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Rating: 
Summary: Great product for the money
Review: I have to say...I'm impressed; at least, moreso than I thought it would be.The Pros:
Easy setup - Despite all of the mixed reviews I found online for setting this thing up, setup was a snap. If you're running XP or 2000 you'll need to create a user account on your PC (or domain) and give that user read-permissions on your audio share. Otherwise, it's simply a matter of plugging in the ethernet cable, and audio cord -- and turning the power on. Fairly Intuitive interface on the unit. The front panel is very easy to use and navigate with the jog dial. Large bright LCD Fully upgradable firmware Internet radio capable The Cons:
Soft mushy buttons on both the front panel and remote - In my opinion, this is the number one problem with the unit. Layout of buttons on remote control - This problem follows a close second. The remote isn't very intuitive, either. And I don't know if it's the batteries or not, but it generally takes a couple of tries before the buttons on the remote do what they're supposed to. For future releases, I'd like to see a built in CD-Player/Ripper/Burner which allows you to listen to audio CDs or rip them to a shared folder. It would also be nice to be able to burn songs using the unit. Oh well...I guess it just goes to prove that if you ask for steak, and you get a T-Bone, you'll complain because it's not prime-rib! --------------- Don't take the complaining too seriously...this is a great product. I'm going to get some serious use out of this thing. It seems to play all my full albums in correct order (although I maintain all my ID3 tags), and I haven't had a problem with the sound quality. Pick this one up if you're a music enthusiast, looking to play digital music from your PC over your component system. If you're like me, and you're sick of removable media, this is a music-lover's dream come true.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but getting dated
Review: I like the Audiotron a lot, but at this point I think it is getting dated and you get products with many more features at a reasonable. The one thing the Audiotron has going for it is that it looks like a normal stereo component. Setting it up is pretty simple. Just connect it to your network and stereo, then set share music on your PCs. The Audiotron will search the network for shares and (unless otherwise configured) search for particular directory names. The web interface allows you to log into the audiotron and change configuration or even what it is playing. Unfortunately, the interface doesn't work very well for large music collections. It doesn't allow searching and songs aren't always organization the way you would anticipate, which can make finding music frustrating. My biggest gripe with the product is that it doesn't support the full range of WMA bit rates. I believe it is capped somewhere around 192. Unfortunately, they only tell you this deep in the knowledge base of their website. I found this after after reripping my entire collection and then spending a couple hours trying to figure out why the Audiotron wasn't playing anything. Nice customer focus people!
Rating:
Summary: Good, but getting dated
Review: I like the Audiotron a lot, but at this point I think it is getting dated and you get products with many more features at a reasonable. The one thing the Audiotron has going for it is that it looks like a normal stereo component. Setting it up is pretty simple. Just connect it to your network and stereo, then set share music on your PCs. The Audiotron will search the network for shares and (unless otherwise configured) search for particular directory names. The web interface allows you to log into the audiotron and change configuration or even what it is playing. Unfortunately, the interface doesn't work very well for large music collections. It doesn't allow searching and songs aren't always organization the way you would anticipate, which can make finding music frustrating. My biggest gripe with the product is that it doesn't support the full range of WMA bit rates. I believe it is capped somewhere around 192. Unfortunately, they only tell you this deep in the knowledge base of their website. I found this after after reripping my entire collection and then spending a couple hours trying to figure out why the Audiotron wasn't playing anything. Nice customer focus people!
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful Device
Review: I love this device. I have it setup in my living room, connected to my stereo and to a Linksys wireless bridge. The Audiotron can play all of my MP3s from my computer, along with hundreds of internet radio stations, all wirelessly! The simple 802.11b wireless connection easily handles the audio transmissions without problem. The Audiotron has replaced my huge 400 CD jukebox as my most used piece of stereo equipment. Searching for songs is very easy, as the Audiotron can sift through MP3 tags with ease, finding music by author, album title, music type, song title, etc. Well worth the cost!
