|
From YourSITE.com Technical Features Let’s face it. When it comes to music, the internet has revolutionalized media. Broadcasted, traded, downloaded, etc. digital formats of audio and video are a commonly found commodity online, with some sources being more legal than others. While the music industry dawdles trying to find the “right” distribution method and sues their customers who have a hard time waiting, makers of Audio components for cars have more readily embraced digital media. One such company early to adopt the new format is PhatNoise who, together with Audi and Volkswagen Accessories, offer their PhatBox Digital Media Player for owners of virtually all new product from either German brand.
Those newer to digital media files can also use it to record or “rip” their CD collection to their hard drive. And, with the computer connected to the internet, the system will log on to identify the CD and all of the song information automatically for you. 6) Your Car Stereo – I know. I said there were five components, but the true beauty of the PhatNoise system is in the sixth. In the applications that Volkswagen and Audi sell it for, and probably a lot more, the system interfaces with the car’s current car head unit. You can use the buttons on your stereo or even on your steering wheel (where applicable) to control navigation of the system. It’s that easy. PhatBox’s Competition Alright, we know $795 isn’t the cheapest system out there. At 20-gigs, it’s also not the highest capacity system available. There are alternatives, but as with anything, there are upsides and downsides when considering any of these.
Apple iPod – One of the better known and more popular alternatives is the Apple iPod. Now even available from the Volkswagen dealership with the New Beetle, the iPod can be purchased with more capacity than the PhatBox with a maximum capacity model at 40-gigs of space. Prices range from $300 to $500, depending on which model you purchase. The ipod plays all of the formats that the PhatBox does. It also plays music downloaded via I-tunes. It’s portable, and it’s cheaper than the PhatBox. Perhaps iPod’s biggest downfall is its very portability. It’s rather large shape, as compared to other portable MP3 players out there (read below) limit the amount it can be effectively used as a Walkman style device during physical excercise that isn't simply stationary, and at the same time, it also makes the iPod difficult to situate in a secure way inside the cabin of your vehicle unless you have some sort of mounting cradle. Interfacing with the vehicle can be done either via the old tape-cassette insert that originates from the original days of the DiscMan portable CD players, or via a low intensity broadcast attachment that will play it on an FM channel through the car’s radio where sound quality can be lost. Navigation from song to song is still via the iPod unit; a distraction for the driver about on the level of dialing a cell phone. Newer, smaller versions of the iPod about the size of a cell phone will make them easier to mount in the car, but also make their screens smaller and harder to read.
A plus that not all portable MP3 units provide is MP3 recording, both via a small microphone built into the unit or via an audio input cable that works with any standard Audio output headphone jack for other audio components. This could be a solution for those concerned with what is to become of their Cassette and Vinyl collections when they migrate to the digital age. We purchased the RipFlash originally for recording and archiving interviews with auto industry executives. It works well in that capacity, though it also serves a second purpose as it loads up with music and is taken to the health club for a quick workout. For in-car purposes, it is backlit, but the small screen is not that easy to read while driving. However, the buttons are pretty straight forward and easy to navigate. Replacement of the two AAA batteries and the limitation to thirty songs make it not a really viable alternative in our Audi. It was a nice cheap alternative to use in our cassette-only Project Volvo 245 over at Swedespeed.com, but we find we never use it in the newer cars that have CD changers. The capacity just isn’t there. Preparing For Life with the Phatbox Before our Phatbox arrived, I began to prepare for its arrival. I’d actually been preparing for years in the amassing of a rather large MP3 digital music collection on my computer. However, as my music collection goes, that wasn’t even the half of it. Years of Columbia House and BMG Music Club memberships had bestowed me with a CD collection so large, it had been stored at my home and my parents home in various places and in various states. I moved all of the CDs to one collection and purchased Cyberlink's "ripping" software that is a plugin for Windows Media Player, enabling it to “rip” in MP3 format. Had I realized Music Manager would have already had