Introduction

Note: This is a 'rolling review', since initial publication it has been changed several times and may change again in the future.

Traditionally (if about 5 years can be considered a tradition) I've used Minidisc as my 'non-CD format'. 'Non-CD' meaning a format which is small itself, and has small players, is easily recordable/rewritable but with allowably lower sound quality. At the time I bought my first MD walkman (a Sony MD-R30 should you care), Minidisc was all there was. Really, it was that or tape.

Minidisc has some problems though. Namely, it's a pain the ass to work with, tasks such as moving recordings on and off disc and titling tracks are too much hassle. Improvements have been made with newer PC-interfacing Minidisc decks, but that would mean another hardware investment in a format I'm not convinced is going to last long term. Plus, I'm trying to move away from proprietary technologies and if Sony stuff was any more proprietary it wouldn't work with normal humans.

Apart from all of that and also I wanted a dictaphone for recording talks I go to, or indeed I give myself. So, jumping ship to a recording mp3 player seemed the solution.

My requirement was, and is:

Did a fair amount of research looking for this spec and found a total of zero players that met it. The MT-500 came closest just missing the driverless requirement so I went for that. However, since then new firmware has been released which supports USB driverless mode. In this review I'll be discussing a player running firmware 2.0.13j.

Form

Size wise the MT-500 is very nice, it's the smallest player I've ever owned and the lightest too. Not as weeny as the smallest mp3 players but those don't have anything like the MT-500s feature list. It looks nice too, the plastic has a nice texture and the shiny bit, is well.. shiny. Quite a low key design, no obvious branding.

Interface

The device is controlled by two jog dials (left, right, in) and one almost flush button. Mostly you use the jog dials to move around. It takes a little getting used to learning which dial you need to use to go where you want, but it works quite well. One gripe is some options require a pressing one of the dials for 2 seconds. This means that no matter how expert to you get with the interface you're total movement speed is restricted. For example, moving back to the main menu is a 2 second push where a pushing both buttons together would be easier and quicker. Currently the only double push use is another 2 second push for power-off, a quick double push would be nice to get to the menu.

The screen is pretty small but quite readable. The backlight is the EL type similar to that on my Palm V and comes on for 0, 3, 5 or 10 seconds after a button push. Like the Palm version the backlight makes the screen less readable in some daylight conditions. Unlike the Palm there's no one button way of turning it on and off, you have to navigate to the configuration screen to change settings.

Playback

The important point here is that playback quality is good. I encode my mp3s pretty high using LAME and the 'standard' preset. This encodes to a quality level rather than a bitrate so the size of songs varies a good deal. An average bitrate for a guitar driven song is around 200Kbps. These tracks played back on the MT-500 sound as good as you'd want a portable to. I should say I'm not using the supplied ear-buds, which are the standard cheap rubbish you get with almost any portable, but Sennheisers MX500s. I don't rate Sennheiser large headphones but the MX500s really are good. If you get a MT-500 (or any half decent portable) and don't spend the little extra and get some decent earphones you're an idiot.

I have had problems playing back some mp3 files. I noticed this when using series 2 firmware, but it may happen with series 1 firmware. With some mp3s, from a certain point onwards the song will be heavily distorted (as to make it un-listenable). I've also experience a case where a file is playing normally and then the player 'fast forwards' for about a minute through the song before resuming normal play.

I've never successfully nailed down what causes these problems. A corrupt playing file will be OK if re-transferred suggesting a transfer problem, yet transferring a corrupt playing file back to the PC gives an identical MD5 checksum to the original.

I've seen it suggested this occurs when batteries are running low but that isn't the case, the problems are repeatable with fresh batteries. It is possible that there are separate problems with low batteries which I've never encountered. The best correlation I've found is that the problems seem to occur with files on memory cards as opposed to the internal memory, but I can't absolutely swear to this.

One thing which I didn't spot myself (credit) is that the left and right channels are the wrong way round.

Playlists

Something lacking from playback is playlist support. However, the player orders files according to the order in which they're transfered, so providing that ordering is maintained during transfer it's OK, e.g. in Windows Explorer order a directory by date and then copy across. Be wary of dragging multiple directories to the player in a single operation this seems to shuffle the file order.

