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Although released about a year ago, I was given a Creative ZEN Stone Plus to review last week. At first glance, I likened the device to a very large Shuffle, since I could not see a display on it.

Imagine my surprise when I turned the little bugger on, and the display lit up!

The unit fits all your MP3 needs in a very small package. Like those little river stones we used to skip across the lake, the Zen Stone Plus feels like a smooth rock in your hand. Fortunately for the Stone Plus, I did not try to skip it across the office to see how many bounces I could get out of it.

The package from Creative contains the ZEN Stone Plus player, earphones, a short USB 2.0 cable and the quick start guide which basically points you to the Creative website to download the latest version of their software.

Do not use their software! It will only rip audio at 128kbps, and that setting cannot be changed. You are better off not using any software at all, since the ZEN Stone Plus is a Mass Storage Class (MSC) device and will show up in Windows XP/Vista, Linux and Mac like a flash drive. Drag and drop your mp3 files into the music folder, and you’re ready to go!

Sound on the device was pretty good, but ditch the included headphones for a better pair as soon as possible. For the ballers out there you can go with the $100+ headphones from Shure or Etymotic, I like the $30 offering from Sony’s Fontopia line. The ZEN Stone Plus comes with a custom 5-band equalizer so you can tailor the sound, and it actually works.

Battery life on the ZEN Stone Plus is a measly 9.5 hours, but unless you are running 2 marathons in a row that should be good enough between charges. Its rechargeable Lithium-ion polymer battery can charge from the USB port, or an optional USB/AC adapter charger. Recharges were fast, and I never ran out of juice from the little Stone Plus.

All in all, it is a worthy device to add to your gym bag. In terms of whether or not to purchase, I would give this product a 7 out of 10 rating in terms of value for the money.

There are also a bunch of other features that some of you might find useful included in the ZEN Stone Plus, like an FM Radio with 32 presets, a stopwatch and clock function, and it even records voice via a built-in microphone. It is currently on sale for as low as $31.99 from the Creative store (but only in red or green colors), so the street price should be considerably less.

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This article is a great troubleshooting tip based on the “tool of a thousand uses”, the good old tone generator, tone detector. Everyone has (or should have) one of these in the tool bag. They’re typically used to locate cables you forgot to label, labeled incorrectly, or got cut somewhere during house construction.

Next time you have a dead audio path, you can use the toner to work from the audio source component to the final amp, or use the signal generator from the amp and work backwards to the source.

Since we need to make an adaptor for the alligator clips on the end of the tone generator leads to an RCA stye plug, it’s a easy step to add a simple filter/amplitude reducer to make the tone generator signal more amp/preamp friendly.

Better known as the cable signal generator/detector (or “toner”), these two devices are, in fact, the perfect audio (and even video) test gear.   And they’re cheap.  

Photo 1. Typical tone generator (with alligator clip leads) and tone detector.

The tone detector is a very high gain, high impedance audio amplifier that can be used to locate sources of both audio and NTSC video.   To find out whether an audio component is putting out a line-level audio signal, simply stick the probe end of the detector into the RCA jack (see photo 2).  

 

Photo 2.  To test for audio, just stick the tip of the probe into the jack.

You’ll definitely hear the audio.   You can also touch the tip to the end of a line-level audio cable to hear the music.  This trick also works to detect NTSC video except that what you hear will sound like a nasty noise (the horizontal/vertical sync pulses).   But that’s not all.   Want to know whether audio is getting to a speaker?  Simply hold the tip of the detector on the speaker cable or touch into the speaker terminals.

Most signal generators output a pair or alternating tones, something like 500 and 700 cycles.   Unfortunately, upon closer examination of these tones on a scope, they are anywhere from 6 to 10 volts peak-to-peak and a nasty square wave with high amplitude spikes.   You could inject this signal into an amp, but it might cause either amp or speaker damage if the amp was cranked up. Typical line level audio is about 1-3 volt peak.

Since we need to make an adaptor for the alligator clips on the end of the tone generator leads to an RCA stye plug, it’s a easy step to add a simple filter/amplitude reducer to make the tone generator signal more amp/preamp friendly. Figure 1 shows the schematic of the two resistors and a capacitor needed to do this. 

Figure 1. Schematic of simple tone generator adaptor. 
Two resistors and a capacitor.  Values are not critical.

All the parts are easily available at Radio Shack.  This filters out the high frequency components (spikes) of the toner signal and lowers it’s amplitude to less than 1 volt peak.   Photos 3 and 4 show the adaptor I built hooked to the tone generator, and a close-up of the component hook-up.  Simple.  I tested this with three different toners, two from Fluke and one from Ideal (seen in photo).  All work fine. Keep it in the tool bag or the bag that holds the toner/detector. 

Photo 3. Ideal tone generator hooked to the audio adaptor with the alligator clips. 
I built it with two RCA plugs for quick stereo testing.

Photo 4.  Close-up of the adaptor components.  The RCA cable center conductors connect to the junction of the two resistors, grounds go to the end on the left.

Next time you have a dead audio path, you can use the toner to work from the audio source component to the final amp, or use the signal generator from the amp and work backwards to the source. 

Written By: Grayson Evans, Training Reels

http://www.hometoys.com/ezine/08.04/trainingreels/troubleshooters.htm

 

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