The Neuros II
By Peter Rojas 
posted June 28th 2004 9:50AM
posted June 28th 2004 9:50AM
We'd almost completely forgotten little old Neuros. It's been ages since they hit the market with their first 20GB MP3 player, but now they're coming back with the Neuros II, a new version of their Neuros Bundle player which is basically a 128MB Flash player that pops into a hard drive backpack. The concept behind the Bundle is that you have a light, shock-proof portable player to use when you're exercising or just want something light to carry around, but you can also attach it to a hard drive when want to carry around your entire collection. The Neuros II will be pretty much the same, but the backpacks will range in size from 20GB to 80GB and there will be an option for a 256MB Flash player.
I remember playing with one of these at the Linux expo at the Javits Center a few years back. They felt like cheap hollow plastic and were quite massive.
I'm suprised they are still around to be honest since their once big claim to faim (Ogg support) is built in to many many smaller players.
I heard from the CEO Joe Born that the company that makes this has already opened up their software and are working to open their firmware. Also, they are working on a smaller backpack.
The Neuros open source site: http://open.neurosaudio.com/
I bought a Neuros 5 months ago and it's awsome. They are less expensive than any competitor and have no out of the box equal. They do have a small portable unit. As they make inprovements and enhance new models current owner are able to upgrade for a very nominal charge, instead of buying a new one. They have the best customer support and a very usefull website forum. Check it out
I bought a Neuros about 5 months ago as well. I tried really hard to like it, but ended up sending it back.
I bought the 20GB "backpack" setup; they've been selling this for a while so I'm confused about the "II" designation.
The controller bit had 128MB flash memory, and for some reason had to plug into a separate battery unit, which made the 128MB player about the size of my old Nextel i1000 (read: effing huge, and incredibly cumbersome compared to most flash players).
The 20GB backpack unit expands the capacity to 20GB, and makes it a bit larger than a thick stack of 3x5 index cards. Again, effing huge compared to most other players. About three times the size of an iPod, or twice a Nomad.
I had to upgrade the firmware in order to get Ogg support on the unit I bought. Firmware releases come fairly often, and usually bring several bug fixes and new features. They're also not terribly hard to apply, though daunting at first.
The big seller for me was FM transmission since I have no other way of connecting an MP3 player to my car stereo. I work in the suburbs of Chicago, and the transmitter did fine out there, but the signal got stomped by other stations about 5 miles from downtown, including in the area where I live.
It's USB1. There was a 20GB unit that had USB2 released recently after I bought my unit, but syncing 20GB of music over USB1 made me wonder wtf they were thinking by even bothering to release the USB1 backpack.
You also have to use a piece of software (which doesn't exist for Linux or Mac, BTW, though there is third party software for the same purpose) to update the Neuros' song database. It does work as USB mass storage, it just won't see any music you add until you use PC software to update the onboard database.
The build quality of the Neuros 1 is poor; you can feel and hear the 20GB drive spinning and clicking. A few bumps in my car was often enough to make it skip, and once corrupted the unit to the point where I had to re-flash the firmware and replace all my files.
The final straw was using the different backpacks; if you hook up the 20GB backpack, load up some music, then take out the controller unit and try to just use the 128MB flash player, you're in for a nasty surprise; no music on the 128MB unit. For some reason, the 20GB bit blows away everything in flash memory to use as a cache so that the disk doesn't spend all its time spinning. You'd think that it would just load 128MB of music from the disk into cache, and you could just take that with you, but no go.
When I returned the unit, someone had released a beta firmware with a lame workaround that allows you to back up music from the flash player to the 20GB backpack, and restore it before you take the controller out, but that a) takes 5 minutes each way and b) wastes space on the backpack. This was totally insane, as far as I was concerned.
I'm an OSS advocate; I use Linux for everything, and I thought the OSS way of doing things would produce a great MP3 player. Whether the developers or the company building and selling the Neuros is to blame, I'd have to say this player comes out feeling like a half-assed work in progress.
I've got a JoS MP-300 now. FM transmission works wherever I am, and it's 1/5 the size of the 128MB Neruos 1, but has twice the storage capacity, and I don't have to run a silly program every time I add music. I keep up with updates from the Neuros community out of curiosity, but it will take a lot of changes for me to buy another Neuros.
I bought my neuros about a year ago and have experienced NO problems that haven't been fixed since back then:
FM Transmissions work better
USB2 backpacks of 40 and 60GB are available
You can save your 128MB of Flash to HD
You can now customize your db structure
There are THREE open source synching programs now:
- The original NSM (written in C#)
- NeurosDBM (Java)
- Sorune (pure Perl)
You can browse while playing back songs
ogg support is perfect now, wma as well (though never used by anyone I know)
strong statements against any form of DRM were given by the company
Firmware code will be opened up within this year
Still the best customer support ever seen on the net.
i'm listening to my neuros as i write this - still the old-school neuros I, as i haven't got usb2 support on my laptop, anyway. one thing no one has noted is that you can record with the neuros. it has a serviceable built-in mic, and a mini in for external mics. recording is available at 64, 96, 128, and 160 kbps mp3, plus 8, 44.1, and 48 kHz wav. plus the aforementioned FM radio, pitch control added in the last firmware update, and the promise of many, many more happy surprises as new firmwares are released.
this said, i did have some trouble with my neuros at the start. weird problems like my music vanishing (something i've since learned can be fixed by simply rebuilding the database - a process that takes about 5 minutes with 15 gigs of songs), the grey controller piece shorting out, and so on. all of these problems were absolved by digital innovations' terrific customer support. i've now been months without a complaint.
basically, the thing's got character. it's big, sure. but it does more. and it's cheaper.
The firmware has been open sourced and the dev site is at the URL linked to my name.
This is the best player EVAR! And it's not 3 times bigger than the iSex... The Neuros may be a brick, but it's a WonderBrick, not a Brick of Failure!