The Apple iPod has revolutionized how we play music. Most publications use the iPod as the standard that all other hard drive based music players need to live up to. However, like most Apple products, the price seems to be very high for the hardware you get. It is for that reason, I decided to take a look at the competition. I have never owned an iPod, and have only seen one in action for a very brief period. Therefore, I cannot compare these units to the iPod; I can only judge them against each other. Also, keep in mind, that I did not receive review units, and I do not work for any publication. I am simply writing these reviews based on my personal experience with retail versions of these products.

The Neuros II

The first of the two players I am reviewing, is the Neuros II. The Neuros II is a different take on MP3 players. Its main difference is the detachable backpack. The player unit docks into the backpack. The backpack is upgradeable. You can purchase additional backpacks, so you can always expand your Neuros as you expand your music collection.At a suggested retail price of $249, the 20gb Neuros II is $50 less than the 20gb iPod.The Neuros comes in 20gb, 30gb, 40gb, 60gb and 80gb models. There is also what is called the “Neuros bundle” which comes with a hard drive based backpack along with a flash memory based backpack.

 

Here are the features, as listed at http://www.neurosaudio.com :
 
 
 

Features

Intuitive navigation
Go anywhere size: 5.3" x 3.1" x 1.3", 9.4 oz.
20GB hard drive holds up to 5,000 songs (encoded at 128kbps)

Use as a portable hard drive to hold any file you want to take with you

Digitally enhanced FM tuner

Recording to MP3 format from internal microphone, FM tuner, and line input

High resolution, backlit LCD display and button controls

5 programmable preset buttons

10 hours of continuous playback with rechargeable Lithium Ion battery

Automatic firmware and software upgrades

Neuros comes with earphones, car power adapter, wall power adapter, USB cable and Neuros Synchronization Manager Software


 

It sounds very impressive. The Neuros II is the 2nd generation USB player, which utilizes USB 2.0, as opposed to the much slower USB 1.1. One big benefit of the Neuros is that the company has open sourced the software and firmware for the unit. This means that developers all over the world can work on the Neuros and add features to improve the unit. It also means that it’s destined to have a strong following, and support for a long time to come.
 
 

Getting Started.

The Neuros seems bigger than you would expect. It’s about the size of my garage door opener, and a bit thicker. The Neuros connects to the PC via a proprietary USB cable. The USB connector on the player is located on the backpack portion of the Neuros. The backpack can be connected to the computer even without the player docked. It is recognized as a Mass Storage Device under Windows XP. I would have liked to see a standard USB cable, instead of the proprietary connector. For instance, I use the player at work, so I have to lug the cable around. I tried to buy a 2nd cable direct from Neuros, but they were back-ordered and said they would take 7-10 days. After a month, the cable was still not available.

While the Neuros can be used as a regular removable hard drive, you cannot simply copy your music to the Neuros. The Neuros is completely database driven and software is necessary to “sync” the database. Neuros ships with NSM, Neuros Synchronization Manager. It will index your MP3 files stored on your computer, and synch them up with the Neuros. The software is easy to use but very buggy. It caused General Protection Faults a number of times on my Windows XP machine. My MP3 collection is very large. I have a 160gb nearly filled with MP3s (mostly live audience recorded concert recordings). NSM took hours to load all the information from the MP3s into its database and finally crashed. Upon restarting the software, it simply locked up. I had to uninstall it completely, and then reinstall it, while not loading my entire collection of music. It was at this point that I switched over to some popular open source software to load music onto the Neuros.
A java based NDBM (Neuros Database Manager) is very easy to use, and very polished. It was stable and worked well in my tests. It is necessary to have the Java runtimes installed on your computer to use it. There is also Sorune, which has a very small footprint, and can run right off the Neuros hard drive itself. It worked well, but it has a very unpolished GUI, and a work-in-progress feel to it. Both open source apps were stable, and seemed easier to use NSM. There is also Positron, open source software for Linux. I do not have a machine with Linux, so I did not test this.

 

I also must mention, it is necessary that your MP3s be tagged with ID3 tags. Since the Neuros is database driven, navigation is done via artist and album, and proper ID3 tags must be in place. The Neuros does not navigate using files and folders. The Neuros is also one of the few portable MP3 players to boast support for OGG files.
 

