Micro Blog

Music Petition

http://www.consumersdigitalrights.org/cms/declaration_en.php

Go to this site and read what it's got to say It is about freeing up music like making copying cd's legal between friends e.t.c it also talks about lowering I-tunes prices and making the music shareable. Even makin p2p networks like limewire legal

You can Sign the PETITION here I urge you to do so! Send it to This to all your friends and get them to sign aswell, the more people on board the more freedom and better laws that are in you and the artists favours.

http://www.consumersdigitalrights.org/cms/petition_en.php

Videos

I've started Video blogging on my personal blog recently and I'll probably be doing some features in video format for this page aswell in the near future! For watching the videos I'd recomend Apple quicktime! You probably already have it whether you know it or not! but I've added a direct link in the tool bar and heres one here! Enjoy!

Audio Quality

I was thinking the other night when listening to my Zen Micro in bed as I regularly do to relax and unwind after a hard day. "What will make the quality of my music better?" I know a fair amount of technical stuff about computers and audio encoding so the answers for the questions came quite quickly. I could change the audio format I use, Which would mean changing 1000+ songs from mp3 to wma or wav. I'm quite happy using mp3 aslong as it's encoded at 128kbps any lower and the sound gets a bit grainy. I also use DRM restricted Wmas from Napster which are good quality! However not that much different from mp3! I could just beef up the bitrate but that would take more memory and not offer substantial differences! So What else is left to do if I'm staying with Mp3 and a few Wmas at roughly the same bitrate. Well Zen owners have secret weapon! It's called smart volume, thats right, the setting on the audio options menu under the equaliser settings that appears just to make things quieter. This revolutionary technology developed by creative labs cuts down on background distortion and noise in all compressed music! It may sacrifise volume but it boosts quality ten fold and stops you having to constantly adjust volume which can be irritating while out and about! This doesnt mean much to me but here's a spectrogram of the Zen with Smart volume on.

This Shows almost perfect results which is where the i-pod fails! It is no-where near perfect put it this way! Also the spectrogram here shows the Zen pumping out 100+ decibels through the stock headphones! This makes it even more impressive!
So to get the best quality out of your Zen buy some quality headphones such as sennheiser's or panasonic or phillips, or if you've got the cash Bose, just try to make sure the plug is a gold one. Then you could encode your songs at higher bitrate between 128kbps-192kbps are ample! I personally cannot tell the difference between mp3 and other formats but the only supported format which is "supposedly" better is WMA but you probably wont be able to tell them apart, even with great hearing like mine! If it's music for a computer or CD or a device that supports different formats you could try AAC apple's format or M4a from I-tunes, but obviously only i-pods and apple software support that! Or just try some quality encoding software such as Creative Micro media center or Cd'n'go suite or NCH swift sound which is fast and almost studio quality! The worst one is windows media player which i despize for some reason I just Don't like it at all and quality is poor! For old music from cassette vinyl or even recorders try magix audio cleaning lab which worked wonders for my Guns n' Roses Bootlegs and classic songs from the mid 80's!

New Forum

Finally I've Got round to doing a forum For the site! Thanks to Nick Mason at www.bulletproofcupid.20m.com for the link to the great forum site!
Check out the forum and register and Start one of the first Zen Micro Communities!
Also visit Nicks site (as he needs traffic) Only jokin!

Micro Media explorer update

I Downloaded an update for The zen micro media explorer yesterday. The Creative site says it adds new features and makes it all run smoother! This is a lie to start off with! I've found the update really irritating as it doesnt appear to do anything! Occaisionally I get an irritating error pop up It also messes with the already poor creative media source! Stick with your original media explorer Unless you want to be restarting the system repeatedly! I Re-installed everything and it seemed to work good after that! Smooth as you like and with bonus organiser features!
If you can be bothered messing about with it. It's good but you need to uninstall media source! (oh well) But after you do a couple of re-starts and uninstall media source! The Visual updates are quite subtle but good! Try it if it doesnt work use the copy on your startup disk! If you need another get in contact and we'll probably sort you out with a copy!

