Xitel MD-Port AN1 Review

Author: Anthony Roberts
Editor: Howard Ha
Publish Date: Monday, July 17th, 2000
Originally Published on Neoseeker (http://www.neoseeker.com)
Article Link: http://www.neoseeker.com/Articles/Games/Reviews/MDPort_AN1/
Copyright Neo Era Media, Inc. - please do not redistribute or use for commercial purposes.

Xitel's MD-Port AN1 in the Box

Xitel is better known for its Platinum Sound Vortex2 cards, but has since moved onto a market that better targets their customers: digital music recording. What they came up with is the MD-Port AN1, an intriguing product for analogue MP3 to MD recording, so that you can easily record your MP3s into your MiniDiscs using a high fidelity hardware solution.

The biggest contender in the market are the myriad of sound cards out there, and with digital recording at an all time high, it brings to question why Xitel chose to come out with an analogue product. In fact, Xitel is working on a digital MD-Port, the DG1 (soon to be released), but for now, the AN1 is their toy of choice, and Xitel feels it has some advantages to offer over a sound card. For one, it is an external solution, it isnt installed INSIDE the system, and audio purists have been arguing for a while that the electromagnetic interference inside a computer case affects the quality of the audio decoding. Second, thanks to its USB interface, the AN1 can be taken anywhere, and used on any computer, without complicated software installs. You literally plug and play (provided you have the proper USB support on your windows install). The USB interface also guarantees that only digital signals are passed to the AN1 device, where all the D-A conversions can take place. Thirdly, Xitel packages the full version of MusicMatch Jukebox Plus with the AN1, and MusicMatch has a few benefits that other media players dont have, the chief of which is the track marking feature for MD recording.

I remember publishing an article a while ago about MD recording from MP3s, and the most common question out there is always how do I get auto track marking? Normally when you record from CDs using analogue cables, the tracks are auto marked because the CDs have 3-4 second delay between tracks, and MD recorders in analogue mode use play volume to determine when tracks are turning over. In digital recording a CD player shuts off its digital output when a track finished playing, and this signals the MD recorder to mark tracks. The problem with recording from MP3s in digital AND analogue mode is that some computer media players, including Sonique, and WinAmp, do NOT have any functions to facilitate track marking in MD recordings. This could be a problem on some recorders which cannot otherwise distinguish between separate tracks. The included MusicMatch Jukebox Plus software DOES have a feature to enable 3-4 second silence spacers to signal track marking in analogue recordings, and that saves you a LOT of trouble. Several people I spoke to actually create empty 4 second long MP3s and put those between tracks to force track marking, but using the Analogue Track marking feature is so much more convenient. In our tests, we used a Sharp MD-MT20 portable recorder, and it did not require any special track marking when recording through an analogue connection which made the whole MusicMatch software feature extraneous. If you also have a device without such problems, already one of the significant benefits of the AN1 is rendered useless.

The AN 1 & Interface Connectors

The AN1 installs rather easily. No software drivers are included, because none are needed. You dont even have to power down the system when first installing the device; you simply plug it in, and windows starts to install. If you have your Windows cab files on your HD, you dont even have to whip out the original CD-ROM. After installation, a restart is necessary, but afterwards, you can actually plug and unplug the AN1 from your USB ports and your system will reconfigure itself automatically without a restart, its USB at its best! The ease of configuration is actually a must, since the minute you plug in your AN1, it takes over as the playback device in Windows. You can only have either your sound card, OR the AN1 as the playback device at any one time, so if youre not recording tracks onto MD, your only option is to unplug the AN1, because as long as it is plugged in, the AN1 is the only audio device that will function. I found that there were some quirks in the way the AN1 configured itself when plugged and unplugged while the computer was on. The literature states that you should be able to do so freely, but I found that several times, unplugging and/or plugging the device into the system would cause some DLLs to crash, and ultimately result in a forced reboot because audio became completely unstable.

The AN1 is essentially compatible with all MD recorders, since its really just passing the audio signals along. It is also compatible with any media player, again, since its just passing the signals along. I would stick with the MusicMatch software, because of its Analogue track-marking feature, but also because MusicMatch turned out to be a pretty good media player. With extensive features, MusicMatch becomes as much a digital music library organizer, as it is a media player. And with additional capabilities like CDDB support and the ability to rip and encode MP3s, this becomes a complete audio center.

Overhead view of the AN 1

The meat of the whole review rests on what I feel is the most important factor in deciding whether to purchase the AN1: whether it offers anything that regular sound card recording does NOT. If you believe in the dirty signal that is associated with a sound card installed inside of a PC case, then you have very good cause for purchasing a solution like the AN1. On the other hand, remember that MP3s use a lossy compression algorithm to begin with, so absolutely pristine recording conditions may or may not even be the most important factor in deciding audio quality, especially if you still go through that additional DAC conversion right before submitting the audio to the MD recorder. Then you could base the decision on ease of use and convenience. Certainly MusicMatch Jukebox enables a convenience that your regular media player does not have, but it can be purchased directly for $29.95 from MusicMatch.

Angled view of the AN1

Most of you are likely wondering about the core aspect of the AN1, which involve factors like signal noise and recording quality, but from my test recordings and blind A/B listening tests I found some interesting, but possibly inconclusive results.

I felt that recordings from the sound card and from the AN1 were both essentially good and correct, but I had the distinct feeling that the AN1 recordings had a more detailed quality, with better harmonics and a wider frequency spectrum. Electric guitars especially had a higher fidelity and better clarity, with a greater sense of depth in the sound stage. Vocals seemed more alive, and I am certain that the vocalists stood out more from the chorus in the AN1 recording compared to the sound card recordings.

When I asked some colleagues to also try some blind A/B testing, I got some mixed results that differed from my own experience.

AN 1 & MD Interface

Some felt that the sound card recording was crisper, and more detailed, and that the AN1 recording sounded filtered or muddled. One other colleague didnt notice any difference between the recordings at all, and he was hard pressed to distinguish any sound quality differences. To me the sound card recordings were harsher, with a less refined high end, and more strident notes, but this experiment with several colleagues only proves the common belief that sound quality is highly subjective.

AN 1 & with both Connectors attached

The most interesting finding though, from the A/B tests, was that the recordings using the AN1 definitely turned up cleaner. In complex sequences, the sound card recordings had a slight but noticeable amount of background buzz or distortion that was not present in the AN1 recordings. This may very well be a result of the D-A conversions taking place outside of the computer casing, and away from the electromagnetic interference inherent in such an environment, or it could be that the AN1 had superior DACs with higher SNR ratios. Regardless, the AN1 proved that at least on the point of cleaner recording signal, it lived up to its marketing promise.

Based on the whole of the situation, I would have to suggest that the AN1 is not a device that you would invest in, unless you had a poor sound card and suffer from an obvious and audible amount of signal noise in recordings - some computers have so much interference that signal noise becomes a serious problem. If you are currently satisfied with your sound card recordings, an extra $59.99 may not be justified. On the other hand, if you are an audiophile with a sensitivity to the signal degradation of your internal sound card, the AN1 may be what you are looking for. As with all audio devices, the final say in audio quality rests in each users hands, and I can only say that I preferred the AN1 recordings, while others indicated otherwise.

Under side of the AN1

For those who are still waiting for a working digital recording solution, the upcoming MD-Port DG1 might just do the trick, and THAT is something that really might be worth looking into, since Xitel tells me that the DG1 allows auto track marks during digital recording of MP3s, and which is definitely the biggest problem in recording MP3s digitally to MD.

Overall Score: 81%

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