Music Playback

Once the music was loaded, the Neuros was disconnected from the computer. The Neuros takes a little while to start up after synchronization. The menu interface is simple and straightforward and very easy to use. Finding my music was easy. As is with nearly every portable music player I have tried, the included ear-bud style headphones are weak. I switched to a set of Koss KSC-50’s and Koss KSC-55’s, which I am very familiar with, in order to evaluate the sound quality. I must say that the Neuros had the best sound quality of any portable based MP3 player I have ever tried (including a number of CD based units, and the Creative Nomad Zen Xtra, reviewed later). There are preset EQ settings, as well as a custom EQ setting, but with decent headphones, these aren’t necessary. Sound was crisp, clean and clear, and the unit was able to pump decent volume levels for a portable player. Clearly, the sound quality is one of the strong points of the player.

 

What separates the Neuros from most players is the wealth of features it boasts. One of the best features is the MyFi (now called NeuroCast), built-in FM transmitter. This will play the Neuros on any FM radio without the need to have dangling wires from add-on FM transmitters. I have never been happy with FM transmitters in the past. Range is limited, and most of them restrict the frequencies used to broadcast. However, the Neuros has a wealth of frequencies available, pretty much covering the entire available FM dial. The frequencies also stay tuned, with no drift. This was far and away, the best personal FM transmitter I had ever tried.
 
 

There were a couple minor problems with it, however. Navigation was slow and sluggish when the FM transmitter was used. The auto-detect feature, which is designed to find the best available frequency, picked one that was directly next to the strongest FM station in the state. Fortunately manually selecting a better frequency was easy to do. Also, S and Z sounds were distorted over the FM frequency, even when lowering the gain.

The Neuros has a built-in FM radio as well. It uses the headphone cable as an FM antenna. Unfortunately, with every set of headphones I tried, I was unable to get any station to come through in stereo. I live in an area with lots of strong FM stations, so this tells me that the FM radio reception is pretty weak. This is not a feature that I personally will use much, but it may be important to some.
 

One thing I noticed that was troublesome was the Hold switch. It is right on the front of the player and not recessed in any way. I was carrying the Neuros in my pocket, and the Hold switch moved, and then the buttons depressed and my playback was interrupted. This is a terrible place for that switch.
 
 

Battery Life:

The Neuros has a built-in Lithium Ion battery, which is located inside the backpack with the hard drive. The battery advertised 10 hr playback life, and my tests showed that to be accurate. A full recharge takes 8 hours, which seems like a very long time. (Especially when compared to the Nomad reviewed below). Also, should the battery wear out, it is not user removable and the backpack must be sent back to Neuros for replacement.


 

Recording:

One of the biggest draws of the Neuros is that it is also a portable digital audio recorder, as well as a MP3 player. It supports recording through a built-in microphone, or an external powered microphone direct to MP3 or uncompressed WAV formats. I was unable to test the live recording first hand. However, I have heard a few recordings made from the Neuros, and with the right microphones and pre-amps, the results were fantastic.Keep in mind, that the Neuros does not provide power to the external microphone, so it will be necessary to have a pre-amp or powered microphones.

One major disappointment is the battery life when recording to WAV format. While I was unable to test this myself, some queries to people who have used the Neuros to record concerts indicate that the Neuros will only last between 2 and 2 ½ hours recording to WAV format, and about 4 hours to MP3. This is because the hard drive must spin more often when recording to WAV because it uses more data than the compressed MP3 format. The concert trading community frowns big time on MP3 sourced recordings, so this lessens the usefulness of the Neuros as a recorder. Some users have overcome this by buying expensive add-on battery packs that plug into the power cord jack (one vendor sells this for $69 with a $69 charger). Others have built their own battery packs, but this adds weight and size to a device, which is already pretty large for stealth recording.

The unit will also record from the FM radio, and has a feature called HiSi, which will identify recordings from the FM radio the next time you synch the Neuros to the computer using NSM. I did not test this feature because of my difficulty with NSM. I did record some samples from the FM radio, but unfortunately the FM radio would not tune stereo, so my recordings all sounded pretty flat. This is not a feature that I would use very often at any rate.


