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• Just because vorbis is a non-issue to Apple, doesn't mean it is a non-issue to me. I have no problem with the perfectly valid and obvious fact that Apple cares not about the vorbis niche market, but I get annoyed when people suggest that *I* should support Apple's position.
• Many people right now are already playing Ogg Vorbis files on Apple iPods using the Rockbox firmware. This is the real reason why Apple doesn't need Ogg Vorbis: the geeks can make iPods play vorbis files anyway, whether Apple likes it or not.

I purchased an iPod Nano last September and I now play Ogg Vorbis files on it every day without issue. I've converted my entire collection from Mp3 to Ogg in fact. Previously I was convinced that deviating from Mp3 would limit my choice of a player in the future but I no longer have that concern.

The solution is Rockbox.

MP3, OGG, FLAC, AAC, ALAC, AC3 and WavPack playback.

You also get gapless playback, crossfading, a real EQ (not just presets) and ReplayGain support. Not to mention the rapidly growing collection of games and plugins and other random features such a real JPG viewer that doesn't require conversion. It also frees you from having to use iTunes or GTKpod or other software to interface with the player. You simply copy the files and folders over directly and navigate whatever file structure you choose on the screen (mine is /Artist/(Year) Album)/).

The reality of the situation is that you're going to end up using Rockbox on your iAudio anyway. The Cowon firmware is pretty terrible and doesn't have a lot of the features mentioned above. This is the case with my friend who also ordered the U2. I paid $50 more for my Nano but got twice the storage space, a color screen, and a form factor that is ridiculously small in comparison. We both use Rockbox.

"It'd be adding in another chip that maybe 1% of the userbase would make use of."

Rockbox seems to get by playing Ogg/MusePack/FLAC/WavPack on my Nano just fine without any extra hardware.

Rockbox supports Vorbis. Works fine on my iPod.

The very first thing I did when I got my ipod was installed rockbox http://www.rockbox.org/ and got rid of the dependency on iTunes. I can now plug my ipod in, copy my music to it the same way I'd copy something to a normal hard drive, unplug it, and play. Its still got some issues, but the dependency on iTunes is gone, and the people working on it do a great job.

Right now, the 60GB 5G iPod can be had for ~$399...it does Video (and fairly decent video at that) and doubles as a digital photo wallet (with a $25 digital camera connector)...not to mention, there's currently a project to port RockBox to the iPod...

There aren't many that even offer a 60GB option...none that are signifigantly lower in price, and have one or more of the following problems...they have poor build quality (I know this is opinion), poor firmware (also opinion), low battery life (compared to the 60GB Video), B&W screen, no video support, or no digital camera connectivity.

ok, why is everything an ipod killer these days? I've seen everything from cell phones to game consoles labelled an ipod killer.

Maybe it's just wishful thinking from people who actually enjoy music. Let's face it, the iPod has done for digital audio players what the eight track did for hi-fi. Would it have killed them to spend a little extra development time to deliver gapless playback, a real equalizer, and Ogg Vorbis support?

Help me, Rockbox, you're my only hope.

There are examples of Open Source Software bettering commercial in accessibility.

Rockbox, the replacement firmware for archos mp3 players, is not only a lot better than the original, but more accessible too. See http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/BlindFA Q. I understand that this makes it the only off the shelf, inexpensive, mp3 player with such accessibility. Specialist units available at the time were much more expensive.

This was due to the involvment of blind users in the development mailing lists. One or two initial blind users started using it when it got basic support for identifying where you were in the menus aurally (usefull to the sighted if your mp3 player is in your pocket), and with their feedback it quickly improved.

With Rockbox, input to the development team from disabled users was very well received, and I think this would be the case with very many OSS projects. OSS depends on community input and that doesn't just include coders. Clear descriptions of requirements; design discussions on mail-lists; testing of features, they're are all useful. If projects have disabled voices within their development community then I'm sure that accessible OSS software will result.

There are examples of Open Source Software bettering commercial in accessibility.

Rockbox, the replacement firmware for archos mp3 players, is not only a lot better than the original, but more accessible too. See http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/BlindFA Q. I understand that this makes it the only off the shelf, inexpensive, mp3 player with such accessibility. Specialist units available at the time were much more expensive.

