Personal Jukebox
The Personal Jukebox is a hardware and software system. It includes a music player and companion software for the PC. The player is called the Jukebox and the companion software is called the Jukebox Manager. This document describes how to use the Jukebox Manager.
The Jukebox Manager is used to capture music from your CDs, organize the captured music, and transfer it to the Jukebox. Music is compressed to an average of one-twelfth of its original size, allowing you to store up to 65 hours of music in the Jukebox. MPEG level 3 (MP3) audio compression is the technology that makes this possible. You can also transfer MP3 files you have stored on your PC to the Jukebox.
The Jukebox Manager compresses the music from the CD directly into the Jukebox. It is never stored on your PC. When you connect a Jukebox to a PC, the Jukebox Manager queries the Jukebox to find out what music is stored in it.
You can organize your CDs into the categories typically used by music clubs or define your own categories. Each track is stored individually so you can rearrange the tracks on a CD or even combine tracks from multiple CDs to create your own customized virtual CDs.
Some basic definitions will help you understand how to use the Jukebox Manager to organize your music.
Click the Jukebox menu and then click Select Jukebox. This command searches for Jukeboxes on the network and lists the Jukeboxes it finds in the Select Personal Jukebox window. Typically only one jukebox will be found -- the one connected to your local USB port. The first Jukebox in the list will be selected. If you want to use this Jukebox, click OK, otherwise click on the name of the Jukebox you want to use and then click OK. If your Jukebox has not been initialized, it will have a default name. You can change this name if you want to. See Renaming a Container for more information.
When a Jukebox is selected its music collection appears as a container in the Jukebox Contents subwindow and you can add music to the collection or reorganize the music that's already in it.
The next time you use the Jukebox Manager the Jukebox you used last will be selected by default. If you have more than one Jukebox, you will need to use the Select Jukebox command to switch from one to the other.
When you place an audio CD in the CD-ROM drive of a computer running Windows 95, Windows 98, or Windows NT, the computer automatically starts playing the music on the CD. You need to prevent this from happening so that the CD can be read by the Jukebox Manager. You can turn off auto-play manually when you load a CD or you can reconfigure Windows to disable this function for all CDs.
To prevent this from happening manually, hold down the SHIFT key when inserting the CD.
To reconfigure Windows to turn auto-play off for all CDs, follow these steps:
To re-enable auto-play, repeat steps 1-4, and make sure Play is bold when you are finished. You may also need to turn the auto-notification option on again. See Turning On Auto-Play for instructions.
When you capture music it goes directly to the Jukebox. If you reorganize your music after you've captured it, however, the reorganization does not go directly to the Jukebox. You need to save your changes before they will take effect in your Jukebox.
To save your changes, click the Jukebox menu and then click Save Changes.
If you don't want to store the latest reorganization of your music collection in your Jukebox for some reason, you can discard the changes you made since you last used Save Changes. See Saving Changes for more information.
To discard changes, click the Jukebox menu and then click Discard Changes.
A music collection is organized into containers. A collection contains sets, a set contains discs, and a disc contains tracks. Music collections, sets, and discs are containers. The Jukebox Manager has two subwindows. The Jukebox Contents subwindow shows the container hierarchy while the Contents of subwindow shows the contents of the currently selected container.
The contents of a music collection are accessed by clicking container icons in the Jukebox Contents subwindow. When you click a container icon in the Jukebox Contents subwindow the contents of the container are displayed in the Contents of subwindow. Click the plus signs if any are present to display more of the container hierarchy in the Jukebox Contents subwindow.
The toolbar beneath the Jukebox menu provides shortcuts for common operations. It contains, from left to right:
All of the standard keyboard shortcuts for Windows can be used in the Jukebox Manager. These shortcuts are listed here.
To rename any container in the Jukebox Manager subwindows, the name must be highlighted and you should see the outline of a box around the text. This is called edit mode, and there are four different ways to get into edit mode for a name.
You can use whichever method seems most natural to you to get into edit mode. Once you are in edit mode, press Backspace to clear the text then type in the new name.
If you receive a notice that a software upgrade is available for the Jukebox, you can use the Jukebox Manager to install it.
