Phatbox Mini Review
11-28-2001, 03:25 PM
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Phatbox Mini Review
I thought some other Audi philes would appreciate reading the review of my new Phatbox that I posted on another website.
Although this review might seem somewhat long to some folks, it is in fact a mini review, pending me getting some digital pictures taken and a more detailed review written.
Also, I am only posting this on the NEO website for informative and comparison purposes. I think this is useful as with the death of the Empeg the Phatbox is the only 2nd generation player that is actually going to be on the market in the coming months. I also don't work or hold a stake in Phatnoise.
Anyway, on to the review.
Physical Impressions:
I ordered the Audi Phatbox for my 2000 Audi A4 Quattro. I ordered the 20 Gig version of the Phatbox (more than enough space for me, more on that later), cost $800. I also had to order the Blitzsafe adapter for my Audi that is designed to interface between the Phatbox and the Audi factory cd changer bus, that was an additional $60.
The Phatbox came in a really nicely packaged box, which included the Phatbox, the 20 GB DMS cartridge, the USB docking cradle, the Music Manager software and a really nice and thoroughly informative manual. Also included was a quickstart guide and a quick reference card for using the SSA features in my car (more on that later).
The Phatbox itself looks a lot like a small amplifier... it's got some real heft to it as well, probably weighing a good 5 lbs. It definitely has the look and feel of being a device that is engineered for serious automotive use. The burnished aluminum (steel?) of the outer case looks beautiful. The outer shell functions as a heatsink, and the unit has a very beefy power supply.
Setup and Install:
Installation of the Phatbox was the easiest thing I have done yet with car audio. I located the pre-existing CD changer cable in my car and connected it to the Blitz adapter, grounded the blitz adapter and connected it to the Phatbox. I used four screws to mount the Phatbox to the side of my trunk. It took all of 30 minutes for the physical installation. The Phatbox powers up immediately, even if the car is turned off, it then read the firmware off the cartridge, which took about 5 mins. Selecting the Changer input on my radio greeted me with a really cool "welcome to Phatnoise" intro mp3.
The next step was setting up some playlists and copying some songs across. The Music Manager software is actually pretty decent, as it is a ripper, encoder, tagger, and player all in one. It also manages all of your playlists. The Phatbox can support up to 99 virtual CD's with each virtual CD containing up to 999 songs. There are two types of virtual CD's supported, dynamic and virtual. Dynamic discs might be all your tracks from a particular genre, such as rock, or all the tunes from a particular artist... dynamic discs will get updated automatically if you add more music to your collection.. so if I put "tool" on as a dynamic disc and later get some more tool tracks, the Music Manager Software will automatically know it should add those tracks to your DMS cartridge.
The 2nd type of virtual CD is static playlists. These are your typical winamp style playlists of a number of tracks. These playlists do not get automatically updated, so if you change your playlist you will need to update the CD yourself.
I created about 8 virtual CD's.. 7 dynamic playlists and one static one. The music manager then proceeded to copy across all the necessary music. My selections consisted of about 700 tracks, which took about 1 hr to copy across to the cartridge on the USB bus. My 700 tracks (mostly high quality Lame VBR encodes) took up about 2.5 GB on the Phatbox.
Because my Audi uses the SSA system for navigation, part of the synch and eject operation consisted of generating voice prompts for all of my music. To do this, the software uses microsoft agent to generate speech from the text names of all of your selections (playlist name, artist, album, genre, etc). For all of my music the text to speech prompts took about 2 mins to create... they are copied over to the DMS cartridge automatically... there are also some options in the manager software to blow them away and regenerate them if necessary (or if you renamed some files, etc).
Performance:
The sound quality of the Phatbox is absolutely top notch. It really makes my NEO sound pretty poor in comparison (not that the NEO is awful, but the Phatbox is a lot better). I intentionally put some very low level MP3's on the DMS cartridge that would require me to seriously crank up the factory Bose stereo. Noise was virtually non-existant... no hard drive whine, no engine noise, very nice.
