My Gigabeat: My S30 Review: Music Managment (Updated 6/9/2006 9.40am)

Friday, June 09, 2006

My S30 Review: Music Managment (Updated 6/9/2006 9.40am)

So by now I'm into my 5th day of ownership of my Gigabeat S30. Granted I have by now used it quite a bit, and I belive I'm ready to give you guys a review of my music management experience.

I have a pretty substantial library of mp3's. Roughly 5000 320Kbps mp3's, which amounts to 33GB of music. So why did I get a 30GB player? Well, I share this library with my wife, and a lot of this music is not going on my player. Trust me on that one... :) I also wanted the smaller version. 3mm extra in thickness might not matter, but I just felt that the S30 was the way to go.

So, music management with the S30. I have Windows Media Player 11 installed, and I do recomend it allthough it is BETA. I have not experienced any issues with WMP 11, but I have seen some posts in the forum here from users who did. So be aware, WMP 11 is beta!

The first time you connect your Gigabeat S30 to your PC with WMP 11 running a window will popup up asking you if you'd like to sync your library now. Since I was not sure if my library was setup to the right directory, in this case my external hard drive, I selected to sync later.

Once you have setup to monitor the folders you want (Library - More options - Monitor Folders) you can see all your music in WMP 11.

If you click on the picture above you get a good view o your library options. I'm not going to spend to much time on WMP 11, since this is a Gigabeat S30 review. But I do want to make it clear that you have to use either WMP 11 or WMP 10. You could of course just use Explorer, but if that is your choice I think there are players that are better for suited for you like Cowon.

If you just like to sync your whole library to your Gigabeat just select Album for example and click one item in the list and the click [CTRL] plus the [A] key on your keyboard. Then drag all items to the Gigabeat on the right side. It is even spelled out "Drag items here".

Once you have draged all the songs you want to the Gigabeat you click on the Sync button and that's it.

UPDATE: 6/9/2006 9.40am
The Gigabeat community really rocks! Some users already pointed out that you can indeed change the settings so that you don't have to convert MP3's to WMA, and I'm guessing also transfer WMA Lossless files.

In the left library panel where you see your Gigabeat when it is connected you right click on the name you choose for your player and select Advanced. Select the Quality tab and under the Music option select "Select quality level automaticly (Recomended)". I should have caught this no doubt. Thanks guys for pointing this out!

If you don't change the convertion settings under Options - Devices you will end up with 128kbps WMA's on your Gigabeat.

Syncing in itself is very fast. Roughly 200 songs take no more than a minute or two to sync. Converting and syncing 200 songs took 40 minutes. So if you have a large library you might as well start syncing before going to bed.

Syncing a Playlist is as easy as dragging the playlist to your Gigabeat drop in WMP 11.
Here's something that was a little bit annoying to me. My whole music library is in mp3's. When my files tranfers to the Gigabeat they get converted to WMA's, and the only option I have is what quality of WMA. I really don't care if the files on my Gigabeat are WMA or MP3, but it does add a lot of extra time when syncing. Granted it is only going to be slow the first time you add ALL your music, but still, why not give us an option to sync as MP3? I'm sure this has something to do with performance. In order to get the battery life they now have they had to tweak a lot, and WMA's are supposed to be easier on the battery. This could of corse just be a PMC thing as well since WMA is a Microsoft file format, and they enforce it if you want to use PMC on your player.

UPDATE: 6/9/2006 9.40am
You can also setup your playlist to sync automaticly when you connect your Gigabeat which is great if you have a "My New Music" play list for example. You do this under the top nav Sync menu. Select you Gigabeat in that menu and then Set Up Sync. Just add the Playlists and other automatic lists such as Fresh Tracks, Favorites 4 and 5 star rated. A great feature if you just want your Gigabeat to stay up to date with you music without to much effort.

Lets try out the player and the music options. To get to your music you select My Music from the splash screen. Simple enough, right? Once you are inside My Music you will see the a list of your albums, if this is your first visit. Otherwise it will start with what ever section you viewed last time.

The pictures for this section is definitly sub-par. Sorry about that.

To navigate you use the cross. Left and Right will move you trough the base options: Albums, Artists, Playlists, Songs, and Genres. Under each option you have a the ability to just Play All within that option or select individual items.To get back from within an option you just use the [<--] back arrow button just under the screen. Navigating the menues is a breeze. UPDATE: 6/9/2006 9.40am
The player displays up to 25 characters. If the Album name is longer it scrolls after you hover over it for a second.

