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Ogg Vorbis Portables On The Way
Emmettfish writes "According to this release on Xiph.org, it looks like the Neuros player will support Linux users, and also give them the ability to play back Vorbis files on the move, starting in late May. Go Ogg! Remember, donating a few bucks to Xiph may not make the world a better place, but it'll definitely help it
sound a lot better." For those of us craving a portable that plays from cheap CD-Rs rather than flash media or a hard drive, Emmett says by email that an agreement for development of firmware for a CD-based Ogg player is in the works, too.
I'm glad this is finally happening... too bad it doesn't say how much this thing costs. Speaking as a broke college student, I can't afford to pay a ridiculous premium for a small gain in audio quality.
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
Well this is obviously good for ogg, but even if this does gain some momentum a big name portable mp3 player manufacturer will simply put it in their player and way underprice these guys.
I am not saying it isn't a good idea at all, but don't you think they could get shut out of business really quick?
Would we have to call it joggvorbising then?
and it's secsi too. i wonder if it will give the ipod a run for its money...
make sure the players support upgradeable firmware for future codec upgrades and I'm set - tho the specification does claim that all future Ogg Vorbis files will be decodable by the current decoder, it may miss out on improvements and enhancements.
The CD-based player is a good idea for those of us with massive disc collections but just cannot be bothered to transfer the songs - much easier with a change of disc.
Speaking of which - one of Ogg Vorbis' strongest selling points is bitrate peeling - you can "peel" a 192 kbps file to 128 kbps and the resulting file will sound just as good as if it were encoded directly off the original CD/wave file.
But there is no tool yet. When can we expect to see one?
Thanks for all the great work.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Does it play Ogg? Oh! it does. I'm going back to sleep.
"Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them."
Nice, but I already have a portable Ogg Vorbis player: tkcPlayer
I've got the IRiver MP3 CD player and it's nice but it would be way nicer with OGG support. They've got upgradeable firmware and they mention OGG support in their docs... but it never comes thru!
idealord music
the MyFi feature of Neuros is very fun, useful and innovative!
MyFi allows you to broadcast the music on your Neuros through any FM radio. Like the one in your car. Or your kitchen. Or your coworker's boombox. MyFi automatically scans the FM radio dial for an available frequency and broadcasts using all digital stereo encoding, just like broadcast towers used by professional radio stations.
I don't think RIAA will like this, but this feature is really a killer-app amha.
An MP3 file at 32 kbit/second sounds muffled - high frequencies largely removed - while an Ogg at 23 kbit/second (16 kbit nominal) has a much better tonal balance. The Ogg stream is not pristine quality, but much better than the MP3.
If you're interested in packing many hours of low bitrate material, Ogg is the way to go.
I'm in a Unix state of mind.
I have my doubts about this unit. In my opinion, the days of the flash-based MP3 (ogg, etc.) players are numbered for one simple reason: they don't hold enough music. Even if it's relatively simple to sync the device with the computer, it's still a pain to have to do that every time you want to listen to new music. I own the 15GB Archos Jukebox Recorder, which I got on sale for $150 (including rebate) a couple of months ago. I was able to put all of the songs I'd downloaded from my desktop and laptop - about 10GB worth of music - on it, and a bunch of my CDs as well. Now I don't have to take a bunch of CDs around with me, as the player can hook up to my home stereo, car stereo (it's a newer stereo that has an MP3 port and I use a cable to connect the player to the port - with the Neuros you could broadcast over the stereo's FM frequency), and also at work (I hook my computer's speakers up to the player). For me, it's a much better option than the flash-based players because I can fit so much more music on it. My only complaint is that there is so much music on it that it is sometimes hard to navigate around the HD to find exactly what you're looking for, especially if you don't take the time to really organize your music by folder, track number, etc., before you upload it to your player. I have heard that the user interface for the iPod solves some of these problems, so I am hoping that Archos comes out with a software fix soon. Anyway, the bottom line is that I would go with the 20GB option here - I guess my only concern about that in this instance is that the 20GB "backpack" looks huge, and might add a lot of weight to the unit and make it bulky. The Archos I have is a little heavier than I would prefer, but really not that bad. I am still able to jog with it, which is key. I carry it in my left arm now and for the first time in years, my left arm is the same size as my right arm. Just kidding.
