Product Reviews

By now most of us have a fair number of MP3 music tracks on our Macs. However, listening to them can be a disappointing experience compared with using audio CDs and a traditional hi-fi setup. Even plumbing your Mac through your stereo isn't ideal, what with system beeps, cable length issues and so on. Fortunately, there's a solution in the shape of the Slim Devices SLiMP3 player. This music-playing device solves the problem in a highly innovative way by using an Ethernet network connection to read MP3 files from your Mac and play them through a pair of RCA phono connectors straight to your hi-fi. This means that the store of MP3s can be on a computer anywhere on the network. All you need is an Ethernet cable, which causes less signal loss than audio cables.

The SLiMP3 is more of a hi-fi component than a computer peripheral. The computer acting as the MP3 repository has to run the SLiMP3 Server tool, which comes in the form of a simple OS X System Preferences panel for starting and stopping the server (which can be done automatically when logging in), and a more comprehensive Web browser interface. Behind the scenes, the SLiMP3 Server actually runs on the Mac as a Perl process, but you'll only ever deal with it via System Preferences or the Web browser interface.

The SLiMP3 uses the iTunes music library by default, but it can be steered elsewhere, via the browser interface, if you prefer. It can use saved iTunes playlists, which is a very useful, Mac-savvy touch, and will also play streamed

ADVERTISEMENT

MP3 data from Internet radio stations.

What's in the box?

The device itself is a simple box mounted in a smoked Perspex prop which shows a clear two-line LED display. Inside the box are a network interface, an MP3 decoder, and an audio interface; everything you need to take music files across a network and push them out as analogue audio signals. The minimal LED interface doesn't lend itself to regular Finder-style browsing, but it's surprisingly flexible all the same. A remote control comes with the package, and this is used to navigate through the music collection via artist, album, genre or plain folder structure. It's also possible to search for artist, album or track names. You can pick saved iTunes playlists, create a custom playlist, turn the volume up and down, and even set an alarm to make the SLiMP3 start playing music at a given time of day. When not being used for other things, the readout shows the current track's ID3 tag information as well as the track time. If you're not close to the device, the display can be set to use large-size text across both LED lines, scrolling sideways to show all the data.

Setting up the SLiMP3 isn't hard, although you'll probably need some basic networking information handy. It will work virtually automatically via DHCP (where all details are supplied by a DHCP server on the network), but most users will probably need to use a manually set IP, net mask, and router settings. It will also need to know the IP address of the computer running the SLiMP3 Server software, although a beta version of an upgrade to this software tackles this issue for you via Rendezvous.

With the SLiMP3 player you can have your cake and eat it: use your ever-growing MP3 music library on your Mac, but avoid the fuss and complication of running player applications on the Mac and suffering system beeps being blasted out through your amplifier. The SLiMP3 proved an instant hit in the MacUser office, both for its technical innovation and its sheer practicality.If you regularly use your Mac to play MP3s and have access to a network, you'll love it.