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PhatNoise: Office
Managing the PhatBox with a really nice CD ripper
April 5, 2004
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PhatNoise DMS Cradle USB 2.0 and Manager Software for PC shown with in-car PhatBox player
Connects to your PC and can take your music files with you |
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If the office is where you manage your music, it's where you'd keep your PhatNoise desktop cradle, which now has a USB 2.0 connection for high-speed transfer of songs from PC to cartridge. (PhatBox customers with the older cartridge have to upgrade to the high-speed cradle for $79.)
On your computer, you'd run the PhatNoise Music Manager, a competent but frill-less jukebox. You don't have to choose this in place of your favorite music manager for everyday music needs; you just have to use it to get at the content in your PhatNoise cartridge. (Not to worry: our test PC is proof you can run 10 or more similar music jukebox programs with little or no conflicts.)
The software's biggest asset is a nice CD ripper. You can encode CD tracks in MP3 format anywhere from an ugly 32 Kbps to a pristine 320 Kbps in quality; you could also encode in three sizes of WMA format. If you like, it will rip the CD tracks as they are, saving them in WAV format; another format, FLAC, can cut the WAV file size in half, while keeping the sound quality high.
Your final encoding option is OGG, or the Ogg-Vorbis codec, which seems to be more of a political choice at this time. On Vorbis.com, the developers admit that it's "roughly comparable to other formats" with the main exception that it is "completely free, open and unpatented." Other codecs like MP3 cost the software publishers money, which they tack onto your bill. At this time, however, it's not popular enough for us to recommend you rip your whole CD collection in OGG and then toss your CDs. Don't do it — at least, not yet.
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