You can confirm this cost by hitting the CompUSA preorder site (ship date of tomorrow, feb. 25th).
http://www.compusa.com/promos/neuros/default.asp
Fairly expensive. But I do like the built-in FM transmitter. Also, I would recommend buying the 128MB unit, as the 20GB HDD will be available as a "backpack" that makes the 128 exactly the same (size, shape, capacity) as the 20GB unit. However, the 20GB unit can't be "downgraded" to a smaller, more pocketable 128.
I've been researching various portable MP3 players for some time, meanwhile budgeting some cash that I could use to buy one. I had my mind set on a iPod for a while because the design looked sleek and elegant, stored gigs of music, and reportedly got good life out of its batteries.
.ogg format, I decided to hold off until something actually played .ogg's.
.ogg is a viable format. Hopefully more players will come along.
My alternative to an iPod would have been the player from Archos, which was AFAIK the second portable music player that stored giga-, not mega- bytes.
Since the investment in one of these players is fairly substantial (300-400 USD), and as of late I have more and more music files in
This is probably the music player that I've been waiting for. A hard drive so I can store thousands of songs (as opposed to whatever I can squeeze into 32 or 64 megs), and some 'smart' features such as recording and being able to broadcast to a radio.
I'm sure there are other people out there like me that have been waiting for this kind of player to come along, so I for one am ready to plunck down the cash and buy one, and show the industry that
I wish Neuros the best of luck with their new product, and of course, kudos go out to the Xiph.org team for all of their hard work.
-Jason Jones
There's one benefit of Ogg that many people miss... compaines can use it in their products, whithout paying a royalty, and without worrying about the libraries changing (since they can distribute the libraries). For applications other than music players (such as games) that play sound, it's perfect. Who wants to use a system supplied mp3 library that may or may not work with your application 5 revisions down the road?
What this means for me is that I can play my oggs in my friend's car without the aid of any doohickey cable or any other crap like that. All he needs is an FM receiver. A truly useful [and I do not use the word lightly here] innovation. Wonder why no one ever thought of it before...
I really wouldn't worry about the RIAA here - more likely is the FCC who dictates frequency spectrum allocation, but the transmitting range should be short enough to satisfy their requirements.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
If it had usb2, firewire 800, and bluetooth support this thing would be damn near perfect. The ability to transmit music via FM radio is already hella neat. I like this thing.. although it is a wee bit expensive :(.
But does it play MP3s as well? .. oh, wait.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
If you're using Ogg Vorbis for recording lectures, I suggest you switch to Speex. From the website:
The Speex project aims to build a patent-free, Open Source/Free Software voice codec. Unlike other codecs like MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, Speex is designed to compress voice at bitrates in the 2-45kbps range. Possible applications include VoIP, internet audio streaming, archiving of speech data (e.g. voice mail), and audio books. In some sense, it is meant to be complementary to the Ogg Vorbis codec.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
schweet
SimonTek
There have been several rumors lately that the Nex IIe from Frontier Labs will support Oggs RealSoonNow (tm).
Link to yahoo group thread.
the iRiver is what I'm waiting for. Slim, decent battery life, plays CD-R/RWs ... when that plays ogg, I want one for my car. Heck, that would be incentive enough to upgrade my terrible speakers! :)
Flash media is nice, hard drives can hold quite a bit at a time, etc, but now that CD burning is (given the context of regular computers users) more of a standard item than a luxury, I'd much rather have my audio stuff on CDs. Portable, replaceable, etc. Could be that flash media will one day be cheap enough that I stop caring that way, but for now, I could put several weeks worth of Car Talk on one CD, and *not* have to erase it when I wanted to put on the next several weeks.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The 128MB Neuros player can be upgraded via a backpack to be exactly the same as the 20GB unit. Total price for the 128MB player and the 20GB backpack is only $430, just $30 more than the 20GB unit. The 20GB version is much larger and heavier, and cannot be "downgraded" to be the same as the 128MB unit. By going with the 128MB unit and a backpack, you can have a small, light, solid-state player for the gym (or whatever) and a 20GB backpack to hold all of your music, too. With the 20GB backpack on, it is *identical* to the 20GB unit. The 128MB piece is not available as a backpack, though.
If you jog with it, this is definitely the route to go. Tiny player for jogging, plug in the backpack for huge capacity.
FYI, Frontier Labs expects to have ogg support ready for their Nex II player in Q2 2003.