The navigation of tracks with the SSA system is a little interesting. The 6 "disc" buttons on my head unit become mode buttons when listening to the phatbox. In the "playlist" mode, when I hit the button the system speaks back the name of the disc I am playing ("lateralus"), then if I press the forward or backward track buttons it starts speaking the names of those playlists ("club mix", "giant mix", etc), when I release the button it is playing the new playlist. The system also lets you search for songs by genre, artist, or album name. This is actually very handy... I was able to drive around and find a track without ever having to take my eyes off the road. If you have ridiculous amounts of music though, then you might have to come up with a way to "condense" some of these tags or it could take you hundreds of button pushes to find what you are looking for. The voice prompts are usually easy to understand, although for a few tracks it was difficult to understand what it was saying... I could probably name those tracks better and get a name that I understood more easily). The SSA is probably easier to use and navigate than a simple text display like that on the NEO, but probably not as fast at searching as the Empeg. The real advantage of the system is that you don't have to take your eyes off the road to navigate your music collection.
Once you find what you are looking for ("rock" genre for example) the system automatically organizes all tracks that match the criteria into a new playlist. This is actually a nice feature.... I can also use random play on a newly generated list or one of the pre-existing ones (and random actually works, it won't repeat a song till all songs in the list have been played at least one time). The unit of course resumes where it was (whatever playlist, either static or dynamic) unless you remove the DMS cart, in which case it starts playing again from disc 1 track 1.
Bugs:
I only ran into a few bugs, and I even talked briefly with someone from Phatnoise who said that the things I have discovered are being addressed.
1) Mushy button pushes... you really have to hold the mode buttons down for the Phatbox to recognize your button presses (but strangely track change buttons are fairly responsive)... this is due to the Blitz adapter not always recognizing what you pushed and they are working with Blitz to get a newer adapter that is more responsive.
2) The head unit switches back to the tuner after turning the car off then back on.. when I reselect the phatbox it is playing where it is supposed to be though... they think that this is a bug and are probably going to get it fixed.
3) XP compatibility... not quite done yet, supposedly ready in "a few weeks".
Limitations:
Some people reading this review have already probably picked up on a few limitations of this device. This device is NOT designed to allow easy navigation of 10,000 mp3's. If your MP3 collection is absolutely huge then you might have difficulty finding a way to organize the music or search through it on the Phatbox. Having said that, I don't really understand wanting that many tunes in the car anyway... I have over 2,000 MP3's, of which I could probably only stand listening to maybe 1,000 in the car anyway. For those who want the ability to have "any song on tap" the Phatbox might not make them happy. Because it is so easy to create new playlists (I do it on winamp, then open the playlist with the phatnoise music manager) this isn't really a big deal to me. With just the 700 songs I have on the Phatbox I have over 60 hrs of music ready to go, more than enough.
The SSA feature also requires that you have good IDT3 tags, it took me a good 4 hrs to go through and re-tag a large number of my MP3's.
Final Word:
Having put up with the limitations of the NEO (random play works like crap, no true playlist support, sound quality not the best, difficult navigation) the Phatbox is a god send. For me, having an MP3 player that integrates directly into the existing factory setup is definitely the way to go. The SSA system is actually a joy to use once you get the hang of it, no more scrolling through lines and lines of text or taking my eyes off the road to look for a song or album.
Currently phatnoise is shipping the units for use with Kenwood (text support) and BMW or Audi (SSA). They will also be releasing Sony support, with an option to use an FM modulator and SSA for those with incompatible head units. Possible future support includes VW, Honda and Toyota factory stereos. They are also working on Sony and Alpine for aftermarkets.
Again, this solution is not for everyone, but for many of those who got fed up with the limitations of 1st gen units, this unit is a very, very nice upgrade.
Lastly, I did not compare this unit to the Empeg (which I'm sure is better, although, gee, it's discontinued for a reason) for a simple reason... I don't want to rip out my factory setup (explained in another thread) to put a stereo in my German death machine.
Although this review might seem somewhat long to some folks, it is in fact a mini review, pending me getting some digital pictures taken and a more detailed review written.
Also, I am only posting this on the NEO website for informative and comparison purposes. I think this is useful as with the death of the Empeg the Phatbox is the only 2nd generation player that is actually going to be on the market in the coming months. I also don't work or hold a stake in Phatnoise.
Anyway, on to the review.
Physical Impressions:
I ordered the Audi Phatbox for my 2000 Audi A4 Quattro. I ordered the 20 Gig version of the Phatbox (more than enough space for me, more on that later), cost $800. I also had to order the Blitzsafe adapter for my Audi that is designed to interface between the Phatbox and the Audi factory cd changer bus, that was an additional $60.
