Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra 30GB Review
Page 4
Transferring files/Creative MediaSource
Let's take a look at how to transfer and manage the music on the player.
There are two ways to interact with the Creative Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra on the computer. One is using the so-called Windows Explorer-intergrated option, the other is using Creative MediaSource (included on the CD). My personal perference is using Creative MediaSource, because it is so much easier to manage the music files.
Note that due to the way the software works, you cannot have files with the same Artist and Title, even if they have a different track number. For example, some artists have a few "Interlude" tracks. When you try and copy them (whether as a whole album or individually), you will receive a notice that the files already exist on the player.
When you load up MediaSource, this is what you see.
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There are three main panels, Sources, Now Playing, and the track listing.
In Sources, you can choose either files on your computer (in PC Music Library), or, if you have a compatible Creative audio player connected, you can choose the files on that player.
In addition to that, you can also view, edit and add Playlists on the player.
The playlists are very useful for organising your music, especially if you have a variety of music from rock, heavy metal to pop, new age or classical. Organising them into playlists will at least prevent you from getting sudden change in music, from, say, Linkin Park to Dido.
There is also an alternative view, which adds the Artist and Album panel to the track listing.
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This will make it easier to find your music, at the expense of a more cluttered screen.
Transferring music files into the player is easy. Just click on Import Tracks, which will bring up the following screen.
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Here you choose the folder containing your music files, then you can either Add Folder (to add all files in a folder) or choose invidual files from the panel at the bottom left and Add Files. File Options lets you choose which file extensions you want, as well as filter files in Windows directory and/or filter files less than a certain size.
On clicking Continue, MediaSource will check for duplicate files, then bring up a screen to give you the option to tag your files.
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If your files are already tagged properly, nothing needs to be done here. Otherwise, there are two options for tagging, tag using file paths, or manual.
Click Continue and the transfer begins.
I selected two albums to transfer, totalling 163MB, and it took 41 seconds to transfer. This works out to about 33.5Mbps. Note that USB1.1 allows a maximum of 12Mbps, so it will take nearly three times longer if you are using USB1.1.
Note also that in MediaSource, you can configure it to encode WAV files if they are selected to be transferred. A great space-saving feature.
Finally MediaSource also allows you to access the player settings.
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And even change the startup/shutdown screen! Too bad the display is monochrome. At least you can still customise it. One more thing. I noticed the time on my player was off by more than a day. Which is strange since my player still had more than half power.
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