Dell 30 User Manual

Using a Dell DJ MP3 player

for field playback of bird songs

Stuart Healy

Western U.S. Bird Guide,

Specializing in Southeast Arizona and the White Mountains

220 Stardust Street, Sierra Vista, AZ 85635

Tel: (520) 458-7603 Fax: (520) 458-7353

E-mail: stuarthealy@earthlink.net Web: http://www.aztrogon.com

Using a Dell DJ MP3 player for field playback of bird songs. Rev A2, November, 2005

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................................3

Original Requirements............................................................................................................................3

Compromises............................................................................................................................................3

Decision.....................................................................................................................................................3

HARDWARE ...............................................................................................................................................4

SOFTWARE.................................................................................................................................................5

Musicmatch Jukebox...............................................................................................................................5

Dell DJ Explorer.......................................................................................................................................5

Audio Editing............................................................................................................................................5

IMPLEMENTATION OVERVIEW..........................................................................................................6

Source material ........................................................................................................................................6

Organization.............................................................................................................................................6

Looking at the results ..............................................................................................................................8

SOFTWARE WORKFLOW ....................................................................................................................10

Step 1 – Copy the source material to disk............................................................................................10

Step 2 – Add source tracks to Raw Birds Library..............................................................................12

Step 3 – Editing audio tracks................................................................................................................16

Step 4 – Convert edited tracks to MP3 format....................................................................................18

Step 5 – Add MP3 files to Birds Library..............................................................................................19

Step 6 – Copy Birds Library to Dell DJ...............................................................................................19

PRACTICAL MATTERS.........................................................................................................................21

DJ Settings..............................................................................................................................................21

DJ Operation..........................................................................................................................................22

Problems and Annoyances ....................................................................................................................23

Ongoing Concerns..................................................................................................................................24

Desired Features.....................................................................................................................................24

APPENDIX.................................................................................................................................................25

This document may be freely copied for personal use.

No part of the document may be used for commercial purposes nor incorporated into another body of work for any purpose without my explicit permission. Please respect my work by complying - thanks.

Using a Dell DJ MP3 player for field playback of bird songs. Rev A2, November, 2005

INTRODUCTION

This document describes my experiences configuring and using a Dell DJ MP3 player for field playback of bird songs in the course of my work. Topics covered include how I went about defining what I wanted, the compromises involved when I checked into what was on the market, the hardware and software that I ended up using, how I implemented the project and the practical aspects of field use.

Even though your application, hardware and software may not be exactly the same as mine, the information contained here will hopefully help you to implement an MP3 solution that works for you.

Original Requirements

Life before MP3 with a myriad of portable tape players and (briefly) a portable CD player had given me plenty of insight into potential problems with field use of electronic playback equipment.

First and foremost on my mind was robustness, the ability of the equipment to withstand the knocks it would undoubtedly receive -- I knew that I would be dropping the equipment on a regular basis. For this reason I decided that I wanted a solid state unit; i.e. one with a memory card rather than a hard disk

The second most important aspect was ease of use in the field. I wanted to be able to quickly and easily access any bird song using just one hand. With a binocular, micro-recorder, often times a scope and sometimes a camera to carry, this is obviously an issue.

Two main features were important here: (1) a large display that could be read easily in poor light and (2) an easy to use selection device. Secondary, but nevertheless important, issues that I considered were storage capacity, a field replaceable battery, unit size and weight.

Compromises

Now to reality. When I first looked at the market in February 2005, I soon realized that I would have to compromise on my most important requirements. All of the solid state units were “low end” in terms of display and controls. Most didn’t have a display at all (let alone a large display) and the controls for selection of songs were quite primitive.

To get a large display and decent controls for selection of songs meant that I would have to buy a unit with a hard disk. I also settled for an integrated battery.

Decision

PDAs can play MP3 files but the dorky touch screen pen control ruled that out as a viable option. IPOD seems to be the main choice for most (music) MP3 users but since I’m a PC and not a Mac user, I didn’t want to invite any software problems. Consequently, I ruled out IPod immediately and didn’t even consider the available units. I looked around at various manufacturers’ equipment and eventually decided on a Dell unit for several reasons -- it had the large display that I wanted, a very easy to use selection device and, perhaps most importantly, I’ve been a Dell computer user for a number of years (two desktops and a laptop) and have been very satisfied with the equipment.

