What are the details for USB Direct regarding music players?

[yoda313]

Hi,

I think this forum will work - otherwise will a mod please move it to AUDIO? Thanks.

Anyway my ultimate music solution would be a device that can playback audio from a usb harddrive. This application is for work so it would be stationary with a firm powersupply so size is not really a factor here. I was at the phillips audio section of their website and saw this thing on USB DIRECT for music. It mentions it acts a USB host. It says you can plug in a device and it will play it back.

What are the limitations of this in the real world? Is this only for portable usb mp3 players? Can this actually hook up to a usb harddrive? If so I'd buy one in a heartbeat. My ideal notion would be to buy one of these USB DIRECT devices and hook it up to a portable harddrive of say 40-80gb storage and simply playback all of my music.

Does anyone have any practical experience with this? Are harddrives useable with this? Can you use ntfs or is fat32 neccessary? Is this USB2.0 or 1.0? Can wma be played back?

Any answers to these questions would be greatly appreciated. I'm basically looking for a cost effective alternative to buying a 300.00 80gb mp3 player - be it ipod or zune style. All I need it to do is to play multigigs of music. Thanks.


EDIT -- ok I did some digging on the phillips webstite. Here is a bit of what I found:

usb device which requires driver installation under windows xp is not supported.

2.0 support

usb flash memory
usb flash player
fat 12, 16 or 32

mp3 32-320 wma v9

This is for the philps cd boombox model AZ 1835..

Now what kind of driverless usb harddrives are available? I have a 2.5" maddog usb adapter for ide drives. But it uses two usb plugs - one for power and one for transfers. I don't believe that would be useable unless they make a usb to ac adapter for that particular model style. Also I take it that requires drivers to operate if I remember right - I haven't used it in quite awhile.

Hmm... decisions....

[redwudz]

One of those 'video appliances' may work for you. Most are made for video and are stand alone units. But they would also hold quite a bit of audio. Something like this Lacie Siverscreen with a 40 or 80GB harddrive: http://www.lacie.com/support/support_manifest.htm?id=10120&CFID=24637620&CFTOKEN=86081293 The 40GB is about $90US at present, but LaCie was selling it for $80 direct a short time ago.

There are other similar devices out there.

[yoda313]

thanks redwudz.

Unfortunately for my application I need on-unit display capabilities - at least track number info so I know what I'm playing.

I went to best buy and asked a guy there about it. The whole sticking point will be the driver issue. There are the settop cd boomboxes that now can read off of usb flash drives. However those only go up to like 4gbs or so. But you're looking at 60-80 for the boombox and then at least that much for the flash unit. Whereas the 4-8gb flash mp3 players are in that 150-200 range these days so its kind of a wash.

What I'm thinking about is maybe one of those larger video 3.5" enclosures they have on ebay. They have for about 50.00 on buy it now. They seem to include the on-unit display so it might be possible to acutally use it as a standalone player. That would be my best bet right now.

However I think I'm going to hold off for right now. I might keep looking.

Another option is to find a used 10gig mp3 player on ebay. That is about what I'd need for my current collection. However I will keep my options open.


EDIT - Well i went ahead and found a used Dell 30gb mp3 player on ebay for 65.00 plus shipping - its from one of those store sellers. I should get it in a week or so I hope. This unit supports mp3, wma, and wav. A lot of those hard drive enclosures only support mp3 which means I'd have to convert a lot of my wma collection over to mp3. This way I can just transfer my collection as is. I think I only have about 10gigs of files right now. So once I get this player I could actually start reripping my cds to higher quality files. I might either do 300kpbs mp3 or 192kpbs wma for sharper sound. I'd love to rip all as wav but even a 30gig mp3 player would not allow that for more than 20 cds I don't believe - if each were at 700mb that would be 14,000mb right there 14gigs I believe. So that won't be possible for my entire collection. Maybe for a few choice cds or maybe some of my concert dvd rips and leave them uncompressed perhaps..... Hmm... the possiblities

The best thing is this ebay store has a return policy and they say they protect against DOA items. Here's hoping - they do have a high feedback rating