Play interface

A minor niggle, the play screen doesn't make good use of available screen space. The display is split into four lines:

  1. Battery, repeat mode, play/pause, play time
  2. Folder
  3. Title and artist (scrolls)
  4. File format, bitrate, frequency, EQ mode, volume.

The top line is fair enough. The second I'm not so convinced by, the folder is either going to be obvious or irrelevant. But it's the fourth line is completely pointless, none of the information there is relevant at the time of playback. The file format I know (should I care), the bitrate and frequency don't matter, I rarely change the EQ setting and the volume is displayed as a pop-up when you change it, so constant display isn't needed. I feel a much better layout would be a three line display; status line (as current), title then artist. With the title and artist being in a larger font.

Recording

A nice feature of the MT-500 is that recording is done directly into mp3 so you get a decent size/quality ratio. Bit-rates are selectable independently for voice (32, 64 or 128), radio (64, 128 or 256) and line-in (64, 128, 256). All recording is CBR.

The built-in microphone is quite sensitive and can easily pick up normal speaking volumes from 3 meters. There is some background buzzing, but for dictaphone use it shouldn't be the end of the world. Handling the player whilst it's recording does produce loud bangs on the recording.

You can jump straight to the voice recording screen by holding down the proper button for 2 seconds, in the words of the manual "anytime when not playing or paused". But since most of the time you're either playing or paused, this doesn't gain you much. incidentally, holding down this button whilst playing or paused doesn't do anything, so this restriction seems rather odd. Getting to voice recording quickly is important as it makes the device more suitable for dictaphone use. It would be nice if you could get to voice recording this way anytime, including when turned off.

Recording from the line-in is pretty simple. Move to the screen, press the proper button and it starts, press again to stop. I've only done the briefest tests of the recording/encoding quality but it seems OK. In the brief series 1 firmware test there was some slight crackling in the left channel whilst in the brief series 2 firmware there wasn't. The big omission in recording is the lack of a) a recording level monitor b) a recording level control. This really hammers the usefulness of the recording function and if Multichannel Labs can fix this in a firmware upgrade they really need to.

Radio

The MT-500 also includes a FM radio. I live in a poor FM reception area and the MT-500 struggles to pick up a good signal. Recording from the radio is very nice and simple, just hit the button to start and stop.

Transfers

Software

The mass storage device mode works as it should, the internal memory appears as one drive and the memory card (if you have one) appears as the other.

Speed

Transfers are quite slow, it's only a USB 1 (as was) anyway, but even bearing that in mind, the transfers don't seem to maxing out the bus. Transfers to the internal memory are around 600KB/sec whilst transfers to a memory card in the device are only around 250KB/sec (Sandisk card).

Other notes

A carrying case (even a cloth bag) would have been nice. Not supplying a remote is a little tight, not necessary one with a display, just one for basic play functions. Furthermore, the long promised optional remote has now been cancelled.

The memory slot has a rubber cover for when there isn't a card installed. This is loose and it's easy to lose. I lost mine on the player's 3rd outing.

I initially thought the connector on the player was mini-USB, it's not. I wish companies would stop using pointless proprietary connectors just to force users to buy overpriced replacement cables. It's not clever, it's not subtle and it just pisses people off.

Conclusion

I've updated this review a few times and the conclusion has usually been "Basically good hardware, but buggy. Frequent firmware updates though so hopefully it'll all get sorted out."

The problem is that the firmware updates have dried up with the lastest version (2.0.13j) coming out in December 2003. Someone on a forum mentioned their newish player came with 2.0.17 but no download has been made available. It could be that all the problems I've mentioned are fixed, but then again maybe not. Either way it's pretty poor for Multichannel Labs to abandon existing users.

So if you're looking at a MT-500 you should know what you're getting and as of 2.0.13j that's a small, basically good sounding player with a list of issues. At the top of that list I'd put the corrupted playback followed by the lack of recording level control and playlists. On top of that there seems to be a lack of commitment from the manufacturer for the device, i.e. lack of firmware updates and the cancelling of the optional remote.