Once you select what you want to listen to you are taking into the "now playing" screens. Here you can also navigate Left and Right between options: Text only screen and progress bar, Same with small album cover, Only large album cover, song list if album or play list, play options [shuffle, repeat, EQ, purchase (no idea what this means, and no info in the owners manual)].

Unlike the F Series you have to use the buttons on the right side on your Gigabeat to control volume, pause/play, FF/RW, next/previous song. I think this was a good idea. It is a lot easier to manage when you Gigabeat is in your pocket for example. The music manger experience on the Gigabeat S Series is great. The only negative thing I have found is the need to convert when transfering MP3's. It does take some time, but for me it is not that big of a deal since I only have to do this once with a large amount of songs.

The more I use the Gigabeat S30 the more I realize that this is a player is built for the regular people, not extreme gadget freaks... If you are looking for a player that supports all formats and a lot of customization this is not the player you want. But, if you just want a player that just works and you don't want to worry about stuff like file formats and bit rates this is a very good player.

I still have more stuff to review like Video (Vongo, DVD's, etc), XBOX 360, FM, and my final verdict.

Look for more posts tomorrow and this weekend.

If you have any questions post a comment or use the forum topic for my review.

posted by Tomas @ 1:14 AM

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27 Comments:

Joshua said...: A) Re scrolling:

1) When searching through lists of albums, do titles which are too long for the screen scroll?

2) On the now playing screen, how many characters for album/artist/song title actually can be displayed at one time. Do overlong song titles scroll on the screen?

B) One problem I can't think of a way around. All of my music on my computer is stored in WMA Lossless (I have converted to MP3 for my iPod) on my computer which I listen to via Windows Media Player 10. I wish to use much smaller files for the gigabeat, but how can I store two types of files (lossy and lossless) on WMP without an enormous amount of confusion arising? Any ideas?

Thanks,

Joshua

P.S. I've decided to purchase a gigabeat on my next trip to Canada in July. I suppose I might have trouble with the warranty, but I'm going to risk it.; Fri Jun 09, 06:31:00 AM 2006
Anonymous said...: Great Review so far - I just got my 60gb version 2 days ago. So far I'm loving it! I'm still in my testing stages as well. Music and picture functionality is really good. I'm having a bit of trouble getting my DVD's to the player right now. It won't play my avi files, so I'm trying to find a converter that will encode those avi files to wmv files. Great site - I'll be looking forward to your video review this weekend!

BTW- the black 60gb model REALLY shows the fingerprints :); Fri Jun 09, 07:00:00 AM 2006
Mark said...: I don't understand why it would have to convert or why that was the default setting. Also, you can edit the sync relationship to automatically sync certain playlists. That way, when you plug it in it automatically syncs or just you click 'Sync Now' and it syncs those predetermined lists.; Fri Jun 09, 07:26:00 AM 2006
Jay said...: It was really frustrating me that my collection was being transcoded on sync -- takes forever! I don't understand why they've disabled the option convert or not (like on my Rio Carbon). As far as I can tell, it makes the WMA lossless playback irrelevent since you can't get those files on to the gigbeat.

I did find a workaround that I posted in the forums here. I actually ended up changing the highest bitrate beyond 320000 to make sure all my MP3s clear through unconverted. Works like a charm...

http://www.mygigabeat.com/forum/messages.cfm?threadid=B3F28F7F-3048-2906-EAD4C70C802A2BB4; Fri Jun 09, 08:35:00 AM 2006
Anonymous said...: Initially I had the same problem with converting MP3's to WMA, but you don't have to. Here is how to put MP3's on your Gigabeat w/o the time consuming WMA conversion:

Connect your Gigabeat and open up MP11. On the left pane you will see your library, and then underneath it your Gigabeat and its library. Right click on where it says Gigabeat S, and then go down to Advanced Options. Once that window opens up, click on Quality. All you have to do is click on, (under Music) is select quality level automatically. Once you do this it will just copy your MP3's over, no conversion needed!

Chris; Fri Jun 09, 08:42:00 AM 2006
Tomas said...: Updated my post with your guys tips and questions.

Thanks! :); Fri Jun 09, 09:59:00 AM 2006
Jin said...: did you figure out how to repeat only one song when you have the repeat on?; Fri Jun 09, 10:15:00 AM 2006
mouthnoize said...: I'm still confused about UMS (MSC) capability. I didn't see anything in either manual, but in the 6th paragraph Tomas writes "just use Explorer".

Is this possible? Can I sync on my home computer, but then browse the files on another computer?; Fri Jun 09, 10:56:00 AM 2006
Joshua said...: Yo Chris!

