Backed by the International Standards Organization (ISO) and MPEG, MP3 gained further momentum by being initially made free for use and development by Fraunhofer IIS-A.  The openness of the standard eventually led to Tomislav Uzelac's creation of the first MP3 player in 1997.  Uzelac, of Advanced Multimedia Products, created "AMP" which was later incorporated into WinAmp and MacAmp.

In the remarkably short time since then, with the help of the Internet, MP3 files have become perhaps the most important medium for listening to music.  With about a 10 to 1 compression ratio at 128kbps, high quality music files can be quickly and easily downloaded over cable modem or dsl -- a typical MP3 song encoded at 128kbps takes about 4MB versus around 40MB for the uncompressed version.  With a broadband Internet connection, a typical MP3 song can be downloaded in well under a minute.

The consumer electronics industry has not been oblivious to the wildly successful MP3 phenomena.  Pioneered by Diamond Multimedia (now SONICBlue), the market is currently awash with many different portable MP3 players.  Although most of these players remain solid state devices like SONICBlue's Rio 800 or Intel's Pocket Concert, CD-R based players like SONICBlue's Riovolt, promising over 600MB of cheap interchangeable storage, are increasing in popularity.

However, the Cadillac of MP3 players have been hard drive based systems.  First generation devices were big and expensive, but Creative Labs' Nomad Jukebox has been a breakout product of this genre, bringing portability, quality and 6GB capacity under $300.  To put 6GB of storage in perspective, that is enough space for about 150 CDs or over four days of music.

The player is turned on by holding down the "On" button for about four seconds.  When starting, the unit first reports the current firmware version.  Our player had version 4.53g installed.  A quick trip to the Archos website showed that our player was up to date for this review. 

Windows2000 reported that the 6GB hard drive in our unit is a Toshiba MK6015MAP.  It wouldn't be surprising, though, if Archos used multiple hard drive suppliers.

The batteries in the Jukebox 6000 recharge automatically when the device is attached to the included AC adaptor.  It is a good thing that the batteries do not have to be placed in an external charger because they are very difficult to extract from the unit.

Beside chemical considerations, there is a persuasive reason that NiMH are delivered at lower voltages than their alkaline equivalents.  AA alkaline batteries are listed at 1.5V while AA NiMH batteries are only 1.2V.  This disparity is because NiMH cells have lower internal resistance and can deliver more current -- in fact, devices could be damaged if NiMH batteries were shipped with the same voltages as alkalines. 

Under high current demands, the voltage delivered by alkaline batteries will drop substantially while internal resistance increases rapidly.  NiMH batteries are capable of delivering relatively constant voltage under high load conditions.  Because of these characteristics, NiMH performs better in conditions demanding lots of power such as with digital cameras where they can outlast alkalines by a factor of 3-4, even though alkalines can be rated over 2,500 mAh.  Alkaline batteries will perform somewhat more favorably in low draw applications like wall clocks, or in situations demanding long shelf life -- NiMH can lose up to 40% of its charge per month just sitting on the shelf at room temperature (if placed in dry container in the freezer, the discharge rate of NiMH can be reduced to a total of about 10% over the course of several months). 

Radios and flashlights are other applications where the initially higher voltage of alkalines might be useful.  However, even in these circumstances, the load voltage of alkaline batteries will soon drop below NiMh's relatively constant 1.2V.   Also, alkaline batteries do not recharge well and are essentially one shot disposables.

Compared with NiCd, or Nickel Cadmium batteries, NiMH is superior mainly due to the fact that they do not suffer significantly from the notorious "memory effect," a voltage depletion phenomenon.  Periodic deep discharges are necessary to maximize the life of NiCd batteries, otherwise NiCd's will have less and less capacity.  Sometimes seemingly worthless NiCd's can be rejuvenated if they are subjected to a very deep discharge and then recharged overnight.  This is not nearly as big an issue with NiMH, so devices can be recharged frequently with little concern for the discharge status -- however, even NiMH batteries should occasionally undergo a deep discharge-full recharge cycle to maximize performance. 

Per charge NiMH are typically 10-25% longer lasting than NiCds, but NiCds can be better with extreme current draws like that demanded by power tools.  NiCd's also contain a highly toxic heavy metal, Cadmium, and can be environmentally harmful unless disposed of properly (recycled not discarded).  NiMH require more sophisticated chargers, but this is not much of an issue, since these chargers are cheap and commonplace.

To test battery life, the unit was first fully charged overnight.  The volume was set at 12 out of 15 and bass and treble were left at defaults.  Playing a 297 item play list in random order and using a pair of Koss A/200 headphones, the Jukebox 6000 played uninterrupted for 9 hours, 18 minutes.  This is well beyond the player's listed rating of eight hours.  In a time of dubious marketing claims, it is refreshing to see a product actually exceed a vendor's marketing statements. 

In the future it would be desirable for Archos to equip their next generation Jukebox drives with Firewire interfaces.  Archos already sells portable Firewire drives, so this should not be much of a stretch for them.