I decided on the Dell DJ 30GB unit. At the time of my purchase (March 2005) this was the largest unit that Dell offered (in addition to 5GB and 20GB). Although such a large capacity isn’t necessary purely for bird songs, I chose it because I also wanted to play music (man cannot live by birds alone) and download photos to the unit while on the road (as a backup in case my laptop hard disk fails).

Using a Dell DJ MP3 player for field playback of bird songs. Rev A2, November, 2005

HARDWARE

The Dell DJ 30 is a very compact and sleek unit that measures approximately 4 x 2.4 x 0.7 inches and weighs 6.4 ounces. I use it with an optional soft carrying case which increases the weight to 7.6 ounces. For output, I use a Radio Shack mini speaker-amplifier (catalog #277-1008C). The speaker-amp measures

3.5 x 2.75 x 1.4 (base), 1.2 (top) inches and weighs 5.4 ounces when equipped with a rechargeable 9 volt battery (weight includes modifications). I use a 6’ cord with 1/8 inch miniplugs to connect the units.

Unlike some MP3 players that use four compass point buttons to navigate through the various on-screen menus, most operations with the DJ are done using the centrally located “scroll-select” dial. This slightly ribbed wheel can easily be rolled up and down using a t and pressed to activate the currently highlighted selection

The main menu can always be reached quickly from anywhere in the menu system by pressing the “home” button to the right of the s select dial. From there I can get to any bird very quickly.

The power button on top of the unit must be depressed for 2 seconds to prevent accidental operation; a slide switch locks out buttons.

Complete information about controls and operation can be found in the DJ 30 user’s guide (see appendix).

The DJ supports selection of music tracks by Genre, Album, Artist and P See the implement

laylists.

ation section on how I use these features.

The back of the speakeramplifier is secured by a screw which I removed and replaced with a Velcro strap to facilitate easy field replacement of the battery.

I also added a push button for easy on/off control.

humb

croll-

Using a Dell DJ MP3 player for field playback of bird songs. Rev A2, November, 2005

SOFTWARE

The Dell DJ ships with two software components.

Musicmatch Jukebox

This is the main component that facilitates the conversion of CD tracks to MP3 files and provides extensive features to catalog and “tag” the tracks prior to copying them to the Dell DJ. I talk more about this in the implementation section. The Jukebox can also play CDs and MP3 files on the computer.

Musicmatch Jukebox is a free software package that you can download from the web. I invested $20 to upgrade to Musicmatch Jukebox Plus which offers faster conversion speeds from WAV format files to MP3 files (as well as a few other features that I don’t use).

Note: I refer to this software simply as Musicmatch throughout this document.

Dell DJ Explorer

This software has the look and feel of Windows Explorer and allows files to be copied from the computer hard disk to the Dell DJ using drag and drop or cut and paste. The DJ connects to the computer via a standard USB 2 port.

DJ Explorer can be used to create playlists which I use to create species lists for specific locations as well as client target lists. It’s very easy to select tracks from the displayed master list (library) and to save them to a named playlist that shows up on the DJ when you select playlists from the music library screen.

I also use it to copy photos from my laptop to the DJ as extra backup when on the road.

Audio Editing

Since most source material for bird songs will undoubtedly have an announcement at the beginning of each track, it’s necessary to edit the tracks before copying to an MP3 player if you want to get rid of the announcements. Also, many tracks have songs and calls sequentially on the track so if you want to play them separately in the field, you’ll need to do some audio editing to separate them.

There’s plenty of freeware and commercial software available for audio editing and you certainly don’t need anything fancy. I already owned the Adobe Premiere video editing software (which can also edit audio tracks) and I’ve found it to be perfectly adequate for my needs.

Using a Dell DJ MP3 player for field playback of bird songs. Rev A2, November, 2005

IMPLEMENTATION OVERVIEW

For me, as a guide, it’s imperative that I can access the song or call of a specific species as quickly as possible before an opportunity passes by. No point in having tons of material on the MP3 player if I can’t get to what I want quickly when the need arises.

