Creative Nomad Jukebox 3 - The Wanderer's MP3 player
Written: Oct 02 '02 (Updated Oct 02 '02)
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Pros: Great sound, large storage, beautiful looks
Cons: Size & weight may be an issue, plus the occasional hiccup(hang).
The Bottom Line: The Jukebox 3 is a major jump from the old time MP3 players. If you want great sound, plus large storage, then this is the player for you!
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| LifeStar's Full Review: Creative Technology Nomad Jukebox (20 GB) MP3 Play... |
The Change
It’s funny how things and attitudes change. Years ago I was very opposed to ever using MP3s or making my own, less alone download them from the internet. Why? I felt (and still do a little) that the sound quality and the hassle associated with MP3s were not worth it. For one thing, I was a sound engineer at my church, so I’ve gotten used to listening to pure raw wave files on my PC whenever I was editing the recordings we’ve made, and I didn’t want to waste my time and telephone line just to download the latest hits from the Backstreet Boys.
However, over the past year and half I’ve been working at a nice tech company for my internship program that my school runs. During that time, I’ve found it really convenient to take my own albums and create MP3 libraries on my work laptop and listen to the songs from there. Now, as I prepare myself to head back to school in January, and not sure whether I will be working at this tech company when I graduate, I decided that I needed another device that would allow me to keep my MP3 collection and bring it to school and my future job.
Hello stranger…
I’ve been reading about the latest MP3 players and even my church’s youth director has an Archos Jukebox. I initially thought that I would try to find one Archos on Ebay, but to no avail I was not able to secure one. Those things were going like hotcakes, so I thought that I might just have to wait to buy one.
That was when I was introduced to the Creative Nomad Jukebox 3 (CNJ3) by my work buddy. He read about the CNJ3 and felt that it kicked the little Archos to never never land. After reading up on the specs and reviews, I came to the same conclusion. So there I go to Ebay and to make a long story short, I got a brand new CNJ3 for $230. It included all the accessories and the seller even threw in 2 full retail games that actually work! Kicking!
Give me the techie specs buddy!
For those who may not fully understand what kind of device this CNJ3 is, it’s an MP3 Player, but unlike two other common types of players that use CF cards or MP3 CDs, the CNJ3, like the iPod and Archos, uses a good old laptop hard drive for its storage of MP3 files. With this model, the CNJ3 has a 20 Gig hard drive that can store over 333 hours worth of music encoded at 128 Kbps. That is equal to about 400 albums that any proud music listener would have!
The CNJ3 also has the following specs:
- A 132 x 64 pixel LCD Display with adjustable color display (Blue/Green)
- Memory 16MB DRAM buffer
- Signal to Noise Ratio Line-out: 98dB
- Signal to Noise Ratio Headphones: 96dB
- Frequency Response 20Hz~20kHz
- Maximum Output 100mW
- Harmonic Distortion Output less than 0.1%
- 11 hours of continuous playtime with 1 LiON battery (Sorta)
- Size W x H x D (mm) 123 mm x 130 mm x 35 mm
- Weight 10.2 oz (289gms) without batteries
So how is it in the real world?
As one knows, looking at the specs of the machine will not tell you everything that one needs to know about it. However, I will say that the techie specs alone are quite impressive, and the real thing matched pretty much all these specs. The only thing I would contend with would be the battery life, but I will get to that a little later in this review.
The Good
-----Storage Space: This is hands down one of the best methods of transporting a large number of MP3 songs with you as you ride in the train or drive in the car. Having 20 Gigs worth of hard drive space is hard to beat and for the typical music listener, this is more than enough for one’s lifetime. Creative was also very innovative because they purposely chose a hard drive that doesn’t make much noise and would use less power to get it going. The 16 MB DRAM buffer is a big help to the storage and playback because those 16 MB are the key to the low power consumption of the player. The hard drive will only need to spin to fill 16 MB of space and this allows the playback to remain virtually skip free for normal use. However, if one is constantly jumping between tracks and moving song selections constantly, then I’ve noticed that the playback of songs will slow down a bit as the hard drive is constantly looking for your new song selections. This will obviously drain battery life.
