REVIEW: Two new media players: WinVibe and LGC Jukebox

In several of my articles (for example, ROUNDUP: Bluetooth remote control (AVRCP) compatible media players), I’ve reviewed several Pocket PC-based audio players. Now, I elaborate on two (with the second, brand) new Pocket PC players, WinVibe and LGC Jukebox.

WinVibe

This free, Korean player is pretty capable – just look at the feature list at the WinVibe homepage (BabelFish translation here).

It supports Surround/Bassboost/Reverb/Echo effects, playback speed change (see the similar capability of VITO Sound Explorer), Support Showing lyrics when playing music (both ID3 Tag lyrics and LRC / TXT file), button reassignment (unlike LGC Jukebox), HTTP streaming playback (MP3/Ogg Vorbis) and SHOUTcast streaming playback (MP3/Ogg Vorbis). Pretty imporessive!

Unfortunately, it doesn’t support AVRCP (Bluetooth remote control).

Availability, compatibility

It’s available for download here (QVGA) and here (VGA) and, as has already been pointed out, is a free download. I haven’t had any problems on any of my WM2003+ devices. (HTC Wizard, Universal, PL720, WM5-upgraded hx4700, x51v.)

The default skin is Portrait-only; it automatically switches to Portrait when started in landscape.

CPU usage

In the related, recommended AximSite thread, many have complained about the CPU usage. With my standard test 112 kbps MP3 file (Värttinä: Oi dai) and with the default QVGA / VGA skins, I haven’t measured problematic CPU usage at all. It only consumes about 12-13% CPU on my x51v; with maximal reverb, about 14-15. With iPlay, the corresponding figures are 10-12 and 16%, respectively, with Pocket Player, 14-16% (about 1% less with no visualizations) and, finally, with WMP, 11.6-14%.

The case is similar on the overclocked (to 240 MHz) HTC Wizard; on it, the CPU usage is 27% (with reverb/echo at default: 34%; reverb at max: 30%). This is slightly lower than the, by default, 30-31% CPU usage of WMP.

All in all, unless you use custom skins (with visualization), you won’t have CPU usage problems – on the contrary, it’s slightly better than WMP.

Sound effects; their quality

It also supports echo and reverb.

The latter is, unfortunately, REALLY inferior to that of 40 iPlay, the best player in this respect (screenshot of enabling reverb is here). (Note that of iPlay, I could only test the October 2006 version of the player, due to the, to put it mildly, funny “protection” banning out most of the world and also discussed in this AximSite thread. This means I don’t know if the developer has come out a brand new version in the meantime.).

I’ve also compared the reverb / echo effect to the Conduits Pocket Player 3.01 Echo Effect DSP. I’ve found the latter much more unnatural-sounding.

This also means the reverb quality is around that of other reverb-capable Pocket PC media players (for example, Conduits’ Pocket Player).

LGC Jukebox 2.10

The developer of this title, Lonely Cat Games is well established in the Symbian world, unlike on the Pocket PC, where, so far, their only product is the (not-really-recommended) ProfiMail (see the Mailer Bible for more info).

The Pocket PC conversion of their well-known Symbian audio player LGC Jukebox is a brand new release; it’s so new the official homepage of the title doesn’t even show it; it must be downloaded from third-party sites like this. Note that the trial version will only work for 120 minutes.

Compatibility

I haven’t had any problems on any of my WM2003+ devices. (HTC Wizard, Universal, PL720, WM5-upgraded hx4700, x51v).

It’s Landscape-compatible (even left-hand one), unlike WinVibes.

Capabilities

While it supports radio streaming (and has a radio station manager) and offers quick positioning inside a track (as with WinVibe but unlike iPlay – he latter only has buttons for quick forwarding/rewinding), playback-wise, it pretty much lacks: it’s only capable of playing back MP3 and OGG files. No WMA, no Flac, no AAC.

