sponsored by Audio Explosion

The Japan-based Kobe Steel has apparently entered into a licensing agreement with NTT (Nippon Telephone & Telegraph, basically Japan's AT&T) for rights to use the TwinVQ codec in a portable digital audio player called "SolidAudio." TwinVQ, also known by its file extension .VQF, was developed separately from MP3 technology. This is in contrast to AAC, which extends MP3 technology. While AAC has a small technical edge over TwinVQ, both sound distinctively better than MP3 at equivalent bitrates.

I got a chance to test out the prototype SolidAudio player and interview one of the DSP engineers, Toshiaki Shimoda, about a week ago. I brought both my Rio and my friend Nathan Schmidt (hardware guru) to the interview: both proved very useful in making comparisons between the devices. While Toshi (as he liked to be called) didn't let us take pictures, we were allowed to measure the device and play around with it. It was roughly the size of a credit card and was half the thickness of the Rio. The device comes with a very cute docking station for recharging the internal lithium ion battery.

It uses SmartMedia flash cards to store the .VQF files, obviating the need for a direct PC link. Toshi demonstrated loading the flash card into a special, hollow floppy disk to make a computer believe that the flash is actually a floppy! (The "flash floppy" is called Flash Path and costs about US$70 in Japan) We were able to place files onto the flash card simply by copying the .VQF files of our choice to the floppy drive. The player takes the names of the .VQF files and displays them as the song plays in a 1" x 2" LCD panel on the front of the player.

The player had very small buttons for changing the volume, skipping tracks, playing, stopping, fast-forwarding, and rewinding. There were also two buttons that didn't do anything. Yet. Toshi suggested that they could serve a variety of purposes in the production release, although Kobe had not yet fully decided what functionality to incorporate. The output is through a supertiny headphone jack, a form factor becoming popular in Japan. Toshi had a converter on hand for US headphones, thankfully.

The sound quality from the player was excellent. We loaded up two pieces of classical music onto the SolidAudio player and the Rio and played them through my friend's $100 DJ headphones. The SolidAudio player turned out crisp and vibrant music, filling my ears with sound. There was very little noise, but I felt it was lacking the rich bass that a good Walkman should have. The Rio, in comparison, sounded quite muddy, garbling several of the more intricate and intense parts of the piano solo I had loaded onto it. To the Rio's credit, I felt that it's bass was a bit more smooth and well-rounded, and that the overall sound was a tad warmer.

On the technical side, the SolidAudio player uses a recent DSP from TI. (Kobe Steel distributes TI's DSPs in Japan, so it was a good match!) It's apparently reprogrammable on the fly: you could turn this device into an MP3 player simply by uploading the MP3 codec to the device. This holds equally for other codecs, such as AAC. This technology might also enable new encryption formats, like AudioSoft's ASFS, (soon to be integrated into Winamp) to be incorporated to allow playback of protected music. As such, this player could end up a serious competitor to codec-specific devices. Why pick one format when you could have them all?

Optomistically, the player will go on sale in Japan, likely in the fall or winter of 1999. Toshi didn't know when the player would make it to the United States. It should be noted that it's not clear that anyone else besides Yamaha and Kobe have licensed VQF technology from NTT for incorporation into a hardware device. If Yamaha decides not to pursue creating their own portable digital audio player, this would give Kobe a virtual monopoly on the portable VQF market. The player is expected to cost just under $200 when it comes out in Japan, and be even cheaper by the time it hits US shores.

It should be noted that the largest card available for the device today is 16Mb. This would amount to just under half an hour of high-quality VQF playback. Nice, but expensive! Toshi hopes that by the time the device is released there will be affordable 64Mb cards. When asked about the possibility of using IBM's new superthin hard drives, Toshi seemed initially wary of such a possibility. He cited several power consumption, robustness, and vibrational problems with using mechanical devices in such a small form factor, but did not discount the idea completely.

All in all, Kobe will be a mover to watch next year. Their shiny, tiny player just may be the next step for Internet audio distribution.

Existing Players

Saehan Information System of Korea released the MP-Man about six months ago as the first solid-state MP3 player. Cute and technically impressive, it turned the heads of several industry observers, but has not been able to make much of a consumer impact yet, mainly due to the fact that it is difficult for a manufacturer without brand-name recognition in the US to get "shelf placement" quickly. The device is sold at a few websites, but is generally not yet available in traditional retail outlets.

Diamond Multimedia, a US computer peripheral manufacturer, came out with their portable Rio player a few weeks ago. The player will soon be available in stores, thanks to Diamond's preexisting relationships with the retail sector. This marks the beginning of a new generation of consumer portable digital audio products. Diamond, as the first major US hardware firm to support MP3, took flak from the RIAA on the grounds of supporting piracy. Diamond fired back that the RIAA "had damaged Diamond's credibility" and was guilty of "unlawful business practices." While Diamond was not prevented from manufacturing their Rio device, prospective device manufacturers are taking care to approach the RIAA gingerly before coming to market, lest they be sued, too.