DSi Sound- Gimmick or Valuable Feature?

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Silver-twilight

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#1 Silver-twilight
Member since 2009 • 25 Posts
This will serve both as a guide and a review of the DSi sound channel as it stands at release. I'm writing this guide from personal experience with the DSi's sound system, this guide is best used with users of Windows as I have no experience on a mac. It should be known that this guide does not review the recording feature of the DSi, only the DSi's ability to play music from an SD card. Due to the nature of the DSi's updatable firmware, its possible that some aspects of this guide may become outdated. Feel free to post or reference this guide as you feel necessary with no requirement of my permission or a citation. DSi Sound Statistics *There is a 3000 song cap on the DSi's music player, regardless of the size of SD card. *The DSi reads both SD and SDHC (A higher storage capacity form of SD that goes up to 32gigs as far as I know). *Only 100 songs in a folder can be read. (Try creating two folders to fix this is you have over 100 songs by an artist. IE: Radiohead1, Radiohead2) *The DSi reads Window's folder organization system and can have up to 1000 files displayed (Assuming you don't have less than 3 songs per artist and 1000 artists, this should not be a limiting factor) *Folders up do a depth of 8 can be read. *Unfortunately at this time, the DSi does not display folder inside of folders, but rather two separate folders. (This means that if you try to organize your music by putting them in a multi-folder organization such as "Artist>Album>Song", you will see all the albums displayed in main scroll menu, and if the Artist album itself had no songs, but only folders, it will not be displayed) *Folders with identically names are automatically merged. *The DSi only reads AAC files at the moment, read the "Converting Music" section for more details on working around this problem. DSi Sound vs. Other Music Players *Price- The DSi costs 170$, combine this with an 8gig card for music storage for 30$ (I purchased such a card at Walmart myself) and you get a 200$ pricetag. A similarly priced piece of technology would be the iTouch from apple, which currently costs 220$ for an 8gig model. The DSi is slightly cheaper, but I'm sure a less flashy music player like the iPod nano or another similar product would cost a lot less. *Size- There's an obvious flaw to using the DSi as your music player, its considerably larger than even the iTouch, which could demean it's value in certain situations such as outdoors use, or at the gym (Don't worry, I know we here at GameSpot don't have to worry about such situations, but still.) However, when headphones are inserted into the DSi, it still plays music while closed, so all hope is not lost. *User Interface- There is room for improvement in the DSi's UI, but I would say that it is quite bearable. Every folder on the SD card is lined up in a root directory, regardless of how the files are organized into each other, in alphanumeric order, into a turntable format (The folders appear to be on a vinyl record). You can then navigate by tapping or holding the left and right on the control pad, sliding your stylus to "Spin" the turntable, sliding the stylus along the scrollbar, or tapping the arrows at the end of the scrollbar with your stylus. You can enter into a folder with the "A" button or by tapping the "Open" button on the screen. Playing music works the same way once you're inside a folder, "B" can be used to go back, or the "Back" button on screen. Volume can be controlled via touchscreen or by the buttons on the side of the DSi. An on screen button also controls the album loop, track-loop, or shuffle setting. Converting Music for the DSi This is probably the biggest turn off for using the DSi as a music player, lack of file format support. However AAC is a simple file to convert to, as many of you may be aware of, iTunes is capable of converting files. An alternative method also exists, by using the program "Bonkenc", its free, and a quick Google search will lead you to their website. Simply open the menu for "Encoder Options" and set the encoder to "FAAC MP4/AAC Encoder", you don't need to mess around with any other file settings to get it to work. (The file extension will be .m4a NOT .aac). You can use this to convert folders of music into another folder, or individual files. You should keep in mind these things when considering a DSi as a music player though. *Your computer may not have an SD card slot, so you might be buying extra hardware. *Your computer's SD slot might not support SDHC (Any card higher than 4gigs will be SDHC) *iTunes music that still has its DRM protection will not work on your DSi. *It takes some time to organize your music into folders by artist, it can be a bit time consuming if you have 1000 songs. (I did gradually over two days though, so not TOO time consuming) Special DSi Sound Features There are a couple features on your DSi that can add some bonus entertainment that I thought I'd show you, and also review. *Pitch and Speed Graph- You move a point around on a graph, moving it to the right increases speed, to the left decreases speed. Moving it up increases pitch, moving it down decreases pitch. This is a pretty neat feature, you can make a "Speedy Mix" of a song very easily with it. *Song Effects- There are four effects that work on a DSi; Radio, Instrumental, Echo, 8-bit Game. Radio adds a neat effect of making the song sound like its being played on an "Old Transistor Radio", it was fun for a second. The echo effect adds well, echo, doesn't do much for songs with lots of instruments going at once but, it works. Instrumental attempts to remove the vocals from a song, it sorta works, sometimes it takes out most the vocals, sometimes it doesn't, its a so-so feature. 8-bit game is supposed to make your songs sound like a well, 8-bit game, it doesn't work. At all. It sounds disgusting. *Overlaying pre-recorded sounds- You can record 10 second blips with the DSi, basically, you can play one of these in the middle of a song, it does what its supposed to do, why you would want to do this, I don't know. *Shoulder Button Percussion- L and R make various sounds, you can pick through drums, clapping, Mario sounds and others. Luckily you can also turn it off. *Equalizer Effects- You get an equalizer visual to go with your song. They vary from a nice waveform display to an interactive Mario display where Lakitu leaves behind coins for you to collect based on the song's waveform image. I liked this feature. Conclusion The DSi doesn't stand up to most music players, but it can be made into a respectable music player none-the-less, maybe with firmware updates we could see support for MP3 and other improvements as well. If you're short on change and don't want a DS and music player, you'll probably manage to get along with your DSi alone, the same could be said if you don't like carrying around lots of electronics at once. The DSi Sound channel is only one feature of the DSi, but with a little investment into your library it could become your primary music player. If you're not up to messing around with conversions and timely re-organization on your SD card, get yourself another music player though.
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tjoeb123

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#2 tjoeb123
Member since 2004 • 6843 Posts
Did you also mention that Nintendo could possibly fix some of these features via firmware update?
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Silver-twilight

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#3 Silver-twilight
Member since 2009 • 25 Posts
Good idea. I added it to the conclusion. "The DSi doesn't stand up to most music players, but it can be made into a respectable music player none-the-less, maybe with firmware updates we could see support for MP3 and other improvements as well."
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George_M

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#4 George_M
Member since 2007 • 212 Posts

Nice writeup, thanks. Looks like it's even worse than I feared, particularly with regards to organization.

It seems like there's a good opportunity for someone to make a killer DSiWare media player.

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Nomoreblasphemy

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#5 Nomoreblasphemy
Member since 2008 • 198 Posts

They were running short on time when they added these features, so I'm just glad they got them in there. They'll probably fix any problems in the future.

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