The Phatbox came in a really nicely packaged box, which included the Phatbox, the 20 GB DMS cartridge, the USB docking cradle, the Music Manager software and a really nice and thoroughly informative manual. Also included was a quickstart guide and a quick reference card for using the SSA features in my car (more on that later).
The Phatbox itself looks a lot like a small amplifier... it's got some real heft to it as well, probably weighing a good 5 lbs. It definitely has the look and feel of being a device that is engineered for serious automotive use. The burnished aluminum (steel?) of the outer case looks beautiful. The outer shell functions as a heatsink, and the unit has a very beefy power supply.
Setup and Install:
Installation of the Phatbox was the easiest thing I have done yet with car audio. I located the pre-existing CD changer cable in my car and connected it to the Blitz adapter, grounded the blitz adapter and connected it to the Phatbox. I used four screws to mount the Phatbox to the side of my trunk. It took all of 30 minutes for the physical installation. The Phatbox powers up immediately, even if the car is turned off, it then read the firmware off the cartridge, which took about 5 mins. Selecting the Changer input on my radio greeted me with a really cool "welcome to Phatnoise" intro mp3.
The next step was setting up some playlists and copying some songs across. The Music Manager software is actually pretty decent, as it is a ripper, encoder, tagger, and player all in one. It also manages all of your playlists. The Phatbox can support up to 99 virtual CD's with each virtual CD containing up to 999 songs. There are two types of virtual CD's supported, dynamic and virtual. Dynamic discs might be all your tracks from a particular genre, such as rock, or all the tunes from a particular artist... dynamic discs will get updated automatically if you add more music to your collection.. so if I put "tool" on as a dynamic disc and later get some more tool tracks, the Music Manager Software will automatically know it should add those tracks to your DMS cartridge.
The 2nd type of virtual CD is static playlists. These are your typical winamp style playlists of a number of tracks. These playlists do not get automatically updated, so if you change your playlist you will need to update the CD yourself.
I created about 8 virtual CD's.. 7 dynamic playlists and one static one. The music manager then proceeded to copy across all the necessary music. My selections consisted of about 700 tracks, which took about 1 hr to copy across to the cartridge on the USB bus. My 700 tracks (mostly high quality Lame VBR encodes) took up about 2.5 GB on the Phatbox.
Because my Audi uses the SSA system for navigation, part of the synch and eject operation consisted of generating voice prompts for all of my music. To do this, the software uses microsoft agent to generate speech from the text names of all of your selections (playlist name, artist, album, genre, etc). For all of my music the text to speech prompts took about 2 mins to create... they are copied over to the DMS cartridge automatically... there are also some options in the manager software to blow them away and regenerate them if necessary (or if you renamed some files, etc).
Performance:
The sound quality of the Phatbox is absolutely top notch. It really makes my NEO sound pretty poor in comparison (not that the NEO is awful, but the Phatbox is a lot better). I intentionally put some very low level MP3's on the DMS cartridge that would require me to seriously crank up the factory Bose stereo. Noise was virtually non-existant... no hard drive whine, no engine noise, very nice.
The navigation of tracks with the SSA system is a little interesting. The 6 "disc" buttons on my head unit become mode buttons when listening to the phatbox. In the "playlist" mode, when I hit the button the system speaks back the name of the disc I am playing ("lateralus"), then if I press the forward or backward track buttons it starts speaking the names of those playlists ("club mix", "giant mix", etc), when I release the button it is playing the new playlist. The system also lets you search for songs by genre, artist, or album name. This is actually very handy... I was able to drive around and find a track without ever having to take my eyes off the road. If you have ridiculous amounts of music though, then you might have to come up with a way to "condense" some of these tags or it could take you hundreds of button pushes to find what you are looking for. The voice prompts are usually easy to understand, although for a few tracks it was difficult to understand what it was saying... I could probably name those tracks better and get a name that I understood more easily). The SSA is probably easier to use and navigate than a simple text display like that on the NEO, but probably not as fast at searching as the Empeg. The real advantage of the system is that you don't have to take your eyes off the road to navigate your music collection.
