Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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165 of 165 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
NJB User Review: One Month Later, October 21, 2000
I got my Nomad Jukebox (NJB) just over three weeks ago. I am a committed MP3 fan, and I have owned both the Rio 300 and Rio 500 players. The NJB is, far and away, the best player on the market in terms of durability (Rios don't last in my experience), price/capacity ratio, playback options, and recording. If you have gotten this far, you probably already know all the specs. Here are the glitches I have found, and some solutions I recommend. 1. In my opinion, the battery life is the biggest limitation of this product. This device is a portable harddrive, and it eats power. As a result, Creative provides two sets of four 1600mAH rechargeable AA batteries. They look like normal Duracells, but a standard disposable battery contains about 750 mAh. This is milli-amps, a measure of the storage capacity of the battery. Four Duracells would probably last about 10 minutes in this thing. In short, you need super-batteries to run the NJB properly and the company gives you only two sets. Each set, when fully charged, get **optimal** play life of four hours. Plan on less. If you travel a lot, like me, and want the NJB for longer trips, you need to buy extra batteries and an external charger. (It comes with a cigarette-lighter adapter for the car) To optimize you batteries with the NJB, buy extra sets of 1600mAH batteries, and an external charger. Get a charger with a conditioning feature that fully drains the battery before recharging. You can run the Jukebox with no batteries inside, just connected to the AC. I always run my NJB on AC when available, and only charge my batteries in an external charger. 2. There are some annoying problems with the NJB that the company plans to fix soon. A few a really important for DJs who might want to use this for dance mixing. There is no A-B looping feature within a track, and the NJB places a pause between tracks that you cannot eliminate. These will be fixed, appartently in future firmware upgrades. My advice to people looking to use the NJB for DJing -- hold off the flurry to buy now, because the features you want are still a few months away. 3. There is another annoying problem that really irks me. The NJB can only recognize one song title, even if the album and artist are different. So if you want to put Ella Fitgerald's and Billie Holiday's version of "All of Me" on your NJB, you have to rename one of the tracks, e.g. "All of Me 1" and "All of Me 2" This is annoying, especially for classical music and jazz fans. 4. The cool headphones are not very loud. Many NJB users I know have purchased headphone amps to increase the sound. I am not much bothered by this, but you if like LOUD headphones, you need to buy another gagdet to get the most out of this. 5. Perhaps the biggest design flaw is that the reformatting function for the NJB is triggered by pressing "play" and "stop" together. Since they are the two largest buttons on the player, this was a mistake. It hasn't happened to me (you have to respond Y or N to "reformat?" ...I'm not that brave..) but this seems like a stupid mistake. 6. Plan on several weekends of CD ripping. I still have 2GBs to fill after intensive copying sessions. 7. You can not upload files with the .mp3 extension from the NJB back to your computer. But you can upload files with the .wav extension from NJB to computer, and you can simply add the .wav to any file on the NJB with the enclosed software. 8. As for the enclosed software, PlayCenter 2, its an adequate CD ripper/Mp3 encoder. Creative didn't spend a lot of time on the software. If you have a favorite encoding software, don't chuck it until you check out Playcenter. Its really weak, especially with multiple file transfers. 9. You need a pre-amped mike to record on the NJB. Basically this means a mike with a battery in it. I have one, and have made one recording. The recording is awesome, and very simple to do. All in all, the NJB is GREAT. I love it, I use it everyday. but there are some glitches that will be fixed in future upgrades, or at least you should be aware of.
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120 of 121 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is my coolest gadget!, September 15, 2000
I actually *have* one of these units, which was released nationwide on Sep 10th! I've used it a few days and overall, I LOVE IT! Obviously, the good point about it is you can store most or all of your audio collection in this lightweight, tiny unit. The software is easy to use. Downloading is fast 15Mb/minute... (about 15x realtime). Unit is easy to use, and it seems pretty rugged. Display shows lots of info and is nicely backlit. Let me re-iterate: This thing is GREAT! You've done your research and know why you want it, so it may be more useful for me to nitpick the downsides:>claimed battery life (I haven't tested it): 4 hours is ridiculously short, and you can't use regular alkalines as backup. Conventional DC adapters won't work either --not enough juice. >no song scan: Despite it saying on the box that you can scan thru a song, you cannot. This makes it painful to listen to audio books with hour-long chapters --if you stop, you have to go back to the beginning of a chapter! I suspect they can and will add this feature in their next downloadable firmware update. >no reordering: you can't reorder songs on the active playlist...not a big deal... >uncomfortable headphones: they sound fine, but clamp my head way too tightly! They should fold for portability too. >a bit pricey: have to worry about it getting stolen...shop for a good price ;) >accessories not available yet: would love the remote control that they're hinting at offering in the future. A protective case where you can actually *use* the unit while it is in the case would be great. Patience... tip: turn off 'Novice Mode' or menu navigation will be SLOW. These are all small nitpicks! Buy one and you'll have fun!