provisions for this, I would have not bothered purchasing the software. However, it worked well and we were satisfied with its use, working seamlessly within the Windows Media program. Either way, be prepared, as ripping CDs takes time. My 9-month old Sony VAIO laptop averaged about 10 minutes per CD. I literally sat and did work while feeding CDs into the machine for more than a few work days. Additionally, large collections of this magnitude take up a lot of space. Neither hard drive in my laptop is 20-gigs, so that presented a problem. On the side, I invested about $80 in an 80-gig Iomega External Hard Drive. A drive like this can be used for computer backups, archival storage or mass data storage, such as photos, etc. More directly, it can hold a ton of music and it connects to the laptop via another USB cable. Another key benefit to the external drive is that it is portable. Take it and a laptop to a friend’s house and you might leave with more music than you arrived with. Take it to the library and park yourself in the CD Audio Book area and you could feasibly leave with a virtual library for your car. Although, should you do any of this, please adhere to any copyrights. If you have a laptop, or simply like the idea and plan to use an external drive of this nature, be certain that you have two USB ports available on your computer so that you can transfer data from the drive to your computer and on to the PhatBox Cartridge sitting in its cradle. Installing the Phatbox Ordinarily, installation of the Phatbox should be straightforward and easy; “plug and play” if you will. The aluminum Media Player mounts via four mounting points, using brackets and bolts. Using the wiring that comes with the system, it should go together easily IF your car is prewired for a CD changer. The key word here is “IF”. Most new Volkswagen and Audi products are pre-wired for such a component from the factory. However, cars like our 2002 B6 A4 with its 6-Disc in-dash CD Changer, were not pre-wired. Because of this, the unit needs to be wired from the stereo head-unit. This will add considerable complication to a do-it-yourselfer and will add time for those having it installed. Not having the tools needed to pull the Audi stereo head-unit, and not having the patience to do this myself, I opted to take the car to a dealer. Currently, the Phatbox is a relatively new Accessory for Volkswagen and Audi. While some dealerships have learned the ins and outs of Phatbox installation, others might possibly be new to the situation. The first two Audi dealerships we’d contacted as early as last August about installation had not yet performed a PhatBox install. On realization that the Avant needed full wiring, the quotes we received were quite high, with an estimate on 10 hours worth of labor. Additionally, we did not want to install the Phatbox in the then recommended position of the sidewall of the trunk area. Thoughts of an overactive dog or heavy sliding cargo danced in our head as we thought of the dollar investment in the new PhatBox hardware. We were resolved to place the unit in the left hand side compartment of the A4 Avant, contrary to the original placement recommendation. In the end, we worked together with a very astute young Audi technician by the name of Randolph Singh at Rockville Audi in Rockville, MD. Randolph, a third helper and I began the work together, with much of the work being done by Randolph and his aid. Were the box to be mounted on the sidewall, removal of the left side panel in the trunk might not be necessary, but our requirement of placement in the left compartment meant it had to come out. In order to do that, the rear seat also needed to be removed.
While the seat is fairly easy, great care needs to be taken with the left trunk panel. Several clips predominantly hold it in, but the right tools and especially examination of the right shop manual make this a job I don’t recommend without doing your homework. With the side panel removed, we experimented with fitment of the Phatbox Unit. While there is enough room in the left compartment for the unit, removal and replacement of the cartridge would have been impossible. However, by cutting a Phatbox shaped hole in the bottom of the compartment, there was enough room to lower it into the empty space below and make it all work. Using some magic markers, we marked a silhouette of the Phatbox unit and cut a matching hole with razor-blade knives. Eventually, the unit was mounted with the existing brackets, holding it suspended within the hole. To note, if you are very particular about the aluminum finish on the unit, do not go crazy with the magic markers in making the silhouette. In my haste, the permanent Mr. Sharpie markers left lasting marks on our PhatBox. If you don’t do the installation yourself, you should consider making a note of this to the tech, as it’s highly probable given the fact that he or she will be tracing the unit itself.
In the meantime, Randolph began work up in the front of the car, pulling the head-unit and the lower driver’s side dashboard. He was able to save some time by running the wiring underneath the carpeting along the driver’s side door sills, making the removal of the seats unnecessary (a process I’d been told would be necessary in previous quotes). Putting it back together, I was impressed by Randolph’s insistence of wrapping the cabling with foam and tying it tightly to its mounting point. He kept stating how much he hated rattling and in the cold November weather we were experiencing, the car would be especially prone to rattling. Thanks to Randolph, we can honestly say that we’ve experienced no new rattling whatsoever in a month’s worth of operation. As quick as this process may have sounded, it was about three and a half hours later that we finished, and that was with two and sometimes three people working at the same time. Randolph estimated it to be a 6-hour job with the ’02 A4 Avant and the mounting point we dictated. This mounting position, I am told, will be recommended to Audi Accessories. It seems to make more sense than mounting it within the actual cargo area. The expensive PhatBox is better protected and also hidden from would-be thieves, so we couldn’t be happier. It is important to power the unit up according to the installation instructions that come with the unit. Fairly comprehensive instructions detailing the installation are available through Audi’s intranet and can probably be sourced from the dealer, though a quick startup guide is also provided with the unit. There is also a handy quick-reference guide to the stereo controls as they pertain to the PhatBox that is conveniently the same size and shape as your owner’s manual. Randolph powered up the unit, and after the several second boot-up period, a welcome message began, rolling into the song Jung at Heart from the Volkswagen Jetta commercial where the everything happening outside in the rain goes along to the beat of the music. After that song, a mix of sample music is pre-loaded onto the unit as well as in an intro to Audible.com (more on that later).
Life with PhatBox We waited until after the car installation was complete to install the software on the home computer, although we’d recommend you get started by installing it and uploading your CD Collection whenever you get the chance. While PhatNoise techs have stated to us that some Sony VAIO notebooks can have problems, the only difficulty we had was with a damaged cradle having problems establishing two-way communication. Other than this, our VAIO worked flawlessly. During our trouble-shooting phase, we learned that there was also online shareware program that you can get to make the Phatbox work with a Mac (something PhatNoise themselves doesn’t yet officially support). We did install it on a Mac laptop and had the same problem, realizing we had a hardware issue with the cradle. In regards to Mac, what we did learn was that while it does work, the PhatBox does not play i-Tunes format music and the Mac plugin that makes i-Tunes software act as your music manager is not able to format a Cartridge should you ever need to do so. We didn’t, but our lack of two-way communication tricked the Mac into thinking we did, and thus the lesson learned. Just when you thought you’d spent most of your time investment ripping your CD collection to some sort of digital format, you may find yourself yet in need of some additional hourly investment in the creation of Play Lists. The Phatbox can play music by Album, Artist, Genre and self-made Playlist. If you care to use any other distribution order than Playlist, it is imperative that the music contain the various fields properly filled out. PhatNoise’s Music Manager software will do this automatically if ripping is performed while connected to the web. Apple’s i-Tunes also formats music in this way, but again, i-Tunes format music doesn’t work with the player, so you’ll have to burn and re-rip those songs anyway as well as re-entering those information fields in the database when you rip it back to the computer. We opted to place an emphasis on our Playlists as a large selection of MP3 files that had been acquired over the years was not saved to the new format included information like genre, even though all of the newly ripped music was. One can create a Playlist on basically anything. We opted for genres such as Rock, Pop, Rap, Jazz, R&B, etc. and then focused on other large collections we had such as by band (U2, Third Eye Blind, Bare Naked Ladies) and by other criteria like (College Music, Highschool Music, Mellow Music and Audio Books). Speaking of Audio Books, another benefit to the PhatBox system is that it’ll get you a month’s free access to audible.com, one of the leading sources for Audio Books and show subscriptions on the web. With audible, you can buy best sellers, reference books, learning books, etc. and subscribe to both periodicals such