Rome MP3 player

Well, a while ago while, flipping through an issue of "Portable Computing" magazine, I came across an article detailing several of the portable MP3 playing devices currently on the market, and one of them really caught my eye.

When my RomeMP3 player finally arrived, I was really excited! Being the impatient person I am, I couldn't wait to tear into the package and start playing with my shiny new toy. After getting the shipping box open, I was greeted by a nicely designed retail box. After admiring the pretty box for about 1.5 seconds, I returned to the task at hand and pulled out the inner packaging. The Rome package includes the player itself, a 1.2v rechargeable battery, battery charger, parallel port data cable for transferring your files, a CD-ROM, the instruction manual, and a pair of ear-bud style headphones.

When you first receive your RomeMP3 player, you're supposed to charge the battery for a full 3 hours. I didn't. Like most of us would, I wanted to play with this sucker immediately. Unfortunately I ran into a few snags, so I ended up sticking the battery in the charger. I then tried to forget about my new toy until it was time to go home.

The software that ships with the RomeMP3 player claims it's compatible with Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT. That wasn't entirely the case. At the time I got the Rome, the only NT software available was far from functional. It was unable to connect to the Rome, and despite all of my efforts, I just couldn't make it work. I was thwarted again when I got home. My primary workstation at home runs Windows 2000, which at the time was not supported at all. Fortunately, a week or so later Rome sent me newer versions of the Rome Manager software that worked correctly with Windows NT and Windows 2000.

The Rome Manager software is very simple and easy to use. Just browse through your computer using the explorer-style tree on the left side, select a few MP3 files, and download them to the Rome. Because the Rome uses a parallel port cable for transfers, it can take a while to move music to and from the player. This arrangement was only slightly annoying, and isn't much different from most other portable MP3 players on the market.

One of the things that impressed me most about the Rome was its unique design. This is what originally caught my eye in the magazine article, and what makes the Rome stand out in the sea of candy-colored plastic that comprises most other portable MP3 players. The Rome itself is slim and lightweight. The unique design makes it very easy to carry in one hand or stuff into a shirt pocket.

The UP-301 model player that I received is the first in a line of RomeMP3 players. This model comes standard with 32MB of memory, a small compartment for the slim, 1.2v rechargeable battery, and your standard assortment of control buttons. Along the top edge of the Rome you'll find your most commonly used controls, such as: play, stop, fast forward, rewind, volume controls, and a "hold" button. The "hold" button functions much like the hold feature on a portable CD player; when activated, it keeps you from accidently triggering one of the other player functions. Along one side of the player you'll find the 1/8 inch stereo headphone jack, as well as controls for intro, menu, EQ, A-B, repeat, and random.

I rarely used any of the more advanced controls, mostly because the only display that the UP-301 has is a single LED on the front of the player. This LED communicates the current state of the Rome by blinking in some bizarre, morse-code like way. A small LCD display would have made using some of these more advanced controls much easier. Despite the lack of a traditional display, the Rome was very easy to use.

I'm sure you've all seen the various portable digital music devices that have been released over the past year or so. Starting with the Diamond Rio, and continuing through literally dozens of players, all very similar in design to each other.

One of the coolest features of the Rome is its ability to be played just like a standard audio cassette. Just slap a few MP3s on this beauty, charge the battery, and you can take it anywhere. The Rome will work with almost all cassette players on the market; it doesn't matter if you're listening in the car or on a friend's stereo system.

Some of you may not be totally impressed that the Rome can be used as a cassette, but there's more. Not only can you stick the Rome in a cassette deck and start playing music, but the fast forward and rewind buttons will actually change audio tracks. Yup, that's right. The designers connected a set of gears within the RomeMP3 that are turned by the spindle inside the cassete deck. An optical sensor—much like what you would find inside a mouse—reads the speed at which the gears are spinning.

You can have the Rome totally off, stick it in your cassette deck, and the motion of the gears will trigger the Rome to start playing. Hit the fast-forward or rewind button, and the sensor reads the speed change. The result is you can skip forward tracks, or backwards. The action of skipping tracks works much like a standard CD player, skipping forward to the next song, or backward to the previous song. The designers of the Rome really managed to come up with something original and cool here, unfortunately someone skimped on a few parts—but more on that below.

Once I got my Rome up and running with some nice fresh MP3s transferred over, I popped the little ear-bud headphones in, and started playing. The first thing that I noticed was the sound quality. The little Rome player was able to reproduce all the highs and lows in my test files without even one hiccup. Even with the relatively cheap included headphones, the quality was amazing. Needless to say, I was impressed.

Things weren't quite as peachy when I got to my truck, however. I popped the Rome into the cassette deck, and the first thing I noticed was the lack of sound quality. At first I thought it might have been a setting on my radio. Maybe the bass was up too high, or the treble too low. I fiddled with the settings to no avail. Next I thought that maybe I switched EQ modes accidentally while inserting the Rome. I popped it out and tried several different settings. No matter how much fiddling I did, I just couldn't get truly good audio out of the

Now I know some of you are probably thinking that it was just my cassette deck. Let me assure you it wasn't. I also tried playing the Rome in several other decks. In some, there was a small difference in quality—for the better. However, the playback always seemed somewhat "muddy". As a further test just to prove it wasn't just my stupidity—or bad hardware, I dug up an old cassette adapter. You know the kind; they're included with a lot of portable CD players: a cassette at one end, and a stereo headphone jack at the other. I plugged my Rome into it, and stuck the adapter in my cassette deck. The difference was amazing. My old, cheap, cassette adapter was able to out perform the Rome's built in cassette mechanism—hands down.

This presents a bit of a problem. You see, the Rome costs about $199. There are a lot of other capable MP3 players out there that cost much less. Some with twice the memory capacity. What truly makes the Rome stand out—not to mention worth the extra cash—also is the Rome's downfall.

I have mixed feelings here. The RomeMP3 player is by far one of the coolest and most innovative portable MP3 players out there. If you're in the market for a portable MP3 player, and money is not an object, some of you may want to pick up this player for nothing more than the "cool" factor. Most folks may want to wait a bit longer, though.

There were a few things about the Rome I didn't like, but most of those are things that either affect most other MP3 players on the market or are minor annoyances more than anything else. Having only 32MB of memory limits the Rome somewhat, but capacity is a limiting factor for a lot of MP3 players. Then there is the somewhat limited feedback from that single, blinking LED. Also, I was less than impressed with the length of time it took to transfer a MP3 file to the player.

The good news is that all of these problems have been covered in the newer versions of the Rome. The newer RomeMP3 players are equipped with more RAM, as well as memory expansion slots; they have small remote LCD displays, and are equipped with USB interfaces to handle the file transfers. This bodes quite well for the future of the Rome line, and I'm hoping the guys at Rome will send along one of these newer units so we can check it out for you.

Despite the improvements with the newer players, that still leaves us with the question of sound quality. The big selling point of the Rome is that it can be used as a standard audio cassette. The whole design of the Rome is centered around this fact, and as I've said before, that's what makes the Rome so cool. I sincerely hope that Rome has fixed this problem in the newer versions of the player. It may also be possible that there is something physically wrong with the sample I received. But unless I can be proven wrong, or the quality of the sound improves, I just can't recommend the current model RomeMP3 player.