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57 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Value with Some Flaws, October 1, 2000
By A Customer
All in all, this imperfect player is the clearly the best MP3 player on the market in terms of both value and functional convenience, and for that it deserves 5 stars. Upgradeable firmware in a volatile technology is a comfort that is not matched by the two 100 MB plus competitors that I am aware of. It is about the size and shape of a portable CD player, but with it one carries the equivalent of an entire CD collection. At its present price, it is not that much more than a top of the line Rio or Nomad, yet it has more features and a spectacular storage capacity that does not require expensive flash cards. I've owned mine since the day it was released for sale in the U.S.A., and here are my observations regarding its other strengths and where it has room for improvement. File transfer is a huge improvement over the parallel port apparatus of my Nomad I. USB is much quicker, and I have experienced none of the buggy transfers that sometimes plagued use of my Nomad I. Also, I would rather wreck a thing than use a manual. (I'm not lost, the road signs are all wrong). I have made recourse to the manual only once to use a feature of either the player or the PC software. This speaks well of a very thoughtful, intuitively lain out design. Finding and playing tracks is easy. One can browse a library of tracks by album, artist, title, or playlist. I find the ability to save and play lists of songs especially convenient as I like different styles for work or for working out, and I do not have to spend any thought or time at matching a situation or mood because I can simply load a list of songs. The player has many extras. I like the battery power meter, which reads in terms of percentage remaining, as well as the ability to turn-off the backlit display entirely or after a specified delay. Spatialization (the ability to make the sound seem wider or narrower in source) and effects that can make a track sound as though it were a live performance in a club, arena, opera house, or out of doors are schmaltzier items I neither use nor like. I do welcome the addition of a three band equalizer, which can be adjusted to set the midpoint of the frequency range. This can go a long way toward overcoming the weaknesses of a particular track or a particular set of headphones. Adequate volume remains a minor issue, but the devise seems to play slightly louder than my Nomad I, and with ear buds it is fine for me on the street. Although the overall sound quality does not quite match the quality of my expensive, near audiophile quality home CD player, it is still quite good with high bit rate recordings, and I do plug it into my home stereo. I would never dream of doing this with the noisy output from most computer equipment. In fact, except when I sit down just to listen to music, this ultra convenient devise has become the primary player even on my home stereo. The supplied headphones are cool daddy-o "backphones" with one wire in to the left earpiece, so there is no dangling "Y" of wire hanging in the way. The phones fit behind one's ears like a pair of glasses and are connected by an unobtrusive strut that runs behind one's head, they are not in the way when removing hats and bike helmets, and they are comfortable (once you learn to put the strut behind your ears), but the sound is mediocre. Sennheisers from my home stereo make them sound absolutely sick, but of course there is a several hundred dollar difference in price. You may want to budget-in a set of your preferred headphones, or ear buds for loud environments. Also, like the smaller Nomads, this player can be used to store any kind of file, so you can transfer files of nearly 6 GB to and from work or school with it, but like its smaller nephews, it will not allow you to transfer MP3 files from the player to another computer. I did not notice this probable nod to the music industry with my Nomad I until a reviewer noted it, but I imagine it could be quite irritating if you had a need for transferring MP3 files. Also, like the feature that convinced me to buy the Nomad I, this player has the capacity for voice recording (and, obviously, a much better capacity for long discussions or proceedings). However, with the Jukebox, a preamplified microphone is needed but not built-in or supplied. Finally, the Jukebox's weakest point is that it does come with two sets of four rechargeable metal hydride batteries that recharge while the player is plugged into a wall socket, but you may need all eight batteries if you make a lot of house calls. It is a power pig. If I load a list then leave the player alone, I can get about 4 hours per set of batteries, but using schmaltz features, frequent fiddling with the controls, or especially rebooting will cut into this time significantly. Personally, I can comfortably live with the limitations, but the failure to use a lithium ion battery and the inability to use standard, alkaline batteries with the player irk me. Normal batteries drain in about one hour. The player comes with a carrying case that would be adequate except that there is no hole to plug in headphones while the player is encased. I would prefer a belt clip of some sort.
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