5. Battery Life

Short battery life being one on the chief failings on the first Jukebox, Creative Labs has paid special attention to this aspect of Jukebox 3, which comes with a Lithium Ion battery supposed to last 11 hours. But in addition, it has a second bay for doubling playtime to 22 hours of continuous use. The standard package contains just the one battery; a second one will available via the Creative Labs site for a price which has yet to be announced.

Our tests showed that in practice, the figures are not quite as high as those claimed by Creative Labs. The battery lasts a bit less than 9 hours in continuous use with the headphone volume at half its capacity. With two batteries, playtime should reach nearly 18 hours, which is quite phenomenal.

Use

Just to remind you, the first Jukebox, with a hard drive of 6 GB, could play back sound on two stereo channels and integrated EAX environmental effects. It was undeniably innovative and useful, but had those little shortcomings of youth. The rechargeable batteries only lasted four hours, the only connection available was the USB 1.1, it could only record in WAV format via an analog input and its operating system was slower than the Jukebox 3. It was due to wanting to correct these failings, which are pardonable in a new product, that Creative Labs has come up with the Jukebox 3.

With its fast operating system and scroll wheel, the Jukebox 3 is a pleasure to use. You just scroll through the menus and select objects to make up a playlist or find a track. It is very quick to start, especially as it goes into idle mode for a preset time before switching off completely. Obviously, if you increase the idle time, the battery time will be affected. But when it is in idle mode, it can start again instantly. Beyond the preset time, the Jukebox 3 needs about forty seconds to be operational, but be warned, if you reset the device, it will restore the file library on the drive and this can take up to five minutes.

For playback, Jukebox 3 has a number of functions:

Smart Volume Management and Match Volume (explained above) Time scaling: to slow down or speed up play without affecting the pitch Environmental effects: Like the SBLive! and Audigy sound cards, the Jukebox 3 has a real-time environmental effects DSP, so several kinds of environment can be used (like Concert Hall, Cathedral or Arena). Advanced EQ: The Jukebox 3 includes several kinds of predefined adjustments such as rock, classical or acoustic. Multi-channel effects: The Jukebox 3 has two analog outputs to plug into 4.1 speakers. You can apply a spatialization or 3D effect to these outputs.