Ok, MP3’s are here and there is nothing the record industry can do about it. This is evidenced by MaximumPC’s March issue, which includes the Ultimate MP3 Showdown. They review no less than 23 hardware MP3 players some for your car, living room and even your daily workout (daily workout – as if…)

I decided to take a more in-depth look at the Digisette DUO-Aria MP3 Player. I travel a lot and find myself doing the car rental thing when I am away from our Redmond offices. Try finding a good radio station in BFE Eastern Washington; not going to happen. It just so happens, the pimp daddy engineers at Digisette have come up with the solution to my music woes, the DUO-Aria. The DUO-Aria is the exact form factor of a traditional audio cassette. It can work as a stand-alone portable MP3 player or pop directly into your car’s audio cassette deck.

Lets start with the opening of the box. I was pleased to find a whole hoard of accessories. These include:

DUO-Aria itself
AC battery charger
DC car adapter/charger
Ni-MH rechargeable battery
Software CD
USB connection cable
Carrying case
Earphones
Charger connection cable
Manuals

I was really impressed with all the power options, and especially with the charger connection cable that allows you to plug the DUO-Aria right into the AC or CD battery charger.


Next I installed the DUO-Aria Manager software. They use a slick Macromedia install front end. You also have the option to install Real Jukebox (I passed) and Audible’s Audible Manager. Audible is a provider of premium downloadable spoken word audio, offering a vast selection of audio books, newspapers, magazines, radio shows etc. Digisette includes a $100 coupon offer for Audible.

The DUO-Aria connects to your PC via USB and can transfer files at up to 1.5 MB/sec, and it does. I was impressed at the speed of transfer. If you are looking at MP3 players accept nothing less than USB. Upon connecting the DUO-Aria to my PC, Windows 2000 added it to its hardware list as a USB Flash Memory Controller. I launched the manager software and found the interface was fairly basic and easy to use. I opened my MP3 folder and selected several MP3’s from the list. Then I selected Add, then Transfer. That’s it, about 30 seconds later the transfer was done. I was impressed to see the software check for Firmware updates and then prompts you to download them.