Rating:
Summary: Best Network Audio Appliance for Sound Quality
Review: I settled on a network audio appliance to play back my digital music for the convenience of being able to control the jukebox software from the appliance itself, from the remote, or from any web browser on the network, as well as the convenience of having an independent LCD display of track information. I settled on the Audiotron because it allows me to pipe full CD-resolution wave files (16 bits, 44.1KHz samples, 1.4Mbits/second) through an optical S/P-DIF jack to my A/V receiver (Harman Kardon 325, also highly recommended). It also allows MP3 files to be passed through in the same way. The full resolution CD files sound exactly the same from the CD player with digital out, through the computer's digital out, or through the Audiotron. I was less than thrilled with the analog output piped into my A/V receiver's anlog amplifer; thus I suspect the headphone jack is similarly low quality. The ripping software provided is OK, and has the advantage of having a really speedy (re-)tagging system for wav files (using the Microsoft standard RIFF info chunks; standard ID3 tagging is used for MP3s). It also rips fast. But I found the freeware Exact Audio Copy (EAC) program to do a much more accurate job of error-correction on hard-to-read disks, as well as putting in the right amount of between-track spacing (which is perfectly carried over when played back through the Audiotron). Used in conjunction with a freeware EAC plugin script called ATWavTag, I was able to use EAC to rip my entire CD collection with tags appropriate to the Audiotron. Without tags indicating the track number, the Audiotron will default to playing tracks in alphabetical order. My only complaint about the Audiotron is that it's slow. With wave files, it takes about 5-10 seconds or so to skip a track, and if too many tracks are skipped at once, the buffering gets confused. That's slower than my CD player (which is now gathering dust) and way slower than doing it from the computer on which the tracks live. The web server takes 5-10 seconds to load a page when a track's playing. I would've been willing to pay more for a bigger buffer and faster processor. Finally, it takes a long long time for the Audiotron to find all the music files on the network; around 15 minutes for the 200GBs of music I have (about 5500 songs). The author of ATWavTag also supplies some useful utilities for creating tables of contents which are read in almost instantly over the network and allows the discovery process to be bypassed. Setup was pretty straightforward, but it's hardly trivial. I had to create a Windows account for the Audiotron to get it going, and all the permissions had to be right. Then I had to figure out how to log into the administrative part of their web server (user/pwd is admin/admin, though it took me forever to figure that out, and I'm a compulsive manual reader). After that, it's just worked. If you're using Linux, you'll need the additional step of setting up a Samba server or the like to emulate Windows networking for the Audiotron's benefit. Like other non-NT-derived Windows OSes, the Audiotron's WinCE on a StrongARM processor is not the most robust. I've had to reboot it twice in as many months. Turtle Beach regularly supplies firmware upgrades, and there's a huge enthusiast community writing scripts and FAQs on how to use the Audiotron. It also looks just like a standard audio component, though it's NAD-grey, so it doesn't match my black or silver components. As for general usability, it's pretty easy once you get the hang of their selection system. But scrolling through a large music collection linearly by artist, especially with a lot of various artists collections, can be painful. And there's no way to drill down from artist to album or from genre to artist, on the device, though it can be done through the web interface. The remote adds some functionality like fast-forwarding through tracks, that is not available (at least in a way that I can find) through the front panel. I find the scrolling display easy to read, and I really appreciate having track information on random play; it fixes the problem with huge CD changers and never knowing what's playing. Note: There is also a slightly more expensive version of the Audiotron that adds HPNA (home phone line) networking to the mix.
Rating:
Summary: Great control of song playback from my laptop
Review: I won't repeat everyone elses reviews. My message is this: I wanted to sit in my recliner with my laptop and be able to pick and choose what music was playing on my stereo. I didn't want to use the TV or another clicker to control anything. The Audiotron does a GREAT job! It has a http server built in and I can talk to it with my web browser, pick songs, play them, etc. No other software needed period. You don't need to load/run any software on your song file server either. Any pc on your network can simply share whatever directory you like and the audiotron can see it and play songs from there. Great product! I just wish it had 802.11b built in. I had to buy a Linksys WET11 to get wireless connectivity.
Rating:
Summary: Great product with very few minuses
Review: The Audiotron (AT) performs as advertised and then some. My current configuration consists of the AT-100, ethernet hardwired to a Linksys BEFSR41 10/100 router/switch with all the music stored on a Tritton Tri-NAS 120 network drive. With this setup, I can play music whether my computers are running or not, which, I have not seen as a feature on any of the comparable devices which all require server side software to be running on the computer (somebody feel free to correct me if I am mistaken). BEFORE YOU BUY, I highly recommend (especially in light of some of the critisisms listed in other reviews on the AT) that you read the user's guide (available as PDF on Amazon or Turtle Beach websites) to familiarize yourself with the capabilities and limitations of the AT. That way, there are no surprizes when you get it home. THEN, read them again while you set the AT up. While the AT works pretty much right out of the box, there are a number of tweaks that will expand it's capabilities. I also made use of the extensive knowledge base on the Turtle Beach Website to find the info for configuring the AT with my NAS drive. Also, taking the time to ensure that your MP3/WMA, file tags are fairly complete and consistent as far as Track #, Artist, Album, and Genre will make search and playback functions much more intuitive. This is accomplished quite easily if you are ripping your own but may take some time to re-edit downloaded files (which can be done with included Audiostation software or any number of shareware/freeware programs). This may seem pretty obvious, but it is apparent that some persons are having trouble with the AT's playback order. So far, I have had no problems with getting songs to play in their correct album order. I am using the optical output and the sound is excellent. I have read in other places that the sound from the analog outputs is less than stellar so if your receiver does not include optical inputs, you may want to consider an outboard D/A converter. All in all, I am very pleased with my Audiotron. If you READ THE USER'S GUIDE and do a little work up front to properly tag your audio files, you will have a very versatile and capable digital jukebox system.
Rating:
Summary: THE SINGLE MOST INCREDIBLE INVENTION EVER
Review: The lightbulb, the telephone, the automobile- pale in comparison to this invention. For true, (no, I mean TRUE...) audiophiles, there is nothing that can compare to the ability to dial up ANY song you are in the mood for. Think of any song you feel like listening to and it's there. What else could you want from life?
Rating: 
Summary: Warning, legacy speed support ONLY!
Review: This device ONLY supports a 10base-t network. I just bought this unit and might have to return it unless I can figure out a way to make it work. Odd that a unit that relies on the network to receive music would not support 100mb networks. The more bandwidth the better, I say. Not likely to sell into any business that has 100mb only. I'd consider this a mistake and one that I did not expect in a network appliance at this time in networking where practically everything supports 10/100 based networks. Surprised and not impressed with that limitation... Something that should be fixed in any future version...
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