as audio versions of newspapers and magazines, and also radio shows such as NPR’s Car Talk. The Audible trial is risk free for the first month, but you do have to remember to cancel your subscription. That first month will get you one audio book and two subscriptions or two audio books depending on what you choose. Whatever you choose, opt to download at the highest quality or the file will not work with your PhatBox. Lesson learned. We’ll be listening to those files on our computer I guess. Another option for retrieving audio content is an MP3 recorder. We purchased a program called supermp3recorder.com off of the web for about $30 after a quick Google search. It records right off of your soundcard, allowing recording of streaming media albeit not at a really great sound quality because of the compression rate. Additionally, if your computer has an audio input, you could probably record your old cassette tapes and records, though you probably want to make sure you have files that use sounds such as AOL Instant Messenger turned off. We haven’t tried this yet, but we’re hopeful as we have some great music on cassette and vinyl as well. Back to the PhatBox and our MP3 collection, after literally hours of sorting our thousands of songs, our PlayLists were complete. Just a few hours more of upload time through our older USB1 port (PhatBox is USB 2.0 capable), and we headed out to the car. Most of our MP3s were ripped at 128 kbps, a setting we had set our Windows Media Player plugin to “rip” at. With that bit-rate, you can’t really tell a sound quality difference between the MP3 and CDs in the Audi’s changer. We do have some other less quality recordings at a lower rate, and obviously the sound quality is only as good as the recording. Navigating the Playlists, Genre, Artists and Albums is easy once you get the hang of the buttons. The PhatNoise system is based around their patented SSA Voice Interface that tells you where you are in your library. On our A4, the Disc + and Disc – inputs toggle between play modes. A voice comes across the system telling you which method you have selected. I found that I use Playlists most commonly as not all of our songs have the artist, genre and album information attached in a reliable fashion. Once your method is chosen, you then navigate through your secondary choices via the track select buttons (next track, previous track). As you do, a digital voice reads to you the name of your Play List, the artist, the genre, etc. Whatever you call the list, or whatever the artist, the system is effective at stating the name in a clear manner. Words in our list such as “Retro” sound more like “Rett Row”, but that’s the only pronunciation glitch we’ve found and no, we haven’t tried plugging in dirty words or phrases. Having learned the button use, navigation while driving is very natural. Had our A4 been equipped with steering-wheel controls, navigation would be that much easier. The PhatBox may not be the cheapest solution out there, but it definitely seems to be the most comprehensive and user friendly.
Besides the price, we’ve only found one potential problem of the system, and it’s not really a problem of the PhatBox. Having created our playlists using the external Iomega drive labled as G: on our computer, we recently had problems when another device was attached and the Iomega was changed to H: automatically by the computer. While connected as H:, we opened the PhatNoise Music Manager Software and it re-scanned the computer for music. It found the music, however, it cleared out all of our playlists due to the different location source. We fear that performing a sync on the cartridge now will clear it of its playlists, so that’s something we’ll check in with PhatNoise on before performing. Speaking of that, in our experimentation with the system, we learned that Audi and Volkswagen have set up their own tech support toll-free phone number (877-ASK-PHAT) or contact email at phatnoise@audi.com dedicated to PhatBox support. Between that number, and calling PhatNoise directly, we were able to solve situations our experimentation had created that hopefully no normal user will ever have to deal with. Is the system worth the large investment? Initially, I wasn’t so sure. Now with the system installed, I believe it is. In the end, it really depends upon the vehicle owner and how important music is to them. I’m personally delighted to be spending hours in the car listening to great music I haven’t listened to in years or songs that I never recorded to a CD before and had even forgotten I’d downloaded. I can take a long trip and never hear the same song twice, or I can work on my language skills with a “Learn to speak German” audio book I downloaded. Especially if you spend long hours in your car, this is a wonderful, if not small, investment. PHATBOX INFO: Audi Accessory Collection Audi Phatbox Website PhatNoise, Inc. Shareware for Macintosh 1 Shareware for UNIX
© Copyright 2004 by YourSITE.com |