This was due to the involvment of blind users in the development mailing lists. One or two initial blind users started using it when it got basic support for identifying where you were in the menus aurally (usefull to the sighted if your mp3 player is in your pocket), and with their feedback it quickly improved.

With Rockbox, input to the development team from disabled users was very well received, and I think this would be the case with very many OSS projects. OSS depends on community input and that doesn't just include coders. Clear descriptions of requirements; design discussions on mail-lists; testing of features, they're are all useful. If projects have disabled voices within their development community then I'm sure that accessible OSS software will result.

An open source and advanced firmware for Archos, iRiver, and now lately iPod players, it has voice prompts for all menu options (and there's a lot of them), in different languages even, and you can add your own, such as names for directories or individual files. If you don't want to add them, it can still say e.g. "Directory 5", or spell out the name.

More info in the FAQ for blind and visually impaired users. (and a note to smartasses: blind users commonly use a screen reader to read webpages)

An open source and advanced firmware for Archos, iRiver, and now lately iPod players, it has voice prompts for all menu options (and there's a lot of them), in different languages even, and you can add your own, such as names for directories or individual files. If you don't want to add them, it can still say e.g. "Directory 5", or spell out the name.

More info in the FAQ for blind and visually impaired users. (and a note to smartasses: blind users commonly use a screen reader to read webpages)

Just use Rockbox
http://www.rockbox.org/
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodPor t/

Just use Rockbox
http://www.rockbox.org/
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodPor t/

Don't forget the ever-deserving http://www.magnatune.com/. Mmm, FLAC (which play fine on an iPod with Rockbox, along with MusePack, Vorbis, WavPack, etc)

Well there is always the roll your own UI. Rockbox has a very customisable GUI, I haven't used it but my cousin has been raving about it on his iRiver. They have a beta for the iPod going - although you have to get it from the CVS iirc. http://www.rockbox.org/ then there is iPod linux, and ones own coding skillz.

Apple does not support OGG and FLAC, but iPods do. Just install Rockbox on it and you'll have support for ogg, flac, musepack, aac (but not DRM'd aac), gapless playback, and all the bonuses of free software to boot.

For better or for worse, the portable player universe revolves around the iPod now. This holds even for the free software community. I fully expect that the iPod will become the dominant platform for ogg vorbis portables.

To the gp who claims that ogg vorbis is pointless because nobody outside of a few geeks care: you're missing the point. I personally gain a lot from vorbis support, because with only 4GB of storage for flash players, sound quality at low bitrates suddenly becomes important, and ogg vorbis aoTuV beats any other format in terms of sound quality at low bitrates (yes, even AAC). If I have the option of using vorbis and benefitting from it, then I'll use it. I don't really care what everyone else uses. It's not like I trade music with other people (which is illegal anyway), so why should I care what file formats everyone else uses, or vice versa.

I thought Rockbox was the coolest accessory anyway, and Apple sure can't take over that! ;-)

http://www.rockbox.org/

How about a 60GB iPod with Rockbox on it so you can have gapless playback and FLAC support like you do on your Karma?

I can zip really quickly down to the approximate area, then slow down, and zero in on the right one.

With Rockbox I get to do that on several different players, and more importantly I get to specify the amount of scroll acceleration and "inertia" I like. But don't worry, the Rockbox Ipod port is progressing nicely...

I can zip really quickly down to the approximate area, then slow down, and zero in on the right one.

With Rockbox I get to do that on several different players, and more importantly I get to specify the amount of scroll acceleration and "inertia" I like. But don't worry, the Rockbox Ipod port is progressing nicely...

There are several features that the iPod is still missing. They're the reason I haven't gotten one. One is Ogg playback, just because I have a lot of music in Ogg. That's forgivable, and I can transcode if need be. However, the other one is simply unacceptable, and that's the lack of gapless playback. Workarounds like encoding all my music as one file are also unacceptable. I need true gapless playback for files that support it.

However, I might soon be buying an iPod, since the fine folks over at RockBox are busy porting their firmware over: http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodPor t

That will solve the gapless issue and hopefully the Ogg issue, too. It'll also add a whole lot of cool features... When they finish that project, I might finally buy an iPod.

http://www.rockbox.org/ is currently being ported to the iAudio X5, which makes this solid player even more attractive

Rockbox supports mp3, ogg vorbis, MPC, AAC (MP4), A/52 (AC3), WAV, AIFF, FLAC, ALAC, Wavepack, shorten. Some of these decoders need to be optimized, but they're working on it, and future formats are possible.

So stop worring about these format wars, pick which format suits YOU best and demand the hardware manufacturers support those formats. As you can see with rockbox, it's not hard.

Just install this on your iPod and keep your oggs.

iPod in fact now supports Ogg Vorbis (and many other formats too), with an excellent third-party open source firmware called Rockbox. The playback is also gapless and supports Replaygain data, and it doesn't force you to use iTunes or any other database tool. see: http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/IpodPor t

Unfortunately, it looks like they haven't been able to get audio playback to work on the iPod video yet.

As to the 8 track, there may not be gaps between songs, but what about gaps right in the middle of songs. How fun is that?

You could try using Rockbox for your nano - they've just managed to make the sound driver work. Rockbox supports FLAC, Ogg, mp3, Musepack, etc. It's still a bit rough on the edges, but it's pretty cool - plus customisable play screens rock!

Anyone who has greater than a 30 IQ will quickly learn the fact that the Apple people went to great lengths to take a perfectly good USB mass storage device and bastardize it by adding an artificial software layer on top of it called "iTunes". In order to use the device you have to use the iTunes client, which forbids shared access to the device, prevents copying mp3 files to device from multiple computers, prevents importation of native directory structures into the device -- it strips directory structures off the imported filenames and you wind up with John Denver, Slayer and Dieselboy in the same directory. Also transferring files to the device takes about 5-10 times longer than a similar USB drive.

What concerned me the most about Apple's braindead design choices with the iPod was that they were expecting people to spend two or three times the price that you would pay for a similar sized Archos Jukebox device. I just cannot justify spending two or three times the money for narrow minded crippleware that attempts to force their users into this thinking is "normal". No thanks, Apple. I'll buy a $45.00 Archos Jukebox 6000 on ebay, pull out the 6GB drive, plug in a 100GB toshiba notebook drive for $133.00 and flash the firmware with rockbox.org firmware. Adding music is as simple as plugging it into the USB and drag/drop all your files to it.

What I really want is a portable disk-based audio-player that has a completely normal USB harddisk interface to the computer, and that supports ogg vorbis, musepack, flac, and other common formats. But I guess there's no market for that, people really want to limit their choices to the iTunes I guess, and never have a need for portable harddisks in the same unit...

Howdy joto,

I have an iRiver H340 and love it.

It is a completely normal USB harddisk (40GB).
Supports ogg vorbis, MP3, WMA, ASF and WAV.
Can record direct to MP3 from line-in, internal microphone and also from the built in FM radio.

I wish it supported FLAC, but alas it does not. However soon the Rockbox open firmware will support this player, bringing FLAC amongst other things with it. Awesome!

I am pretty sure the answer is no for gapless playback. From what I understand, the standard mp3 codec doesn't support it, but AAC can. Apple doesn't support it, the iRiver does, IIRC, and some guys have a hacked up mp3 codec/firmware that supports it. Also, Sony players will do it if you use ATRAC...So as you see this gapless playback seems to have been not a big priority for many companies, and I personally haven't heard many people complaining. ;)

ReplayGain, no. It is a proposed standard. If I understand the concept, the iPod, as well as iTunes uses something equivalent called "Soundcheck"

Any hardware supported by Rockbox open source firmware can do gapless with properly encoded albums. Rockbox on the iRiver hard drive DAPs is perfectly gapless.

Today it runs the open source Rockbox firmware and supports virtually every major audio format in use today: MP3, Ogg Vorbis, Musepack, A/52, AAC (experimental), FLAC, Shorten, Apple Lossless and WavPack. It even has a 33 shade greyscale JPEG viewer.

"lame enc can put the actual track sample count into a special id3 tag but i'd be surprised if any hardware would support that."

See:

http://www.rockbox.org/

(Open Source firmware for various portables - experimental iRiver version does gapless from Lame enc mp3 and OGG). I think the Rio Karma also respected the Lame tags - it was certainly gapless with later firmware.

I drank the Ogg Vorbis Kool-Aid and ripped hundreds of CDs in that format, fully believing that it was the Format Of The Future (tm). I'm having a lapse of faith, though: you have to jump through hoops to play them in iTunes (like installing barely-supported Quicktime plugins), and forget about listening to them on an iPod or any random piece of consumer hardware.

I don't really understand why you want to play anything through iTunes. Why not just use xmms or Winamp? Either will play ogg vorbis and plenty of other codecs.

Also you should check out Rockbox http://www.rockbox.org/. They are even working on a port of that to the iPod now. This is my answer, coupled with buying CDs. Rockbox supports multiple codecs, so I am not hamstrung by the vendor's proprietary firmware. And it's open source so you can contribute to making it better if you have the desire and skills.

Simple.. do your research to live in a DRM free environment

Digital Audio Player
I researched around for an non-cripled (no DRM) player that would mount as a hard drive, allowing access to the music files without the use of any software.

Result:iRiver iHP-120 (which has better audio fidelity, plays more formats, and has many more options than the iPod [digital optical out/input, FM radio, etc.]) Not to mention I'm running rockbox on it so it's a wonderful experience

Music purchases
I buy CDs! I can rip everything in the FORMAT & BITRATE that I choose, and if, God forbid, I lose or destroy my DAP (& the duplicates on my computer) I can re-rip something. Also, if you search around, you can get CD's online for cheap & without tax.

I agree--I'm not nailed down to iTunes and I'm very glad.

No one has mentioned the "Rockbox" open-source project for the Archos mp3 Jukeboxes.

http://www.rockbox.org/

The Archos Jukeboxes were uglier and bulkier than iPods, but much cheaper, and the open-sourced firmware is lovely and has amazing features. And I'm no uber-geek, but I can still get handy extra benefits like little shell scripts for customized playlists.

(Unfortunately Archos has since knuckled under to M$ pressure, and their newer stuff isn't linux-compatible.)

I would drop it in an instant if I could have a nice open source digital music player

iRiver with open-source Rockbox...

The thing that always gets me about iPod vs other media players is that the other things that try to compete are players, and relating to music, and now movies, it stops at that. Farther up this thread I saw a link to Rockbox, which is a cool looking media player with games and recording and stuff. One of the features it lists is the ability to delete and rename files. This is the most obvious place where it steps out of direct competition with the iPod, and further inspection shows that really not many other players do directly compete with the iPod. The iPod is an extension of a music database, iTunes. It keeps track of statistical data about your music, such as the play count, rating count, last play time, date added, etc.. Drag-and-drop players do not offer this functionality. You can't just plug in your Rockbox player to your computer and have it automatically sync any songs that were added recently, songs that are rated high, remove songs that have been rated low on the portable player itself, etc.. iTunes does that because of the fact that it's a database. I know that not a lot of people want that, they want drag-and-drop, but that is not the iPod and so those devices do not directly compete with it. Unless you're including the database features of the iPod, you're not giving it an appropriate comparison to other portable media players. The iPod is a portable extension of iTunes. A satellite.

I've already been using open source on my iRiver - and I can tell you, it completely wipes the floor with the ipod - the only problem? The player that I have looks like an ugly box. http://www.rockbox.org

What it should be like:
1) Decent hardware.
2) Full documentation for hardware.
3) ALL the source code.
4) A free cross-platform dev environment that is easy to install and setup. Gcc/linux/cygwin maybe?

And finally port and extend the rockbox firmware. http://www.rockbox.org/

Without that software we'd be adding song ratings on the ipod itself

Assuming Ratings were not available (they are!), let me tell you how I'd do it in Media Center, my favourite jukebox software.

Define new custom tag: MyRating. Click the radio button so "MyRating" embeds within files and updates during Library changes.
Optionally: set it to update Library setting from device files setting, if newer.
Create new Smartlist with MyRating >=3, say.
Synch.
That's about it.

Of course, you would have to create the Smartlists using MC itself and define the playback statically because the iPod is a closed system with very little configurability available to the end user. For myself, I prefer more control over my playback devices, and the option of open source.

does knowing a movie is gonna be out on DVD six months after hitting the movie theater stop people from going to the movies? Not really.

Box Office is a money loser for Hollywood. It breaks even on DVDs and cleans up tidily with TV and syndication. The box office kabuki is just to add a bit of pizzazz to the TV launch. And in fact, the Box is declining rapidly and becoming more and more of a liability. The release window has now shrunk to 3 months or so for Thanksgiving movies. The studios make no money from popcorn sales, which is all the multiplexes care about, and most of them went bankrupt several years ago anyway. It's a death spiral.

The old Archos players are bulky, but they do go to 120GB when you drop in the latest Seagate 2.5" drives. Pretty sweet. It's nice being able to add $100GB to your DAP for only a hundred bucks or so.

It's just a pity that their expansion has to stop here because their disk controller is not LBA and only reads up to the ~127GB limit.

That's not enough to decode fullres MPEG4 in realtime. Heck, today's xScale PDAs can barely do that at around 500mhz. It would need a faster CPU and/or a dedicated custom decoder chip.

Remember, it's a small screen.

The open-source Rockbox people managed to add a video player to the 4-year-old Archos hardware, and it's using a CPU most often found in washing machines (12 MHz SH1734). Now, the video is greyscale, but it is impressive to see it working, and with full stereo audio synch, at 67 fps.

I'm expecting great things from the port to iRiver: a 140MHz ColdFire 5249 is a whole different kind of beast. It's already enabled a pretty spiffy Gameboy emulator,

That's not enough to decode fullres MPEG4 in realtime. Heck, today's xScale PDAs can barely do that at around 500mhz. It would need a faster CPU and/or a dedicated custom decoder chip.

Remember, it's a small screen.

The open-source Rockbox people managed to add a video player to the 4-year-old Archos hardware, and it's using a CPU most often found in washing machines (12 MHz SH1734). Now, the video is greyscale, but it is impressive to see it working, and with full stereo audio synch, at 67 fps.

I'm expecting great things from the port to iRiver: a 140MHz ColdFire 5249 is a whole different kind of beast. It's already enabled a pretty spiffy Gameboy emulator,

That's not enough to decode fullres MPEG4 in realtime. Heck, today's xScale PDAs can barely do that at around 500mhz. It would need a faster CPU and/or a dedicated custom decoder chip.

Remember, it's a small screen.

The open-source Rockbox people managed to add a video player to the 4-year-old Archos hardware, and it's using a CPU most often found in washing machines (12 MHz SH1734). Now, the video is greyscale, but it is impressive to see it working, and with full stereo audio synch, at 67 fps.

I'm expecting great things from the port to iRiver: a 140MHz ColdFire 5249 is a whole different kind of beast. It's already enabled a pretty spiffy Gameboy emulator,

their clumsiness, and their poor interface.

One word: Shuffle.

Two years brings a lot of changes. At the time he was busy dissing those players, there were 1GB players available. In fact, a player I have from that era now takes 2GB cards. I like progress. Progress is good. The nano represents progress of a sort for Apple - I think absorbing most of the Creative mp3 player design team has worked out well. It's nice that Apple finally has a pretty good, albeit quite expensive, flash player, even if it did take it a few years to get it right.

But there are other players since then that have advanced significantly, adding video, games, emulators, PDA functions, wireless, expansion, and so on. For myself, I like my personal media tech to push the envelope, and to not be so hostile to open-source firmware enhancements.

I'll take your word for the video. I don't really spend "probably on average 75-80% of my waking day" on the Internet, but let me see...

In addition to your story and the one in TFA, the Rockbox project recently had a security breach in TWiki too, and the whole thing got deleted. The news item is still there on their website, if you want to read it. I know the plural of "anecdote" is not "data", but this little collection of tales of woe still doesn't do much to bolster my confidence in TWiki.

Rockbox, the open-source firmware project for the Archos Player, Recorder and iRiver H1xx's recently lost their entire TWiki on a similar security flaw. I'm not sure if it is the _same_ flaw, but it allowed the guy who did it to just wipe the whole thing clean. Thank god for the whole backup-culture...

RockBox comes highly recommended, with ports to quite a few newer players being underway, including the iAUDIO ones; it supports Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and even ReplayGain iirc (features page is down atm) which is great for keeping volume sensible. I'm gonna wait and see how far these ports get before investing in a player.

Wow. I know what's going into my trusty old Archos mp3 player real soon now...