For a device like the Archos Jukebox, Firewire would be much more attractive than USB2.  While transfer rates are similar, Firewire, increasingly called "1394," is a peer-to-peer standard that can potentially allow a a 1394 hard drive to be connected directly to a camera, digital video camera, satellite decoder or stereo.  While USB2 is just now appearing, many computers are already equipped with the 1394 interfaces.  USB/USB2 requires a computer, so is ill suited for connecting consumer electronic devices.

In our HDTach tests, the Jukebox 6000 posted a random access time of 23ms.  HDTach reported an average transfer rate of 0.94 MB/s, closely corroborating with our copy test results.

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Audio Quality

As with just about every portable player of any kind, the bundled headphones are not very good.  In addition to the included headphones, we tried the Archos Jukebox 6000 with several different headphones:

• Koss A/200

• AKG K-400

• Sennheiser HD570

• Grado SR 80

Of these, the Grado is best suited for portables and also sounded best with this unit.  However, at $90, the Grado's are not cheap.  A good alternative is the Koss SportaPro which can be purchased under $30. 

Using any of the headphones listed above, the Jukebox 6000 sounded good.  It also sounded much better than with the included pair of headphones which were tinny and had a pronounced lack of bass. 

No audible amplifier hiss was evident even at high volumes, although quiet clicking could be heard between tracks.  The volume can be adjusted in 16 steps (0-15).  At volume levels greater than 13, turning up the bass would cause clipping.  At 15, only slightly elevating the bass would cause significant distortion making music unlistenable.   With the volume at 15 and with bass settings at normal (0), the Jukebox 6000 was bearably loud with all headphones and distortion was rarely evident.

The "lineout" jack worked well with a set of Altec Lansing powered speakers.

Overall the sound quality from the Jukebox 6000 is good and on par with some of the better MP3 portable audio devices we have listened to.  Maximum volume is adequate.

The Archos Jukebox never skipped (other than what is caused by a bug in the firmware -- see below).  We took the Jukebox on long trips and used it in our Jeep Cherokee and the player performed flawlessly.  Archos boasts of a proprietary shock protection technology, but since the Jukebox contains an ordinary laptop hard drive we strongly recommend that the player not be treated too roughly.

Strangely, Archos firmly recommends placing the player upside down in its carrier.  This would prohibit use of headphones not having a right-angled minijack.  We noticed no problems when placing the player in its carrier right side up.

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Bugs?  Bugs!

Unfortunately, the Archos Jukebox 6000 still has serious bugs and some of these problems cannot be corrected with firmware updates.

We are on our second unit for this review.  Our first Jukebox 6000 had problems with its included AC power adapter.  At first the unit seemed to work well although it got very hot when connected to the power supply for any length of time.  We then noticed a 60 Hz hum as we listened to music with the adapter connected.  Disconnecting the adapter quieted the hum, but as days passed we could easily hear a loud, similar hum coming from the unit itself when the power was connected.  We also determined that battery life had severely decreased to only about two hours.

We checked the DC voltage from the 9V power adapter and were surprised to find that it was over 15V.

We returned this unit, but before plugging in the second unit we measured the voltage from its power supply and were distressed to see that it registered well over 14V.  Not wanting to duplicate our experience with the first Jukebox, we chose to use a PowerLine 1 Amp Universal  AC Adapter that we purchased from Wal-Mart for about $15.  When set to 9V, we measure this power adapter's DC output voltage at just under 9V. 

We have used the PowerLine adapter with the Jukebox 6000 with great success.  The Jukebox never gets more than slightly warm and neither the player nor the audio buzzes.  Battery life seems to be holding up well.

Our experience seems to suggest that the Archos Jukebox 6000 has acute quality issues with its bundled AC adapter.

We hit a problem almost as serious when our second Jukebox locked up after playing a large playlist for several hours.  The unit froze completely and would not turn off.  The only way to reset the unit was to remove a battery, which is a difficult feat in itself.  When the unit came back up, we unhappily discovered that the entire drive contents were lost.

We had to reformat the drive and recopy all of the data back to the drive.  The total time for this was around 1.5 hours.  When formatted with FAT32, Windows 2000 reported 5.58 GB (5,995,593,728 bytes) free on the empty disk.

Other problems we encountered include:

• The unit will lock up with playlists containing more than 300 items.

• At high volumes (around 13), the jukebox will clip (distort) when the bass is at or above 3.  This can become severe if bass and/or volume is turned up higher.

• Firmware problems induce skipping after holding down the “-“ button for about 30 seconds.  This problem will persist, but can be remedied by restarting the unit.

• There are occasional dropouts lasting about 1 second when playing through a collection of songs.  These silent interruptions occur in the middle of songs with a frequency of about once an hour or so, but does not seem to follow a pattern.  This is a very minor issue.

• After we encountered the problem that erased the drive we could not get the playlist that we had been using to play again after we restored the drive.

We tried to contact Archos to allow the company a chance to either correct these problems or at least respond to what we have found.  To date, we have waited nearly a week without any response from Archos.

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