This is a Good Thing for sure, but keep in mind that the important thing is to help the average Joe see the benefits of Ogg. Sending your mom the CD you ripped in ogg format is way more useful than preaching benefits of ogg on slashdot.
The FCC allows unlicensed low-power FM broadcasts without a license. This is how drive-in movie theaters usually work--you listen using your car's sound system. I'm sure someone here can post the exact limits the FCC imposes on such broadcasts, but they're certainly much more generous than this device would require.
But why can't people hire Apple's design firm or at least be 'enspired' by the iPod?
And, while we're tossing out wish lists, more file formats to play, can't someone make the damn thing play everything under the sun? Why not use an engine design that allow for plug-ins, ala WinAmp?
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
On one of the Neuros surveys, it asked which new format you prefer they add support, and FLAC was one of them. I thought FLAC was a lossless format so one could record and edit sound files, not for listening? Do audiophiles really notice the difference between a high quality ogg/mp3 and FLAC? I don't notice any distortions with a high quality ogg vs the original. Is the FLAC file smaller? Logically and from what I've seen, the FLAC file should be bigger. It is lossless after all...
I have built the plugin for the Qtopia media player on the Sharp Zaurus SL5500 myself a few weeks ago. You can also find someone else's build as an IPKG on http://www.killefiz.de/.
And the Zaurus could accomodate a CF harddisk (1gig)... I'm not saying that it would run off the battery for long tho.
Also, I heard that the integer only decoder (Tremor) used less power than the built-in MP3 one, so battery life as affected by that is supposed to be longer (10 percent I read someplace).
Now Xiph.org merchandise, however, is something I've been waiting a long time for. Go buy some, kids. The Xiph dudes get some cash out of it, and you get to pimp your fly audio compression.
In other words, more than my main desktop computer cost.
I'm assuming you're talking about the 20GB version, but even so...you built your computer system (with a display) for less than $400? Did you buy it used or something?
May we never see th
I love my Rio SP250. I have a fairly large CD collection, and I love being able to just switch CD's and have a different portion of my collection.
.ogg files off of CD (vs. my RIO which plays mp3 off of CD)?
But my question is, why would I want to make a lateral move to something that plays
What I would really like to see is a DVD +/- R solution. Then I could have 4.7GB vs. 700MB of music ready to go.
Am I just dreaming, or is there a market for this besides me?
As a current 3th yearr post secondery student, I think Speex would be perfect for my recording of lextures. Just one problem: the Speex site does not render correctly in my Opera 7.01 browser. Once the open source comunity starts supportting standards in the web, I will support thier format. I will continuto use Windows Media Audio format for my recordding of lextures.
It has a *very* limited range. Like you, and maybe the car next to you, if you both have your windows open and the other driver has a good antenna. Hell of a lot cleaner than a tape adapter, and easier than pulling your stereo out to add an RF modulator so that you can plug the thing directly in.
I was wondering how hard it would be to reverse engineer some firmware for the CD MP3 players. I use a Riovolt SP-100. Now Rio hasn't updated their firmware in forever, but you can use their Korean cousin's firmware (iRiver).
Would this be possible and feasible? Or should we just wait until the company does it themselves?
--If only there was a license required to use a computer.
If you can easily move songs from the backpack to the flash memory this would be one handy little puppy.
Zaurus? Sharp's zaurus has supported several ogg players for ages. And it's more than just a digital music recorder/player. I've been drooling over the damn thing for months, but cannot bring myself to spend the $800CAN for one of these things yet. Perhaps next week when I go consultant full time and can write off the PDA as a business expense.
:wq
I was thinking - this is pretty cool. Then I saw it connects to your computer via usb 1.1. Who in their right mind would develop a new product with a 20GB harddrive and stick a measly USB 1.1 connection on it? There's no way that's going to work without frustrating every user
It is great that they added in an fm transmitter, but this may be the mp3 player for me for another reason. They added in mp3 recording with a line in. That means I can go, but a couple good mikes and record every show I go to. Hopefully the quality will be great.
It's not the size of your stack that matters, it's how you push and pop
This device looks really nice: switchable piggyback storage, FM transmittery thing, not too heavy, not too bulky, 20Gb, etc. etc. Of course ogg support is a big plus too. It could be the iPod competition we've all been waiting for! But ...
