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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. |
Packaging/Contents
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.
A Closer Look at the M3
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
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).
Transferring Files
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.
Audio Quality
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.
A Wealth of Options
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.
Trying to use the Main Unit Without the Remote
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.
Battery Life
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.
Improvements?
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.
Conclusion
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.
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