Neo Car Jukebox
www.ssiamerica.com

SSI puts a 30-gig harddrive in your car, and does it with style, with their latest MP3 head unit.

by Brian Smith

The Neo Car Jukebox is a high capacity MP3 storage and playback system. The system consists of a 30-gig EIDE hard drive capable of holding about 800 CDs, PC docking bay, vehicle-mounted docking bay with wired LCD remote, and all of the accessories that are needed to get into MP3 in a large way. Once installed into your PC, the Neo behaves just like another computer HD. This allows you to transfer MP3 files from practically any source including your own CD collection (conversion software is included). In the car, the Neo connects and functions much like a CD changer, albeit with substantially increased storage capacity.

Performance
I’ve been waiting for this one - RAM sticks are novel, and a CD with 10 times as many songs is pretty cool, but why not skip the middlemen and go with a car-mounted HD. The storage medium isn’t easily lost or damaged, access time should be quicker than a CD changer, and the capacity issue pretty much speaks for itself.

As with anything new to the car audio market, one of our biggest concerns revolves around how the unit in question will perform in the electrically noisy environment of an automobile. The preamp outputs on most first generation car audio products are generally what we like to call "trashy." This is the first MP3 unit that we’ve seen that’s a stand-alone piece, so we absolutely had to run a few tests on the preamp outs.

While maximum output voltage is rather low at about 1 volt, practically every other performance parameter looked surprisingly good. Source impedance, in particular, measured an impressively low 47 ohms. Otherwise, the Neo measured much the same as the typical CD head unit. Frequency response was the only measurement that gave us a problem; however, it’s the same problem that we’ve found when trying to measure any of the MP3 players that we’ve seen. I’ve yet to find an MP3 encoder that will pass a sine wave above about 15 kHz with the standard 128 kbps bit rate, so that’s where the response measurement ends. I’ve also done enough A/B comparisons to realize that 15 kHz-and-up isn’t just missing in MP3 music files, the perception-based data compression just seems to have a hard time with test signals. In the 20 Hz to 15 kHz range, the Neo is very flat, with about 0.2 dB of roll off at 15 kHz.

User Evaluation
This appears to be one of those kits that includes everything that you could possibly need for installation. The collection of hardware and wiring is extensive, there’s even an FM modulator for those without preamp inputs.

Using the Neo in a PC couldn’t be simpler; it works just like another HD in the Windows environment. If you’re familiar with HD installation, installing the unit into the PC should also be a snap.

In the car, the Neo’s user interface consists of a small, wired remote controller with an LCD display. While the interface is totally digital, it’s surprisingly easy to navigate. The buttons are very small, but there are only ten of them and the layout makes more sense than the typical head unit. A tiny wireless IR remote is also included and makes operation even easier.

Overall, I’m impressed. I figured someone would take the HD route sooner or later, but quite frankly, I wasn’t expecting the first unit to be this good.