There are two different ways to add music to a Jukebox. You can add tracks that you have stored on your PC in MP3 format, and you can capture music from your CDs.
Music will play unless you have turned off the PC's auto-play feature. See Turning Off Auto-Play to prevent this from happening.
Click the Jukebox menu and then click Capture CD Audio. The Select Tracks to Capture window will appear. This window may not look like it represents your CD but it does. The names of the set, disc, and tracks are not available from the CD so what you see are default names for the tracks.
You can use the Titles button to have the Jukebox Manager consult an Internet database of CD information to fill in the names for the set, disc, and tracks automatically. You must have Internet Explorer installed to use it, but if you do, Titles is easy to use -- just click it. For more information on how it works see Titles.
You can name the set or disc before you use Titles or rename them afterwards. If you select or type in a name for set or disc before you click Titles, the information from the Internet database will not replace what you typed. It will instead be added to the menu of choices for the set or disc. For more information on filling in the set, disc, and track information see Specifying Set, Disc, and Track information. You can use the Reset button to start over again if you don't like the name changes you've made.
If there's an X in the checkbox by a track name, that track will be captured when you click OK. All of the tracks are checked by default. You can clear the X from selected tracks by clicking the checkbox or you can clear all tracks by clicking Clear All. Similarly, you can X a cleared checkbox by clicking the checkbox or X all tracks by clicking Select All.
The Encoded bit rate option determines how much the captured audio data is compressed. You can store all of the data from a disc or a track in your Jukebox, but if you do, it will take about twelve times as much space as compressed audio. 128 kb/second is the default. Higher bit rates require more storage space.
Click OK. Each of the tracks you've selected will be captured. Capturing the tracks will take about as long as playing the tracks on a normal CD player. If you already have one of the selected tracks in your Jukebox, you will be prompted with a message that tells you that the track already exists. If you click OK, the track will be captured again.
If you click Cancel instead of OK, nothing will be captured and the Select Tracks to Capture window will disappear. If you click Cancel and then decide to capture the tracks after all, make sure the CD is still in the CD-ROM drive. Click the Jukebox menu and then Capture CD Audio. The Select Tracks to Capture window is initialized with the information it held when you clicked Cancel. This is useful when you have used Titles or renamed the set, disc, or some of the tracks on the CD.
When you click OK, the Audio Capture Progress window will appear. It may take some time before you see information about the tracks you are capturing, but after a few seconds, you will see the name of the track, a progress bar that shows how much of the track has been captured, the audio-capture rate, the mode the software is in, the percent of the track that has been captured, the length of time it will take to finish capturing this track, and the total time it will take to finish capturing all of the tracks you selected.
The audio-capture rate is expressed as a number n followed by an x. This notation means n times as fast as playing the CD. A rate of 4x is very good. It would take 4 times longer to play the CD as it took to capture the data from it.
The software mode shows you what is happening during the capture. It is best if the software is in read mode most of the time. If it spends a lot of time in verify mode, audio capture will be slow. See Slow Audio Capture for more information.
You can click Cancel to stop audio capture. If you do this you will be asked to confirm the cancel. Audio capture can be time consuming, and it is inconvenient to have to start over if you've inadvertently clicked Cancel.
If a captured track would have the same name as a track already in the disc you specified, a number in parentheses is added to the end of the track name. This ensures that no two items in the same container have exactly the same name.
When all of the tracks have been captured you can reorganize your music collection or finalize your additions. To reorganize your music collection see Reorganizing Music in a Jukebox.
The Set and Disc fields have pull-down menus of options. The options in the Set menu are the list of sets in your music collection and optionally a set name from Titles or a set name taken from a file you are adding to your Jukebox.
If you want to change the Set name to one of the options in the menu, click the down arrow to get the menu and then click the option you want. You can also type in a new Set name by replacing the text in the Set field -- click the name in the field, press Backspace to clear the text, then type in the new name.
The options in the Disc menu depend on the Set you chose. Before you have chosen a Set, there are no options in the Disc menu. Once you choose a Set, the options in the Disc menu are the list of discs currently in the set and optionally a disc name from Titles or a disc name taken from a file you are adding to your Jukebox.
