Web Exclusive! Black Boxes Head-to-Head: HP de100c vs SONICblue audio center

by Charles Mohnike
Summer/Fall 2002

Once the MP3 format began to gain popularity on the Internet, it was only a matter of time until manufacturers of home audio components took notice. First-generation home MP3 players released over the last few years have managed to take advantage of the format's increased storage capacity, but they almost invariably suffered from terrible, often complicated user interfaces that made finding tracks and assembling playlists time-consuming and unwieldy. As a result, those first home MP3 players never really caught on except with the most ardent gadgeteers.
Enter Round 2, in which companies like SONICblue and Hewlett-Packard have learned from others' mistakes and presumably put their units' interfaces through some real-world usability testing. The resulting units show vast improvements and they display some real creativity on the part of both companies. Though both the RioCentral and the HP de100c are jukebox-type units designed to let users store and manage music catalogs of up to 750 albums, they do so with slightly different approaches and feature sets that will appeal to two unique groups of consumers.

First Glance Comparisons
The RioCentral Advanced Digital Audio Center is a stand-alone unit that could occupy the space of a standard CD player in a home-audio stack. Unlike the HP, it neither requires nor supports connection to a TV, but rather uses an LCD screen on the front of the unit to allow for management of tracks and playlists.
Since HP's de100c requires a connection to a television set and will not function as a stand-alone unit, it's best placed in a home A/V stack. In addition, while both units support network connections, the HP makes extensive use of the Internet for its extra features, including listening to online radio stations and purchasing digital music. It makes a phone or broadband connection a requirement to get the most from the unit. And one small point: the design of HP's stylized remote is so pointy as to be painful when our test subject "found" it between the cushions of our couch, pointed end up.

Archiving Music
Both the RioCentral and the HP include CD-RW drives that allow you to record music from either a standard audio CD or a home-burned CD-R disc containing MP3s. When you insert a standard audio CD, the units rip the digital audio tracks from the disc, compress them into the MP3 format and store them on the unit's hard drive. We found that both units made archiving a fairly quick task. With each unit, in about an hour, we were able to archive roughly 12 audio CDs and a few CD-Rs. We gave extra points to the RioCentral for allowing us to listen to previously archived tracks while the ripping was in progress. The HP allowed us only to listen to the CD currently being archived.
If you've worked with MP3s on a home computer, you know that there's a tradeoff between space-saving and sound quality. The same considerations apply with both of these units. Both allow you to specify the bitrate at which your archived tracks compress, from 96kbps to 256kbps. Lower bitrates mean small track sizes and therefore, more room to store more songs. However, on both the RioCentral and HP, tracks encoded at the lowest bitrate exhibited noticeably inferior sound quality, including the "swooshing" sound common with low-bitrate MP3s. But when tracks were encoded at the highest rate, both units provided sound indiscernible from the original compact disc source.

Managing Tracks
Finding ways to store MP3 tracks on a hard drive is a pretty easy task for most player manufacturers. Giving you visual access to your files so you can easily play unique tracks or assemble playlists is another matter, one that separates these exemplary units from their first-generation counterparts.
The RioCentral's LCD panel allows you to sort your tracks by artist, genre, year of release or album title. Using the directional buttons on the unit's front panel or included remote, you can scroll through various lists to find and play individual tracks or entire albums fairly easily. We found that creating a custom playlist was a little more arduous due to the limitations of the small screen. It took us several minutes to create and then name a playlist using the limited alphabetic controls on the unit's remote. It's probably not the kind of thing you'd do if you just wanted to queue a few tracks, but not unreasonable if you were planning background music for a party. RioCentral has done a great job of making navigation possible on a fairly small screen, but the LCD also means that you have to be within an arm's length of the unit to read the various menus.
The HP takes advantage of its TV output to present an interface that's slightly easier to navigate, but its main drawback is that your TV needs to be on while you use the player. The HP also allows for sorting tracks by artist/year/genre, etc. and makes it much easier to do so from a couch due to the larger viewing area.
One problem common to both units is that they categorize your music based on the content of the ID3 tags found within your MP3 files. ID3 tags contain textual information such as artist name, album title, etc. While this is probably the best way for MP3s to be classified, it has an inherent problem: if your ID3 tag isn't 100 percent correct, your album or track may be classified incorrectly and be very difficult to find. For example, if the tag for one album lists the artist as "The Miles Davis Quintet" and another lists "John Coltrane with the Miles Davis Quintet," the second album would not catalog with other Miles Davis tracks. Both units allow you to create and modify ID3 tags using the limited alphabetic keys on their remotes, but that's a task best left to masochists. (A better solution is to spring for one of the optional keyboards available for both units.)
The CD drives on both units can also record music, meaning that you can burn compilation discs from the contents of your archived collection. Both units performed the burn process quickly and without a hitch, though we gave the HP extra credit for a slightly superior interface when creating a CD playlist. In addition, both units can transfer archived tracks to portable MP3 devices. The RioCentral can transfer tracks to all Rio portables and the Nike PSAPlay, while the HP works with a variety of units including the Rio 500, the Iomega HipZip and the SanDisk ImageMate.

