Creative Nomad Jukebox

This

is the latest offering from the Personal  Digital Entertainment devices

line of products of Creative Technologies. Whereas the Nomad II was a tiny MP3

player, the Jukebox is much more. At first glance, it looks like a Discman (a

portable CD player), but a closer look reveals otherwise.

Its most important feature is its huge capacity. It can store

around 2,000 CD-quality MP3 songs on its built-in 6 GB hard disk. In addition to

MP3, it also supports WMA and WAV formats. The number of files it can store will

then depend on file format. You can create your own playlists–customized, or

based on artists, genres, etc. A neat feature here is active playlists–while

one track is playing, you can sequence other tracks to play after it.

You don’t have to carry around your audio CDs once you have

the Jukebox, because it can convert and store your favorite audio CD tracks too.

Just pop the CD into your PC, activate the Playcenter 2 software that comes with

the Jukebox, and watch it rip tracks from the CD, encode them to MP3, and put

them in your Jukebox. For audio enthusiasts, there’s a line-in jack to record

from external devices.

Another neat feature in the Nomad Jukebox is the EAX

(Environmental Audio) technology. This allows you to experience audio in various

environments, like concert hall, stone room, etc. It has a lot of presets and

allows custom settings too. Combine this with the graphic equalizers, and you

get phenomenal audio experience. One of the presets for the EAX is variable

playback speed. Thus, you can speed up or slow down the playback rate without

compromising on quality–especially useful if you want to learn the lyrics of

your favorite song.

The expected release time for the Jukebox was end-August at

the time we went to press. Priced at USD 499, this will initially be available

in two colors–metallic blue and metallic silver. The company also promises to

provide future updates on their site to enhance features, add more format

compatibilities, etc. More details are available at www.nomadworld.com.

Ashish Sharma in Singapore