If you want to change the Disc name to one of the options in the menu, click the down arrow to get the menu and then click the option you want. You can also type in a new Disc name by replacing the text in the Disc field -- click the name in the field, press Backspace to clear the text, then type in the new name.
You can change the name of a track the same way as you would rename a container in the main Jukebox Manager windows. See Renaming a Container for more information.
When the Jukebox Manager fills in the titles of the set, disc, and tracks of a CD automatically, it consults CDDB, an Internet database of information about CDs. CDDB contains the titles of the disc and tracks as they appear on the CD. In addition, CDDB categorizes CDs the same way music clubs do, e.g. rock, classical, and so on. The CDDB category for a CD is used by the Jukebox Manager as a set name.
The way CDDB works is that a unique identifier can be computed from the information on a CD. This identifier is associated with the titles and category for the CD if the CD has been registered in CDDB. Not all CDs have been registered. If your CD has not been registered, you will have to fill in the titles yourself. However, the CDDB database is growing rapidly because anyone can register information about a CD.
To use this feature, you must be adding music from a CD to your Jukebox. You must also have installed Internet Explorer because the Jukebox Manager uses Explorer's API to access the Internet.
The CDDB Query window will appear. It may take a long time to get information from CDDB due to network congestion. The CDDB Query window shows the Elapsed time for the query and allows you to click the Cancel button to cancel the request if it's taking too long. Barring network problems, the information from CDDB will replace the default information for the track names in the window.
If you select or type in a name for set or disc before you click Titles, the information from the Internet database will not replace what you typed. It will instead be added to the menu of choices for the set or disc.
There is a set of Jukebox Manager options that control audio capture and Titles. To access these options, click the Jukebox menu and then click Preferences.
The audio capture options should only be changed if you are having trouble capturing music from CDs.
To access the audio capture options, click the Jukebox menu, click Preferences, and then click the Capture tab. These preferences are specific to a CD-ROM drive, so you need to select the drive you are interested in. If the drive you want is not already in the Drive name: field, click the down arrow in this field and then click the drive you want.
If you are having trouble capturing music from CDs, you can try changing the drive speed, the way error correction is done, and as a last resort, the type of the drive. Your drive may perform better at some speeds than others, and it may claim to read accurately when it does not or it may read accurately even though it claims it does not. Some CD-ROM drives cannot be probed to determine which type they are. In this case, we sometimes guess wrong about the type.
The Drive Speed section of the Capture preferences page contains a Speed field with a pull-down menu of options. It also contains a string that shows whether the options were obtained by querying the drive. Some drives report the set of speeds that are supported and some don't. To change the drive speed, click the down arrow and then click the speed you want to try.
The Drive Error Correction section of the Capture preferences page contains a string that shows whether your drive claims to read accurately or not, and an Override default checkbox that allows you to override the drive's default setting for error correction.
The Drive Type section of the Capture preferences page contains a Type field with a pull-down menu of options. Auto-Detect is the default choice because probing the drive to determine its type is the best way to do this for most drives. However, a small number of drives do not support Auto-Detect and may behave badly when probed. On these drives, the probe may return the wrong type, it may confuse the microcode of the drive and cause it to reboot or return an I/O error, and in some drastic cases, it may even cause Windows to crash. If you think you have one of these drives, try changing the drive type.
To revert to the default values for this CD-ROM drive, click Use Defaults.
To access the CDDB parameters, click the Jukebox menu, click Preferences, and then click the CDDB tab. The CDDB parameters are simply a User name and a set of CDDB Servers that are used to fill in set, disc, and track titles. See Titles for more information on CDDB.
The User name is sent to the CDDB server as part of a request for information about a CD. You can change this to be your email name if you want to, but you do not need to do this.
The list of active CDDB servers changes over time, so you may need to adjust the list of Servers. When you click Titles, the Jukebox Manager tries to get information from the first server in the list. If it cannot connect to that server, it tries the next server in the list, and so on until it has tried all of them.
You can rearrange the servers in the list by clicking a server name and then clicking the Up or Down button to move the name in the list. If the server is at the top of the list, the Up button will be grey and clicking it will have no effect. Similarly, if the server is at the bottom of the list, the Down button will be grey and clicking it will have no effect.
