Jukebox Jury (Archos Jukebox HD-MP3 6 GB)

Member Name: kfingleton

Product:	Archos Jukebox HD-MP3 6 GB
Date:	21/01/03 (984 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: All that music

Disadvantages: Battery time, ugly

In my opinion the Archos Jukebox Recorder is (almost) the last word in gadgets for the music-lover. One problem people have with MP3 players is the fact that, despite the size of regular MP3 players and their aesthetics, they held measly amounts of music (one or two albums per memory card). Thus you sacrifice practicality for cool. The original Archos Jukebox and its rival, the Creative DAP solved this problem. Both these MP3 players came with a 6GB Hard Drive, something that a medium range PC would have had as standard only 5 years ago. For those of you not technically-minded, what the 6GB offers you in space is the equivalent of 150 albums worth of music (there or thereabouts). Not quite your entire collection, but good enough to keep you going! Now, the future of music doesn?t seem to be in bad hands?

The Archos Jukebox Recorder was an evolution of the original Jukebox and improved in every way, allowing you to create MP3s at the touch of a record button. You could record directly from a source such as a stereo or TV or connect a mic (or even use the built-in mic) to record, say your friends jamming on guitar in your front room. This is what made me pay ?400 in October 2001 for the Jukebox Recorder, as regularly use it like a Dictaphone to record songs that I?ve just written. Unless you really want a basic Hard Drive MP3 player, I recommend the Jukebox Recorder or something more expensive. Even if you don?t use it often, the record function is very useful to have.

Like I?ve said, the hard drive gives the AJR a massive advantage over the tiny little MP3 players. One trade-off for this is the notable physical increase in size and decrease in aesthetic appeal. The AJR is basically the size of a relatively bulky personal cassette player with big rubber corners to protect it if dropped (more on that later). This means that the silver and blue combination is, to be honest, pretty ugly. But as most people will keep it in its little rub
ber case, this is less of a problem that you?d think. And like I?ve said, the trade-off is that you get to hold about 100 times the amount of songs you?d get on a regular player for less than twice the price.

The 6GB AJR is now the entry level model; such is the speed at which the computer industry advances. The Creative DAP III and AJR and new Jukebox FM Recorder now have 20GB hard drives (over three times the space) and the Mac equivalent, the beautifully engineered Apple Ipod has a 10GB disk. A 20GB player should hold pretty much the entire record collection of all but the most avid music fans (My music collection stands at 30GB, so I await a player to meet my needs). But even the 6GB player should be enough for most users, because you can always swap your music about.

The AJR itself is pretty easy to live with, and while those with very bad computer skills may find it a little hard to figure out, it?s pretty intuitive to use. My 8 year old cousin figured it after a quick tutorial and within minutes was dancing away to Travis. The facia offers simple controls such as On, Off/Stop, Play/Pause, Fwd, Rwd. The LCD screen may prove to be a little small for some, although I find it an improvement on the larger typeface on the older Archos Jukebox. As the AJR has its own hard drive, when connected to the computer (via USB 1.0), you can access it like a regular hard drive and organise your files into simple folders. There are various ways is which you might like to organise your files, I have alphabetical subfolders (A-C, D-F, G-I etc) followed by subfolders for each band. On the jukebox, you can just browse these folders to find the album or particular song you want (though there is no ?search? function). One advantage that the Creative DAP has over the AJR in this regard is that every album will be played in the correct order without any need to tamper with the folders, because it uses the MP3 ID3 tags to order album track lists. The AJR e
ither needs the MP3 files to be named with the track number first (i.e. 01, 02, 03, 04 etc) or for you to create an M3U playlist, otherwise the songs will be played in alphabetical order.

The Menu function allows you to tamper with various features on the player, such as the sound (bass, treble, bass boost, level, panning etc), to record MP3s or to select a play mode (shuffle, repeat etc.). There is no doubt that the Creative DAP offers vastly superior Graphic Equalisation and sound themes, plus, 5.1 surround sound (if you have ANY albums that are recorded in surround sound). One downside is the player?s inability to shuffle through subfolders, unlike Winamp, for example. Another is the way it eats up its batteirs in about 8-9 hours (they do give you two sets of batteries and the charger though). The player also lacks support for the Windows Media Audio (wma) format, but frankly, I don?t care myself.

Transfer of files to and from the player via USB is a little bit of a chore, though more recent versions come with the much faster USB 2.0 connection. It takes a good few minutes to transfer a full 6GB to and from your player (a tip would be to always use your AC adaptor while doing this). There is the slight nuisance of having to create a playlist for every album you transfer, but once it?s done, you?ve got plenty of music to put you back into a good mood.

Living with the AJR has been a pretty good experience, despite file transfers every couple of months or so. The player can be buggy sometimes, something that happens less with the Creative DAP (when the DAP isn?t connected to the computer, when it is connected it can be a nightmare). More recent versions of the firmware on the player (free to download off www.archos.com) seem to have minimalised the number of times the player has crashed. It?s happened to me once in the last 8 months.

I can also safely say that their customer support is pretty good too. Having dropped my
player on the floor after about 3 weeks of owning the thing (those rubber bits do their best, but aint good enough), the player was promptly fixed under warranty with free shipping back to France (from whence it came) and back again to me. Since then their have been no real failures and it has resolutely not been dropped! But their technical support was incredibly helpful and I was very pleased to get such service having ordered directly from the company rather than a retailer.

The Archos Jukebox Recorder may now be old hat compared to the smaller, more aesthetically pleasing Multimedia player and Creative DAP III, but in 20GB form at around only ?400, offers real value to those who can do without a camera or an FM radio in their player. I can?t recommend the AJR enough to people and having lived with the original Archos Jukebox and the Creative DAP, I can only say that the AJR is the player to get (unless you want the top-of-the-range model. The Jury has decided, the Jukebox is guilty of being great.

(I really apologise for that last line).

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