Also, it has absolutely no DSP’s and pretty little visualization; all it offers is equalizer, album art display / download and lyrics display / download (more on this later) support. It doesn’t even let for reassigning hardware buttons (here’s the settings menu), which is a BIG minus – even the most basic players (including WinVibes and, of course, the built-in WMP) allow for this! Needless to say, as with WinVibe, it doesn’t support AVRCP either.

Lyrics support

One of the (not many) strengths of this application is lyrics display and download. Some examples: see this on online searching, this and this on the downloaded lyrics. As can be seen, this is pretty useful at quickly finding lyrics.

It’s also capable of auto scrolling the lyrics; or course, as it’s not Karaoke, it’ll only make guesses on what the current position in the song is. That is, in most cases, auto scroll will be useless.

CPU usage

It’s pretty good: definitely lower than that of WMP and most other players; on the reference x51v: 9.0-9.8%; with an activated equalizer (tested most of them), ~12.5-13.2%. The results were pretty similar on the HTC Wizard (27%, while WMP consumed about ~30-31%).

Verdict

Unfortunately, with WinVibes, you get what you pay for and the situation is even worse with the, in my opinion, pretty basic LGC Jukebox. I’m still waiting for a, battery consumption, AVRCP- and reverb-wise, iPlay-killer title.

UPDATE (01/28/2007): AximSite frontpage here and here. I've also thoroughly compared the latest, 5.0 (early January) version of iPlay 5 to iPlay 4 (thanks to a not-to-be-named PPC user); so far, I haven't found much difference, except for the new version's not supporting operating systems prior to WM5 at all. The reverb sounds equally good - you MUST check it out, you will LOVE it.

UPDATE (01/29/2007):: thanks to AximSite forum member Mokubai and Duwenbasden (see the above-linked AximSite frontpage thread), I've noticed I've made a mistake when measuring the CPU usage of WinVibe. With these measurements, I've forgotten to set the CPU speed to fixed (all my past measurements used fixed CPU speeds); this is why I haven't noticed the player indeed runs, in general, the CPU at, in general, two steps higher speed setting (for example, 416 MHz as opposed to 208 MHz) than WMP / Conduits Pocket Player and three times higher CPU speed than iPlay.

The fixed results are as follows:

On the A12 x51v,

at a fixed 208 MHz, CPU usage (at this low speed, the CPU usage difference becomes highly visible):
WMP 10: 24%
WinVibe: 28%
iPlay 4.x: 11%
Pocket Player 3.01: 27%

at auto speed, the player runs the CPU at the following speed (in MHz):
WMP 10: 208
WinVibe: 416
iPlay 4.x (without using the built-in CPU applet to set the CPU speed): 104
Pocket Player 3.01: 208

(The CPU usage introduced by actively monitoring the CPU speed / loads (through Services.exe) is 1.5 (1.8 with enabling the load monitoring) at 208 MHz and is, therefore, negligible, as far as the test results are concerned. That is, it's highly unlikely the additional, at 312 MHz, ~1.3% CPU usage caused by monitoring is causing the CPU to switch to 416 MHz from 312.)

UPDATE (02/12/2007): I’ve thoroughly tested the (offline) lyrics, MP3 tag and album art support of the two players.

WinVibe (as of the latest, 4.9.5 version) has turned out

1. not to support files with .lrc at all (you can, however, (mass-)rename these files to TXT files; then, all will work
2. to support lyrics .txt files flawlessly
3. its MP3 lyrics tag support is flawed as can be seen in here – the starting three “Kuin oisin omilla mailla / Oman pellon pientarilla, / Oi” rows are completely missing from the original lyrics. This means it may not display the start of other embedded lyrics either.

Unfortunately, it has absolutely no support for album art or MP3 tags at all.

LGC Jukebox, on the other hand, only supports .LRC files, not embedded lyrics or .TXT files. (The latter, again, can be very easily converted into .LRC files with a simple (mass) file rename.) I should also point out that, while it doesn’t support directory-level album art, it does show embedded thumbnails as can be seen in here. Unfortunately, it doesn’t display MP3 tags at all.