Turtle Beach Audiotron (Discontinued)

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As we advance further into technology, we start to forget about CDs more and more. This is a good thing for most of us, and for the people that it is not good for, well most of us don't care about you. (Sorry). Most people only use MP3 audio files now a days because you can keep everything on your computer, and you will save a lot of room for not having to keep space for physical audio CDs. You then face a problem. What will you do if you want to play your music collection on your stereo? Hmm… well, one thing you could do would be to burn all of your MP3s onto CDs. This would create a problem, because you would have to spend the money on hundreds of CD-R's, and you would yet again have to allocate more space for your CDs. Instead of going to all this trouble, WeTheGeeks.com has a simple solution for you. The Turtle Beach Audiotron.

The Audiotron is a short rectangular box that allows you to stream audio files from your computers over your home network. The Audiotron connects to your Stereo's AUX output, and you can listen to your entire music collection with the press of a button.

File Format Support on the Audiotron

There are three file formats the Audiotron supports: MP3, WMA, and WAV. If you have a decent network connection, MP3 and WMA files will play without a problem. WAV files on the other hand, did not perform well over my home network. I am able to stream the WAV files back and forth from computer to computer over my home network, yet when I try to do this with the Audiotron, it doesn't work at all. I am suspecting that the problem is caused by the small buffer of the Audiotron. This is a real drag, because if you want to have the true CD quality sound of your music, WAV is the best way to go. Since I couldn't use the WAV format, I turned my entire music collection into MP3 files at 320 kbps. The Audiotron was able to play these files without a problem.

Audiotron Interface

The Audiotron has a small yet readable rectangular screen. From here, you can view all the information about the song you are currently playing; like the artist, album, song title, and bit rate. This screen can also be used to see what directories you are navigating through. There is a large dial on the face of the unit, and with it, you can scroll through the available audio files that you are streaming.

The interface for the Audiotron is very nice and easy to use. You can sort your songs by album, artist, genre, or title. The only thing I didn't like was that on the remote, there was no button for each individual letter of the alphabet. Then again, this would create a much odder looking remote, and probably a larger one at that.

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For instance, if you have 600 different artists on your Audiotron, and you are trying to locate Salt n' Pepa, you will have to scroll through everything first before you reach the ‘S' category. With lettered buttons, you could simply press the ‘S' button, and be able to get to Salt n' Pepa quickly.

If you have a lot of music to stream, you might not appreciate it when the Audiotron turns on and off. Every time you turn the device on, it will rescan your entire directory of music. The scan might take a long time…

ID3 Tag Support on the Audiotron

The one thing the Audiotron was a little finicky about was ID3 tags. With all of my classical music, I couldn't have the Audiotron sort by composer. You would have to make the composer the artist, but then you can't put the performer's name down. Just something you will have to live with…

Overall

Overall, the Turtle Beach Audiotron is a nice unit that you can use to play all your music. If it could play WAV files, it would be better, but as it is now, you got yourself a nice little jukebox.