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Inside the Digital Den
July 2000
Bit players?
Digital audio risks exile from Main Street.
Maury Wright, Executive Editor
Arguably, digital music represents the first true convergence application. Certainly digital music players count as the most successful and perhaps the first true Internet appliance. Beginning with our first issue, we've covered digital music formats and streaming-media technologies.
Now, however, it's time to take a hands-on look at some of the products to see if they deliver the simple yet robust out-of-box experience that consumers in Anytown USA will demand. We all know that technically adept college students, who have bandwidth and time to burn, love their MP3. But ultimately, widespread success means answering a different level of expectations.
Before we begin, let's clarify one point. Audio CDs clearly count as digital music, although the term has recently been associated more with formats, such as MP3, which make much more efficient use of bandwidth and storage. In fact, this article will center on formats that are efficient enough for Internet delivery and for storage on both computers and miniature devices like CompactFlash (CF) cards.
For such digital music to succeed broadly, the vendors that offer equipment and services must solve two sets of problems—audio quality and ease of use. For starters, the quality of the audio must approach that of CDs, despite relying on significantly fewer bits to represent the sound. With digital music, quality is a function of data rate (if you're talking about streaming audio) or storage capacity (if you're storing the music digitally), and codec quality. Look to our September issue for a qualitative evaluation of the different codecs. For this article, I'll rely on my own subjective determination of near-CD quality.
In terms of ease of use, digital audio holds great promise, but realistically, today, it requires way more effort for the typical consumer than do traditional audio CDs. Let's examine a worst-case scenario that's actually quite common. You go buy one of the hot new handheld digital audio players. The allure is a product that's smaller and more durable than a portable CD player (free music might also tempt you, but see my caveats in the sidebar "The free music myth").
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We all know technically adept college students love their MP3, but widespread success means answering a different level of expectations. |
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So you've got your shiny new player. But before listening to a single note, you must install a PC peripheral and PC software. You must find and format some music. And you must transfer the music to the player. Moreover, every time you want new tunes, you must repeat the latter steps in the process. Don't get me wrong, I'm bullish on digital music, but the player makers, Web music sites, and content owners must streamline the process to attract middle America.
A tale of two players
To further illustrate the trials and tribulations of digital music, I set out to evaluate what I felt were the top two choices in portable players—the RCA Lyra and the i2Go eGo.
 PLAY MAKERS: RCA’s Lyra (left) and i2Go’s eGo both get good marks for sound quality, but the process of retrieving and playing digital audio remains a bit too convoluted for the average Joe. |
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These two devices have feature sets that, I feel, target different types of customers. The Lyra is a pure music player with the best bang for the buck on the market. The eGo is a good music player and a model of what the future holds for these devices. For one, the eGo can act as a voice recorder. In addition, you can download email to the eGo and have the unit recite your messages to you using its text-to-speech capability. You can even record responses to email that ultimately get sent as voice attachments. These features, however, burden the device with a sometimes-cumbersome user interface and would clearly be more valuable with wireless connectivity.
I started with the Lyra. The device comes with a CompactFlash drive that attaches to your PC via the parallel (printer) port. Actually, the drive also requires connection to the keyboard port, although the keyboard and printer can plug into pass-through connections on the drive cable. Software installation went quickly, but the PC froze upon the required reboot. The only remedy proved to be a boot into safe mode and an uninstall of the CompactFlash software. Later I would find out that the CompactFlash software mimics a SCSI drive, and apparently the SCSI subsystem on the PC in question caused a conflict. SCSI is far from commonplace, but enough PCs have it that this problem should have been solved long ago.
Rather than fighting the software problem, I headed to my office and a different PC that already had a CompactFlash drive connected via USB. I skipped the installation of the Lyra CompactFlash drive and only installed the customized version of RealJukebox that ships with the Lyra. Unfortunately, RealJukebox didn't recognize my CompactFlash drive, despite the fact that Windows Explorer could read the drive flawlessly.
I was more than a little perturbed—especially given the small amount of documentation that ships with the Lyra and the lack of a robust online support center. I would later discover that RCA offers better-than-average telephone support, but the info I needed should have been immediately available.
Reluctantly, I installed the Lyra CompactFlash drive on my office computer. This time the process proceeded painlessly, and I was shortly ready to manage some music.
Using the included RealJukebox or MusicMatch (downloadable from www.lyrazone.com) software, you can quickly take an audio CD and convert tracks for download onto the Lyra (a process referred to as ripping a CD). The product supports MP3, Windows Media, and RealNetworks formats. You must use the RealJukebox or MusicMatch application to copy songs to the CompactFlash card, then move the card from the drive to the Lyra player.
