512mb cheap mp3 player

As a freshly minted college graduate, and as a struggling musician, there wasn't much money to buy CDs or LPs. But I soon discovered the wonders of the local public library, which had a pretty good collection of both. And good quality cassettes were cheap so much of my music collection was on tape.

I've since managed to acquire over 400 CDs, but I've still had probably another 150 or so albums on tape and LP that I occasionally dust off. I've been meaning to rip them in to MP3 player and onto my home server's music jukebox volume, but have only managed to get small parts of it done. I thought about using a laptop, but very few laptop line inputs have clean enough signal quality to do the job right. But a new product from Xitel, called the INport, promises to overcome those obstacles, allowing you to create clean audio files on your PC or notebook. At $69, it's the least expensive USB audio device we've seen to date, and has a lot going for it. It's a good (though not great) solution to handle getting your vinyl and tapes into the digital domain. There's a lot we liked, but some things we didn't. Turn the page to find out more.

Although there are other USB audio products on the market that are more versatile, including Creative's Sound Blaster Extigy and M-Audio's Sonica Theater, both these products are a good bit more expensive than Xitel's INport. The INport is designed to do one thing and one thing only: make clean recordings inside your computer, from analog audio sources like a cassette deck, VCR, TV or phonograph

For the $69 price, here's what you get with the INport: USB external pod with analog RCA stereo jacks CFB Software's LPRecorder, which records the incoming audio signal. CFB Software's LPRipper, which takes the recorded file and parses it into tracks, and can encode to MP3 or WMA with the right external encoder module present. 30-foot shielded RCA patch cable – which includes a ground-loop isolator (more on that later)

This load-out gives you everything you need to get going, and having a 30-foot long patch cable means that after the initial fumbling around behind your stereo receiver, you can sit comfortably on a couch with your laptop to do your recording.

This device will live or die based on whether it records audio better than the standard PC or notebook audio-in jack.

We compared the INport to three other options – a standard notebook audio input on a Dell Inspiron 8200, a PC with a clean sound card in it, and Creative's Sound Blaster Extigy – a $125 option.

Our test system was a Dell Inspiron 600m (check prices) laptop with the following system components: 1.6GHz Pentium 4M (Centrino) Intel 82855 chipset 512MB of DDR SDRAM system memory ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 GPU SigmaTel C-Major audio codec Windows XP Pro with SP1 DirectX 9.0b System updates as of 8/18/03

As it turns out, this laptop is an ideal candidate for the INport, since Dell's implementation of Sigmatel's C-sharp audio solution lacks a line-in input, and only has a microphone input. The result is that without INport, no recordings would be possible at all on this system.

We first wanted to get a general idea how clean the INport's line-input was, so we tested it using RightMark Audio Analyzer 5.1. We used a signal generator system equipped with Terratec's DMX6fire sound card, whose own dynamic range is around 103dB.

We generated our test signals from another system equipped with Terratec's DMX6fire sound card, an Envy24-based PCI sound card whose own dynamic range is around 103dB, making a clean and viable piece of hardware to use for test signal generator. We then recorded the reference system's output using the INport.

Here's what we found: Resolution: 44KHz/16-bit/stereo

Xitel INport ESS Maestro3 Desktop PC Sound Blaster Noise level dB (A): -86.9 -61 -92.6 -95.4 Dynamic range dB (A): 86.5 60.6 91.6 90.8 THD %: 0.03 0.045 0.0011 0.0046 IMD %: 0.102 0.279 0.0078 0.014 Stereo crosstalk dB: -81.3 -7.9 -92.6 -6.5 Resolution: 96KHz/24-bit/stereo

Xitel INport ESS Maestro3 Desktop PC Sound Blaster Noise level dB (A): -86.1 -58.4 -94.9 -94.3 Dynamic range dB (A): 86.2 58.4 94.8 90.6 THD %: 0.03 0.034 0.0023 0.0027 IMD %: 0.103 0.389 0.006 0.0089 Stereo crosstalk dB: -80.7 -7.9 -91.9 -6.5

Overall these numbers are pretty good compared to desktop PC sound cards, although they're not stellar. Interestingly, we saw no pickup when we increased our sampling resolution to 96KHz/24-bit, so while it's cool that INport supports this resolution, it's also pretty clear that you don't really gain anything here by using it.

As you can see, the INport falls in the middle of the pack, certainly better than the ESS Maestro3, but not as solid as the PC desktop sound card, Terratec's DMX6Fire. Creative's Extigy did very well on all the tests, save one: stereo crosstalk, where it fared very poorly. But INport's overall performance here is pretty strong, although certainly not the cleanest we've seen.

Noise Floor: We then ran some noise-floor tests using SoundForge 6.0, where we removed all connections from the INport to get a reading of the card's noise floor. After recording ten seconds of silence, we noted the RMS Power Value in the statistics window. RMS gives us the average signal energy value present throughout the ten-second recording. More is bad, less is good.What we're measuring is "what's there when nothing's there," and so we're measuring the noise the device itself generates when sitting still. These tests were more of a mixed bag, and the INport didn't fare as well. The RMS noise level was around -61dBFS, and compared to the other audio products we tested here, it was by far the noisiest.

This finding doesn't align well with the results seen in RightMark Audio Analyzer. However, on some recording inspection tests we did using SoundForge, that level of noise floor was clearly present in the device, although it wasn't readily audible.

The problem we have with this amount of noise floor is that it effectively compressed the dynamic range the device can deliver, since quieter passages and more subtle sounds can have levels that fall beneath the noise floor. We've seen instances where an audio device delivers a higher (i.e. worse) noise floor when sitting completely idle, but that this noise floor lowers (improves) significantly when signal is being run through the unit.

We then used the INport to record both cassette tapes and LPs, using the unit's two bundled apps, to gauge not only the recording quality, but how easy these apps make the recording process. How did it do? Turn the page and find out.

We recorded several albums, both from LPs and from cassettes on the INport and our other test machines. The results we got using the INport were very clean, and in the cases where the LP being recorded was in very good condition, the sound quality was very good. Perceptually, recordings made using the other sound cards were not notably better in terms of audio quality, but this has partly to do with the somewhat limited sound quality of the source material. Unfortunately, tape hiss was unavoidable unless we wanted to run Dolby noise reduction, which does reduce tape hiss, but also filters out a lot of desirable high-frequency information as well.

Software Test Results

The INport comes with two separate applications designed to ease recording and encoding, called LPRecorder and LPRipper – both are from CFB Software.

LPRecorder: Allows you to record line-level signal coming into the INport. It includes three features we particularly liked. Audio Configuration State Memory: LPRecoder can remember, and restore audio device and mixer settings so that you get a consistent audio configuration for your recordings. This is a "set it and forget it" type feature, where you have to set it up initially, but once done, the app remembers and restores that configuration when you restart it. Auto-Stop: This is especially handy for those times when you want to start a recording and then run to the store or take a nap and not have to manually hit the stop button when it's done. The app "listens" to the incoming signal, and upon hearing a sustained period of silence, automatically stops recording. This feature worked flawlessly, and is a very nice touch. Auto-Level: Manages your audio level so you get a strong signal level without overdriving the INport's input. This feature spares you the trouble of having to manually dial in the right recording level. However, if the incoming signal gets too hot, this feature will dial down the recording level, which will result in an inconsistent overall level. However, our tests we found that it apparently has a "gentle hand" in tweaking the recording level, and as such, it works well.