Getting Phat: A Mobile Way to Listen to Music
December 16, 2003
Stephen Williams:Newsday
PhatNoise is the name of today's product, a rather lyrical description that seems appropriate to this season when we eat a lot.
PhatNoise (as in fat noise) is a digital- based audio system designed for mobile environments, one that will soon migrate to the home as well. I tried out the player in a Volkswagen Passat, because VW and Audi, both part of the Volkswagen group, are among the first car companies to actively promote PhatNoise and offer it as a new-car option. The system is designed to work in other makes - Honda and BMW are two - as well as with many existing head units and aftermarket audio decks from Kenwood, among others. List price is $795, with aftermarket systems starting at about $500.
The device is essentially three hardware components: a slotted box (the "Phatbox") that sits unobtrusively, like a CD changer, in the vehicle's trunk or under a seat; an iPod-esque 20-gigabyte hard drive housed in a cartridge that slips into the box; and a USB-connect cradle for downloading music to the cartridge from a PC.
In operation, PhatNoise is transparent. If you know how to program a CD player and operate a car stereo, the learning curve for PhatNoise is about five minutes. And in the VW, the Phat unit can easily be switched over (or off) to access the car's conventional premium Monsoon audio system and its CD or AM or FM modes.
On the road, PhatNoise is a logical transition from tapes and CDs in the way that MP3 devices, iPods and even the newer, less expensive range of MiniDisc products represent the trend in portable listening.
Of course, it's possible to wirelessly transmit music from a portable through a car's FM radio, or to use a cassette adapter (there's plenty of cassette players still on the road - Mercedes still builds one into most new cars) that plugs into the player's headphone port. But these jury-rigged solutions are sonically marginal at best, awkward, and a pain to use.
PhatNoise is more elegant. Before ignition and liftoff in the eight-cylinder-powered Passat, I transferred a few CDs' worth of tunes into the Phat cartridge using the Linux-based software (so farfor Windows PCs only) that came with it. The music-transfer system, which compresses tune files into the MP3 format (PhatNoise also supports WMA and WAV files), behaves much like other "burn" programs, and it allows users to create playlists that can be a single artist, album or genre or a mix of all ofthose.
The Phat software also does something special, by generating a speech file for each playlist. When you access music in the car, the voice reads the name of the playlist, like "Here's Bruce!" or whatever you choose to call the list. The "announcer," though, sounds like he's speaking through a towel.
In the car, however, PhatNoise isn't that elegant. In operation, one hits buttons on the VW's dashboard control panel to browse selections. When the voice says the name of the playlist, do nothing and it plays. More button-pushing advances through more songs. Despite the handy-dandy reference card that's supposed to get listeners to "Werewolves of London" quickly, the Phat can be frustrating and - a more serious issue - distracting.
I also had some sound-quality problems with the material I installed on the PhatCart, which included R.E.M. and Springsteen. Sibilance was apparent on some cuts, and occasionally the music would lose depth and go flat. I played back the digital files on my PC that had been transferred and noticed no aberration in the sound. I suspect some glitch in the transfer process on my equipment, since music preloaded on the test unit was fine.
Entertainment systems like PhatNoise are gaining momentum in the mobile market. At theextreme are DVD "dream systems" with multiple speakers and monitors that drop down from the roof liner. Acura recently became the first company to include a multichannel DVD- Audio setup in the new TL model. Some of these options are too fast and furious to attract the masses today, but they're dead on course for tomorrow.
Stephen Williams can be reached at steve.williams@newsdaycom
