Are you the type of person that always has a set of earphones on your head listening to the latest tunes or audio books on your portable CD or cassette player? Well, if you also have a WindowsCE Palm sized PC, you can leave that heavy CD player and book at home!  There are now five pieces of software that will allow you to listen to MP3, MOD files, and audio books on your PSPC (there are also versions of some of these programs for the HPC).

Xaudio v1.3.4
ModPlayerCE v1.1
Hum v1.62
Pocket Player v1.21
AudiblePlayer v1.0
Windows Media Player v1.1

Xaudio

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few months, you probably already know what MP3's are. If you don't, here's a quickie overview. MPEG3's are highly compressed music files that are usually taken from regular music CD tracks. The key here is in the compression. A typical 5 minute song recorded to a .WAV file for example would require about 50mb of disk storage. That same file in MP3 format would only need about 2mb of storage space and would still sound just as good. As a result, the record companies are freaking out because people are 'ripping' tracks from CDs, converting them to MP3's and then making them available for download over the Internet. Files can be found at various sites like these: MP3.com Lycos MP3 Search Engine Xaudio is a MP3 player from a company called MpegTV. Xaudio is available in Linux, Mac, BeOs, Unix, Windows and now Windows CE flavors. I'll be reviewing the PSPC version as used on a Casio E-11 with a 32meg compact flash card. The application requires 500 k and any .MP3 files that you load will of course take up additional memory.

.MP3 files are really large so I recommend buying a compact flash card if you think you'll be using Xaudio a lot.

The player has a nice interface that displays the song titles in your current play list. You can create multiple lists and save them. So, if you have a bunch of country tunes, or top40 tunes, you can separate them into different lists. You can then tap on them one at a time to play them or you can shuffle them.

The onscreen controls let you Play, Stop, Pause, go to Next song, or go to Previous song. You can also drag the progress bar to a different part of the song (sort of like fast forward or rewind). There is also an on screen pull down volume control switch. I had a slight problem with the volume control. While playing a song, I popped up the regular system volume control app and set it to the highest setting. When I did that, everything turned to a loud static sound. It startled me since I had the earphones on. I had to stop the song and restart it. It seemed fine then but I could repeat the problem.

The sound quality is great on the Casio E-11. Here's a sample that I recorded using the internal speaker on the Casio E-11. Remember, it will sound MUCH better through headphones.

sample ~ 27secs / 297k

Xaudio now has a permanent place on my Casio E-11. I really enjoy listening to a quick song whenever I wish. The only thing that it needs is hardware button controls so that you can easily start and stop a song without having to get the stylus and tap around on the screen. And maybe an option to start up with the last play list loaded. You can use the up/down rocker button to adjust the volume though. Other than that, it's a nice program at an ok price. 

Price: $19.95

Pros:
Easy to use.
Very good sound quality.

Cons:
MP3 music files are very large.
No hardware button control to skip to next track.

ModPlayerCE

What are MOD files? Modules, or Mods, are digital music files. They contain instrument (or even voice) samples (similar to WAV or AU) and sequencing information that tell the player how to play the song, when to play which sample on which track and at what pitch (similar to MIDI), sometimes effects like panning are added. MOD files are a crossover between MIDI and WAV, and has the best of both worlds. MOD files are interesting because they are mostly original compositions and not just remakes of existing Top 40 tunes. ModPlayerCE by Jimmy is a MOD player for the PSPC or HPC. This review will only focus on the PSPC version as tested on a Casio E-11. The program requires 220k of free space on your PDA. This doesn't include space for the actual MOD files. MOD files are typically quite a bit smaller than MP3 files. Although some can be almost a meg in size.  You can find many websites with MOD files for download. Here are a few example sites:

The Mod Archive
Alpha64
Trax In Space

You have to be careful to just get files with a .MOD extension as there are quite a few varieties of MOD files that ModPlayerCE isn't yet compatible with.  ModPlayerCE also can only play 4-8 channel MOD files.

The interface for ModPlayerCE is pretty simple to figure out. There are CD player like controls for Play, Stop, Pause, Rew, FF, Next Track, Prev Track. There are also little buttons that:

Scan a song -plays the first 15 sec
Shuffle -shuffles songs in the play list so they will play randomly
Repeat -allows you to play one song over and over
Time -toggles the display to show either time remaining in a song or time elapsed while song is playing

You can select one song at a time from your storage memory or you can create play lists. During the review, I put several songs on a Compact Flash card and ModPlayerCE was able to access them easily. There is one setting you have to change before you can play any MOD files. You have to turn off screen tap sounds in the Volume app. I'm not sure if this is just specific to the Casio PSPC or to all PSPCs though.