 

Problems galore.

I encountered some minor problems my first week with the unit. There were instances where the unit would lock-up, or freeze. This happened a couple times, but it wasn’t major. There is a key combination that can be used to “reboot” the Neuros, and this usually solved the problem. However a week after purchasing I ran into a problem that could not be fixed. The device would turn off as soon as I would turn it on, saying that power was low. Of course, the battery was fully charged, and the device would do this even when plugged into the AC adapter or the included car adapter.

I called Neuros support and they were very helpful. After verifying my purchase, they e-mailed me a shipping label and sent me out a replacement unit as soon as I mailed them the defective unit. Unfortunately, my problems did not stop there. The second unit would lock-up much more frequently, and would sometimes not power back on after the lockup. This prompted additional calls to support, who once again issued me an RMA and I sent the player the back. When the third player arrived, and the problems started within 10 minutes of using it, I got very frustrated. I was unable to return the player to the point of purchase since the 14 day return policy had passed while waiting for my 1st RMA. Neuros support said that they could not offer me a refund, but would send me another player, so once again I mailed them back the defective unit. The fourth unit arrived, about a month and a half after my initial purchase, and once again I have run into the same lockup problems as units #2 & #3. A quick check of the tech support forums indicate other people are having the same exact issue, and support personnel have responded stating that they appear to have a bad bunch of players. However, after four units they have been unable to provide me with a working unit. I realize problems crop up, and while Neuros support has been very helpful and patient, they have been unable to solve my problem and keep sending me back defective units. (The concert I was going to record has come and gone by now, so that is why I was unable to personally test the recording function).
 

As it stands as of this writing, I do not have a working unit, and thus I cannot recommend anyone purchase a Neuros.

UPDATE: As of 11/01/2004 Neuros Support has finally agreed to refund my purchase price.
 

Pros:

Great sound quality

NeuroCast works well

OGG support

Open Source software available

Unit acts as removable USB hard drive

Good battery life playing back MP3s


 

Cons:

Simply doesn’t work

Poor FM radio reception

Proprietary USB cable

Battery not user replaceable

Battery takes a long time to charge

Battery life too short recording WAV’s

Packaged software buggy
 
 

Final Words:

The Neuros is a great concept. Its feature set is compelling, and it sounds incredible. Unfortunately, it does not work, and the company has been unable to solve my problem.

On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the best), my score is …….2
 

Creative Nomad Zen Xtra

Creative Labs is famous for their Sound Blaster series of sounds cards. They are also famous for having software that likes to take over your whole system. They also like to implement proprietary connections. For instance, on my Audigy 2 ZS, the digital out only works properly when connected to Creative brand speakers. This is one of the main reasons I was very hesitant about trying a Creative Labs based MP3 player. For the most part, I was pleasantly surprised.

The Nomad is much smaller and lighter than the Neuros.
 
 

Creative makes a number of different models of hard drive based MP3 players. They all have features that differ from one another. The unit I am reviewing is a 40gb Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra. (The Zen Xtra also comes in 30gb and 60gb versions). This has been on the market for about a year now, so you might have read reviews before. The Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra is much smaller than the Neuros, in both height and thickness. It ships with a handy leather carrying case with a belt clip that helps protects it when moving around. The 40gb Nomad retails currently for about $269, which is only a few dollars more than the 20gb Neuros.

The Nomad inside the handy included carrying case.

 

The Nomad Zen Xtra is almost a completely different product from the Neuros. Where the Neuros has loads of additional features, the Zen Xtra is strictly a MP3 player. It doesn’t have any MyFi, it is not recognized as an external mass storage device, it doesn’t have a FM radio, it doesn’t record, it doesn’t support OGG, etc. What it does do is playback MP3 and WMA files, and it does that quite well.
 