-----Sound quality: This is a major sticking point for me on any sound or music device I purchase. This point alone is what determines what pair of headphones I buy, and weighs in heavily to the laptop or desktop system I would like to get when I graduate to replace my old Solo 9100. Thus if the CNJ3 didn’t have a great sound to it, I would be making a profit on Ebay right now.
I am glad to say that the sound quality on the CNJ3 is top-notch! It’s definitely a whole lot better than the Archos jukebox and when one looks at the specs it does make sense. While the Archos boasts a 90dB for headphones and lineout, the CNJ3 boasts an amazing 96dB and 98dB for headphone and lineout ports respectively. What does that mean? It means that one doesn’t need to raise the volume up on your player to crazy levels in order for you to hear music. Though the CNJ3 still cannot beat a CD player’s S/N ratio, which typically is above 100dB, it is definitely a whole lot better than 90dB any day.
Depending on how you encoded your songs, the player plays them back excellently. However, there are some things I’ve noticed, which may be because of how the songs were encoded. Certain songs, especially ones that rely heavily on drums and electronic guitars, tend to have a scratchy feel to it when the volume is high. I have yet to finish my investigation, but I have no noticed that one hears less distortion when I turn off the equalizer. I’ll update once I’ve determined what is the exact cause of this little distortion on these few songs.
One last thing I also want to mention are the lineout ports. Yes I said ports, which means this player has 2 line out ports! This means the player can be hooked up to a four speaker setup and you can get a surround sound feel to your music. The lineouts are bona fide and they sound great on the home stereo. Definitely a big plus.
-----Look & Feel: I believe that this will heavily depend on one’s own personal tastes, but I definitely love the shape of the CNJ3! Its shape is reminiscent of my CD player’s and many friends have mistaken it for a CD player. Why I think this is a great deal is the fact that I go to an urban college and I live in Boston, a very urban city. When a typical mugger or hoodlum who wants to make a quick buck sees my CNJ3 from a distance, they would assume that it’s one of those old Sony CD walkmans. They would be lucky if they could make 40 bucks off of that! However, if they saw me carrying a little white brick, they would obviously know they can at least make 200 bucks on it if they were to run and snatch it from me. Get the idea? I consider it a praiseworthy thing that people do mistake this player for a CD player and just look away and let me listen to my music.
Now the debatable issue is the weight & size of the player. It is smaller than my CD player, but not by much. The hard drive and the electronic components (mostly audio I bet) do take up space, and just the player is a bit cumbersome if you don’t have large pockets in your jacket or a school bag. The weight is manageable for me. However, I know that for some people the weight is a little too heavy for them to carry around. I guess for me it’s not much of an issue because I’ve gone to schools where your typical carrying weight on your bag and arms equals to about 15 pounds. So 10 ounces means nothing to me!
-----Learn-ability: The learning curve to get the CNJ3 isn’t very high. After spending an hour on the machine, I learned pretty much how to handle and work the machine. The only problem I had was trying to figure out how to select items on the menu. Turns out one has to push in the scroller on the player to select your choice. That seriously took me awhile to figure out, but I guess everyone has to have one dumb problem every so often.
-----Battery Life: The battery life on the player is pretty good, but from what I’ve seen, it has matched the life that their specs say it should. The battery has lasted around 8 – 9 hours of continuous use. However, there are a few factors that may have reduced battery time for me. For example, instead of using the typical 128 kbps to encode my songs, I use 160 for better sound fidelity. Another issue is that I didn’t charge the battery optimally when I first got it. I just plugged it in and charged, but not drained it 3 times before full use. Supposedly I would have gotten better battery response if I had done it right the first time… oh well.
The Bad
There aren’t many things that I can say are bad about the player, but there are some things that I wished Creative did to make this player even better.
