The Turtle Beach

Turtle Beach Systems

Turtle Beach Systems is a sound card and headphone manufacturer and direct competitor with Creative Labs-branded Sound Blaster. In 1995, the company merged with Voyetra, a company that made custom software for sound cards, to form Voyetra Turtle Beach Inc which is headquartered in Elmsford, New...

 AudioTron AT-100 and AT-101 are 1U

Rack unit

A rack unit or U is a unit of measure used to describe the height of equipment intended for mounting in a 19-inch rack or a 23-inch rack...

 rack-mountable, hi-fi

High fidelity

High fidelity—or hi-fi—reproduction is a term used by home stereo listeners and home audio enthusiasts to refer to high-quality reproduction of sound or images, to distinguish it from the poorer quality sound produced by inexpensive audio equipment...

 network music players. An AudioTron can stream digital music files from personal computers or NAS

Network-attached storage

Network-attached storage is file-level computer data storage connected to a computer network providing data access to heterogeneous clients. NAS not only operates as a file server, but is specialized for this task either by its hardware, software, or configuration of those elements...

 devices without the need to install server software on these storage devices since the AudioTron is based on Windows CE

Windows CE

Microsoft Windows CE is an operating system developed by Microsoft for embedded systems. Windows CE is a distinct operating system and kernel, rather than a trimmed-down version of desktop Windows...

 and is therefore a computer that looks like audio hardware. Supported file formats include Wave, WMA, MP3 and MP3 playlists. These files can reside on a Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

 network share or on a Samba server

Samba (software)

Samba is a free software re-implementation, originally developed by Andrew Tridgell, of the SMB/CIFS networking protocol. As of version 3, Samba provides file and print services for various Microsoft Windows clients and can integrate with a Windows Server domain, either as a Primary Domain...

. AudioTron reads music files over Ethernet

Ethernet

Ethernet is a family of computer networking technologies for local area networks commercially introduced in 1980. Standardized in IEEE 802.3, Ethernet has largely replaced competing wired LAN technologies....

 or HPNA network

HomePNA

The HomePNA Alliance is an incorporated non-profit industry association of companies that develops and standardizes technology for home networking over the existing coaxial cables and telephone wiring within homes.-Overview:HomePNA does not manufacture products, although its members do...

, and generates analog audio via RCA connector

RCA connector

An RCA connector, sometimes called a phono connector or cinch connector, is a type of electrical connector commonly used to carry audio and video signals...

s as well as digital audio

Digital audio

Digital audio is sound reproduction using pulse-code modulation and digital signals. Digital audio systems include analog-to-digital conversion , digital-to-analog conversion , digital storage, processing and transmission components...

 via S/PDIF

S/PDIF

S/PDIF is a digital audio interconnect used in consumer audio equipment over relatively short distances. The signal is transmitted over either a coaxial cable with RCA connectors or a fiber optic cable with TOSLINK connectors. S/PDIF interconnects components in home theaters and other digital high...

.

An AudioTron can play streaming media

Streaming media

Streaming media is multimedia that is constantly received by and presented to an end-user while being delivered by a streaming provider.The term "presented" is used in this article in a general sense that includes audio or video playback. The name refers to the delivery method of the medium rather...

 from Internet radio

Internet radio

Internet radio is an audio service transmitted via the Internet...

 stations. The formats supported are Windows Media

Windows Media

Windows Media is a multimedia framework for media creation and distribution for Microsoft Windows. It consists of a software development kit with several application programming interfaces and a number of prebuilt technologies, and is the replacement of NetShow technologies.The Windows Media SDK...

, SHOUTcast

SHOUTcast

SHOUTcast is cross-platform proprietary software for streaming media over the Internet. The software, developed by Nullsoft , allows digital audio content, primarily in MP3 or HE-AAC format, to be broadcast to and from media player software, enabling the creation of Internet radio "stations"...

 and Icecast

Icecast

Icecast is a streaming media project released as free software maintained by the Xiph.org Foundation. It also refers specifically to the server program which is part of the project. Icecast was created in December 1998/January 1999 by Jack Moffitt and Barath Raghavan to provide an open source...

. The Windows Media support is limited to the features available before the release of Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player

Windows Media Player is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices...

 10. Connecting to Internet radio stations was once supported through a free service called TurtleRadio. When TurtleRadio was shut down by Turtle Beach, Turtle Beach disclosed an alternative method available in the device's firmware (using a local file) to load one's Internet radio station list into the AudioTron.

Users operate the AudioTron with a PC/laptop on the same network using the web interface from the built-in webserver, with a remote control or on the device itself using buttons and a large "Turn & Push Selector Knob" on its front panel. The knob is used to navigate song selection menu on a two-line green LCD display. Users can select songs by turning and pushing the knob, based on various combinations of Genre, Album, Title and Artist tags. The knob also serves as volume control and playhead control while a song is being played. Standard Play, Pause, Stop, Forward and Rewind buttons can be used to control playback. An infrared remote control comes with AudioTron and can be used instead of the front panel.

AudioTron obtains an IP address

IP address

An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...

 from DHCP server

Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol

The Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol is a network configuration protocol for hosts on Internet Protocol networks. Computers that are connected to IP networks must be configured before they can communicate with other hosts. The most essential information needed is an IP address, and a default...

 by default. The AudioTron can be configured via buttons on the front panel or remotely from a web browser. AudioTron runs a web server which can be accessed via any standard browser. The web server also allows users to access the complete collection of songs online. Users can play songs or send them to AudioTron's play queue, without using the front panel or remote control. The AudioTron is also able to determine the type of device the web server was being accessed from, and devices such as PDAs will display a simplified remote control screen more suitable to the smaller size of a PDA screen.

First released in 2001, AudioTron was ahead of its time in providing driverless music streaming, S/PDIF and Internet radio support. The AudioTron operated as a standalone music player by making use of the Microsoft SMB file server protocol; that is, it could load music from any SMB file server.

Production of this device stopped in 2004.

Turtle Beach continued to support TurtleRadio until March 2007. After that time, the TurtleRadio website was retired and users had to change the configuration of their AudioTron to use a local file to set the list of radio stations that their AudioTron could stream. In March 2010, Turtle Beach implemented a redirect that allows the AudioTron to be used with the Webstation Radio Database. Similar to the TurtleRadio website, users can create accounts and select their own favorites from thousands of radio stations which will then be available on the AudioTron.

External links

• Turtle Beach AudioTron website
• Audiotron Discussion List
• Audiotron Radio station database
• Samba File Extension Mapping VFS Module a Linux daemon for realtime on-the-fly conversion of flac
  FLAC
  FLAC is a codec which allows digital audio to be losslessly compressed such that file size is reduced without any information being lost...
  
   and ogg
  Ogg
  Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The creators of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia.The Ogg container format can multiplex...
  
   files to an Audiotron compatible WAV
  WAV
  Waveform Audio File Format , is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs...
  
  stream.
• Amazon store sales page.