The songs sound good on the Casio with headphones. I don't think you'd want to try to listen to them through the regular speaker because it isn't really loud enough. Here's a sample that I recorded using the built in speaker.  Keep in mind that it sounds much better through headphones (although it is not stereo of course).

mod file sample ~30secs / 375k

I like ModPlayerCE a lot. But, wish it had a few extra features. I would really like it if you could use the action/rocker button to start or stop a song. It would also be nice if there was a hardware button that you could use to go to the next or previous song. Having hardware buttons that can do these functions would just make it easier for people that use the player while they are driving or riding a bike for example. It would also be nice if there was an easy way to change volume levels through the ModPlayerCE app.

Price: $24.00

Pros:
Easy to use player
MOD files are smaller than MP3 files

Cons:
All controls are on screen. No hardware button controls

Hum

Hum is an .MP3 player that was co-developed by Utopiasoft and Xaudio. It actually uses the same Xaudio.dll engine as the Xaudio player uses.

The interface on Hum has very large buttons so that you can easily tap them with a stylus or even your fingers. There is also a nice volume slider control. A status window at the top of the screen displays the song title and the time count down of the currently playing song. The best thing about Hum is that it will actually play in stereo on the Casio E-100. Another nice feature is that you can either use the action rocker button or the joypad up/down button to turn the volume up or down. Pressing the joypad left or right skips to the next song or goes back to the previously played song. You can customize the interface of HUM with free downloadable skins. These skins make the interface really colorful and unique. A great place to find skins is the PalmSizeMedia site.

I think that the sound quality through Hum is a bit better than Xaudio. I can't be sure if it is my imagination though.

Hum has implemented what they call AdaptivePlay� technology, Hum constantly detects the multimedia capabilities of your device while dynamically delivering the optimal audio reproduction regardless as to what device (mono, stereo, color, black/white) you have.

I do like Hum a lot but I think the price is quite high considering that you can use Xaudio for free. I'm hoping that Utopiasoft will add some extra features to make this program more in line with the price they are charging.

Price: $19.95

Pros:
Plays in stereo on a Casio E-100.
Takes advantage of the joypad on the Casio E-100.
Sound quality seems better than Xaudio.
Customize the interface with skins.

Cons:
None that I can think of.

Pocket Player

PocketPlayer is an .MP3 player by Conduits Technologies Inc. Like HUM,   this player can use 'skins'. Skins are graphic overlays that allow you to create your own custom user interface for the program. A great place to find skins is the PalmSizeMedia site. Pocket Player like HUM also uses the Xaudio MP3 engine. The program excluding the skins will take up approximately 350k (total program size with skins will be 400k-800k depending on the skin). Pocket Player can play in high quality stereo on a Casio E-100/105 and it sounds great. Pocket Player can be set to play in CD quality mode where HUM has only LOW and MEDIUM quality modes. The Pocket Player interface comes with a cool iMac like default skin. A Windows application is available that will allow you to create your own new skins. Unlike WinAmp, you can totally configure how you want the screen to look. It is up to you what the buttons look like and where they are located in the screen. I think this will quickly set this MP3 player apart from the others because of the ability to customize it.

The skins will take up from around 50k-500k of storage space on your device.

Other features that Pocket Player has are a nice play list editor and options for mono PDAs to use either the left, right or both speakers. Pocket Player also is the only player that will turn the display's backlight off in order to save battery life while you're listening to music. When the backlight is off, the alarm LED on the PSPC will glow red. You can also minimize Pocket Player. When the app is minimized, you can tap the icon in the taskbar for a small menu of options. These options let you pause, skip to next track, etc.   One little annoyance that I kept running into had to do with the NEXT track function. After you get to the end of your play list, pressing NEXT will not cycle back to the first song. Instead it does nothing.

A couple other interesting features included are a preamp that will increase the playback volume. This works pretty well but on some songs it made them sound a bit like they were over driving the speakers. The other feature is a visualization feature. You can choose between throb or scope visualization. It just puts up a little window that changes with the beat of the music. This is just a novelty... I doubt if you will use it more than once or twice.

Right now Pocket Player is my pick for best MP3 player due to price and sound quality.

Price: $14.95

Pros:
Turns off display backlight for better power management.
Uses 'skins' for a more custom feel.
Nice play list editor.