I take it then that I can convert my WMA Lossless files to WMA lossy but not MP3? Can I convert up to WMA 320?

Best,

Joshua; Fri Jun 09, 11:03:00 AM 2006
Anonymous said...: I am assuming that you mean automatic conversion. I do not know whether or not the Gigabeat S supports lossless WMA, (don't see why it wouldn't) but the highest automatic conversion is 192 kbps WMA. What I would do if I were in your situation, is to use another program to convert to 320 kbps MP3. 320 kbps and any lossless format sound virtually identical. Personally, I encode everything in 320 MP3 because it will always be compatible with whatever player I ever own. But to answer your question directly, no, WMP11 will not auto-convert to anything other than WMA, and the highest you can go is 192 kbps. I'd try out the conversion and see how it sounds. You may be perfectly happy with the 192 through your headphones.

Chris; Fri Jun 09, 11:41:00 AM 2006
Anonymous said...: The "purchase" option (as I believe I read in the CNet review) refers to music obtained by a subscription service like Napster to Go. So if your music is not owned and will delete when you stop paying your subscription, then you can press purchase and it will, I assume, sync with the appropriate program? Sounds kind of cool if it works...; Fri Jun 09, 11:44:00 AM 2006
Anonymous said...: "mouthnoize said...

I'm still confused about UMS (MSC) capability. I didn't see anything in either manual, but in the 6th paragraph Tomas writes "just use Explorer".

Is this possible? Can I sync on my home computer, but then browse the files on another computer?"

If you connect the Gigabeat S while WMP11 is NOT open, the little window will pop up asking you what you want to do. You can open up WMP11 or browse using Explorer. So yes, you can browse files on another computer so long as WMP11 (or 10) isn't open.

Chris; Fri Jun 09, 11:49:00 AM 2006
Jay said...: These comments and users here are awesome. I had no idea that turning on the select quality automatically option would keep the MP3s in native format... previous players I've used to sync in WMP10 transcoded all files to WMA so I assumed that would be the case. It also answered my question on the lossless, as I just successfully completed a lossless transfer. Thanks!; Fri Jun 09, 12:06:00 PM 2006
Joshua said...: Hi Chris,

Thanks very much for getting back to me on that. The problem I see with having two sets of the same music (ie lossless and lossy) is that it would become incredibly confusing and would also mean that I couldn't automatically sync.

The reason I ripped to lossless is because I didn't want to rip more than once and I can now convert to as many different codecs as I want as many times as I want without any degradation. For archival purposes and for acutal listening in many situations (not on DAPs) nothing beats lossless, at least IMO.

Best,

Joshua; Fri Jun 09, 12:24:00 PM 2006
mouthnoize said...: Thanks for the UMS answer Chris. I was also confused about the USB host mode for digicams where not much more than 2gb can be reserved for transfer. If I can't use that 60gb hd as a file system, then I think I need to fall back to another DAP.; Fri Jun 09, 01:18:00 PM 2006
Raskawa said...: Someone up above mentioned wanting to get avi to the player. I have successfully moved over several divx and avi movies. You need to install the codec from www.divx.com. If I understand it right, This will make the codexes for several video formats available to WMP11 which will then convert it to WMV at Synch time from DIVX/AVI to WMV(?). Anyway, bottom line my movies work.. they just took a while to convert/synch.

On the same note - has anyone had problems with scrambled HDTV recordings from WMC to the player? I had several recording HDTV shows that were scrambled when I tried to play them (The Office), but other HDTV recordings worked.. (MadTV) - any help would be welcome.; Fri Jun 09, 01:36:00 PM 2006
Tomas said...: Regarding the Purchase option on the player.

I tried this with a song that I synced from Urge To Go service. Next time I synced I was expecting some alert asking me if I'd like to buy the song, but nada.

Maybe this is a future option? Could be come in handy.

Tomas; Fri Jun 09, 02:53:00 PM 2006
Anonymous said...: "mouthnoize said...

Thanks for the UMS answer Chris. I was also confused about the USB host mode for digicams where not much more than 2gb can be reserved for transfer. If I can't use that 60gb hd as a file system, then I think I need to fall back to another DAP."

Yes, you are correct about that. Only up to 2GB's are available for photo transfer. Might I suggest the Epson P2000 for you though? If one of the main purposes of a player is for photo storage, the P2000 has a 40GB HD and will also play movies and MP3's. It has a brilliant screen as well, (640x480 w/ 16.7 million colors). It also has plenty of bulk as well though. Sadly, at this time, I don't think there are any players the size of the Gigabeat S with a useful USB host mode. Also, from what I hear the USB host is S-L-O-W, (USB 1.1 speeds) so you'll spend more time copying, (and subsequently charging the battery) than viewing or listening to music. Note that the Archos AV500 and the Cowon A2 also have USB host mode.

