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The Nomad Jukebox is essentially a portable hard drive with software that will play MP3 audio. Since hard drives include spinning and moving parts, this player is not ideal for active MP3 users such as joggers and snowboarders.
We cracked open the box, inserted the rechargeable batteries, plugged in the AC adapter, and waited the recommended 12 hours for them to charge initially. This is a very important step. This was our second set of batteries--we didn't bother to heed Creative's initial charging directions when we first got the product, and our first set of batteries soon lost the capacity to be recharged.
After installing the included software (we tested the Jukebox on a Macintosh G4 using SoundJam MP; for PCs, Creative includes PlayCenter 2) and connecting the USB cable, we quickly deleted 2 GB of starter MP3 and audiobook files and started loading our own music. We started with about 500 songs, but noticed after the load had finished that not all the songs made it onto the Jukebox. Also, the SoundJam software didn't like us doing any other work on our Mac G4, stalling out the load whenever we switched to another program.
We found it was best to load in smaller numbers and to keep SoundJam up as the active application (unfortunately, not the most efficient use of computer time). The transfer rate is about six minutes per 100 MB, which translates to about 25 songs. (So far, we've loaded 861 songs and we still have 2.3 GB left of storage.)
Once music has been transferred to the Jukebox, you need to create an active playing list by navigating one of three lists--artists, albums, and genres--then adding songs to the queue. (This points out the need for creating thorough ID3 tags, an electronic label that can include song title, track number, year, and more. ID3 tags can be created via the PlayCenter and SoundJam software manually, or they can be imported from the online CDDB database. For more information about tagging, see the Amazon.com Making MP3s Guide.) Playlists can be saved in the Jukebox, though it can be a bit tedious (there's no keyboard), and you can't add songs to an existing playlist.
The Jukebox also sports some nice additions. It has a line-in recording capability (using an external microphone) that records WAV files that can be adjusted for optimal (or low-end) sound quality, and it can play audiobooks.
The biggest downside to the Nomad Jukebox is its portability. As noted, it does run on rechargeable batteries, but they'll last far less than the advertised two hours. Also, this isn't the device to take jogging; its internal hard drive, though somewhat resistant to shock and motion, just won't take that kind of activity. It's really made for stationary play using its included AC adapter.
It also has a few playback glitches, the biggest being that you can't fast- forward or rewind within a song. Also, there's no bookmark feature for audiobook listening--a necessity for long files.
Ultimately, the Creative Nomad Jukebox isn't perfect and isn't suited for everyone's MP3 needs. But it has become a staple of our gadget life--it travels with us daily to the office and hooks in nicely into stereo systems, both at home and at friends' houses. Someday, we'll all wonder what we did without an MP3 jukebox. --Agen G.N. Schmitz
Pros:
About the size of a portable CD player and weighing only 14 ounces, this EAX-certified digital audio player features 6 GB of storage capacity. With far more memory than most portable digital audio players have, it stores approximately 100 hours of CD-quality audio or up to 2,600 hours of spoken-word content. Unlike other hard drive-based solutions, the Nomad Jukebox C offers an onboard, real-time digital signal processor for superior audio playback and customization. The Nomad Jukebox C is SDMI-capable and supports file formats such as MP3, WMA, and WAV.
Other highlights of this player include special-effects algorithms that alter the way your music sounds, making it seem as if you are listening in a concert hall, in a stone room, or in a forest. You also have the flexibility to adjust the treble, bass, and middle tones to your liking. You can slow and speed up the playback of files, an especially helpful feature if you are running through the minutes of a meeting you just recorded or are listening to other spoken-word content.
The Nomad Jukebox C offers USB interface for lightning-fast data transfer between your Nomad Jukebox C and your PC or Macintosh. It includes four rechargeable NiMH AA batteries. Note that the Nomad Jukebox C does not include a carrying pouch or headphones.
