Silverline

colorline 15

Jul 27, '12 9:36 AM for everyone

Category:	Computers & Electronics
Product Type:	Other
Manufacturer:	Crypto

Colorline





It was my first thought after understanding that my favorite mp3 player Muvi ‘died’ for 3 days , 2 weeks ago to replace it wit a new one. And to revive as much as possible the play list included in Muvi. Fortunately I did a small backup in several Cds , including a directory listing that helped me much for re-making it with some success

This is a old mp3 player. Though I am not very sure when I bought I think 2-3 years ago that I had in my shelves for a later use . I don’t remember its price but it was of the 30-40 Euros range

This is a small gadget with 3x 7 cm wth a screen of just 1 sq inch with a 4 GB of memory . Having nt used for abt 2 years I could expect the battery to be fully exhausted . But I was wrong! Its battery still was ca 10-15%!! of its maximum


One important to notice Both (Muvi and Colorline ) are  from same OEM importer  Crypto , but I think are different manufacturers as the menurs and the operations are very different

The accessories included are : USB cable , mains adaptor with USB socket earphones and a mini CD (8 inch )with the accompanied software .packing is nearly the same for both Muvi and Colorline but the software seems quite different > I have kept just the players in one pack (there are also some other there not noticed till this time in the blog )

Appearance ; As you may look frmm the pics below , it is a quite nice design with nearly everything enclosd


Buttons : these buttons have different philosophy than Muvi. Most operations are made with the M button that acts as menu if is pressed continuously or as [enter] for file operations . The stop play button is used as power on off .Volume can be changed by pressing the bottom button with vol blinking in the screen and using prev next buttons

Remain layout : ON the top is the USB the power switch  that goes to the last operation (audio , radio at least )and the  ear socket

On the reaer is the micrphone (qith quite good sound ) and a small speaker that requires quite high volume to be used in order to hbe heard outside . It is activated  by pushing the arrow right for several seconds . BY pushing the arrow left , the speaker disactivates. dd

Mp3 playback : Colorline 1.5 plays all bit rates mp3 and WMA , tested from 8-192 kbps , using the program Xrecode II for compressing . Tested with ogg and m4a formats but not supported IN contrast Muvi can play all mp3 bitrates but WMA bitrates above 44kB
When a music file is played also ID tags are shown


Mp3 options: (by pressing menu )

Once a song is stopped (ab ove ): This is the directory options : folder , delete , delete all

Once a song is played (above ): these are the song options : play , play all , play once , play dir , random
Random playback : in contrast to MUvi that can random the half of the file list , colorline can support all file listing

Greek ID tag and filenames are not supported in Colorline . Latin based letters are shown in ID tags and spaces in filenames . IN contrast , Muvi does not support ID tags as nly the filename si shown but Greeks are shown OK




Media explorer: Its explorer shows only 4 files per page. If you are to search directories with many pages you have to wait abt 1 sec before the next page is shown ! Notice that this explorer is activated from the options menu for each mode separately as file browser


Starting up the player , the song is resumed from the pint is has been stopped (considering you pressed shutdown and not switched the button )






Microphone : there are 4 recording options: fine (32 wav )/long (8 wav ), VOR fine and long (32 and 8 respectively VoR mode) and the ability to save to any directory


Voice menu can play the recorded files from microphone again via the folder menu option. IN Muvi there are only fine and long options tha ca be saved only in the predefined directory








Radio : the radio operation has a different philosophy than Muvi. The buttons previous-next are used for changing the frequency while start stop act as memories . The menu option does all the remain options for radio : save delete memory , record etc

Audio quality : as tested with two Carrefour ear buds ,Colorline has little less bass and little more treble


Audio output : HiFi using Greek music and Sony MDR . Trebly using Asian music . Making A./B or parallel listening with Muvi (using two Carrefour ear buds )
I found that FM is a bit more trebly than Muvi and less bassy. Thinking that a stereo sound goes into one line , you can imagine that the basses are diffused towards the left ear (listening to Muvi)and the trebles towards the right ear! (listening to colorline )
Into MP3 testing , it is quite difficult to test but with some delay between the one and the other I found to be nearly same !

Earphones : awful with bad and low audio .It is better is you use earphones from a more respected company . All my measurements here are with Sony MDR or even with the Carrefour IPod compatible earphones . The AKG 315 offer very bassy audio but is quite good for MUvi but not Colorline

Volume : volume operation is also different from MUvi as it requires the bottom button to active volume from previous /next . IN contrast to it MUvi has two dedicated button on the top of the keyboard


Battery : 8-10 hours . can be charged by the provided mains supply and the provided USB cable interface , or via computer. It is quite nice(or sad by some way ) that needs no software disconnect to charge. I have not found the required time. The sad with it is that I did not know it before , as the battery was in its first 2-3 cycles in order to be thoroughly drained Muvi can be charged in about 30 minutes from a power supply or by a loose cable connection., If is connected properly in computer it can’t be charged!



Interface and speed : the speed is terribly slow. Just 450-600 kb . I wonder if it USB 1 or 1.1 Muvi had the same transfer speeds but lately , (little time before it collapsed )its speeds risen to 1.7 MB!!


In general : A small  quite nice with very low transfer rates and quite good FM
Possibly i will  post several updates here