Getting Started

The Nomad Zen Xtra ships with an install CD that contains device drivers, Creative Media Source software, and Nomad Explorer software. Media Source is a database manager for all your music files stored on your computer. I will tell you right now, I did not install that for this test. I did install Nomad Explorer, which integrates the Nomad into Windows Explorer, which makes transferring files to and from the Nomad, easy as drag and drop.
Of course, one of the downfalls of the Nomad is the fact that you need device drivers and special software to integrate into Explorer. This is because the Nomad is not seen as an external hard drive. While you can use Nomad Explorer to copy data files to the Nomad for transport from one computer to another, you can’t run from programs from it.You will need to install a device driver, and software on every computer you plan to connect to the Nomad. The Nomad connects with a standard USB 2.0 cable (included). Unlike the Neuros, this cable is not proprietary, so finding a replacement or an extra cable is easy.

 

I used the Nomad Explorer to copy about 34gb of music to the Nomad. Like the Neuros, the Nomad is database driven, meaning your ID3 tags must be filled out for easy navigation (the included software can be used to help with this task). One small problem I noticed was when two files had different filename, but the same information for song title and album in the ID3 tag. Nomad Explorer will prompt you to overwrite the existing file. Here is an example: Two files, 13 – Madrigal.mp3 and the file 16 – Madrigal.mp3 both had ID3 tags that indicated the title of track was “Madrigal” and the album was “1978-10-06 Inglewood, CA”. Even though they had different filenames, I had to change the title on one of two ID3 tags in order to get both to copy to the Nomad.
 

Other than that, Nomad Explorer was easy to use, if not feature rich. I wasn’t able to determine how much space I had left anywhere in Nomad Explorer. Perhaps Media Source doesn’t have this problem. I think the transfer was somewhat slower than copying to the Neuros. It took a couple hours to completely load the Nomad. I think the Nomad is automatically updating its internal database as you copy files to it. This could be part of the reason why it is a bit slower.
 

Like the Neuros, there is Open Source software for the Nomad as well. I tested out a demo version of a product by Red Chair Software called Notmad Explorer. This is an alternative to Media Source and Nomad Explorer. It has a very polished interface and seems easy to use. Unfortunately, unlike the Open Source software available for the Neuros, Notmad Explorer costs $25. I did try a WinAmp plug-in, which was free, that integrates the Nomad’s database into WinAmp. This worked pretty well, and was pretty cool too. You can use WinAmp to copy, delete or even play files off the Nomad.
 

Music Playback

As far as MP3 playback goes, the Nomad excels here. The navigation is simple to use, and sound quality is excellent. Not as nice as the Neuros in that department, but still better than most portable players I’ve tried. I’ve been using the Nomad for about 2 ½ weeks now, every day for at least 4 hours a day. I have not had it lock up, freeze, or skip yet. It is very stable. It features EAX sound, which is a Creative standard for adding environmental effects to music. This can be anything as simple as EQ and as complex to automatic volume leveling. However, I have not found the need to enable any of it in my tests. Using my Koss headphones mentioned above, it sounds great without any added effects. I did not test the included earbuds.
 
One complaint is the side-mounted controls. While the scroll wheel makes navigating through a long list of albums a breeze, I find front mounted buttons easier to use. I would have really liked to see a wired remote, but neither player reviewed today has that.

Battery Life

A user removable Lithium Ion battery powers the Nomad. It is advertised as lasting 14 to 15 hours, but I have found it lasts about 10 hours. Unlike the Neuros, users can replace the battery on the Nomad without having to send the entire unit back to the company. Creative sells replacements for $49.99; however, there are a number of shops selling replacements on eBay for less than $20. The Nomad ships with a rapid re-charger that charges the battery in 1-3 hours.This is a great feature and far beats the 8 hour charge time of the Neuros.
 
Pros:
Very stable and reliable
User replaceable battery
Battery charges fast

Excellent sound

40gb version costs the same as most competitors’ 20gb offerings.

Included handy leather carrying case
 

Cons:

Better open source software costs extra

Not recognizable as a Mass Storage Device, drivers and software must be installed

No extras
 

Final Words:

The Nomad Zen Xtra is the way to go for no frills, reliable music playback, and is more affordable than most other hard drive based portable music players. I also realize that I did not review the entire product, as I did not install the Media Source software. However, I was able to get full use of the product without it. It does not have all the extras that the Neuros does, but the 40gb Nomad costs about the same as the 20gb Neuros.

On a scale of 1 to 10, the Nomad Zen Xtra gets an 8.