USB 1.1?! What were they thinking? How could they get so close and still drop the bundle?! Transfering a CD's worth of music onto the device would take well over a minute at any decent quality. Transferring a collection onto the drive would take hours. If there were no alternatives, then sure, it's certainly not too bad. But with a disk attached to the device, there's no good reason why transfers couldn't be ten times as fast, if only they used USB2 or firewire.
As a portable harddrive, USB1.1 speeds are apalling.
Would putting firewire or USB2 on really have been so hard? As it stands, the player seems to be in the 'so close but' category.
According to this site: http://www.mixstix.com/ they already have ogg playback.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
YAMPP MP3 players can be made for the parts for about 80 dollars... perhaps less if you can find things on clearance. It is nowhere near $12, however.
Likewise, many MP3 players are significantly lower than 150 dollars. Poking around on Shopping.yahoo.com, you can find the the Ampigo3 for 50, the Samsung YEPP for 50, the JamP3 for 40, the Audiovox MP-1000 for 40, and the D-Link DMP-100 for 35 dollars. Rio PMP 300's are still available on ebay for $50 or less. They're all about the same quality as the "latest" MP3 players from sonicblue, and will compare favorably to that $20 CD walkman for high-impact activities like treadmill jogging, cycling, etc.
If you look hard, you can find 20GB Archos Jukeboxes for $150.
If you want an MP3 player, now is a great time. Actually, last year was a great time. Now isn't that bad though. Do some legwork and start saving those batteries.
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
I've been uploading Oggs from Linux onto my Yopy and playing them since last summer. Mind you, I had to hack the (at that time) rudimentary fixed precision decoder library into ogg123 and modify the included gqmpeg a bit to play nice with it, but it works fine and sounds much better. Just gotta get me a bigger MMC card sometime :)
University - a box of academia nuts.
Does anyone know of a flash-card compatible (Compact Flash II, whatever) mp3 player? All the flash mp3 players I have seen on the market use built-in flash, or proprietary flash. Why hasn't anyone developed one that will work with the generic flash cards on the market, such as the ones that work with my camera?
The only thing I wish this thing did is have an FM Radio and (why not) support Ogg.
This Nueron thang sounds like it's got some nice features, but the lack of the video/picture functionality, plus being $100 more, I think I'm still ok for now.
Of course, something new and better will come out soon enough to make me start thinking about selling my Archos on eBay (like I did with my 10 GB model) and upgrading ...
This is great news for those of us looking to become more efficient in our daily lives. Now, instead of wasting five syllables on "MP3 Player," we can use just 3 with "Ogg Player." Terrific!
Furthering the process, I have found a wonderous take on the English Language called "Newspeak." It's fairly new, being created only in 1984, but the efficiency and importance of every word is astounding. I suggest you all try it out.
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
The parent wasn't talking about being able to decode files 5 or 6 revs down the road. He was talking about being able to use the libraries that implement the codec years down the line. It is easier to keep an evolving app in sync with a standard if the standard is fully documented. Also, one does not have to trust the OS vendor to keep this process easy.
The Palm Tungsten T works great as an MP3 and Ogg player with either of the shareware programs Aeroplayer or Pocket Tunes installed. Aeroplayer is free for ogg use, but not free for MP3. Pocket Tunes is not free for either. In any case both are pretty cheap. The TT uses standard MMC and SD cards. Not to mention that the Tungsten T is an excellent Palm OS 5 PDA.
--- What?
SonicBlue's Pearl plays Ogg. It was demoed at CES this year, so it should be on the streets by this fall. A SonicBlue employee reported on RioWorld that it supports Ogg. It also has an ethernet base, which is unusual and forward thinking.
Simple. Just go to CompSA instead.
Now if I could only get Ogg support for my iPod...
-------------------------
slashdot@com.jarnot (swap the domain)
Up until a few years ago, the only way to listen to Los Angeles Valley College's radio station was to be on campus with a portable radio. It too used a drive-in type transmitter Actually in the case of KVCM it was an AM transmitter. [eew!] When I was on staff, I was hearing "United Artists Cable (East SFV cable franchise) is going to carry us Real Soon Now" but that didn't happen until about 10 years after I left. There was also talk of a "community radio license" (low-power FM stations that have their transmissions restricted to a very small radius) but of course that option never really got a chance. The FCC first proposed that, then withdrew it under pressure from Big Radio.