Cons:
Has a small bug in the NEXT track feature.

AudiblePlayer

AudiblePlayer from Audible Inc. is not a music player but an audio content player. What is the difference you might ask? Well, audio content includes audio books, newspapers, magazines, and recorded radio shows for example. The AudiblePlayer comes with a Windows desktop program that allows you to transfer different content to your PSPC. The desktop software will let you transfer blocks of audio (you can specify how large the blocks are). For every 1 hour of audio, 2meg of storage space is needed.

You actually sync with this desktop program so that after you have listened to a block or portion of the audio content on your PSPC, it will then refresh your PDA with the next block of audio.  For example, I downloaded a book called Anne of Green Gables. This is a classic children's novel. The entire audio book is about 12hrs long. I transfer about 45mins of content to my device at time. This lets me listen to the book during my drive to and from work. Then I sync with the desktop program so that I have fresh content for the next day. The desktop program is easy to use and keeps track automatically with your PSPC and what it needs to transfer next.

The desktop program will even allow you to listen to the content on your PC.  I like the desktop program but sometimes it would seem a bit flaky.  I had quite a bit of trouble with it during the time I helped beta test for Audible. Since I have upgraded to their latest version, it seems a lot better but I still have a few problems now and then.

The AudiblePlayer on the PSPC is easy to use. The interface looks like a typical player with stop, play, pause, rewind and fast forward controls. A status tells you how long you've been playing the content and how much content is left. You can use your up/down rocker button to either fast forward or rewind 10 secs at a time. Pressing the action button in will start and stop playback. You can even set bookmarks to mark specific places in the audio content. The quality of the audio is just fine for listening to this type of content. Being able to listen to books like this really nice. I found that it made my short drives to and from work really enjoyable. I would use a cassette adapter to round the audio through my vehicles stereo. These adapters are cheap and can be bought through the Audible website or at most dept. stores. As far as the variety of content that you can download from the Audible website, it is pretty large. You can find best selling books, classic books and all types of other content. You use a shopping cart online to purchase your titles. Prices range from around $5 - $12 or so depending on the titles.

You can buy subscriptions to different business publications and radio shows so that you will get the content automatically.

Price: FREE player. Pay for content.

Pros:
Easy to use player.
Great for long commutes to work.
Lots of content available through the Audible website.

Cons:
Desktop program can be a little flaky at times.

Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player is a free .MP3 and .WMA file player from Microsoft. .WMA files are a special format that usually compresses even better than .MP3 files... making the files take up less storage space. This player although free, is pretty basic. It does have the typical player features including play lists, and skins though.  Play lists are implemented much better than the other players that are available. Windows Media Player will automatically find the .MP3 and .WMA files on your device or CF card without you having to put them in a separate folder. You can also create different play lists and modify the order of the songs very easily. Another nice feature is the ability to assign functions to the hardware buttons. For example, you can assign Play to the Action button, or Next track to the Up button etc. Being able to do this makes playing songs more convenient because you don't have to extract the stylus to tap the screen.

The .MP3 sound quality of the Windows Media Player is very good. It might even be just a tiny bit better than Pocket Player. But, I think Pocket Player has a bit better bass response. Either way, they are both VERY close. .WMA sound quality is the same (at least to my ears) as the .MP3 quality. But, the great thing about .WMA files is that they are quite a bit smaller than .MP3 files. I took a 5meg song and converted it into a .WMA file that was only 1.3meg in size. I listened to both of them and couldn't hear a difference at all. A file converter doesn't come with the Windows Media Player, but you can download shareware converters easily.

There are a few problems with the Windows Media Player which keeps me from recommending it. It seems to be a bit flaky and will sometimes not shut down properly. Another very annoying problem with it is that it will pause the playback if you bring up a song's info and then close that info screen. It will pause playback for about 3 secs and then restart. It will also do this if you bring up the About dialog screen. Besides those 'bugs', this player also lacks screen blanking and the ability to minimize it to the task bar. Trying to run other applications while playing a song also seems to slow the overall system.

If these problems could be fixed, I'd give this player a big thumbs up... but as it is, I'll stick with Pocket Player.

Price: FREE

Pros:
Free.
Good sound quality.
.WMA files take up less space than .MP3 files.
Ability to map hardware buttons to different functions.

Cons:
Pauses song when exiting info screen.
Does not blank out the screen.
Can't minimize to taskbar.
Sometimes locks up on exiting.