You can delete a server in the list by clicking the server name and then clicking Delete. You can add a new server by typing a hostname into the text field beside the Add button. Once you have typed in the name, click Add to add the host.
To revert to the default values, click Use Defaults.
You can look at the properties of tracks, discs, sets, and the music collection as a whole. Properties of a track include playing time, disk space used, the number of copies of the track in the music collection, and compression details. Properties of container types include the playing time and consumed disk space of all of the music in the container. You can get a good idea of how the disk space in your Jukebox is being used by looking at these properties. Note that this information does not take into account the fact that tracks can appear on more than one play list. Therefore, disk space figures may be higher than actual space used.
There are two ways to get properties, through the Edit menu or through the right-click menu. To use the Edit menu:
To use the right-click menu:
A music collection is organized into containers. A music collection contains sets, a set contains discs, and a disc contains tracks. See Viewing Jukebox Contents for more information on the container hierarchy and on the contents of the two Jukebox Manager subwindows.
You can reorganize both the container hierarchy for your music and the list of tracks for each disc. All of the reorder and copy operations described in this section can be done in either the Jukebox Contents subwindow or in the Contents of subwindow. Individual tracks are not containers and therefore don't appear in the Jukebox Contents subwindow. Similarly, a music collection is not contained by anything else so it doesn't appear in the Contents of subwindow.
When you finish reorganizing your music collection, you must save your changes to have them take effect in your Jukebox. See Saving Changes for more information.
The rest of this section describes Creating a Set or Disc, Reordering a Set, Disc, or Track, Copying a Set, Disc, or Track, Moving a Disc or Track, Deleting a Set, Disc, or Track, and Multiple Selection.
There are three ways to create a set or disc. You can create an empty one using the Create menu, you can copy an existing one, or you can type in new set and disc names when adding music from a CD. If you do the latter, the new set and/or disc are created automatically. Copying is described in Copying a Set, Disc, or Track. To create an empty set or disc using the Create menu:
The list of sets is always shown. If you want to reorder the discs in a set, click on the set to see the list of discs. Similarly, if you want to reorder the tracks on a disc, click on the disc to see the list of tracks.
You can reorder sets in a music collection and discs in a set in either of the Jukebox Manager subwindows. You can reorder tracks on a disc in the Contents of subwindow.
There are some rules about what can be copied where. The rules match the container hierarchy. For example, a track can be copied to a disc but not to a set because tracks are not contained in sets -- they are contained in discs. Similarly, a disc can be copied to a set but not to a track.
There are some rules about what can be moved where. The rules match the container hierarchy. For example, a track can be moved to a disc but not to a set because tracks are not contained in sets -- they are contained in discs. Similarly, a disc can be moved to a set but not to a track.
You can copy, reorder, or delete more than one item at a time, but only in the Contents of subwindow. To do this:
The Help menu has two options: About Jukebox... and Topics. When you click About Jukebox... you will see the Jukebox Manager version number. When you click Topics, you will see this document.
There are two possible sources of static, the USB communications and your CD-ROM drive. If your Jukebox is connected to your PC and you see the two-way communication icon above the time display on your Jukebox, it is listening to the PC. You can play music while it is listening to the PC, but you may hear static if you do. We recommend that you disconnect your Jukebox from the PC while you are listening to music.
Some CD-ROM drives capture audio from CDs better than others, and you may have a CD-ROM drive that doesn't do audio extraction very well. If your drive doesn't do audio extraction well, it may capture cleanly but slowly, it may capture audio with pops and clicks, or it may not capture audio at all.
We provide a test to help determine how well your CD-ROM captures audio. This test captures audio tracks from the Jukebox Manager software CD and compares them to an error-free master. Any difference between the captured tracks and the master is due to a problem with your CD-ROM drive, but not all differences will be audible. Further, some CD-ROM drives produce intermittent errors. If the test says that it captured a track cleanly, the CD-ROM drive may still produce errors on other tracks. You can test from 1 to 18 tracks at a time. The test allows you to vary the drive speed and to override the drive's error correction setting to see if either of these helps solve the problem. For more information on drive speed and the accuracy of your drive see Preferences.