Once you find what you are looking for ("rock" genre for example) the system automatically organizes all tracks that match the criteria into a new playlist. This is actually a nice feature.... I can also use random play on a newly generated list or one of the pre-existing ones (and random actually works, it won't repeat a song till all songs in the list have been played at least one time). The unit of course resumes where it was (whatever playlist, either static or dynamic) unless you remove the DMS cart, in which case it starts playing again from disc 1 track 1.
Bugs:
I only ran into a few bugs, and I even talked briefly with someone from Phatnoise who said that the things I have discovered are being addressed.
1) Mushy button pushes... you really have to hold the mode buttons down for the Phatbox to recognize your button presses (but strangely track change buttons are fairly responsive)... this is due to the Blitz adapter not always recognizing what you pushed and they are working with Blitz to get a newer adapter that is more responsive.
2) The head unit switches back to the tuner after turning the car off then back on.. when I reselect the phatbox it is playing where it is supposed to be though... they think that this is a bug and are probably going to get it fixed.
3) XP compatibility... not quite done yet, supposedly ready in "a few weeks".
Limitations:
Some people reading this review have already probably picked up on a few limitations of this device. This device is NOT designed to allow easy navigation of 10,000 mp3's. If your MP3 collection is absolutely huge then you might have difficulty finding a way to organize the music or search through it on the Phatbox. Having said that, I don't really understand wanting that many tunes in the car anyway... I have over 2,000 MP3's, of which I could probably only stand listening to maybe 1,000 in the car anyway. For those who want the ability to have "any song on tap" the Phatbox might not make them happy. Because it is so easy to create new playlists (I do it on winamp, then open the playlist with the phatnoise music manager) this isn't really a big deal to me. With just the 700 songs I have on the Phatbox I have over 60 hrs of music ready to go, more than enough.
The SSA feature also requires that you have good IDT3 tags, it took me a good 4 hrs to go through and re-tag a large number of my MP3's.
Final Word:
Having put up with the limitations of the NEO (random play works like crap, no true playlist support, sound quality not the best, difficult navigation) the Phatbox is a god send. For me, having an MP3 player that integrates directly into the existing factory setup is definitely the way to go. The SSA system is actually a joy to use once you get the hang of it, no more scrolling through lines and lines of text or taking my eyes off the road to look for a song or album.
Currently phatnoise is shipping the units for use with Kenwood (text support) and BMW or Audi (SSA). They will also be releasing Sony support, with an option to use an FM modulator and SSA for those with incompatible head units. Possible future support includes VW, Honda and Toyota factory stereos. They are also working on Sony and Alpine for aftermarkets.
Again, this solution is not for everyone, but for many of those who got fed up with the limitations of 1st gen units, this unit is a very, very nice upgrade.
Lastly, I did not compare this unit to the Empeg (which I'm sure is better, although, gee, it's discontinued for a reason) for a simple reason... I don't want to rip out my factory setup (explained in another thread) to put a stereo in my German death machine.
11-29-2001, 05:51 AM
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A few basic questions
Forgive me for asking some basic questions:
What is SSA? It seems like it is some system that allows the car to "speak". Does that mean that you have to have the factory navigation system for this to work? If so, do you have any idea how it works for those of use without the navigation system?
Thanks!
What is SSA? It seems like it is some system that allows the car to "speak". Does that mean that you have to have the factory navigation system for this to work? If so, do you have any idea how it works for those of use without the navigation system?
Thanks!
11-29-2001, 07:24 AM
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Re: A few basic questions
SSA works without Nav.
With SSA, Microsoft Agent (on your desktop computer) generates all of the voice files, they are then copied over to the Phatnoise DMS cartridge.
And yes, your Audi does talk to you with SSA!
With SSA, Microsoft Agent (on your desktop computer) generates all of the voice files, they are then copied over to the Phatnoise DMS cartridge.
And yes, your Audi does talk to you with SSA!
11-29-2001, 07:45 AM
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Re: Phatbox Mini Review
Which Neo did you have that didn't allow play list use... according to their website (which sometimes is like believing your dealer) the neo car (also called the neo35) fully supports playlists...also how did you have the neo hooked up...Just wondering if it makes the Phatbox worth the extra $450 dollars (I know where you can get a neo35 for $330 w/ a 10gig HD)
Thanks for any info
Thanks for any info
11-29-2001, 08:07 AM
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Re: Phatbox Mini Review
The NEO does have playlist support... the problem with the NEO playlist support is that whenever you shut down your NEO (turn the car off) and start it back up, the NEO will continue to play the track it was on, but doesn't continue play of the playlist (so for example if you were playing a song in a playlist, it would just play the next song in that folder, rather than the next playlist selection).