Mysterious encryption
The copy process reveals that some type of unexplained encryption takes place. In fact, that encryption is the reason you can't use a non-Lyra CompactFlash drive or an application like Windows Explorer to copy music files to the Lyra storage card. RCA, being a force in the consumer audio industry, is adhering to music-industry policies on copying content. That means the Lyra supports SCMS (serial copy management system), which allows the owner of a title to make a copy for his or her own use, but prevents someone from making a copy from the copy.
The Lyra CompactFlash drive is custom designed to read the serial number of a CompactFlash card. The encryption process embeds that serial number in the music file, which ensures that a copy made independently to another card won't play on a Lyra player. RCA claims that most CompactFlash drives can't read the serial number, so the company supplies its own drive (a USB drive is available as well). It appears that the Lyra will work with any of the PC-Card-based CompactFlash adapters, because they allow the system to read the card's serial number.
RCA might have gone overboard here, given the state of the industry, but its intent is noble. Today, other music players store unmodified PC music files. RCA has hinted that it might allow other devices to use the Lyra scheme, but I suspect most manufacturers will ignore the need unless confronted with legal action. Fact is, computer products aren't governed by SCMS rules, and music enthusiasts can easily copy CDs and copies of CDs on a computer with a CD-R or CD-RW drive.
Simple installation
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How would a consumer who just dropped $200 react to such installation glitches? |
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The Lyra experience left me questioning digital audio's potential to reach the masses. How would a consumer who just dropped $200 react to such installation glitches? But I must admit that the little player generates high-quality sound—better, in fact, than many cheap portable CD players. I decided to tackle the eGo to see if its installation and logistics were any better.
The eGo ships with a USB cable that lets your PC communicate with the two CompactFlash drives built into the player. The successful eGo installation took minutes on two different PCs.
I've railed against USB at times and still feel it should be limited to low-end peripherals (see "Universal it's not"), but it is convenient for a product like the eGo, assuming you have a desktop hub to connect the short cable that i2Go supplies.
The eGo ships with MusicMatch and some sample tunes on the installation CD. I had music playing within 10 minutes of opening the box. It takes more time and effort before you can play self-selected songs; you've either got to rip a CD or download songs from the Net. USB does allow fairly quick transfer of songs to the player, once you store and organize your content on your PC disk. Moreover, you can write to the eGo CompactFlash card using any file-management software. In this case, simpler is better for the consumer. Why should a player comply with SCMS if users obviously have the music on their PCs in an unencrypted format anyway?
Until music players are truly plug-and-play, I'm not sure just how big the market might be. I do know, however, that I've seen some extremely compelling product and service concepts that go beyond handheld players.
The ultimate in ease of use came from the My.MP3.com service, pioneered by MP3.com and now being copied by other sites. My.MP3.com maintains a virtual jukebox of all your CDs (see "My way"). Assuming you're connected to the Net, you can access your collection with no concerns of storage or transfers. At press time, MP3.com had disabled the My.MP3.com service as part of settlement agreements with the record labels who had fired copyright-infringement lawsuits at MP3.com shortly after it launched the service. MP3.com said it would restart the service once licensing agreements with the labels could be worked out.
Whatever way the MP3.com situation plays out, the advantages of such a service are too persuasive to deny. Someday, we'll access these online jukeboxes wirelessly with handheld devices or from our cars. Today, such services are still viable as virtual music players for our PCs and, soon, our living rooms.
Compelling products
A number of products about to debut allow you to take advantage of digital audio throughout the house. And while none shipped in time for us to test for this article, stay tuned to www.commvergemag.com for updates.
Among the compelling products, the Kerbango (www.kerbango.com) is an Internet-connected boom box. It's especially cool alongside a broadband connection shared via a home LAN. Connect Kerbango to the LAN, and without a PC you can tune Internet radio broadcasts or play MP3 songs from local or remote locations. Promised at under $300, Kerbango has the potential to reach middle America, assuming middle America gets broadband.
Akoo.com also has an interesting hardware product that's tied to its fee-based portal service for music, news, and other types of broadcast information. The company's Kima hardware includes a device you connect to your PC and one you place next to your living-room stereo. Kima wirelessly brings sounds from the Internet to your living room.
Meanwhile, S3—one of the digital audio pioneers with its Rio portable player—has announced the Rio Digital Audio Receiver. Destined for the living room, the unit includes a HomePNA connection, which allows the machine to link to an Internet-connected home LAN via a telephone cord. For $300, the unit also includes a HomePNA card for an Internet-connected PC that bridges the receiver to the Internet. Turtle Beach has announced a very similar product called Audiotron, and both of these units should ship before the holiday season.
