Turtle Beach AudioTron
continued...

Now if you visit the site (www.audiotron.net) and read the manual, you'll get the wrong idea about this unit. There have been many flash upgrades that add features to it, and it's quite a different beast now!

Believe it or not, Turtle Beach has a mailing list. With real people from the company on it. Who actually type honest responses. That really listen to user requests. That actually implement them!! Gasp!

By far, this interaction and updating they have done is what really makes the difference. Since the first release, here's what they've added (much in beta form, but works very well regardless):

• A way to add songs to the queue while it is playing
• Fast forward/rewind (should have been there, user requests got it fixed)
• A web interface for configuring and controlling it (click here for web page (not operational!))
• Support for better control using a Pronto remote
• A new filter type interface for gathering songs
• Support for shoutcast Internet radio streaming

And more. Many of these from user feedback. And released not over a year, but weeks. This is the way software should be done!

I'm using it with an HPNA card through the phone line, and it works great. The HPNA technology is very good, and you can get a PCI card for as little as $30. I set up Internet connection sharing in Windows ME, and away I went. The AudioTron lets you specify and ip address, or you can do it the easy way and let DHCP do it for you.

Upon firing it up the first time (or after a blackout) it must scan for all of your music. This can take a while. Scanning my 2500 songs can take around 5 minutes. The bulk of it seems to be thrashing the hard drive looking at the song tag information. TB seems to thing the speed is a factor of processing speed, but the disk really is flat out, so I still think saving that info in a file would speed up subsequent reads.

That's an optical digital out. Note that it's only active for 44.1khz rates, the analogs work with other odd bitrates.

The unit comes with a remote, not backlit, but pretty well done. There are keys that can be programmed to presets for one touch song/album or list playing. But those settings will go away if your power glitches, bah!

Oh yes, the sound! I have mine hooked to a Yamaha 2095 digital receiver both analog and digitally. I did this because the digital output will only support 44.1khz rates. If you have something lower (like talk show streams etc.) it will only use analog. Sound quality is obviously as good as your music source if using digital. The analog does only a fair job, and is a very low in volume. You can adjust the volume of the analog output via remote or front panel knob, if you're using it with powered speakers. But it starts at full volume, so that's not too good.

To use Internet streaming, you visit a special web site, www.turtleradio.com and set up stations there from pre-chosen categories, or make your own. Once that's set, you see them appear in the AudioTron. These can even be set as favorites or put in a group so you can flip them around.

I have a cable modem, and streaming 128k streams is easy, and works great! I've got Internet connection sharing set up, so the AudioTron connects that way. Since it just uses that, and no extra software, the CPU shows practically no extra load.

This is pretty close to what it really looks like. Yes you can see the segment blocks and odd artifacts, but just a little less pronounced than this image. It seems overdriven for sure.

Negatives? Well the LED's were way too bright... but they fixed that with a patch after users asked! The main two line display still is a bit bright, and too small to see from far away. It begs for a TV out! And although they have made the gaps between songs smaller, it really doesn't play "gapless" well enough for me (play a Pink Floyd album and hear little pops in-between tracks). The gapless issue has been there for portable mp3 players too, and some of those have gotten it right, so maybe the AT will do better eventually.

But what about automation? >>