Chris; Sat Jun 10, 12:09:00 PM 2006
Joshua said...: One of the things I don't like about the player is the lack of bookmarks. It's not a deal-breaker, but I'm not happy about it.; Sun Jun 11, 07:41:00 AM 2006
Anonymous said...: You mean multiple bookmarks? I find that it remembers where I last left off in every video I have. It asks if I want to start from the beginning or resume from last point. That's enough bookmarking for me. You must mean keeping bookmarks for certain parts in videos you just want to watch? I can understand that, I guess. Just not something I would use, so I don't miss it.

Chris; Sun Jun 11, 01:59:00 PM 2006
Joshua said...: I'm talking about audio. It wasn't actually clear to me from reading the manual that there is an audio resume function. In any event, I'm talking about a proper bookmark function for audio. Very useful for audiobooks and very long pieces of music such as opera.

I doubt very much whether I'll use the player for video. I've looked at a video once on my iPod and that was just to test it out.

I guess this has something to do with the player's use of Portable Media Center. The iRiver Clix seems to possess the same deficiency both in this area and also as regards a clock/timer.

As I said though, it ain't a deal-breaker.

Best,

Joshua; Sun Jun 11, 03:23:00 PM 2006
Anonymous said...: Does the Gigabeat S have audible support? I didn't think it did, or do you just have like, mp3 audiobooks? Just wondering. I understand where you are coming from though. Sucks for people who listen to audio books.

Chris; Sun Jun 11, 04:57:00 PM 2006
Anonymous said...: I thought the Gigabeat Series S was supposed to support audible.com but I just checked the website and Toshiba is not listed at all.

Like Joshua, I listen to a lot of long audio files - Opera, audiobooks, news programs, podcasts, speeches, etc.

While I'd love to have an audio bookmark option, at a minimum I need a "fast fast forwarding" on my MP3 player. The Ipod does this incredibly well.

Does anyone know if the Gigabeat Series S has "fast fast forwarding"?

Any if not - can anyone recommend a player that has both audio bookmarks and "fast fast forwarding"?; Tue Jun 13, 12:22:00 PM 2006
mouthnoize said...: I'm pretty sure that I saw audible.com listed as a store in WMP11 - I wouldn't think the gigabeat has anything to do with it other than supporting the DRM to listen.

I played with an S30 at American TV here in Wisconsin and I could not see anyway to fast-forward/rewind either video or audio. That's a bummer!

I'm also still focused on this UMS thing - I'd sure appreciate it if someone could upload a screenshot of windows explorer looking at the contents of the s30 :); Tue Jun 13, 02:06:00 PM 2006
Tomas said...: Regarding Fast Forwarding:
The fast forward speeds up the longer you hold the button (or right side of the cross) when watching video and playing music. I FF trough a 1.29hr movie in 25 seconds.

Hope that helps; Tue Jun 13, 07:06:00 PM 2006
Anonymous said...: Regarding bookmarks. People wouldn't beleive the large number of DRM protected unabridged audiobooks available from NetLibary.com. I just purchased the S30 and am planning to return it for this reason alone. Everything else about the S30 exceeds my expectations. Even my Creative Zen micro had the bookmark feature which allowed my to save my place. For those not used to Audiobooks these are anywhere from 150 to 300MB files. It plays like a normal music track from beginning to end (10-19) hours long. With no book marks you must start the playback and hold down the forward button for 5 or so minutes just to get to the middle of the book which is not practical. Another the the creative has is HH:MM:SS counter and the S30 only has the MM:SS elapsed or remaining. If I find out a firmware update with add bookmarks I would be a very happy S30 owner. I still have a few weeks to discover a workaround. I would even be fine if the audio playback worked like the video playback where it saves your place automatically. Any Ideas out there?; Sun Aug 20, 07:12:00 PM 2006
Anonymous said...: Thanks for the great review. I really consider getting that little piece of joy!
but there are still 2 little questions open for me.
1. Is it possible to transfer files from the player to a pc? (with the iPod for example NATIVELY it's not possible)

and 2. Can i store other files like zip, exe or whatever to carry it to another pc?

Thanks in advance for an answer

greetings sakana atama; Fri Sep 01, 09:29:00 AM 2006