Digital audio is on the way. And by the way, these dedicated home appliances should drive music services and help bridge the gap for portable players, making them more attractive to the average consumer.
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The free music myth
Don't misunderstand, you can find free music on the Internet—most any title imaginable. But you won't find and retrieve that music free of a significant effort that includes searching, downloading, possibly transcoding, storing, and transferring. Moreover, even MP3 and other compact formats eat disk space—between 2 and 10 Mbytes per song. In its present form, this free music isn't going to attract the attention of middle America.
Ignoring ongoing legal questions for the sake of researching this article, I tried out the notorious Napster (www.napster.com). Napster actually stores no music on its site. Instead, the site acts as a gathering place where music enthusiasts meet to swap music from PC to PC. The company claims this distinction makes Napster legal, even though Napster users can trade copyrighted songs (see picture).
Upon my first exposure, I immediately understood the music industry's trepidation. At my son's request, we looked for the newest Britney Spears tune, and I was astounded to find hundreds of users making copies available for download. By the end of my weekend experiment, however, I had decided that the music industry has little to worry about. Even though the Napster software shows you the speed of the remote link and even though I have a cable modem, some songs taken from purported DSL and T1 sites took half an hour to download.
And while Napster lets you queue multiple downloads, on average one out of three downloads that I tried failed inexplicably. Moreover, most of the songs online were recorded at the highest quality level, which is great for sound quality but horrible for storage space. To get the one- or two-hour play time touted with popular portable players, you have to transcode the music to a lower quality once you download it to your PC. A serious music fan would need gigabytes of dedicated storage.
I know high-school and college kids will endure this routine. But I wonder how many CD sales this activity really derails. For myself, I would pay for a more capable download service. For example, I'd like to see every song offered in different formats and with options for audio quality/file size. If I own the music in my ideal world, I should be able to download my choice quickly at a truly nominal fee from commercial servers with fast connections. Perhaps that's where Napster and the likes of MP3.com may head with their evolving business models.
Meanwhile, in my opinion, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the National Music Publishers Association (NMPA) are wasting their time fighting Napster. Just before press time, the RIAA and NMPA filed a motion in US District Court essentially asking the court to shut Napster down.
These efforts are futile. I don't believe the broad music audience will rely on Napster, simply because it's too time consuming. Moreover, even if the courts shut Napster down, hardcore users will persevere. Already there are half a dozen or more similar sites. Plus, programs like Gnutella (gnutella.wego.com) and FreeNet (freenet.sourceforge.net) aim to promote file sharing without a central Web site. In that case, there's no way for the courts to shut the technology down, short of killing the entire Internet.
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Picking winners
After spending time with the RCA Lyra and i2Go eGo, I have reservations about portable music players in general, but I admit that these players produce compelling sound. Moreover, smaller designs may prove more attractive, although small has implications with the storage media. Read on for my thoughts and recommendations.
The Lyra and eGo have some key similarities. For example, both use CompactFlash cards for storage. I wouldn't consider a player with any other type of storage right now, and that includes Sony Memory Stick devices. Down the road, perhaps the Secure Digital (SD) Card will prove an alternative to CompactFlash, but today CompactFlash offers the best price, the widest availability, and freedom from royalty ties. The one advantage an SD Card might offer is size. But that's a double-edged issue; CompactFlash cards are already small enough to be tough to handle and easy to lose.
Both the Lyra and eGo are also upgradeable, albeit in different ways. You can download support for new music formats to the Lyra's DSP (digital signal processor), which handles the music decode task. That could be an issue should truly compelling new formats emerge. In my opinion, however, the average listener can't tell one from the other—they all sound good.
The eGo can't be upgraded to support new codecs, but can be upgraded with new features in terms of the user interface and operation. In fact, the company has posted several upgrades already and has even improved the somewhat cumbersome user interface.
The Lyra's sound out of the box is far superior to most players, but mainly because it comes with a quality set of headphones. The eGo ships with ear-bud-style headphones, as do most players, and the sound quality was suspect until I substituted a decent set of phones. The eGo also has a speaker that's pretty much unsuitable for music but very useful for listening to voice recordings or downloaded email.
For a dedicated music player, I would recommend the Lyra, even though I wish RCA would forget the SCMS encryption. I was drawn to the eGo because it can double as a voice recorder. But it can't really match a good compact digital recorder. The microphone could be more sensitive, though it gets the job done. Numerous reviews have complained about the eGo's single-line, scrolling display. It's easy to read in sunlight, but the format takes some getting used to. Despite the perhaps-clumsy design, I found the device easy enough to use once I got accustomed to it. The company actually tailored the design for in-car use. I found the eGo's ability to handle email too cumbersome for regular use, although I might change my mind were it wirelessly connected.
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