"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever....In the digital world, we don't need back-ups..."
-- Jack Valenti
There's also a german firm, Pontis, coming out with an ogg capable player. (Note: .ogg support is in the works) :) .ogg firmware for the Diva MP3 player (a sexy, 36 g device :)
It works with CompactFlash, Secure Digital and Multimedia Card memcards (and acts also as an USB card reader/storage device). It lacks the ability to record and the radio, but I for me these are not necessary. Also, it can be used as a handheld game console, although so far it seems there are two games for it
I have seen it for 95 Euros, so it is not that expensive. The only thing keeping me back from buyin it is its size and weight (nearly 100g - though that's half what Neuros weighs) - I want to see an
(Yes, I love the idea of memcard based players: I have a digital camera with CF cards so I don't want to spend on built-in memory (that can not be expanded) and CDs are too big and require lots of power to operate so there will never be really small and low-powered CD-based players)
Real life is overrated.
They ought to have 512MB minimum so they'd at least hold one travelling day's worth of tunes (approx 8 hours), and have battery life long enough to run that long between recharges/replacements too.
If this product comes as promised (with OGG support) it will be purchased by me. I was browsing through my Crutchfield catalog last night, picking out something, ended up throwing the catalog away in disgust because not a single player had Ogg compatibility (my entire collection is self-ripped Ogg files).
With this player and its features (especially like the MyFi radio broadcast feature) it WILL be in my possession as shortly after March 1st as humanly possible! And please, please, please let that be before mid-March and the annual road trip season.
MORTAR COMBAT!
I really like their modular design, the built-in FM, and the ability to ID songs from the radio by audio fingerprint. But USB 1.1?! I will wait for USB 2.0, or Firewire+USB1.1. (gotta have that compatibility with old stuff as well as the speed!!)
Transfering a CD's worth of music onto the device would take well over a minute at any decent quality.
Moe: Oh boy, the deep fryers here..I got it used from the Navy--you can flash-fry a buffalo in 40 seconds!
Homer: 40 seconds?! But I want it now!
I have a friend who recently bought what he claimed was 5.2 channel surround sound. So I asked him, "Uh, what's the difference between that and good old 5.1 channel surround sound?"
Apparently the extra 0.1 is a "virtual" speaker that only "audiophiles" can hear.
I then spent the next half hour explaining the "Emporer has no clothes" story.
MORTAR COMBAT!
Ogg is basically dead......so this may give it some life but not enough people will buy the player to make it worth the companies money...
At 1 MB per second (the practical maximum for USB 1.x), a 20 GB hard disk would take 20,000 seconds (about 5+1/2 hours) to fill. Fill it overnight.
Got a whole bunch of audio files you ripped from the 3 CDs you just bought at Worst Buy? Just put the new recordings on the device. At 90 MB per CD after compression, it shouldn't take longer than five minutes to sync your device over USB 1.1, and if your OS multitasks well, you should be able to send a folder of .ogg or .mp3 files as you encode it.
Will I retire or break 10K?
> But why can't people hire Apple's design firm
:-)
Because Jonathan Ive works for Apple in-house since '92. And I doubt that Apple's own design group would design an MP3-Player (or a notebook or a all-in-one desktop) for any other company than themselves.
Of course, there was a time when Frog, an external company designed the beige boxes, but this is gone now.
I heared Frod does icons and window themes for XP now, but I think that's just some jealous people talking stupid stuff about this excellent company
k2r
But why not make a player that you can re-program yourself, to support any format, provided the player has enough CPU power to process it? And, while you're at it, why not deliver a software development kit to help with supporting future formats, with it?
Or better (maybe a nice project for /.-ers?): develop a player in the form of a freely available hardware design, so that anyone can build it for him/herself? That is, with a hardware design developed in a similar way as the Ogg audio format was developed.
slightly off topic. But there doesn't seem to be an OGG player, for WinCE units? Surprising, that there is a player for the Zaurus, but not WinCE.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
There are some experiments being done and some listening data available, mostly on hydrogenaudio.org site. Seems like the general consensus at this point is that OGG is somewhat better than MP3 at the average rate about 128Kbps, but at the rates 200Kbps+ MP3 is better (meaning 'less artifacts'). At the rates lower than 128Kbps (where MP3 simply doesn't cut), OGG does a good job and apparently is better than WMA. So seems like OGG at this time competes with alternative lossy compressors at the rates 128Kbps and lower. If you tend to record at 200Kbps average, like the latest LAME default settings, you may as well stick with MP3 unless of course you are against MP3 'in principle'.
