all you need to know (Creative Muvo 32 MB)

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Product:	Creative Muvo 32 MB
Date:	13/01/01 (152 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: looks

Disadvantages: none

The music industry is attacking the popular MP3 music format on a regular basis, now trying to introduce their own music standard - charged with fees of course. However, nobody can deny those impressive features of MP3 like high sound quality at comparatively low data storaging requirements. These are the main reasons why the MP3 format is now widely used in more and more areas of our everyday life.
Yet, it's hard to estimate the sales quantities for hifi devices with MP3 support, since most users still prefer their computer for playback. On the mobile sector, the story is completely different. Thanks to the fact that there is no need for conventional media such as tapes or CDs, such players can live with only a memory chip, decoder chip and a battery. As there are no moving parts, the wearout is practically zero. Quite important also is the design and the weight.
The Creative labs wants to break into this niche by providing decent features with four different colour schemes. This little guy is absolutely uncomplicated and ultra-portable. The dynamic style is particularly very attractive. Also the package is non-standard, as Suma ships the player inside a cool aluminium can. You will find some ear phones, a USB cable, a webbing, a CD and a little bag inside.
The good contrasted display has three lines and can also be read at poor light proportions. The first line will show you the artist, line two names the title and below that you will see the play time. To show artist and title correctly, the Creative labs will need MP3 tags. If they shouldn't be available, the player will display the track (or file) name. Unfortunately, the display is limited to 30 characters. If some name is longer, the exceeding characters it will be chopped off. At the top of the display you will also find an indicator for the battery status, volume level and the track number.
Most people will be able to use the Creative labs player even without looking into t
he comprehensive manual, as all functions can be used intuitively. There is, for example, treble and bass fine tuning, random and shuffle play and the option to alter contrast.
Suma abandoned all kinds of gimmicks - that's something which helps to keep the handling easy. Too many options would complicate use of the Creative labs. In addition, only a few people really make use of toy-functions. The manufacturer also cut off the option to set up personal play lists. Even the software doesn't give you any option to do this.
It took about 90 seconds to fill the memory of 32 MB using the USB cable. That is approximately 700 KB/s. You can upgrade the data capacity by 16, 32 or 32 MB by using a Smart Media card. This kind of storage solution is more commonly used in digital photo cameras. At an average 4 minutes per title, the Creative labs will hold approximately 16 titles with 32 MB of memory.

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