|
01 SEPT 2004 |
|
JetAudio iAUDIO M3 |
|
With the
popularity and success of
Apple’s iPod, other companies
have come to join in the fun
with their own hard drive based
MP3 players. One of the main
attractions in owning a hard
drive based MP3 player is that
you can store tons of music of
files on the device. There are
currently iPods capable of
carrying up to 40GB of data!
Today, I will be taking a look
at the 20GB version of JetAudio’s iAUDIO M3. Although
this is the company’s first hard
drive based MP3 player, they
have had enormous success with
their flash based players such
as the CW200 and CW300.
If you
haven’t heard of JetAudio, don’t
be surprised. Based on the
Korean company Cowon Systems,
JetAudio was established in the
US in September of 2000. The
company primarily focuses on MP3
hardware devices such as the one
I will be reviewing today as
well as their JetAudio
multimedia software.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The iAUDIO M3 came
in a nice silver metallic-looking box.
At the front, you can immediately see
what the player and wired remote looks
like. The back of the box lists all the
features of the product.
The package
contained the player itself, the LCD
remote controller, the software CD,
earphones, a carrying case, an extension
connector, USB 2.0 cable, line-in
recording cable, AC power adapter, a
cradle, and the installation manual and
quick start guide (Whew!). As you can
tell, this package is very complete. It
includes all the wires and accessories
you’ll probably ever need when using the
M3. As a consumer, we all know that
some companies like to charge extra for
all the little accessories. This
package has it all here so you are
getting your money’s worth.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
When looking at the
main unit, this device is simply
gorgeous! The device has a very nice
aluminum design. If you aren’t aware,
aluminum serves well in heat dissipation
since the device can get a little warm
sometimes. At the front of the device
are the play/pause, forward, and rewind
buttons which have a lustrous shine to
them. The top of the main unit contains
that LED’s used at status indicators.
The LED’s are used when charging, when
transferring files to the device, as
well as the mode the device is in.
Additional buttons
are on the side. You can change the
volume, record, and you can also enable
the ‘hold’ feature. The hold feature is
useful when you want to disable the
buttons the device to prevent accidental
pressing. I will talk about the volume
and record buttons later since they are
also on the remote controller.
The other side
contains the connector for the wired LCD
remote controller. It uses a
proprietary adapter.
The LCD remote
controller is the part of the product
which you will interact with the most.
A clip is integrated so it can be easily
attached to your shirt, pants, etc. The
remote controller has a few more buttons
than the main unit. There are two jog
dials that are used to control the
volume and playback. Pressing on a jog
dial serves a different purpose such as
activating or selecting an item in the
menu. These jog dials are the key
controls of the remote controller. In
addition, there is also a ‘mode’ and
‘record’ button. When the player is in
use, the mode button allows you to
switch between its MP3 player
capabilities to voice recording or even
use the built in FM tuner.
Turning on the
device just requires holding down the
‘Play’ button on the remote. It will
take approximately 7-10 seconds for the
device to power up. This may change if
you put new files on the device. Once
the device is powered up, you are ready
to start using the player.
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
Installation is rather minimal
for this product. First you
need to recharge the unit.
Charging the unit its first time
took approximately 2 and ½
hours. Once the unit is
charged, you need to transfer
some music files onto the
player. Transferring files
requires using the provided
USB2.0 cable. After plugging
the cable to my computer and the
player, Windows XP immediately
recognized the device without
any software installation at
all. Then you have two options
in transferring files: you can
either go to ‘My Computer’ and
transfer your music files to the
new drive that shows up or you
can install the JetShell
program. Keep in mind, in order
to connect the USB 2.0 cable,
you can either use the provided
cable with the provided cradle
or use it with extension
connector. The extension
connector plugs directly under
the main unit and has the same
connections as the cradle (line
in, out, AC plug, and USB
connector).
|
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Since this is a hard drive
based player, I decided to test the transfer
speeds. Using the synthetic benchmark SiSoft
Sandra Professional, the drive indexed at
approximately 13MB per second. According to the
benchmark, this looks to be about half the speed
of a full sized ATA 100 7200RPM hard drive.