With this in mind, I set about designing and implementing a scheme that would meet my needs. I invested many hours over a period of two months from the time that I received the MP3 player in early March 2005 until I started using it full time in the field in May 2005.

Source material

At the start of this project I only owned the Peterson Eastern and Western Bird Song CDs. I decided that I needed something easier to work with (i.e. one species per track) and selected the following Cornell CDs as my master source:

Bird songs of California; Geoffrey A. Keller (3 discs) Bird songs of the Rocky Mountain States and Provinces; Robert Righter and Geoffrey A. Keller (3 discs) Bird songs of Southeastern Arizona and Sonora, Mexico; Geoffrey A. Keller (2 discs) Bird songs of the Lower Rio Grande Valley and Southwestern Texas; Geoffrey A. Keller (1 disc) A complete index of all 9 discs is available as a separate document (see appendix).

There are only a few tracks that have multiple (two) species per track. Generally speaking, I’m happy with the overall quality of the source material for my purposes. However, there are a fair number of tracks with problems. In some cases, not enough care has been taken in terms of eliminating background noise. Even worse, sometimes the vocalization of another species that is supposedly “in the background” is almost as loud as the intended species.

Organization

Musicmatch is primarily designed to manage music tracks using “tags” that allow easy organization and selection of tracks for computer playback and transfer to a portable device. Unlike previous versions of Musicmatch, the current version (I’m using version 10) does not support multiple libraries. This is definitely annoying since I wanted to define three libraries.

Why three libraries? The master list of CD tracks is sacrosanct. This is my “Raw Birds” library and does not get modified nor copied to the MP3 player, it’s used only as a source. The edited versions of the tracks that are converted to MP3 format belong to my “Birds” library. I also have a “Music” library. The tracks in the latter two libraries are copied to the DJ 30.

As it turns out, I was able to achieve the same functionality using the “Genre” tag so it was only a little inconvenient. Thus, I was able to create “pseudo libraries” whose contents can be selected and manipulated independently of each other.

This partial screenshot shows how the “libraries” appear. In this example, “Raw Birds” is expanded and sorted alphabetically.

Using a Dell DJ MP3 player for field playback of bird songs. Rev A2, November, 2005

Before I got very far into the project, I looked at the Dell DJ features to see how they would fit with the way I wanted to work in the field. What I required was to be able to get to a particular species as quickly as possible after I turned on the player. I wanted to see a list of bird families which could then be selected to display a list of birds in that family.

The music library menu of the DJ allows tracks to be selected by several categories, also known as “tags”. I chose to use the “Artist” tag to define bird families (as well as the actua l artist for music tracks). Since the DJ lists tracks alphabetically within each category, I needed a method of separating family names of bird tracks from artist names of music tracks so that I didn’t see “Polka Mania” listed next to “Pigeons and Doves” (I listen to Polka all the time<g>).

I solved this problem by prefixing bird family names by an arbitrary sequence number. This kills two birds with the same stone -- since numbers sort before letters, bird family names appear before artists names; and the number sequence ensures that family names are displayed in taxonomic order. The absolute values of the numbers are unimportant, it’s just the sequence that matters. A reference list is in the CD Index.

Although Musicmatch supports an extensive list of tags, the Dell DJ only provides a few basic tags (and most other MP3 players will likely have a similar design). Consequently, I only considered the basic tags in deciding how to organize my libraries. The tags that I use are “Genre“, “Artist” and “Album”.

As mentioned earlier, I use “Genre” to separate libraries. Although this is really more for convenience when working in Musicmatch, it also allows me to separately list all bird tracks or all music tracks on the player. I use the “Album” category only for music tracks and for the “Raw Birds” library. In addition to using “Artist” to define bird families, I use Playlists to define species lists for specific location s and for client target lists. I might eventually use this feature to define lists of species by habitat type (when I get a spare minute perhaps).

Using a Dell DJ MP3 player for field playback of bird songs. Rev A2, November, 2005

Looking at the results

A picture is rumored to be worth a thousand words so I think it’s useful at this point to look at examples of Musicmatch and DJ display screens

Musicmatch Screen 0 is a partial display of the Raw Birds library. The columnar fields are customizable for content, width and display order (I’ve scrunched up the columns to fit the page).

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