The Other big probs I had with the NEO is that random play is very flakey (there is a 2048 track maximum, and the algorithm that generates the random tracks is far from random, you will hear numerous repeats of the same song/album).
If you are looking for a basic box that will get your MP3's in the car, the NEO is fine and definitely a whole lot cheaper than the phatbox. The Phatbox is definitely worth the added price though, IMHO.
I had my NEO connected through the factory CD Changer with an adapter that you can get from Blitzsafe (I was the first one they made the adapter for). I think that they still sell the adapter for about $80 and it basically connects to your CD Changer cable and gives you line in capability.
The Other big probs I had with the NEO is that random play is very flakey (there is a 2048 track maximum, and the algorithm that generates the random tracks is far from random, you will hear numerous repeats of the same song/album).
If you are looking for a basic box that will get your MP3's in the car, the NEO is fine and definitely a whole lot cheaper than the phatbox. The Phatbox is definitely worth the added price though, IMHO.
I had my NEO connected through the factory CD Changer with an adapter that you can get from Blitzsafe (I was the first one they made the adapter for). I think that they still sell the adapter for about $80 and it basically connects to your CD Changer cable and gives you line in capability.
11-29-2001, 10:29 AM
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Re: Phatbox Mini Review
Thanks...That is good to know about the playlist loss and the flakey random...that is my biggest problem with winamp...it doesn't seem that randam is all that random (even though they claimed to have fixed it like every other build)...Why are this dang things so spendy... 
and USB is nice...but slow compared to straight IDE transfer :/
and USB is nice...but slow compared to straight IDE transfer :/
11-29-2001, 10:45 AM
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Excellent write up...
As you may recall I was one of the folks interested in your Blitzsafe adapter a while ago, for similar reasons. My one sticking poing on the Phatbox was an apparent lack of a way to tell what list it is playing since it doesn't take advantage of the text display, but hearing about the voice support just might be all that I need to greenlight getting one of these bad boys.
I'm curious about the SSA... I assume MS Agent comes with the Phatbox software package (or maybe it's built into Windows?). I'm not familiar with it in any event. The Agent program creates voice prompts out of your ID3 tags which the Phatbox then "speaks" to you when you're accessing playlists and what not if I'm understanding you correctly. Also I've never really heard of SSA (or what it stands for) but I'm assuming it's independent of Audi.
I look forward to seeing your digital pictures and the full review... please post us a link when you're done with it!
I'm curious about the SSA... I assume MS Agent comes with the Phatbox software package (or maybe it's built into Windows?). I'm not familiar with it in any event. The Agent program creates voice prompts out of your ID3 tags which the Phatbox then "speaks" to you when you're accessing playlists and what not if I'm understanding you correctly. Also I've never really heard of SSA (or what it stands for) but I'm assuming it's independent of Audi.
I look forward to seeing your digital pictures and the full review... please post us a link when you're done with it!
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11-29-2001, 11:53 AM
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Re: Excellent write up...
Ya, if you order the Audi package, it comes with a full install of the Phatbox Music Manager software that includes MS Agent. SSA is Phatnoise patented voice playback system for audio in your car.
Also, something in the review was incorrect... I indicated that there is a 99 playlist maximum, I am now told that the maximum is 999 playlists.
Also, something in the review was incorrect... I indicated that there is a 99 playlist maximum, I am now told that the maximum is 999 playlists.
11-29-2001, 12:49 PM
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Sounds great... I've just been reading up on SSA on their website...
The new site is much more detailed than the previous one, with more in-depth explanations of the interface and hardware for anyone else who might be curious.
Now I need to get a hold of some spare cash... one thing though... do they supply the proper adapter or do you have to purchase it seperately?
Now I need to get a hold of some spare cash... one thing though... do they supply the proper adapter or do you have to purchase it seperately?
11-29-2001, 01:11 PM
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Re: Sounds great... I've just been reading up on SSA on their website...
The adapter is not supplied, they sell it for $60... it is NOT the same as the line in adapter that Blitz sells for $80 to use your NEO, etc, with the CD Changer interface cable.