So I thought now that I have a car MP3 player I might give it a review for everyone out there. I still plan on buying an empeg when I get called, I actually got this as a gift. At any rate, for those who have not heard of it, the Xenon shuttle II is a MP3 player for the car. It uses a single 3.5” IDE hard drive (You supply any size drive) to store MP3s, the drive is in a removable chassis you can put in your PC to transfer files. The web site for the US distribution is http://xeenontech.safeshopper.com/1/1.htm?14965 When I first read about it I was a bit nervous, they are very specific about not allowing returns. The unit costs just over $400 US, plus you supply your own hard drive. I bought a 7200 RPM 10 GB drive for just over $100.

My first impression was the box is not physically constructed very well. The unit itself is about 2x9x8 inches, about ½ of that is taken up by the removable drive chassis. The top and bottom parts of the case don’t quite line up with each other. The drive chassis is held onto the metal case with 3 small, short screws. When I first got mine, I had to take it apart, the IDE cable was routed to completely cover the fan exhaust from the drive tray. Internally, it appears to be constructed a bit better. All the cables are firmly attached and the circuit boards look properly constructed. I have not had any problems with it falling apart, it just doesn’t look that good. It is designed to be in the trunk where you would never see it, so I guess that does not matter that much anyway. The remote uses a 2x3 in. backlit LCD, I have no problems reading it in darkness or in bright sunlight.

So the first step is to install your hard drive in the removable sled, and the included docking bay in your PC. There are 2 issues. First, the hard drive must be the master. So if you have several IDE devices already, you may need to juggle things around. Second, the drive locks in place with a small key. It’s the same as the old AT style keyboard lock keys. It won’t work unless locked, so don’t lose (or forget) the key. The car part might be worse. The only way provided to mount the device is with 2 large foam pads. They have adhesive on both sides, I guess you are supposed to stick the thing to the floor of your trunk. My unit will be going under the passenger seat, for now it sits on the back seat of the car. For power it uses the 12v cigarette lighter. One note, the car must be running for the device to work, you can’t just turn the car key to accessory position. If you try and use it this way, the unit will turn on, but will never spin up the hard drive. The remaining cables are for the audio signal and the remote control. The unit has 1/8 in. as well as stereo RCA jacks out. It comes with 1 set of cables for each output, both of which have a 1/8 in. female connector on the other end. You will either need a stereo with a line in, or you will need to buy a cassette, or radio frequency adapter. There is a gain control on the unit, but no volume control on the remote, so you must have some head unit to control volume.

The unit supports either FAT16 or FAT32. You may have as many partitions on the drive as you want. Within those partitions, you can have directories 1 level deep. So you can have /Madonna/Like A Prayer.mp3 but not /80s/Madonna/Like A Prayer.mp3. I believe it just ignores any directories more than one level deep. You can still play the songs, but you lose the organization of the directories. It supports long file names but does nothing with ID3 tags. The unit though does not alphabetize the folders. They are displayed in the order you copied them on to the drive.

So how does it play? When you turn on the unit, it plays a brief intro, less than 10 seconds later, it’s ready to play. Hit the play button and it plays the song you left off at when you last turned it off. The buttons on the remote are:

Pause----song up---folder up ---play/stop
Power--song down-folder dn---function

Most of the buttons are obvious. The function button lets you choose play modes. It cycles between – all, all on current partition, all random, current partition random, all in current folder, current folder random, and current song. A note about the random feature, unlike Winamp, it does not randomize the play order and remember the order. In random mode it will randomly choose a song each time you hit song up or down. This means you cannot hit song up to go back to the previous song. This is quite annoying. The Folder up and Folder down buttons let you pick the directory to play. If you hit stop, then hit hold down the F up or F down, you pick the partition. There is also a favorite feature. This allows you to put 100 songs in a favorites list. I didn’t find that feature that useful, I can’t say much about it. In fact a friend put it in favorite mode, it took me two minutes to get it to play songs again.

The LCD on the remote shows you the current song, it scrolls if the file name is too big to fit in the window. I think the window is about 16 characters wide. It also shows the previous and next song. If the current song is the first one on a directory, it shows the directory name as the previous entry. Above the song list is a play timer, the mode the unit is it (random, all etc…) and a stop or play symbol.

I have had no problems with the unit playing MP3s, it does not skip, even when I run over railroad tracks at 40 MPH. The biggest problem is that there is no search function, it is hard to find songs. And that’s a problem. I currently have about 1 GB of a 10 GB drive filled with MP3s. With the directories not in alphabetic order, and no search function it is hard to find stuff on the unit. In addition, you can’t browse through the list of songs without interrupting the play of the current song.

As I am writing this late at night, I am sure I have forgotten some things, and my grammar is probably not the best. Feel free to ask any questions about the unit.