The short story:
It worked great for a while. 6 Gig IS a lot of music, even when I ripped at highest quality VBR. It played anything from 32 to 320 kbps as well. I loaded it up and swapped songs nearly every day.
I think the first downfall was when I updated to the newest firmware. In doing further reading after that, MANY people had similar skipping/freezing problems. Basically, the player would freeze, returning an error, which meant that you had to run the equivalent of a "scan disk" to patch it up. This happened with greater and greater frequency until I basically had to do it every 100 Meg of songs or so. Sometimes even after 2 songs! With 6 gig, you can guess I didn't want to babysit my player as it loaded songs.
Part of this might have been because I was deleting and adding 300 meg of new songs almost every day. I think that exacerbated what otherwise might have been a dormant or relatively harmless problem. But it still should have handled it.
Eventually, it stopped playing songs all the way through. And that wasn't because of the tune because you could reboot the thing and it would play that tune just fine the next time. No, there was something really wrong.
I sent it to their help desk and for [dollar amount] they took a look at it (because it was a month out of warranty!). They reported nothing really wrong and the guy ran the clean-up process and returned it. Apparently, he neglected to read the two page letter I had included that said that I had already done that and even re-formatted.
I sent it back, with a disc full of MP3s of various sizes and shapes and asked them to load the disc on in it's entirety. Guess what! It failed!
They couldn't figure out what to do, so they sent me a new one. Normally this would have cost me [dollar amount] out of pocket, but since their last fix was warranteed for 30 days, I got lucky. Watch those warrantees people!
Anyway, this one worked for a while, but still froze up when I was loading too close to the "full" mark. I had to leave 50 meg free, then 75 meg, then 100 meg free. Finally, it choked all together and now I have a nice handy [dollar amount] paperweight.
I could send it back I guess, but I'm not interested in paying [dollar amount] bucks for a new machine that will only last another 4 months. No thanks.
It had it's good qualities:
- Played any MP3 I fed it, random, repeat.
- Nice organization of stuff on the machine, by artist, album, genre and playlists.
- Easy to get tunes on and off (when it wasn't malfunctioning)
- Solid feel. Nice button response. I liked the weight of it.
- It had playlists which you could upload, but I hated that. Plus, it slowed it down while booting up. What I used was the track numbers built into the tags of the MP3s. It used that to order them.
Criticisms:
- It broke. And not just for me. Look around in the newsgroups, you'll see plenty of people with similar problems. Honestly, being in IT, I have a bit of a knack for debugging problems, and I think this was probably some sort of problem with their delete function. I hope they read this and try to fix it.
- It tried to be robust by using ID3v2 and v1 info AND this weird thing called Lyricsv3, which nobody's ever heard of. Unfortunately, it always defaulted to v2, even though I prefer v1, and then this Lyrics thing which I had a hard time finding a program to strip out. It would have been nice to force it to use ID3v1.
- Needed a "Queue everything" selection
- Took forever (30secs+) to boot up. When I read why, it was a totally stupid reason too. It had to rescan every MP3 or something. Wasted time.
- It broke. Twice. Did I mention that?
I'd certainly think twice before buying one of these, or their higher-priced, larger HD cousins, as they use the same firmware.
Peter
But best of all, just in the month I have had this, they have upgraded both the PC software and the firmware for the Nomad, and addressed many of the problems listed in earlier reviews. Tracks can be ordered in the playlists (non-alphabetically), boot times are MUCH shorter, battery life is longer (slightly), pretty much everything is an improvement (well, except the headphones).
The Nomad isn't perfect, to be sure. The Archos had a nicer size and shape. Its ability to act as an external hard drive was great -- move your MP3s there and free up hard drive space while still being able to play them from the PC. And by far the biggest liability of the Nomad, its abysmal PlayCenter2 software (and the fact that you're locked into using it), was one of the great strengths of the Archos (MusicMatch Jukebox is great, and you can copy files to the Archos with just Explorer). Also, the Nomad is sensitive to "weird" ID3 tags -- about 1 in 10 MP3s needed me to rewrite the tags to keep the PlayCenter2 software from refusing to upload playlists with those songs in them, with no error message.