-----Computer interfaces: When one wants to connect your CNJ3 to your computer to transfer songs, you are given two different interfaces. The first is the Firewire interface that allows you to transfer your songs between the player and computer at very high speeds. The unfortunate circumstance is not many people (unless they have Apples), have FireWire cards, so this option may not appeal. So Creative also included a USB interface. There are two things that I didn’t like about this though.
---------One, the USB port is a proprietary port, which means you can’t go to your local Best Buy to get an extra transfer cable. One has to use the cable supplied by Creative in order for you to connect the player to the computer. The bad issue is what if the cable gets damaged or lost, then one has to call up Creative and order a new cable. I would have preferred a normal USB cable connection, oh well.
---------Two, the interface itself is not based on USB 2.0 technology, which rivals FireWire. I don’t understand why Creative did not include a USB 2.0 connection when one sees that computers have been coming with this interface for the past year now. The technology is backward compatible with the reliable 1.1 version, so there wouldn’t be been an issue there. If Creative included USB 2.0 instead of 1.1, then the music listener could have fast transfers and availability.
-----No real sort options: Though you can search for your MP3s and they are categorized under names such as Artist, Album Title, Song Title, there isn’t anything that really allows you to sort your songs in a particular order. Call me picky, but when one looks up songs in Album category, if you didn’t rip and encode your songs through their included software and then transfer it to the CNJ3, then the songs will be out of order, even if they have the track numbers on them. This is seriously an annoying bug for me and I really do hope that Creative fix this bug.
The Ugly
There are only two things that I seriously believe that Creative has to fix or kill to make this player totally great.
-----Get rid of PlayCenter: PlayCenter and its file transfer brother, File Manager need some serious overhauls or simply shot dead. The two programs are helpful to an extent, but they have to be two of the buggiest programs I’ve used in recent time. Creative needs to come up with a way so one can see one’s CNJ3 as a hard drive connected to the computer. It also would help that there would be better sorting, ripping, encoding options than what is included in either of those two programs.
-----Beef up the firmware: The firmware, though great as it is, still needs a lot more work. There have been times when I’ve left the machine on for a time and I would come back to find that it had froze (or hanged) on me. In the end I have to use a paper clip to reset the machine, which really does bother me considering that it’s a hard drive in this thing. I don’t know why it happens, but it does, even if you aren’t touching the machine at times. Thankfully since the last firmware update, it hasn’t occurred much, but it still needs to be worked.
Time to leave Mr. DJ…
So to whom would I recommend this little beauty to? Well, this player would definitely fit the always on the go commuter who doesn’t want to carry 4, 5 CDs during the train ride. Even though the size and weight isn’t anywhere close to the iPod, it still works and fits nicely in a commuter’s attaché just fine.
The player is also a great gift for the avid music listener who demands quantity and quality for his/her music listening needs. The space and the quality paid to the audio components is obvious and would satisfy most music listeners. Creative really pulled out many stops to enhance the audio quality not only with the hardware, but also with volume control, EQ settings, and other handy features. If your friend also likes to record live music, then the ability to record in analog or digital is gonna be a kicker, not to mention that it can record music in wave or MP3 format. That is very amazing!
The Creative Nomad Jukebox 3 is a great blending of sound and technology. I haven’t regretted buying this and it has been a great help for me as I go back and forth to work and school. The long battery life, coupled with the ability to store my entire music library and still have room for much more is very encouraging to have. It’s also great to have a player that gets mistaken for a CD player! If you are in the market for a great MP3 player that gives you great bells and whistles for a good reasonable price, then take a look at the CNJ3 and be blown away!
Thanks for reading! It’s been a while since I’ve written an electronic review, so please leave your comments and insights. Improvement is a group process.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 230
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Epinions.com ID:
LifeStar
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Location: Boston, MA
Reviews written: 86
Trusted by: 63 members
About Me:
11.06.06 - I'm sorta back, brand new review!!!
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