Napster

I thought I'd do a post about a compatable online music store as many people dont know about them and how they work and that i-tunes will not work with your zen micro!
I joined Napster around six months ago when my friends started using I-tunes which I heard wasn't compatible with the micro, With napster there are a few ways you can pay, I do it the simple way, I'm a Napster light member which everybody starts off as until they want to pay to upgrade. This means I only pay for the songs I want like I-tunes I pay 79p per song which is best for me really as I only really buy individual songs online. However Napster has more options than I-tunes, you can also pay £14.99 per month and access unlimited downloads which you keep aslong as you're subscribed. Another option is Napster to go which you have to have a compatible mp3 player to use (the zen micro is actually recommended!). You pay £9.99 a month and access unlimited downloads to your mp3 player which you change every month you are subscribed but if you want to burn a cd from them you buy the songs for 79p each, Napster to go is only really song rental. Napster is personally my favorite online source of music and of course it is clean and legal, the songs quality is great as it uses DRM protected WMA's so they only play in media player and real player sadly! The software is'nt the best I also use I-tune to organise the music on my laptop. Napster is simple and easy to use and I've found it to have a better selection of music than I-tunes which is said to be "the king". I think many people underestimate Napster and use I-tunes as it's "the in thing", yes it's great software but hardly any portable players support it's awkward format m4a; whereas Napster uses plays for sure technology which runs on most recent mp3 players and all of the new ones! If you can be bothered installing I-tunes for organising and playing music, and using Napster for Downloads it's a great combination. Since I tried it I've gone 100% legal with my music and deleted the files I had from Limewire e.t.c that I have been sent. I dont think there is any need for stealing music so i threw my illegal copilations away and it has just liberated my music! it feels great! Try it, if Napster is'nt for you try another legal vendor like I-tunes They really do work!

Zen Problems

I sent my micro away a few weeks back because it had a firmware error. I searched the forum for anybody else with the same problems. I didnt find any so I got in touch with creative who may have taken a while to deliver and diagnose the problem but they did the job well! I sent of my 5gb black micro which I bought a few weeks previous when I was away in florida. They sent me a brand new silver 6gb version with the playsforsure firmware, at no charge except from postage. The new Zen is great and I would recommend upgrading for the extra gigabyte of memory! The new firmware is really worth downloading, especially if you are a Napster user!
The Message in this pathetic tale is that if your Zen packs up and it seems like you've wasted all that money, there is plenty you can do about it. Search the forum then if theres nothing of any use on there (doubtful) Get in touch with creative and they'll sort you out!
They are 100% better than apple for customer support and personally their products are better than apple's aswell. The I-pod suffers from weak batteries and dodgy screens ontop of being quite fragile. The only problems I've found with the micro have been caused by carelessness and being dropped! (not in my case) I now protect my zen with my altoids case which I showed you how to make in a previous post!
Look after your Zen and it will look after you!

Altoids Case

Last week I found an article on head-fi.com about making a zen micro case from an Altoids case and I really liked the idea as good zen cases are few and far between and when you actually find one it costs over £20! So I had a go at making one and this is how i did it:

I Drilled out a hole in the top of the case which i personally think is better than cutting it as it showed on head-fi as it keeps it's strength better. I bought some cheap very thin foam (pink) from hobby craft and cut it to shape. I then used some really powerful adhesive to stick it all in.
I made a rubber seal around the sharp edges of the hole so it doesn't cut the headphone cord.
I then left a tiny gap around my zen soI could slide it in and out easily.

It's absolutely great for protecting your zen or whatever it is you're making it for although I don't think it will fit I-pods but if you got the right size case you could probably make one!
Next Altoids case creation: Speakers!

Creative Zen Micro!

This is the first of Hopefully many Zen Lounge posts Bare with us While we set up more features and edit this blog of zen!
You can look foreward to hearing about everyhing zen micro related including: