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Are There MP3/CD Player Combinations?
This is a two-fold question. Someone asked me a while ago if combination MP3/CD Players existed. I haven't heard of any, but that doesn't mean that they aren't out there. Now there are portable CD players and portable MP3 players, but has someone out there actually put the two together in a nice affordable unit? Who makes it? Where can I find them? How much do they cost? Here's a slightly related question from JDALaRose: "I'm interested in the opinions of fellow Slashdotters as regards which of the portable MP3 players are the best in terms of not being SDMI compliant, or at least not restrictively so. Thoughts?"
Check out some of the hardware on mp3car.com. This link has a few MP3/CD players right up on top. Not too bad on the wallet either. ;) -capncrack
These guys are always ahead of the game when it comes to making mp3s mobile. Oh and I'm on there too if you want to see a sweet car.
Popular science had an article about Aiwa's new line of CD players. One is a car stereo that will play mp3's as well as a portable mp3/cd player and a home stereo. The car stereo is definitly worthy of my dollar even at $350 (seems good to me). All are due out in late May or early June. They have a press release on Aiwa's site http://www.aiwa.com
http://www.pineusa.com/d'music/sm200 c_spec.htm
Me, I'm waiting for actual *release* before I commit myself. There have been reviews of both of these, but so far both seem rather dubious, with numerous production delays.
Wait and see... :P
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
You know, looking at it, it almost looks like that "licensed technology" came from an itsy... :)
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Unfortunately, they're not that common, and hence have a high price. Also, Chinese engineering isn't the highest quality, so your mileage may vary.
Still, I've $350 in bonus that I have yet to spend, and given the auction history of the item, that will cover it.
Shinco has a portable VCD Player with a small TFT display able to play MP3 cds.
I bought one in September so this guys are way ahead of the story in the register.
http://www.china-shinco.com/
http://gabrielcain.com/
There is a minidisk player out there that comes with a program that converts mp3s to its compression and then allows for download onto a disk on the player. It's pretty nice, I might get one myself. I wonder how well that program would work under wine??? =)
CmdrChalupa
(who knows not how to remove his old sig)
CmdrChalupa, who finally changed his sig (drop -FlogSpammersNow- for my real address)
No, the Ford Focus player doesn't play mp3-cds. Visteon have shown a prototype indash player which plays MP3 CDs though (CES, etc) and also an MP3-changer which uses HDD technology - we developed this unit for them.
Hugo
empeg
I have to disagree with you on this. I've got over 70 CDs recorded to MP3 on one of my home computers. I bought all the discs though, and ripped them myself. The originals sit in a box, not getting used now as I have a much nicer way of listening to them. I've also bought several albums from EMusic and copied them to disc. The disc wiste with my others for safe keeping, and the tracks get listened to from my home stereo.
There isn't anything fundamentally wrong with MP3, just like any other tool you need to use it responsibly. It doesn't have to hold true that using MP3 is trying to "buck the industry".
I think that the idea of CDROM and MP3 on a portable kind of defeats the purpose.
CDs are too darned big, and not easily erasable.
But a Digital MiniDisc Player with MP3 capability would rock!
Small, runs for hours on a small battery, and each track erasable at will?
I want one!
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
For everything from do-it-yourself car MP3 players to portable NVRAM players, this is the page to check out: http://hardware.mp3.com/hardware/. It's also got stuff on other related hardware, such as sound cards, speakers, and other devices. Haven't looked into discman-type devices before, as I don't like walking around with headphones on. Something a little bit bigger seems just right for the car (something too big wastes trunk space).
WTF are you talking about? I'm going to assume you intended your response to be germane to the question that was originally posed, namely "What Discman-like devices can play CDs full of MP3s." In which case you are patently incorrect. MP3s are perfectly legitimate here because it is a lot, lot more convenient to have one CD with hundreds of your favorite tracks loaded up and encoded as MP3s than to have to swap CDs, or even burn a compilation with a few of your favorite tracks. Encoding MP3s of CDs that you own is covered under "Personal Use" of the copyright laws and is perfectly, 100% legal.
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
when you will be able to have 6 gigs of trax on one of these:
x /specs.html
F COWFCM.html
http://www.nomadworld.com/products/nomad-jukebo
and
http://popularmechanics.com/popmech/elect/0001E
[scroll down the page and look for the Creative/Nomad player]
There are only two to my knowlodge. One is the Apex Digital AD-600A. Which plays DVD's, CD's, Kariokee CD's, and MP3's burned onto a CD. I purchased this DVD player for $194 after tax from my local Circut City. But I'm pretty sure they are getting sueded for having the ability to disable the copyprotection feature in the dvd player. So good luck finding one.
The other is called Mambox. This device is the size of any standard Discman. It playes both audio CD's and MP3's that have been burned to a CD. This product is out yet however. According to Jason Moh, Director of Product Marketing, The first scheduled production will be the week of April 17th.
I was thinking about this the other day with repect to car stereo toys. The only car mp3 players is Empeg (I think). The problem is that it has a hard drive and needs to be loaded up.
.mpu (playlist files) first, then catalog the mp3s on the disk. This way, you wouldn't have to take the player out of your car to load it (or however it is done with Empeg. Also, I'd have the player cache the crap out of the songs, to prevent skipping.
:)
Ideally I'd build a car audio player with a crusoe processor and embeded linux, kinda like the demo'ed web pads, but for mp3s. I'd have the player be able to read cd audio, cdrom (iso9660+joliett) + dvdram (for a high end version). I'd have the player search for
In the End you would end up with a fairly low memory, diskless player. You would just hop in your car and throw in a regular CD, or a CDROM or DVDRAM or your favorite songs and have hours of music at hand. I bet someone could do this for half the price (sans dvd) of Empeg (US$1000 last time I check). I'm not a hardare hacker, so I wouldn't know where to start, but if someone wants to give it a try, I'd be happy to test a prototype.
JungleBoy
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
I think it's because the IRC servers were shut down today and they ran out of uninteresting things to post...
Plays CDs and CD-R's with MP3s on them. Equalizer, anti-shock (though I doubt playing MP3 CD-Rs could have any kind of anti-shock), and a built-in battery charger if you use rechargeables. Fairly ugly-looking, but it's portable and the best part is that there's NO FRIGGIN' DOWNLOADING. Has a digital display, a simple dsp equalizer, and bass boost.
Available for immediate shipment at: 1-800-292-6095 or http://www.tigerdirect.com/.
Umm, duh...
Kriston J. Rehberg
http://kriston.net/
Kriston
There's already one in production, as it would appear you could buy one on eBay. The mp3 site dimension music just recently did a feature on this sort of thing.
Sure it does. My roomie has one. Why in God's name would somebody make an mp3/cd/dvd player, that won't play regular audio cd's? It's basically a default feature. Every DVD player that I know of plays audio cd's. That's why DVD changers exist, they all have that feature.
Thats odd. The web site says nothing about playing MP3's. If I remember right, the processor in the origional one is not powerful enough to play MP3's. And it's always run WinCE, as it was codeveloped by Clairon and Microsoft.
If you want MP3 and future standards playing in your car, save yourself the trouble and buy an empeg. Look for the Mark II to ship June 9, and Mark I units to be for sale on eBay.
Ok ok, you are obviously talking about two completely different things, and through the use of incorrect terminology, have gotten your ideas mixed up.
What sorehands is talking about (I think) is using RAM as a BUFFER, so you would have ~6 meg of RAM in the thing that would copy ~6 meg of MP3 off the CD-R. This would allow you to play the music, skip -free for about 6 minutes, and only then would you have to spin the CD up to read another 6 meg.
While this is a good idea, I am pretty sure it takes more energy to spin the CD up to speed than it does to keep it spinning. The question is whether you save more energy by kicking the motor off while playing from RAM or if you save by keeping it running. Either way, the power consumption would probably be pretty close. The other thing is that having my discman spin up every 6 minutes would probably be annoying, unless the put in something to muffle the sound and the perceptable motion it would cause. Better idea is to use RAM as a buffer, but leave the CD spinning with the read head (read as laser) off. THAT would probably save the most power and annoyance factor.
What loki7 is talking about is using the thing to rip CDs. Ignoring the term CD-ROM in sorehands post, he assumes that the idea is to put in an audio CD, have the player rip it to WAV (or directly to encoder), encode it, then store the one song in RAM so that it can be played with less power. No offense intended, but this idea is so stupid I didn't even consider the fact that it could be the actual idea. Apparently loki7 thought otherwise.
Mycroft-X the arbiter.
Stop the fucking whining. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.
No offense, but did this person even try looking before asking this question (about the CD/mp3 player)? I mean, it took me less then 5 seconds to look at Mp3.com's hardware page to find the very first item (at least when I just checked) is such a device. And they've had several posted over the last few months that are in developtment.
/. article on this subject would've been one that points out the players shown in mp3.com's list exist are are being designed.
That's just one site too.. there must be other sites with mp3 hardware reviews/previews out there. Plus a search on deja of
mp3 & cd & audio & player
had about 2300 hits, many of which have URLs to companies with such products in the works.
I think a better
- My favorite error message: xscreensaver, running on an old Sparc 5 w/ 8bit color: bsod: Couldn't allocate color Blue
Minidisks are already lossycompressed. There should apperantly be little gain in using MP3 encoding.
That's a very stupid design CDs can only contain 99 tracks, that means you have to have songs over 6.5MB to make them all fit on the CD. AD conversions seems like a pretty bad idea to.
Very interesting, it looks like they actually have a product there. It's just too bad that the link to actually purchase one leads to amazon.com.. A bit of pressure might convince them to put it for sale somewhere else, too.
On the subject of dual-media MP3 players, I was wondering if there were any products (vaporware or not) for MP3 car audio that offer an integrated dashboard control unit (like a standard car radio faceplate) with a CD reader in it and mp3s stored to hard drive in a box in the trunk? I greatly dislike CD changers and I prefer to have the ability to swap disks around with abandon while driving, but I also don't want some strange little dongle hanging off the side of my radio. I'd like to have an integrated system (CD+MP3+radio) managed from one location. Does this exist?
-- "I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see that I am serious!"
Got a PMP300 with the stock 32MB in it. I get about 64mins of music on it if I use 64kbps mp3's. I find the 64kbp to be fine for what I need, I mostly listen on subways and trains, and the time is just right if I change the load each morning to keep me busy.
A huge benefit is that there are no moving parts, thus no mechanical wear other than the headphone jack and the interface control pad thing. Also battery life if phenomenal. I get a good week of commuting out of a single AA alkaline batt.
Any tips for cheap SmartCards for it?
You could always get the Sharp MD-MT15S, which is a pretty cheap portable player/recorder. While it's not the smallest/lightest MiniDisc player out there, it's still pretty reasonable (retails for $199). You can get a Voquette adapter for it for $49.95 from Voquette directly, and it converts MP3s, streaming audio, E-mails, Word docs, etc. into ATRAC format (though their software only works under Windows).
My suggestion is to buy one of the MD-MT15S's for $89.95! That's the best deal ever. If you go to the MiniDisc.org website, there is a link on how to get this from MobShop (formerly ACompany.com) to get the players for $89.95! Basically, there is a promotional code that takes $50 off the price, and if enough people buy one, it goes down to $139.95. That, plus the $50 off for the promotion, plus free shipping makes it a $89.95 MiniDisc player. They have gone through two successful cycles already (I just bought one from the second cycle), and they have another one going on right now. I was going to get a MP3/CD player, but for the price, I couldn't justify it. Since I can get an add-on that will convert my MP3s to ATRAC format, and discs are only ~$2 a piece, it's a very nice cheap alternative.
http://www.csh.rit.edu/~eriky/raite
The Raite allows firmware upgrades from a CDrom you can download and burn yerself. From what I've heard, that may not be true with the Apex.
__________
http://www.stupidonline.com/products/COOL-0011.htm l
Shipping April 13.
The last I checked 2 or 3 months ago was that there weren't really any out at that point but a lot of them being developed and in production. There are some homebrew component systems that have been talked about on slashdot before, but nothing really commercially availible.
I would love to get my hands on a portable one, though. 650 minutes of lovin' goodness. Just have to hope it supports high bitrates(yeah, yeah, it doesn't work out to 650 minutes then. i know).
A planet where apes evolved from men? Long live the apes.
Creative's Nomad Jukebox seems pretty cool. A little expensive though ($600), and no cd player. But being able to store 100 hrs of music, I think I can live without the cd. :)
How about mambox .. http://www.mambox.com/ ? They're taking pre-orders at this point, apparently their product was ready but they found a firmware bug..?
-Matt
Thanks for the link - I've been looking for portable players myself recently and of all the ones I've run across (all through MP3.com hardware page) the MamboX player looks ike the best one for the moment - though I still worry about how easily one will be able to browse large directory structures.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here is the only one that I know of, from Pine. It plays audio cds and mp3s. It looks pretty cool. I'm not sure if it's actually available now, as I haven't see it anywhere, but I know it's been around, at least in vaporware/hype form, for a while. Looks pretty cool. Someone post a followup if they know if/where these are available!
Mike
[English version]
- ----------------------------
- ----------------------------
+++++++++++> MAXTEK Newsletter HTTP://WWW.MAXTEK.DE ++++++++++
Dear customers and subscribers!
The topics of this newsletter are:
1) Once again: Availability of MamboX P300
2) Features of the MamboX P300
3) Wanted: Your opinion
4) Tonight on TV
5) Delay in eMail response
1) It is getting embarassing. Tagram let us wait. Since there has not been much
progress in march, Tagram have released a letter to all their customers. We have
included their letter with this mail (Tagrams letter can be found at
http://www.mambox.com and http://www.mp3.com). The date mentioned in this
letter, 10th of april, does not seem very probable, as Tagram have not yet
managed to send us sampels from the serial production.
Yesterday evening Tagram told us, that the "P300 will be released this month -
with a probability of 90 percent". Tgaram have sent sampels to the FDC for
approval, so we can awiat some testing results next week.
2) Tagram said that the P300 will not have a text display. There have been
different featurelists on Tagrams Website (http://www.mambox.com/p300.htm und
http://www.mambox.com/faq.htm), one claiming the P300 features textdiplay.
3) As the partnership with Tagram has been a good but not very fruitful one, we
have been looking for alternatives once more - and found one. Actually, there is
quite a lot of MP3-CD-Players announced on the internet but none of these will
be released before 4th quarter. The manufacturer of this device, we call it
"818", has been very reliable so far. Serial production for this MP3-CD-Player
has already started and it is only waiting for CE-approval, so it can be sold in
the E.U. We have already been given samples from the serial production, and thus
have been able to test the "818" extensively. THis MP3-CD-Player does not
feature everything but should cover most users' needs at a very attarctive price
of about 174 Euros. The unit weight is 265grs. and it looks like a "normal"
discman. It features: bitrates mono 16-32kBit/s, stereo 96-192kBit/s, variable
bitrates of all quality levels (time displayed is not exact with VBR); find
MP3-files in sub-directories (we tested it up to!
10 levels deep); Non-MP3-files are skipped; 50 seconds anti-shock memory;
playback of Audio-CDs; EQ with 6 presets; playbck modes: All files, intro-scan,
current track only, random play, current sub-directory only, playback order of
sub-directories and songs is programmable (DirProg and Prog); recharge-function
for NiCd-batteries; 8minutes voice-recording function with external microphone
connector [no kidding]; power-supply, blank CD-R and probably a set of
NiCd-batteries is included. It does not support CD-RW, reads first session fof
multisession CDs.
What do you think of the "818"? Please let us know.
4) Tonight, the "828" Mp3-Cd-Player will be on German TV-Station "Nord3" which
can be received via Astra satellite 11.582/H. Programme will commence at
19.10CET. We will introduce the "818" on our website next week.
5) Wir want to apologize for the delays in asnwering your eMial-requests that
have occured since last week. This is mainly due to a server problem. We hope to
have this problem solved before the weekend.
Best regards,
your team from maxtek
-----------------------------------------------
From: Jason Moh, Director of Product Marketing
To: All MAMBO-X P300 Enthusiasts
Date: March 21, 2000
I have been receiving an average of 300 emails a day. 90% of them are asking me
"When is the release date?" and "Why is it taking so long?" I would like to
return all emails and explain what's going on but that's impossible when I
receive 300 emails a day. I also hesitate to respond because I am more
frustrated than all of the MP3 enthusiasts that are not able to purchase the
Mambo-X. I am frustrated because whenever the factory notified us of the
shipping date, something always came up.
I just took a trip to the factory overseas. I saw the actual sample working. I
think the best answer for "why" is that we developed Mambo-X from the ground up.
As a result, it has taken much longer than we expected. We did once think about
abandoning this project, but the overwhelming response from the MP3 enthusiasts
resellers made us focus and move on; even though it has been delayed and
delayed.
Now we come to a point where I must lay out the facts. The mechanical sample was
already done and working samples, as of today, are in assembly. The first
scheduled production will be the week of April 10th. In other words, the factory
will start shipping later that week. Once the mechanical sample is completed, it
means that most of the development is done and we shall let the working samples
do the fine-tuning. I saw the mechanical sample, so the shipping date is not far
away.
I sincerely apologize for any anxiety, confusion, or concerns that all of you,
the MP3 enthusiasts, have put up with during the Mambo-X development. Once
again, thank you for your support.
Sincerely,
Jason Moh
Director of Product Marketing
Tagram System Corporation
-----------------------------------------------
MamboX claims a battery life of 14 hours.
With an mp3 player there is the potential to save power as you only need to spin the disk at 0.1x or something like that.
How about mp3/radio, for example. MP3 alone is very small, but a CD requires a helluva lot space. I'd rather have a small mp3 and small radio integrated.
(Or perhapse minidisc/radio.)
I doubt, therefore I may be.
Oh really? I have a Rio 500 as well and it lasts forever. What type of batteries are you using? I use both NiMH and alkaline, I get over ten hours on each.
I wish MPs on the memory card were stored in DOS format, like my digital camera. That way, it'd be much easier for me to exchange files with it and my Power Mac.
Karen
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GAT d-- a? C++ UX+ L++ P++ E--- W+++$ N++ o-- !K !w O---- M++$ !V PS++
Here's one that I stumbled on. I don't really know that much about it, other than what the site says... http://www.kiwi-computers.com/discman/_ ______
_________
________________
'Diamond' Joe Quimby
for a portable unit check out
http://www.mambox.com/products.htm. There is also the CD/DVD/VCD/MP3 player posted a while ago. The Apex AD600A. Check out http://64.45.6.252/apex/.
As far as I can tell, the Rio (PMP300, anyway) doesn't care what MP3s you play on it.
I bought one july '99 on a holiday in China (PRC), they sell them in every department store. The company that makes them is called Shinco.
I don't expect you to believe me, so here's a picture of my $99 MP3 CD/VCD player:
And here's a closeup of the MP3 label.
I believe they sell 4 different models, even one with a built in Sega game console ;)
I can't remember who makes it, but when I was at comdex (I spent most of the time at the Slashdot booth) there was a company who had them. So I know they are out there somewhere. If anyone else saw them let me know what company, because I would buy one in a second.
Sony already has the worst possible MP3 players--using the "Magic Gate" version of their already useless Memory Stick technology. They won't ever be a player in the MP3 space as long as they're part of RIAA.
Perhaps SlashDot needs to think about adding a new feature to the site? I would propose they give each story that appears a particular "type" definition that can be used for "quick searches" or could be used in response to an Ask SlashDot submission. This question could have had the types of "MP3" and "player", for example.
In this case, the question could have still been posted, but the response could have *immediateely* listed 5 or 6 links to stories already submitted on SlashDot about "MP3" and "players". This would still allow for the ability for SlashDotters to talk about the product (even if it is for a second or third time... who doesn't like talking about things several times? Especially when they're cool)? But also gives immediate additional information up front.
*shrug* I think it'd be a nice feature to have.
I'm not sure if the method for posting articles to the front page of SlashDot is a point-and-click operation (I'd assume it was) and if it is, how hard would it be to add this sort of functionality?
[IMO, as long as the same topic isn't posted every two days, I couldn't care less how many times it appears. If I don't want to read it, I won't. But I also won't let it work me up to the point that I'm griping about SlashDot's lack of ability in keeping up with the 1000s of stories they've posted over the years...]
Mambo X P300 is the model # if you go to their web sight its on the first page top left.
Because, although the respective industries started in America, they are really international by now. Note once more that Sony (a japanese company) is a member of both.
So you can a) play regular CDs and b) use CD-Rs with MP3s burned to it.
The Empeg Player
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
They are also region settable -- you can play disks from ANYWHERE in the world!
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
They are available from Circuit City at about $180. But you have to ask for them by name, they are not displayed as they are too cheap and don't have enough ROI (return-on-investment) for CC.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
I've got a friend who did essentially the same thing ... except he also installed a 4" mono TV in the dash and installed DOS instead of Linux ... takes only a few seconds to boot and you don't have to worry about shutting down the OS before killin' the engine ...
I saw an ad in a car magazine that both Aiwa and JVC are doing cd/mp3 players, Aiwa is in dash and JVC is portable, or maybe the other way around.
The claim is they support like 12 formats and in 128k mode a cd holds over 12 hours of music... time to kiss your jukebox good bye?
I'm sure there's more info on their respective sites also.
Ciao
Q. What's it take to get a story posted on
Long before the Pine, Apex or any of the other units out there, I & two of my classmates concieved, designed & built a combination CD/MP3 player. It was a scary looking piece of hardware, with a 4-line LCD, a few basic buttons, and a couple of surface-mount components suspended on the wires they were soldered to. We designed & built it for our computer engineering senior design project in '98, and I believe that a group in this year's class is revamping our original. If anyone's interested, I may still be able to find my copies of our documentation, some pictures, etc.
Sure MP3 is small, but as technology improves so fast, storage size should not be an issue whatsoever. How often do you fret about not having enough RAM or hard drive space? It was a big deal a few years ago, but now we should concentrate on music quality and not worry about compression. I'm hoping some kind of DVD audio format will make CDs and MP3 obsolete by surpassing studio master recordings in quality.
This is the coolest GPL project I know of, and these guys rule:
a in.html
/nutt
http://pages.hotbot.com/cooking/anton_verheijen/m
From the page:
The project is not yet complete (hardware is 100% finished). The ultimate goal is to produce a player that can play of IDE harddisks, CD-roms and flashcards. Initially it is meant for home and car use (due to the probable size and power requirements of the first version). Later on, I'd like to reduce the size of the PCB and make it about the size of a 2.5" harddrive.
I wanna build one sooo bad. I've got a billion old HD's lying around rangin from 20MB to 1.2GB.
Maybe it won't make for a directly portable CD/mp3 player, but the fact that it's GPLed leaves the door open...
funfunfun.
The MamboX player looks pretty promising. It's due out pretty soon, and it's MSRP isn't something that's going to empty my wallet either.
Ok, Check this out! Take a cell phone, ok? And we put an MP3 player in the cell phone.... and you just call the music company and ask for the song- they stream you the MP3 to your phone, and charge it to your phone bill! You could maybe get a headphoe jack for your cell phone, or else upload it to your system when you get home. Cool idea? Isn't it? Huh?
What I'd be interested in is a true combination of the two technologies MP3 and CDs. The combination I'm looking for is a CD player which can also read MP3s like those coming to market, but downloads them into a RAM card.
Thus there is no chance of skipping once loaded to the memory, also increased battery life because the CD is spinning only when downloading or playing regular CDs, and a lot of cheap storage for songs, the main drawback of the RIO like modules (say I want to bring more than 60 minutes and don't want to buy a number of expensive memory modules). I know this would cost more but I would be willing to pay for the combined cost because of the advantages.
Has anyone seen anything like this out there or do I have to build it?
-------- This space intentionally left blank --------
Best Buy carries the Sony MZ-R55PCIF which comes with an adapter that I believe converts USB audio to S/PDIF optical. That kit comes with a Sony MZ-R55, the adapter, and some pc software. Is this what you're thinking about? It's featured in a US commercial (although they don't mention what it really is. Some guy is in the shower singing along to some... feminine music and his roommate walks in... you can see a VAIO laptop and an MZ-R55 recording the music). Some people sell kits containing a soundcard with s/pdif optical out on it, but I'd rather have a USB-> to s/pdif adapter.
:> )
At $249 it seems like a bargain (I've shopped around for a USB->S/PDIF adapter and they're $150+).
jay (I'm hoping they decide to sell an MZ-R90PCIF kit... and I stumble across a lot of cash
The Pine D'music is great, I bought one recently mainly because I have all my MP3s archived on CD anyway, so I might as well. I bought mine from TigerDirect.com (Catalog number P450-1270CD) and it cost me approx. 300$ USD. A quick search over there didnt show it on its website, possibly because its primarially setup for PC systems, but you can Request a catalog and I know its in there. I just tried a few other sites (buy.com, pricepulse.com) and didnt see any listing for it, so I dont know where else you could get it. Good luck!
----------------------------------
Looking for hardware (Currently need: Large Etch-a-Sketch) Have one? See my journal!
Though I can't wait for the idea mysself.. I know one very good reason for not having a cd/mp3 player. NO MOVING PARTS In the portable mp3 players there are no moveing parts, this is important for many reasons.. and it is a MAIN reason why I need one..
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Please wait while we save your data...
You cannot enter this contest more than once!
bah. also, i hate how they don't give a suggested retail price.. it's 200 dollars, but 5.5 lbs! Very cool though, and will get better.
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
i'm building an mp3/cdplayer for my car...
the distro's gunna be on a flashrom and the mp3's are gunna be held on cdroms so i don't have to worry about hard drives being bounced or melting or anything
and so i can power down without worrying about "not cleanly unmounting"
nor portable but whatever...
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CYA
Kenny Sabarese
Left Ear Music
greasy311@bigfoot.com
CYA
Kenny Sabarese
Left Ear Music
kfs@leftearmusic.com
irc.openprojects.net #windowma
Me, I like being able to throw 15 minidiscs into my backpack when I travel. :)
I'd really like to see a data minidisc-based MP3 player. You can get a good amount of data onto one of those.
I found one that actually exists unlike the PineTech player. Looks pretty nice. I'd like to get my hands on one and take a good look at it sometime.
Here's the MP3.com review of the player.
-- This post contains %100 recycled electrons Remove spam and eggs to send some mail.
My big concern about any of these MP3 players is skipping. Even with hefty buffering, I can't imagine skipping won't be a major problem with MP3 files. Portable CD players have problems enough tracking 50 megabyte files, what will happen whenthe file takes up only 5 megabytes? You'll hit a bump and skip to the next song. . .
Kind of interesting to see how many folks here can't distinguish between vaporware and actual shipping product.
check out the hardware section of MP3car.com. a whole bunch there...
My friend had created such a player using that one thing that was featured on slashdot a while ago -- "the world's smallest webserver". The MP3s are placed on their own individual tracks and the computer data is converted to analogue on the cd player. The audio output is connected to the small device, which converts it back to digital and pipes it through an mp3 player. The small device then outputs the audio through the device's audio port. Though i don't like the analog->digital->analog idea ..
Come on, USE A SEARCH ENGINE and stop wasting everyone's time with dumb questions. Who posted that on /. anyway? Cannot use Google?
The Pine unit, the MamboX, Aiwa's upcoming car unit, and others are all supposed to be released within the next 3 months. Of course, that's what they said 3 months ago.
tedt (at) MP3.com
Want to code perl at MP3.com? Drop me a line..
Sounds like when the empeg came out- it shipped what, 12 months late?
tedt (at) MP3.com
Want to code perl at MP3.com? Drop me a line!
I haven't looked at Pine's specs but why is it $80 more than MamboX? See http://www.sparco.com/cgi-bin/wfind2?spn=MAMBO-X
I belive that this was the DVD et all player that had "hidden" menus that allowed people to select the DVD region, hence playing DVDs that shouldnt be available to play on normal DVD players, like imports. Ebay had some last time I checked.
They dont have the right firmware *yet* to play mp3s, Kenwood is making a headunit (Z919) sold only in .jp now
I actually sent Slashdot a pointer to this number months ago, but as usuall they ignore any valuable info sent their way. :-) It's by a Chinese company named Shinco and looks pretty neat.
l e/951.htm
It seems to be a much better solution than the in-dash portable PC-MP3 player. You get MP3s off a CD-R/RW and you can watch SVCD/VCDs and a wired remote all for the same price as an MP3 player alone!
In case anybody's wondering, SVCD is a newer Mpeg2 format which supports Dolby Digital sound and SVHS quality video on standard CDs.
http://www.china-shinco.com/product/svcd/portab
There is a nice one called the Mpstar available in the UK at:
http://www.maxsoftware.co.uk
for just 180 GBP inclusive.
Comes with cassette adaptor for the car and a remote. It needs a 12v supply so really a car or home thing rather than something to take jogging.
I have seen one and am bying one myself, they work well.
A nice feature is that it will scan the CD for mp3 tracks - you can play the MP3s that come jumbled up with other stuff on magazine cover disks. Any CDs that happen to have mp3s on them you can take on the road (as long as the files are visible with mp3 extensions on them of course).
This also means any old CD mastering software will do to make disks up.
Martin Houston, Linux Consultant - phone (UK mobile) 07970 850961 mhouston@deluxe-tech.com - http://www.deluxe-tech.co.
What we really need to do is get said product manufactured by big name companies like sony, panasonic, alpine, and clarion. I order to do this i have sent e-mail like this to these manufacturers promoting the idea (even though I proposed a slightly different one-- read on), and I encourage every one of you to do the same. Depending on the responce I recieve I might start a petition like descibed below. This is the only way to convince these corperate giants that there is a market for this type of product.
John
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Dear Sirs:
I would truly appreciate it if you would please take the time to read this message and forward it to the correct parties. I am an avid Sony consumer and have a very important suggestion regarding a product that is in extremely high demand and is not currently being produced.
What I am talking about is a mobile car mp3 player that is the size of, say, one of your 10-disk changers and holds about 2, 4, or 6 gigabytes of mp3's. While I, currently own a $1000 product which is somewhat similar (see www.empeg.com), the model i propose must have several improvements.
First, it must have the sony quality of craftmanship and user friendliness I have come to expect. Also it must connect to and be controlled by the Sony cd-changing recivers with the uni-link technology and preferably have cd-text technology based upon the ID3 tag encoded in the mp3. It also must be able to play mp3's of various quality encoding such as 128, 160, and 192 kbps.
Also while the above ideas are neccesities the following are my ideas which you could incorporate. It should allowed to be connected to a computer via a usb or maybe ethernet connection. The software included should be able to encode mp3's from cds and transfer to the unit. However, please do not change from the mp3 format, because it is almost universal and many people, like myself have already burned our entire cd collection (600-plus albums) to mp3's on cd's at high quality.
You could also make a cd player that plays mp3's on cd's so we can keep from toting 600 expensive cd's around, but the design as a changer is much better. Please respond to my e-mail on the status of this product and what issues you are facing that prohibit its production. I would be willing to call and discuss this with someone if neccessary. Also if it would help, should i send a petition of several hundred signatures and email addresses who would like such a product created? Please contact me at johnmcd3@hotmail.com.
Think you for your time,
John ---------
Black holes are where god divided by zero
The Apex AD600-A is a DVD player that also plays CD, CD-R, CD-RW, and MP3. All that for $179 at Circuit City. It's not portable, but...
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Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Zip disks are poor storage for music because of their cost. Because every maker of the cartridges needs to pay Iomega, it's unlikely that the price will drop much.
discman-style players are notoriously power-hungry - and the extra processing required to decode the mp3 audio might make the battery time low enough to be a nuisance.
Transmeta to the rescue?
. at my signal -- unleash hell .
laptops are a touch bulky sure, but even the most basic units meet the desired functionality and have done so for years now. and it would be so much more worthwhile than another extra gizmo strapped to your belt.
but you know what... a squareish, 5-inch by 1/2-inch palm/ce/beos device that took cd's would be extra cool, especially if it were full color, web enabled, etc. and it should also ship with programmable IR remote control emulation. maybe even RF and ultrasonic.... talk about a universal remote!
maybe a minidisc version?
if anyone important is reading this, please get on the ball. the sort of device I am describing is easy (for an engineering outfit) to design and easy (for a SE Asian megacorp) to manufacture.
Hey! goto http://www.mambox.com/mamboxletter.htm this is copied off of their site! From: Jason Moh, Director of Product Marketing To: All MAMBO-X P300 Enthusiasts Date: March 21, 2000 I have been receiving an average of 300 emails a day. 90% of them are asking me "When is the release date?" and "Why is it taking so long?" I would like to return all emails and explain what's going on but that's impossible when I receive 300 emails a day. I also hesitate to respond because I am more frustrated than all of the MP3 enthusiasts that are not able to purchase the Mambo-X. I am frustrated because whenever the factory notified us of the shipping date, something always came up. I just took a trip to the factory overseas. I saw the actual sample working. I think the best answer for "why" is that we developed Mambo-X from the ground up. As a result, it has taken much longer than we expected. We did once think about abandoning this project, but the overwhelming response from the MP3 enthusiasts resellers made us focus and move on; even though it has been delayed and delayed. Now we come to a point where I must lay out the facts. The mechanical sample was already done and working samples, as of today, are in assembly. The first scheduled production will be the week of April 17th. In other words, the factory will start shipping later that week. Once the mechanical sample is completed, it means that most of the development is done and we shall let the working samples do the fine-tuning. I saw the mechanical sample, so the shipping date is not far away. I sincerely apologize for any anxiety, confusion, or concerns that all of you, the MP3 enthusiasts, have put up with during the Mambo-X development. Once again, thank you for your support. Sincerely, Jason Moh Director of Product Marketing Tagram System Corporation Thnx, Fuller
#BBS-Files on DALNet IRC, Come and Chat about the good old days of BBSing!
>>PS: I want a portable MP3 ZipDisk player...sure it's only 100 megs...but still...portable has hell...no? I think that the most difficult part of a ZIP disk mp3 player is the battery life. As far as I know (I admit not much)ZIPs are kinda like floppies in that they both have mechanical, moving parts. Moving parts suck down battery power, a precious commodity in a mobile device. A CD has moving parts also, but due to portable walkman type players, much more research has gone into making them use as little power as possible.
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If God Droppd Acid, Would he see People???
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Also the Danish company Kiss has a DVD/VCD/CD/MP3 unit. Don't know if you can get it in the states, but here in Norway it costs 3000 NOK, about $350.
And the cool stuff: It uses a standard Hitachi IDE DVD-ROM and some customized interface card to communicate with it.
One fact that everyone seems to be missing about the APEXi DVD player is that it plays normal audio CD's in addition to DVD's and MP3's. I have to say the audio CD feature sounds great (better than the build in CD player in my $300 Philips shelf system...when connected to the Philips aux in!) So unless I am missing something in this post, and I may be, since portables have been tossed around a couple times in the replies, then the APEXi has what you are looking for. I would like to add I think the DVD decoding part is horrible. I many times have experienced the audio not quite in sync with the video by a fraction of a second! Just enough for you to notice the lip movements when people talk are not quite right. It's a lot like watching films which are dubbed from another language into english, or vis versa. (Has any one else experienced this, or do I have a bad unit?) Anyway, my $0.02 -Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
I see mp3 as illegal
Let me get this straight: you see an algorithm for compressing audio data as illegal. Would you mind explaining what exactly makes mp3 illegal and, say, JPEG not?
Is it that mp3 is being used for illegal activities? Well JPEG is almost certainly used to distribute illegal porn. Does that make the JPEG algorithm or file format illegal as well?
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Things are only impossible until they are not.
What I'd be interested in is a true combination of the two technologies MP3 and CDs. The combination I'm looking for is a CD player which can also read MP3s like those coming to market, but downloads them into a RAM card. Thus there is no chance of skipping once loaded to the memory
Surely it wouldn't be necessary to load the mp3 files into RAM en masse to avoid skipping. It would be enough to load the one about to be played.
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Things are only impossible until they are not.
The advantage that a portable MP3 player has over a CD player is it has not moving parts. It lends itself to physical activities that CD players don't.
NOTE: This does not necessarily apply to driving. There are numerous redbook-only portable CD players with car kits (plug the cassette into the headphone jack).
A CD player that can play CD's that contain MP3's is where it's at. I'd buy one of those.
You can put all your Lou Bega "Mambo-V" on a Mambo-X player. Reserve yours today!
Will I retire or break 10K?
So if it's the xxAA, meaning "whatever" Association of America, why the fuck does it affect me in Canada? And why does it affect people in Europe and Asia and Africa and Austrilia and South America? We're not the US's bitches. We need to stand up, tell the RIAA and MPAA to go outside and play hide-and-go-fuck-themselves, and continue with our freedom.
Greedy capitalist pigs.
At least they're not communist, though.
The point with a portable mp3-cd player is that at some point in time, there are usually about 5-7 tracks that I like the most and want to listen to when travelling to work. Having to burn a couple of tracks on a cd every other day is actually more of a hassle than just uploading some new mp3s to my Rio.
I guess it's good for travelling long distances though: a couple of cds can hold the entire work of your favorite band. But for day-to-day, it's not the most practical thing.
- - -
Sony dosn't make an mp3 player, they make a MP3 player-like device, that playes there own MP3-like format. If you want to play ur mp3's. U have to convert them all to their format first.
Then u have to by sony's own memory stick for additional memory, not either of the other standard media (SmartMedia, Compact Flash, etc.).
I say eveyone should boycot sonys poor attempt to monoploize the mp3 scene, and not buy it.
- - -
I know of an CD Player that will: Play CDs with MP3s on them Play Regualr Music CDs Play a combination of Music cds and mp3 cds Allow songs to be able to be stored in directories on the disk Supports Playlists and can play cd-rws It sounds amazing! www.mambox.com
Today is the closing of a parenthesis opened before this sig, before this story, before this existence that is me (as if
Just grab your CD collection 100 CD's at a time and burn them onto DVD rom as mp3 files. Then you just need 10-20 DVD's in your car. Should also play normal CDs of course.
Yes, but it's not portable. Otherwise, it's a really cool unit!
Of course, then there are issues of user interface, playlists, low power consumption, etc. Still, if I can put something together by myself in just a couple weeks, it makes me wonder why all the commercial vendors are so late to market.
Maybe if there is some interest, I'll make some improvements to the design and arrange to make the assembled/tested circuit boards available at a reasonable price... see the bottom of the page for more info.
Paul
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I've had one of these on order for 3 months now. www.mambox.com, for those who are curious. I'm beginning to think that they entire thing was vaporware. They allowed their distributors to start taking preorders in january (Direct411.com) and about 3 weeks ago direct411 called me and asked if i was still interested in keeping my order. I haven't been billed or anything, thats about the only reason I havent complained too much.
First a picture.
The AVPhile plays MP3, Audio, VCD, SVCD and DVD discs. Costs about 500DM in Germany, which is ca 280$.
Look at the Homepage of Raite, the manufacturer. The german distributor is Seditec. Here is a private fanpage (german) with technical specs, Here is its babelfish translation.
So long, happy playing with the "Yami"!
Found the price. It's $214 USD.
segfault@bellatlantic.net
On the contrary, an mp3 player contains no moving parts (servos or gears), and therefore consumes a lot less energy. It can also be extremely small. Soo... what I would like to see is a small (Rio-size) player with at least, let's say, 512 megs of flash and an IR/radio link, that would work from a single AA battery and also had a 9V jack for external power. Heh :)
Karma Police, arrest this man, he talks in maths
He buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Don't bother with CD-MP3 combos or even a stand-alone portable MP3 player; go for Minidiscs. They hold just as much as CDs and can play MP3s anyway.
Not a typewriter
A "toy" icon?
Shouldn't have been the "music" icon used instead?
"I'm looking through you, where did you go?"
If you are going to try to say something orignal about mambox, how hard is it to:
The following post brought to you by the letters V, I, and M
Why would you need a CD player/MP3 player combination when you can just convert CD's to MP3's?
Does anyone know of a portable device that would let you read mp3s directly off cds? You could store a lot more music on a cd and you wouldn't need the memory a traditional mp3 player uses to store the music.
"The anwser to the ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is... 42" -Douglas Addams
The Apex player isn't what this guy is asking for at all. He wants a portable cd player that plays mp3s. The Apex is not portable at all. For that, big deal, I'll hook my computer up to me to my speakers/tv. And, as far as I know, the Pine isn't available yet.
The bus came by and I got on
That's when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land
I'd rather be lucky than good.
most of my mp3s arent and excuse me [my bad], i dont see mp3 as illegal, i see distribution methods like napster unethical, i still use them though [no ethics, read my lst post, sorta like speeding though, not that big a deal.]
My post wasnt meant enrage those that use it for legitimate purposes but to point a finger at those that are rationalizing there use because they cant stop whinning over the music industry.
cs lewis had this idea that we were all born with this sense of right and wrong, as we get older we just get better at rationalizing what we did, to everyones preconcieved notion of right and wrong.
I see mp3 as illegal, but i still use napster. what i want to see is people telling the truth to themselves, lets stop getting better at raionalizing the situation.
Yes, the music industry is as Hunter Thompson says " a long plastic hallway where pimps and thieves run free", but the way to solve this isn't bucking the industry, its by starting your own businesses competing for better artists with a better distribution methods [the internet] and a larger share in the profits.
Check Out http://www.mambox.com i believe they have several different devices, one is a portable player another a home system and i believe coming soon is a car system. All the systems play regular audio cds as well as mp3 cds. phoem
No, actually, Mambox is the model after Mamboix. Get your roman numerals straight AC. ;)
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
Checkout http://www.zottl.com This kid put out plans for one as his senior thesis. They are not totally complete, but atleast they are mostly there and with a little bit extra, could be complete :) Sabre
Sabre
SysOp Sabre's Domain
Hey all, checkout this link http://www.zottl.com This kid released the plans for a MP3 CD Player for free a couple of months ago. Apparently it was his senior project! Sabre
Sabre
SysOp Sabre's Domain
What if the hokey pokey is really what it's all about? -- Anonymous
The technology that is in the PJB did not come from Itsy, but both Itsy and the PJB came from Compaq's research labs in Palo Alto, CA.
:-)
Itsy is a StrongARM-based handheld Linux machine. The PJB is a Motorola 56309-based music player. Other than the fact that they're both portable and the engineers frequent the same Palo Alto restaruants, they're quite different
The PJB's technology was licensed to a Korean company called HanGo (dba Remote Solution in the US). They resell the PJB via mp3factorydirect.com, in catalogs via Hy-Tek manufacturing (Hammacher-Schlemmer, etc.). I think there are some other distributors now too.
[I worked on the PJB's firmware - it was a way cool project].
/Mitch.
I belive that this was the DVD et all player that had "hidden" menus that allowed people to select the DVD region, hence playing DVDs that shouldnt be available to play on normal DVD players, like imports. It (Apex AD600A) is, and it does. My Farscape DVDs would be useless otherwise. It takes a truly brain-dead organization to come up with a scheme that tries to prevent people from giving them money...
Sorry about the original post. It seems Clarion did not release support for MP3s in the original AutoPC, but may include the support for MP3s and DVDs in the upcoming AutoPC to be released in the upcoming months. Pending MP3 disputes have caused the reality of this support to wither in the wind. acid
Not that the forum readers will like this OS on this too much (WinCE), but it does read mp3s and cds and offers a lot more promising technology than any other car audio player on the market. It was originally to be based on the Linux OS (not sure what dist). www.autopc.com acid
There are a number of'em on the market, mostly cabinet units and one for the car. No protable ones as of right now. Here's the list http://www.maxtarget.com/hardware/cdrom/mp3_player s.shtml
God and the soldier we implore, In times of crisis, not before. The danger passed and all things righted, God is forg
I got lazy towards the end of the comments to see if someone wrote about this already or not, so if someone did, oh well, I guess you'll have to read about it again. It's called MAMBOX (located at:http://www.mambox.com) and it can play ANY kind of CDs you want. Even CD-RW!!! I got one of those through a guy that works with 'em, but from what I've heard they are hugely back-ordered, and it'll take 'em about over a month to send you one. It's a really cool thing to have. Anyways, that's it. Go get one!_ ____________
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The Riddler - I don't suffer from Insa
What volumn do you usually listen at? Mine is at least at 17, which should explain a lot of things :-)
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JavaScript tutorials scripts
I currently own a Diamond Rio 500, and was shocked to find out that it eats up batteries faster than I can gobble up Twinkies. The machine requires one AA battery, which it consumes in less than 2 1/2 hours if you turn the volume up. And Rio can't be plugged to the wall. I knew CD players are battery monsters, but this is ridiculous. I wouldn't buy anything that had both in them, as least not in their current technological state.
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Anybody know a site where I can find out how to turn my POS computer/cd-rom drive into a MP3 player?
Sorry guys, forgot about HTML tags
Check out This link on The Register about Pine's MP3/CD player combo.
Looks rather promising, IMHO
"It's not a bug - it's a feature!"
We're talking about players able to play mp3's off of cd's. You know, for all those people who have cd burners and rather enjoy fitting 10 hours or so of music on a cd, as opposed to the standard 1 hour of CDDA. think next time before you stick your foot in your mouth.
...CD players which can store MP3's, not just play MP3's off of CDR's? Something with flash RAM for the MP3's, like a normal MP3 player, but that can also play CD's... Lots of people would probably buy something like that if it wasn't too overpriced.
-Mockery
Has any created an in-dash version of this?
Personally, I'd wire input speaker connects (from indash cd/tape/radio) to a free-hanging "dongle" (no idea what it's really called) where I could connect a Rio or other portable player, then all you have to do is connect the player to the dongle via the output jack when you want (and also to your power supply, unless you like buying lots of batteries)
Of course, I also like the idea of an in-dash player that can read data CD's with MP3's on them, but I would assume this is going to be costly to implement (at first)
Hammer of Truth
I actually thought about putting an LCD in the dash, but "real time" video is illegal in all 50 states, so I never did it. I suppose I could always hook up a cheap cam to the rear and say it was for backup purposes, but its not worth messing with to me.
http://seniord.ee.iastate.edu/may0017/homepage.h tml
It's not a good reference, but tells a little about the project.www.mambox.com A portable CD/Mp3 combo that will read CDR's as well as CDRW .. 199 bucks.
Listen Mr Foot-In-Mouth, my comment still stands. You think a person will somehow save money or have better technology if they "burn mp3s" to CD and then play them on a hybrid player? Let me think this one out loud: 1. Need to replace current CD player with this hybrid that reads MP3 from the disk (this costs $$ for player and electric motors are ultra inefficient) + 2. Will now burn MP3s to disk (disks cost $ per disk + cant just load up in 5 minutes with ad-hoc tunes). Why would anyone buying a new peice of equipement buy one that uses up more battery power (spin a disk vs read the RAM) and will cost as much or more than a pure MP3 player that loads straight from your PC? How about you shut your foot sucker now?
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This would be like carrying a horse in a sports car because you might need the horse sometime. CD + MP3 in one portable unit is garanteed to be landfill within a year or two. Home unit, thats a different story. There was a time when vinyl players existed in the den with cd players.
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It is called the mambox http://www.mambox.com/ you can preorder them at www.direct411.com should be shipping soon
yes there are such things. These have been out for about a months time. http://www.mambox.com to check out one of the many.
-the mack sez...
It really isn't too difficult to build one of these yourself. I recently came across an old cash register laying on the street that said "free" beside it, I grabbed it (it had a really cool looking LCD display), tore it apart and on the back there was a part number for the LCD -- optrex DMF651. I emailed optrex, got the information on this display, wrote a parallel port interface for it, and threw together a cheap P90 to power it and the mp3 playing software. Then all you have to do is get a decent power inverter for your vehicle (if you want a car mp3/cd player) and install that puppy. If you have a deck that has a line in, hook the soundcard output to that, if not, take it straight into your amp. There are lots of these projects at http://www.mp3car.com. Most of these use smaller text based LCD's, but would work fine for the purposes. You can then setup X11amp or whatever you run to play cd's as well as set something up to load an mp3 cd into it. It's really a lot of fun building one of these things if you're into coding at all. I'm currently working on writing a pretty cool GUI for this 640x200 lcd I found :)
I believe now there are cd/mp3 players.. meaing putting a bunch of mp3s on cd... and listening to them is not a problem anymore
If there is a combined CDPlayer and MP3 unit, the logical feature would be to ripping from the CDRom and play tracks as MP3. This not only saves power, but prevents skipping.
I may be misunderstanding you (and oh Lord, please say that I am), but that is the most illogical thing I have ever heard. You want to do this?
CD->Encoder->Save->Decoder->Audio
How does this save power? You still have to spin up the CD but now you have to take the time to encode the file, save it to memory, in addition to decode and play it. As I see it, you're using more power in the encoding and saving portions, not saving. And as for preventing skips, maybe. More likely, it's going to have to account for skips during the encoding process, which, honestly, isn't that what shock protection is for?
No, the logical feature in an MP3/CD player is to play the MP3s off of a CD. Yes, you might get skipping, but for me anyway, the benefits of having 10 hours of music on a handily transported medium that can be used in a player that will also play my other handily transported mediums far outweight issues of power (of which these devices probably don't use much more than regular CD players) and skipping.
David E. Weekly
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
I picked up one of these a little over a month ago. It's got some good parts and some bad parts. Here's the rundown.
:) The tray is really cheap plastic. I feel like it's going to break soon. The LED display has already crapped out.
Good Parts:
It's loaded on features. The Raite AVPhile 715 can read DVDs, VCDs, MP3 CDs, and standard audio CDs.
It reads ISO9660 formatted CDs with MP3s on them. It can recurse subdirectories, so it's easy to organize your music.
It can read Romeo formatted CDs for 15 character filenames.
It can show BMP pictures for each song.
It can display a "lyrics" file for each song.
You can hack it to take out the Macrovision protection or the country codes by playing with the remote.
The on-panel controls (not remote) are well done.
It's cheap (I paid $179 @ Fry's)
Bad Parts:
It's cheap
It takes FOREVER to load the CD
You can't flip through the songs on the CD without actually changing which is playing. You can't switch the display mode without stopping the music.
It doesn't support Joliet or Rock Ridge filesystems. Linux doesn't write Romeo fileystems. You can get around the 8.3 filename limitation by including a lyrics file.
The lyrics file only shows the 1st 15 characters of each line. That's how many fit on the screen, but it doesn't do wrap-around. I wrote a small perl script to do the wrap-around, but it's a hassle, and I wasted a number of CDs experimenting.
The BMP format is really strange. As far as I can tell, they're 1 frame DVD (MPEG-2) files. I don't know why they didn't just use MS-BMP or GIF. They have a closed-source DOS program on their web site. I haven't tried this through dosemu, but I can't imagine it not working. I haven't been able to find any Linux programs to make these files.
No local storage. This means all your MP3 files have to be burnt onto CD.
The remote is confusing, with redundant buttons (forward, fast forward and skip forward, only two of which will work at any given time, depending on media).
DVDs suck. The whole DeCSS thing turned me off them. There's no Jurassic Park, no Star Wars, no good movies. There's the Matrix, but I thought that movie sucked on the silver screen. I've never actually seen a VCD.
-Dave
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Yes, but those are high end geek devices...I'm talking about a DISCMAN that plays MP3s, something everyone can afford....you won't see it happen...at least not for a while...
Oy..I knew that too....thanks....ETLA can be so hard to keep track of anymore *L*
Apparently, the Director of Product Marketing has been getting floods of E-Mail from users who want to know when the product will be released.
There is no shipping date on the site, or in his letter.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
Not the most illogical, but close.
To do this would require a very large memory buffer -- probably at least 4 MB. And more software (and thus more ROM) for encoding MP3s. That can significantly raise the cost of producing a unit.
If you just want to prevent skipping a smaller, read ahead buffer should be sufficient.
If you want to listen to one track over and over again . . . why would anyone want to listen to the same track over and over again? I can't imagine that this is a very common request from anyone over 6 years old who isn't a big Barney the Purple Dinosaur fan. I don't think I've ever used the single track repeat option on my stereo or on WinAmp.
/peter
That's just not true. There are plenty of product announcements that you can read available, but the announced products themselves are not physically available. You can't actually buy one and hold it in your hands and listen to music come out of it. The closest one can come is to load a web page and look at pictures and read specs and imagine how cool it will be.
Now, I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad business model in general. It worked fabulously for the sex industry, resulting in the tried and true line of products that we call pr0n. But for music-playing devices, I dunno. Call me an unimaginative old fart who won't embrace modern technology, but I just don't enjoy imagining music as much as I enjoy actually hearing it. Oh, and another thing: I don't think that just showing us pictures and specs, where we use out imaginations, is going to be a good business plan for the long-term, because they aren't charging for it! Anyone can go to Pine's page and read about the vaporous product, and Pine doesn't make a dime off it. It didn't even ask for my credit card number.
No, I think they only way they're going to make money is if they actually ship a product to end users in exchange for money. Some of us have been waiting for quite some time to buy one, but it seems that no one wants our money.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
While all these products seem to be great, (including this one), they're all about the size of actual CD players. Now, I assume what people are trying to accomplish is to be able to walk around with hours upon hours of music with them. But a bulky CD-player still isn't all that ideal.
What I've always wondered is, why doesn't someone put this concept together with a mini-disc setup? Small disc, with less chance for shock, and still high capacity. (shrug)
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
Flaming the /. authors aside, from what I can tell, the Apex will play DVDs and CDs of mp3s, but not traditional CDs (CDDA format). That is what the question is asking about. I for one am glad to see all the links to CD/mp3-CD players. Me want!
Eric
OK... Yes there is a $80 difference, but from what I can tell, the pine player (if it ever comes out) is a little better too.
For one, looking at Mambo's web site it seems that their LCD display doesn't show the track name for the mp3 you're playing. The pine does. When you have a CDR with hundreds of songs on it, it would be nice to know what you're playing. I think I would pay $80 for that feature, but that's just me!
A few weeks ago I went to Circuit City and paid my $179. There weren't any units in the state, so they promised to order one and get it to me in "7 - 10 days". After a week, I looked on the web site which said "Out of Stock". Aparently they were putting huge ads in the newspaper even though there were vitually no units in stock in the country. Anyway, this is the description currently listed on www.circuitcity.com:
DVD: APEX AD600A We are aware from media reports that initial production of the Apex AD600A had secret menus which allowed some users to bypass copyright protections built in to all DVD players. These menus have now been deleted from this player in recent production and our present stock reflects this fact. We purchased the AD600A based on its full array of legitimate features, quality construction and a most attractive price. It remains an outstanding value today!
Oh well, I guess I can live without the hidden menu. As long as I can play MP3s in my living room.
-B
The CD BlastIt! with a built in 25GB hard drive for storage of MP3s. Sells for $595. From Corporate Systems Center, who specializes in duplication equipment these days.
There is one which claims to be the worlds first, its at www.mambox.com and looks pretty cool.. It seems it may be shipping soon even, and has links to sites which will sell it.
-- iCEBaLM
Actually, the RIAA has some 500 members, so they are not all internationals. Nonetheless, the big boys are the ones that actually control the RIAA.
Although sony is a member of the MPAA, it's not the MPAA that is concerned about MP3s. The MPAA is concerned about DeCSS. You're thinking of the RIAA, a different group of corporate bastards. I can see how you'd get confused though, as Sony is a member of both.
MPAA = Motion Picture Association of America
RIAA = Recording Industry Association of America
Sure, Sony doesn't make MP3/CD combos, but they do sell a couple (pricey) MP3 players, so they can't be too morally opposed to the MP3 format. I'm sure Sony, being a member of the RIAA, will continue to bitch about pirating while making profits off their MP3 players.
The MP3/CD combo probably won't be picked up by Sony until there are more CD burners in the homes of music listeners. They tend to produce on a mass scale, so don't hold your breath. Maybe they're still waiting for their Minidisc to catch on.
I know WinAmp for Windows does CD's and MP3 (among others), and I know XMMS and WinAmp are virtually identical. I seems almost logical that all XMMS would need is a CDRom plugin....
Ozwald
You know the really funny thing about this is, it was featured here on Slashdot last September... Here
News review DMusic
Have a look and order here Kiwi-computers
There are quite a few MP3/CD player combinations in development though none have actually shipped to date. Here is a list of a few of them and a link to where a small review about each one can be read. This is just a few prospective MP3 CD players that have been extracted from an article that Dimension Music just recently wrote regarding the portable MP3 CD player race. These players, with the exception of the Kiwi player, have been known about for quite some time now to those of us who closely follow the MP3 scene:
I wonder what the RIAA would say about it.
Fight Spammers!
There's always the non-portable Apex DVD/VCD/CD/MP3 player which pretty much does anything you would want it to do for about $200. It has a relatively rough user interface and remote, but it's still godly cool.
A choice of masters is not freedom
There are a bunch of Mp3/CD portable player combos. In fact, it's funny you should ask as the first that is acually into production is the Mambo-X and it started Shipping on Friday. It's made by Tagram and has the best features of any of the dual-compliant format players I've seen yet.
For the full low-down on portable players and their support/features go here. Another place to check is Mp3.com's Portable players page. You might find out a little more about some of the players there (especially Mp3 ports.).
the Genica Portable MP3/Audio CD Player. It costs $99. Buy it here. It doesn't go on sale for a few days, however.
Here you can find Voquette's Netlink for MD players... It may only work with these sharp model, but I'm unsure. The original review I read makes it sound that way but the Voquette site makes it sound like any MD can use the netlink. Amusingly enough they also make a MP3 player that will work with any cassette walkman, and even record MP3s to a walkman, if it has a record function.
There is the $179 MAMBOx. I don't think it's out yet, however, it looks cool.
Of course, there is Pine's Player.
There are more of these out there... These are just some of the ones that spring to mind, and all portable. I love my Apex, though... $160 and it plays any disc I own... MP3, DVD, CD, VCD... I use portable music so little that my Rio is fine for my purposes...
Josh Sisk
When I attended MacWorld this past January at Moscone, the Iomega had several Zip Disk prototype devices. There was a digital camera that wrote to Zip Disk (by Canon I think..) but most impressive was a deck sized player that played MP3s off of said Zip Disk. I bet that a portable wouldn't be far off if/when (the Iomega guy was remarkably tight-lipped about development time/stage) they release the deck version. I was very impressed, it had both digital and analog outs...sounded to me like it was close to primetime...
So there I was. Naked. In a refrigerator. With a potroast on my knees. Smokin a cigar. That's when it got REALLY weird.
I know the main reason that people want a cd mp3 player is for space. There is an mp3 player, though expensive, looks nice in contrast to those small crappy mp3 players that only home 32 or 64 megs of music. It has an internal 4 gig Hard drive that holds some 100 cd's (100 full cd's,not just 100 songs). It's called the PJ-mp3 player and i think compaq makes it. Check it out at Pjbox.com Who knows, maybe you can replace the harddrive with say a 40 gig maxtor and hold 1000 cd's. At the present time it's only windows compatible.
"Your just jealous because the voices only talk to me"
I wanted to be able to have 100's of CDs in my car without having them roll around and get scratched too. I just stuck an old 3.2 gig hard drive in a case with a cheap motherboard and hooked it up to my stereo. I wrote a little linux interface to xaudio that controls it via a keypad between the front seats. It really turned out nice for me, holds 650 or so so tracks, only cost about $400, and it only takes about 35 seconds to start up. Check it out!
Ever since I got my CD Burner, i wondered why no one has a CD/MP3 CD Player....once I hard Sony was considering it ( anyone got a link ), and after the Apex DVD player came out I /really/ started to wonder. Why hasn't this been done yet? Legal issues? Probably. Lack of sellablity? Hell no... here's a scary thought...Sony makes CD player...Sony Entertainment is a member of the MPAA....Sony does NOT make MP3 CD Players...coincedence? I think not...
PS: I want a portable MP3 ZipDisk player...sure it's only 100 megs...but still...portable has hell...no?
check out the brujo from Netdrives.
Although the title of the article did not make it clear, from reading the body of the article it seemed pretty clear he wants a portable MP3 CD/player... I'd like one too, but all of the ones mentioned so far seem to not be out just yet.
I think an important feature of any of these players will be how easy the browsing interface is, and I sure hope I can add playlists to the CD's!!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
mambox
Yes, there is one for your car.. Check it out at http://www.carplayer.com. Here are some of the specs (pulled from thier site):
:o)
1. Runs with any ATAPI device i.e. CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW or even DVD-ROM. (required)
2. Full support for MPEG1, MPEG2 Audio Layer III, MP3 files (except 256+Kbits).
3. Multiple CD file formats: ISO-9660, Joliet, Romeo and most others.
4. Auto switch play mode between CD-DA (audio CD) or MP3 Disk.
5. Supports CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW and DVD-ROM media.
6. Can have up to 2200 files per cd.
7. Accepts 63 play list numbers in user programmable memory and has Single, Shuffle, Repeat, 10 second scan and more.
8. 31 Key Remote Control
9. Output level for headphones, speakers, tape adapter (for car), and stereo amps.
I didn't see a price on thier site, but you can be sure it isn't cheap. But then again, geek toys rarely are
segfault@bellatlantic.net
It's a little homebrew, but you cant beat the price:
;-)
www.carmp3player.com
I have one of these things, and it's quite possibly the best 150 bucks i've every spent. Plays mp3 cd's and audio cd's and comes with a remote control! Amazing. Not too fancy, not too aesthetic, but it's perfect for the geek with less 'discriminating' tastes (and a very empty wallet
-bugbbq
Back in September, Pine announced their MP3/CD player (link). It seemed pretty cool at the time. I thouht it was a Slashdot story, in fact, that brought this to my attention. They listed a pretty reasonable price, too, $280, and you can pre-order it at Outpost.com.
On jan 14, 2000, this article was posted about the Apex player. There have since been several followup articles posted about the legality of the Apex, and there are about a bazillion other web sites with info about it. Heck Circuit City now even advertises that this thing plays MP3s
Even earilier than that, back on Sep 9, 1999, slashdot posted this story on the Pine unit. Now, the Pine unit has not hit the market yet, but it any many similar units can be found in the MP3 hardware section on mp3.com
There are now probably about a half dozen other units similar to the Pine unit (their names and URLs have already been posted by people more eager than myself) but also like the Pine unit none of them have actually made it to the streets yet. Had the poster asked what was actually *available* or reviews of the available units, that would have been a different story entirely.
I mean, it's bad enough when people post stupidly obvious questions to usenet or to mailing lists (questions that can be answered with a simple web search or by looking in very obvious locations) but when these things start getting posted as slashdot feature stories... sheesh...
-p.
Terratec CD/MP3 Player
Mambox portable MP3/CD Player
Pine Technology (MP3 Audio): D'music SM-200C Portable MP3/Audio CD Player
netDrives CD/MP3 player Brujo
Check it out ... http://www.theregister.co.uk/000227-000009.html Featured @ CeBIT -- looks promising -arbi.