That is still good performance for such a tiny
hard drive in the M3.
Next, I tested the device
with the HDTach program. The device has a
sequential read speed of 20MB per second, but
drops gradually. The device also has a healthy
burst speed of 34.6MB per second.
For those who will probably
be transferring their whole music collection
onto their drive, I was able to transfer 12GB of
music onto the drive in approximately 27
minutes. That is extremely fast for such a
small hard drive.
|
|
|
|
|
|
With a high 95db
signal to noise, I expected this player
to sound well. The sound quality was
extremely clear and crisp and sounded
much better than other MP3 players I’ve
heard before. You will not be
disappointed at all with the audio
quality. Keep in mind that the audio
quality is only as good as the music
source. The provided headphones are ok,
but most of you will probably your own
headphones. If you use better
headphones, you will be able to
experience the high sound quality even
better.
One thing I would like to commend about
the M3 is that it has excellent stereo
separation. On cheap MP3 players, all
the sounds seem to be heard exactly the
same in both ears. With the great
performance of the M3 in stereo
separation, you can distinctly hear
unique sounds in each ear. That means
you may hear different instruments
coming from different ears while still
being able to hear the full vocals of a
song in both ears.
|
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
When using the wired remote, you
can change many options such as the equalization, sound
enhancing effects, or even little things such as the LCD
light display time. BBE is one of the sound enhancing
effects, it supposedly improves the brilliance and
clarity of the music. As an audiophile, I particular
didn’t like this effect that much. It seemed to have
more usefulness when listening to much lower quality
sound files. Mach3Bass is the second sound enhancement
which provides deeper and tighter bass. I found this
sound enhancement to work rather well. It boosted the
bass of the songs to compensate for the low bass
capabilities of earphones. MPEnhance adds warmth and
clarity to music files. As you know, when you compress
a song to lets say an MP3 or WMA file, you are losing
some of the audio quality. This enhancement tries to
fill in the lost audio parts to try and make it sound
like the original. Lastly, there is the 3D surround
effect. The 3D surround effect makes the sound more
spacious rather than confined making the audio seem
richer and fuller.
|
|
|
Since the
main unit has most of the playback and volume controls,
I decided to try the main unit without using the
remote. This works fine if you only have a few songs on
the device, but can be difficult to navigate if want to
listen to a specific song. In my opinion, it is better
to keep the remote on.
|
|
|
With an advertised 14 hours of
playback, the battery life I experience fell a bit short
with a life of 11 hours. This can depend on the volume
that you listen to music. Low quality MP3’s can
sometimes attribute to the cause. Also, it depends on
the settings of the remote controller such how long you
want the LCD backlight to remain active when pressing a
button, etc. |
|
|
While using the M3, I
noticed several minor issues that can be
improved with the product. When changing songs
from one to another, a ‘wait’ dialogue box will
show up on the remote for 2 to 3 seconds before
it starts playing the new track. It would be
great if this time could be decreased or
eliminated to make the experience more
enjoyable.
If you put tons of songs on
the device for your first time, it will take
quite a while for the device to start up because
it has to read all the file names of all your
songs that you’ve put on it.
Although the headphones
included are decent, they can be a bit large for
the ear. They fell out of my ear occasionally.
As mentioned before, it’s best to use your own
headphones with this device.
The last minor issue is the
location of the headphone port on the main
unit. If you were to plug in the headphones
(located on the site), the headphones plug will
stick out on the side making it very awkward to
put in your pocket. It would be best to place
the headphone port at the top of the device.
|
|
|
|
If you can handle the LCD display
on a remote controller rather than on the main device,
this is certainly a good option to look at. The iAUDIO
M3 has excellent sound, plenty of storage space, and has
a very slim design. The iAUDIO M3 is a great device for
JetAudio’s first attempt at a HDD-based player. At the
retail price of $349.00 in JetAudio’s online store, it
is a bit pricier than an equivalent sized competing iPod.
Nevertheless, you will still have a sleek looking device
which will be more unique (since less people have
them). I look forward in JetAudio improving the M3 and
making it even better. |
|
|
Reviewed by
ronald@digitalreviews.net |
|
|
|
