Neuros flawed but promising
MP3 FANS WILL LOVE IT WHEN KINKS ARE OUT
By Sam Diaz
Mercury News
Posted on Thu, Feb. 20, 2003
The biggest problem I have with the Neuros HD Digital Audio Player is that I really want to like it but just can't -- not yet.
And that's frustrating because Digital Innovations, the Chicago-area company that developed the Neuros, is on to something that MP3 fanatics like me will quickly fall in love with.
The Neuros HD (short for hard drive) puts MP3 technology and FM radio on a two-way street. The unit, while technically a hard drive that stores MP3 files, also has a built-in FM tuner.
Neuros offers the capability of pressing one button to record the audio programming from the FM tuner (say a favorite song or maybe a particular news segment) and save it in MP3 format.
It also allows users to play MP3s over the FM radio in their car or home stereo -- wirelessly.
The Neuros HD scans the dial to locate an unused FM frequency and ``broadcasts'' the stored MP3 tracks on that frequency.
Sounds cool, right?
Unfortunately, Digital Innovations will release Neuros too soon. The product, -- scheduled to hit shelves at Comp USA this weekend and also at www.neurosaudio.com -- has serious issues that will only result in consumers packing it up and taking it back.
The price tag is an immediate deterrent -- $250 for a 128 megabyte unit and $400 for a 20 gigabyte version -- but a true music enthusiast could possibly get past that.
It's the other problems that can't be ignored.
At the top of the list is the USB 1.1 connection used to import MP3 files from the PC to the Neuros. Engineers should have used the faster USB 2.0 or IEEE 1394 (FireWire) connections from the beginning.
I made four attempts at importing my MP3 collection -- some 1,600 tracks -- into the Neuros but wasn't successful once. The process is painfully slow and hogs all of the resources. Even the screen saver slowed the Neuros synchronization.
On my last attempt, I was two hours into the process and halfway through the list of tracks when I launched another program on the PC to see how it would handle it.
The Neuros not only locked up, but it also froze the PC, a year-old HP Pavilion running Windows XP on a 1.8 GHz Pentium 4 processor and 512 MB of memory.
What's worse is that none of the 800 or so tracks that had been imported over the two-hour period could be found, though a technician at Digital Innovations told me they are on the unit but are hidden until the synchronization is complete.
Finally, I attempted an import of about 125 MP3s on a different machine, a Dell Optiplex running Windows 2000 with the same speed processor and about half the memory.
The import took about 20 minutes and completed successfully. I ran to my car to hear my music through the FM radio.
The unit, which uses the earphone as an antenna, scans the FM dial for an unused frequency and displays it on the screen. I tuned my car stereo to that setting and actually picked up a very faint signal -- complete with scratches, squeaks and hisses -- of a Sacramento station.
When I launched the Neuros, I was impressed. The Neuros overtook that faint Sacramento signal and started playing my favorite MP3 tracks through my car stereo's speakers. Because it's wireless, I put the Neuros in the glove compartment and later in the back seat as another test and it performed beautifully.
Then, I went for a short drive. That's when those scratches, hisses and squeaks started overtaking the MP3 music. It sounded much like a radio station that gets weaker as you drive out of town. Only a few miles away, I lost the entire signal and had to pull over to re-scan for another open frequency.
I don't understand why Digital Innovations was in such a rush or why it resisted USB 2.0 or FireWire. For $250 or $400, music fans will rightfully demand that this product do everything it promises -- without having to call for technical support as soon as they turn it on.
Maybe the company is worried that someone else will release something similar before it can. Samsung Electronics unveiled a similar product during the Consumer Electronics Show last month but will keep it off the shelves for several more months to work out bugs.
Digital Innovations should have done the same.
Music junkies have been waiting for a product like this for a long time. But if it means the difference between a good product and a poor product, we're willing to wait longer.
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Contact Sam Diaz at sdiaz@sjmercury.com or (408) 920-5021.
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