How about a firmware upgrade for the Rio Volt series, to let those CD players handle Ogg too? Huh? How's about it?
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
1) Linux synchronization software (they currently claim to only support Windows). Normally I would figure on the community to support the device, but this one looks like it probably has some sync features that need to come from the device owner (like the HiSi feature that lets you ID songs from the FM tuner).
2) USB 2.0 ... Neuros is a USB 1.1 device ... transferring 5000 songs on 1.1 is going to be slow. I don't have a USB 2.0 PC yet, but I will shortly. I'm not to concerned with firewire support.
3) (not a demand but they suggested it and I want it) timed recording of FM stations ... like a TiVo for NPR ... I've wanted this in an easy to use format for a LONG time. I dearly hope it can record FM while playing other recordings ... schweet if so.
4) Ogg support, but this is what this article was about so I'll be optimistic.
Otherwise, the unit has everything else I've been looking for (I really like that the HD is removable while the unit is still playable via the internal storage). I'm probably going to wait 6 months to see if they add any of these features, but if not it's feature-rich enough that I'll happily get this thing.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Check here for a good supplier for NiMH batteries and chargers. I don't work for them and I actually purchased my Ray-o-vac 1 hour charger and batteries from Walmart, but nimhbattery has a much better selection of batteries and chargers.
Some things I have learned about NiMH stuff:
- Buy a good charger. Cheap chargers ( probably first gen) generally work by timer not actual battery condition. The Radio Shack fast charger almost cooked a new set of batteries for me.
- Get second generation batteries, they are properly vented for the fast chargers and have higher current capacity ( 1800-2000mAh for AA size).
- Get a charger that matches your needs, even if you have to pay more. My current charger allows home or mobile charging (12v cig lighter plug) which is great for digital camera use. I bought three other cheaper chargers and regret the purchases, features and quality will actually be important.
- Don't let other people borrow your charger or batteries, you may never see them again. If you do let someone borrow your batteries, then make sure you explain that they should not discard them after they are discharged. Don't ask!
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
Wasn't he fired from Slashdot?
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Why don't we just all make individual petitions and send them to iRiver and other companies that make flash upgradeable firmware (that you can dl off the net for free) ? It sounds like a more reasonable alternative to buying a whole new player!
Already got my own. Remember that Sharp Zaurus that came out a year or two ago? It makes an excellent ogg player. And it only cost me around $100 to upgrade the ram enough to store several hours of music. The advantage to using the Zaurus to these other devices is you can have your network and computers manage your music collection for you through ssh and rsync over an 802.11 net. Show me a $100 ogg player that can do it right now and you might get yourself a customer, if I didn't already have one.
I emailed frontierlabs and they said the firmware for ogg would be added to their website soon for the nexII (model). It'll take CF and IBM microdrives for about $115 USD.
Well, gosh. Here I thought that an XML-aware database that would allow you to sync your XMMS playlists and things in addition to using it as a removable drive would be a useful feature. Seems people agree with me on this one.
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation
Anyone care to compute out how long it would take to actually fill that 20GB hard drive that USB 1 speed?
PocketMVP
I don't read or respond to AC posts
I have to say that on my linux box, mp3s sound much better than ogg files because i have the ability to use the equalizer with the mp3s. I guess ogg could sound better and it could be true that i'm not using the best driver. Either way, I'm sure that everyone would enjoy an eq in their portable players.
SIGFAULT
Yes, this is all true. We've got special plans to have Ogg Vorbis files Shock-Enabled[tm]; If you're listening to an Ogg Vorbis file and you think about copying it for a friend, a special patented algorithm will combine the electrical synapses in your brain and route the power directly to your spinal column, killing you instantly.
It's certainly a cost-savings over the all-weather troops that we've been using for the past few years.
Remember to keep your tinfoil hat on tight. :)
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation
What exactly do you do with your pink monitor to make it come back?