But the Nomad definitely has its advantages. The screen and interface are light-years ahead. Lots of small usability issues make it a lot easier to use than the Archos. It's way better supported with a bigger online community. The preloaded tracks are even better! And while PlayCenter2's support for playlists is weak, even in the latest version which can import M3Us generated by more capable software, the Archos required me to edit playlists with a text editor and even then, keep them under 100 songs.
But when it all comes down, what matters is, the Nomad works (knock on wood). The Archos doesn't. Simple as that. I'd like to see improvements to the Nomad, but even without them, it gets the job done. Great tunes, great sound quality, great portability, and that's what we're really here for.
The Nomad Jukebox from Creative provided me with a full 6Gb of disk space for MP3. I was able to put most every CD I listened to on a regular basis, on it, with room to spare. So I put a book on CD on it too. The form factor is great! Looks like a CD player, but isn't. I get looks from people on planes who wonder how I can listen to one CD for 4 hours straight - when in reality I've been mixing the flight away. I was worried about the interfaces capability to get me around 6Gb of MP3, and while it is a little slow (couldn't you have put a little faster processor in there guys?), it's also very intuitive. The software included, let's me manage my Jukebox with ease as well as play MP3's from iton to my PC speakers. I have the Creative DTS-3500 speakers, and it sounds great!
Of course, it's not without it's drawbacks. The battery life is horrible. Creative maintains that the Jukebox is built not for prolonged independant use, but as a portable CD collection for your office or car, or wherever there might be an power source. So when I say I listend to 4 hours straight - it would have been more but the batteries went dead. On the other hand, you can order more from Creative. Also a big bummer is that while you can transfer MP3's to the device, it won't let you transfer them back to your PC (as it will with any other file type). Looks like the Creative execs got a little worried about legal issues.
Now for the few drawbacks:
The carry case that comes with it doesn't have a long handle for easy transport and doesn't provide room for you to put the unit in the case while the headphones are plugged in.
The PC software is *not* intuitive and does not preserve track order so if you listen to an album, you get the songs in alphabetic order (at least, that's my current experience). There's also no automatic way to convert songs with the PC software.
The Apple software I'm using is iTunes - free and excellent with only one drawback: you can't edit song information once it's on the jukebox (the PC version seems to allow this). However, it does allow you to both preserve and edit track information which is great for those multi-CD "greatest of..." albums - I converted Les Miserables and Best of Meatloaf into single albums and was able to preserve the original song order. The other thing I love about iTunes is that you can set it so that when you pop in a CD, it immediately gets the track info from CDDB, rips the album to mp3 and ejects the CD when you're done - great for converting a collection while doing other things.
If you have the good fortune to be able to work on both platforms, use iTunes for conversion and only use the PC software if you need to edit info *after* you have copied your music to the jukebox.
Why? Well first off, 6GB of MP3's is a LOT of CD's. Next, because I am a music freak, I bought the 20GB upgrade for the Jukebox (search the web for Nomadworld). Anyhow, the dang thing just runs great, is slick, and now I have 500 CD's to cart around with me (yes 500 CD's on this thing!).
The only drawback is that the battery power get's drained quickly, but Creative Labs has been kind enough to give you two sets of rechargable batteries so you can listen to 8 interrupted hours of music without a recharge.
The software that comes with the Jukebox Ripps CD's in a flash, is easy to use, and makes managing all of this music a snap (thank goodness).
Makes flying in an airplane just fly on by (yes, pun intended).
Get it - it is well worth the money. Why waste your time with a 64 MB MP3 player... uploading, deleteing, uploading, deleteing. This thing will hold all of your music.
Things will get better despite our efforts to improve them.
-- Will Rogers
Q: Why did the programmer call his mother long distance?
A: Because that was her name.