Assessing the Extras
Both units are packed with features beyond their core jukebox functions, and here lies the differences that make each unit appeal to unique target markets. For example, the RioCentral works fine as a single unit, but it also includes features allowing it to function as a master control center for other Rio products. It offers the previously mentioned transfer jack for the Rio portables, as well as a Home PNA networking function that allows the unit to stream audio to Rio receivers elsewhere in your home via your telephone jacks. If you're an all-Rio household, the Advanced Digital Audio Center can serve as a master control from which your other devices share audio.
The HP's bonus features reside in its Internet functionality, in addition to HPNA 10Mbps networking. When connected to the Net through a modem or broadband connection and your existing ISP, the de100c has the ability to receive streaming audio -- and a few video feeds -- from a preset collection of Internet broadcast stations. The unit uses RealPlayer for its streaming technology, and as with Real broadcasts on standard PCs, we found the sound quality listenable even over a modem connection. The de100c also offers a unique search function allowing you to find information on artists and then order their CDs directly from the unit's interface with a credit card.
The RioCentral lists for $1,500, the HP for $999. At those prices, these units are not likely to replace standard, inexpensive CD jukeboxes in the near future. However, they offer true audio enthusiasts a group of features that you cannot find in standard CD units at any price. These include the ability to archive thousands of tracks, view and play them by name, title, genre, etc., and to burn compilation CDs of favorite tracks. These units fall into a group of new home MP3 players that have finally mastered the complex user interface and now point the way to the future of digital home audio.

Charles Mohnike is a technology writer and Web site developer.

SMART SPECS
RioCentral Advanced Digital Audio Center
Dimensions: 17 x 4.7 x 15.3 inches
I/O jacks: 1 USB port, 1 pair RCA stereo jacks, 1 infrared remote receiver
Networking: network-ready (requires USB networking module, not included). PNA (10Mbps).
Signal-to-Noise Ratio: better than 101.5dB
Display: LCD panel
Fixed Storage: 40GB hard drive
Removable Storage: CD-RW drive

COMPANY: SONICblue
CONTACT: (408) 588-8000
WEB SITE: www.sonicblue.com
PRICE: $1,500

HP de100c Digital Entertainment Center
Dimensions: 17 x 4 x 13.75 inches
I/O Jacks: 3 USB ports, 2 pair RCA stereo jacks (in/out), digital audio out coax, digital audio out optical, TV composite out, S-video out, Ethernet (RJ-45) port, 2 RJ11 (phone) connectors
Networking: Internet via 56K modem, HPNA 2.0 (10Mbps), Ethernet 10/100 baseT
Signal-to-Noise Ratio: 85dB
Display: via external TV (not included)
Processor: 566MHz Celeron
RAM: 64MB
Fixed Storage: 40GB hard drive
Removable Storage: CD-RW drive

COMPANY: Hewlett-Packard
CONTACT: (888) 999-4747
WEB SITE: www.hp.com
PRICE: $999