To use the test:
Additional information on various CD-ROM drives can be found at http://www.mp3.com/cdrom.html and http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~psyche/cdda. To get the make and model of your CD-ROM drive, click the CD menu and then click Show Drive Info. If you have more than one CD-ROM drive, Show Drive Info will give the make and model of the drive shown in the CD drive: field on the Toolbar.
SCSI drives are generally better than IDE drives. We are using several different CD-ROM drives to test the Jukebox Manager. Most of the drives we have tried work fairly well, though some can capture audio significantly faster than others.
The length of time it takes to capture audio from a CD depends on how well your CD-ROM drive does Digital Audio Extraction (DAE), which allows you to read raw audio data from a CD. With some drives, getting a clean audio extraction requires reading at very slow speeds, with lots of going back and re-reading the same audio samples over again to make sure that everything is in the right place.
In addition, some CD-ROM drives can drop commands. This makes the drive seem to be unresponsive, and audio extraction comes to a halt. If this happens, you will need to close the Jukebox Manager application and restart it.
See the section on Static above for more information on CD-ROM drives.
MPEG layer 1 and 2 files are not supported and the Jukebox Manager will report an error if you try to download one of these files.
If you clicked the Titles button to get disc and track information and waited for a long time before cancelling the request, the problem could be one of the following:
The tests here can help diagnose the problem.
In Windows 95 and Windows 98, the auto-play feature has two parts, an option that determines whether to play an audio CD automatically (auto-play) and an option to notify the PC that an audio or data CD has appeared in the CD-ROM drive (notification). Both of these options need to be enabled in order for an audio CD inserted in the CD-ROM drive to play automatically.
To enable auto-play, see the last paragraph of Turning Off Auto-Play.
To enable notification:
The auto-play feature has two parts, an option that determines whether to play an audio CD automatically and an option to notify the PC that an audio or data CD has appeared in the CD-ROM drive. Turning off auto-play without turning off the notification can have two annoying side-effects. See Turning On Auto-Play for more information on how to check whether the notification is turned on.
The first side effect is that when you insert a CD into the CD-ROM drive, a window may pop up to show you the contents of the CD. If it does, you can simply close the window every time you insert a CD, or you can turn off the auto-notification option for all CDs to prevent this from happening. See Turning On Auto-Play for instructions on how to turn the notification off.
The second side effect is that ordinarily you can play an audio CD by double-clicking the My Computer icon and then double-clicking the Audio CD icon. When auto-play is off and the notification is on, double-clicking the Audio CD icon brings up a window with a list of the files on the CD. To play the CD, close this window, and make sure the Audio CD icon is highlighted, if it is not, click it. Click the File menu and then click the Play option.
When a PC is booted, the CD-ROM drive is checked to see if a CD has been inserted. If an audio CD is there it may be played regardless of whether the auto-play feature is set.
If you used Select Jukebox and no Jukeboxes appear in the Select Personal Jukebox window, either the Jukebox is not listening to the Jukebox Manager or the Jukebox is not connected to the PC. The Jukebox will not respond to commands from the Jukebox Manager unless the two-way communications icon appears in the bottom right corner of the screen above the time display. If this icon does not appear, press the STOP button on the Personal Jukebox and when the icon appears, click Cancel in the Select Personal Jukebox window and then click Select Jukebox again.
If the two-way communications icon does not appear, the Jukebox is not connected to the PC. Click Cancel and try connecting it again. If there are still no Jukeboxes when you click Select Jukebox, try restarting the Jukebox Manager.
If the Jukebox is not responding to commands from the Jukebox Manager, look for the two-way communications icon above the time display. If you don't see it, press the start button to wake the jukebox up and disconnect and then reconnect the USB cable.
If you connect the Jukebox to your PC before you install the Jukebox Manager, you will see the Add New Hardware Wizard window. It tries to find the appropriate driver for you, but since your driver has not yet been installed, it can't find it. If you see this window, Cancel as soon as you can. Disconnect your Jukebox from the PC, install the Jukebox Manager software, and try again.