I think these units are the most underrated out there - I mean, if you really want to put your entire music collection in a portable box, the hard drive units are your only choice. If you don't mind that every 3+ hours of listening you'll have to swap out mini-CDs (i.e. you don't miss the 600+ megs of a full sized CD), you want somewhat more portability for working out or sports use, you don't want to spend a lot of money on a solid state player with several hundred megs of storage, and prefer the convenience of throwing a mini-CDR into your CD burner instead of plugging in a cable and syncing up MP3s to your solid state player, and 55 dollars sounds like a good price, you should definitely consider one of these units.
And if it played OGGs too, and had a radio-broadcast feature for use in the car, that would be the bomb.
My car player has been able to play Vorbis ever since Tremor came out.
Do all your shopping with them in person, at a real store. Also open the boxed package, in plain view of store personnel, to inspect the contents before leaving the store. CompUSA routinely re-shrinkwraps returned merchanise and puts it back on shelves or in warehouse inventory without placing any notice on the package the item has been returned and re-wrapped. Not all of their employees are honest either. I once bought an expensive Ultra160 SCSI card off the shelf. The shrinkwrapping looked perfect like it came from Adaptec. Opened it up at the checkout line, and inside the box was nothing but an empty antistatic bag. My friend bought an ATI Radeon 9000 card and opened the box at the checkout. Inside it was a cheapo Chaintech Geforce2 card.
I have a sizable collection of MP3s ('bout 40Gb @ 256K MP3) from converting my entire CD collection to MP3's. I've heard wonders about Ogg, however given the hours I've spent ripping/tagging my music (and the fact that more than half my CD's have been stolen over the years), are there any MP3 to Ogg converters out there?
Would my tag's be preserved if I converted to Ogg?
Now for my friends that have Windoze, what could they use to play these on? Does Winamp have a plugin of some sorts?
Why waste time learning, when ignorance is instantaneous? - Calvin
There is a loose end of non-commercial encoders, decoders and streams. But so far, mp3 consortium is just letting them exist and going after commercial licenses (that's as far as I know, any corrections?). Another good solution would be for them to ask end users go to some website and pay $5 for the right to use any MP3 software of their choice.
Yes, mp3 consortium could start going after LAME and WinAmp, harassing P2P users and otherwise turn evil. And that's a good thing that OGG and WMA are around to keep them reasonable. But they didn't turn evil yet and in the worst case I'll lose a couple of hundred bucks then buying new devices.
As for quality, interoperability is far more important. If you make an 128Khz, CBR MP3, you can give it to about anyone and be sure they'll be able to play it. With OGG or WMA, a Mac user will be at least forced to do some painful things to hear the sound. And with portable players all bets are off. Even Linux-based Zaurus doesn't come with OGG support by default.
Besides, mp3pro is not bad if you want quality at low bandwidth and still works with regular MP3 players in a pinch. Why not give it a try if you are not worried about interoperability?
Things like this which will record directly from FM to MP3/OGG people will not have to swap files online, they can just lift them off the radio like the good old days. Unless I am mistaken (happens way too often) it is 100% legal to record off the radio for personal use..
It seems that the neuros online store doesn't even have the player in stock at the moment and when I tried to use their secure page it seems to hate mozilla.... you would think they would want my money or something, but no...
I have a portable mp3 player I rarely use, but I use my Kenwood mp3 deck in my car all the time.
I'd much rather use ogg vs. mp3, but until I can have a car player, I can't convert...
*patiently waiting*
when I listen to the oggs I see the gnomes. Oh help they are taking my socks off.
I like everything you just said ;)
... I have about 50 of my CDs ripped to Ogg files, all stored on (standard size) CDs now. Re-ripping, or even just file aggregation and resorting, would be a real pain, but one I'd consider if someone actually would come out with an ogg-capable miniplayer ... particularly for things I want (like radio broadcasts and audio books) 200MB is quite a bit ;)
However, the thing I see being a barrier to widespread acceptance of mini-CD players is that a lot of people have CD-Rs already packed with their converted files
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
True, the fidelity is less than a wired connection ought to be, but the convenience is pretty amazing. Bingo: it's a car player :)
...
These things were a pain when most car radios were analog, but with modern head units, you can lock on pretty well. The Neuros unit with a flash reader as well as the hard drive "backpack" looks fun, though I have not yet had a chance to use one. My car stereo does have a line-in, so I can compare the two
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Forget it! Imagine a cellular phone or or a camcorder with those kinds of limitations. Early laptops did have similar stupidity but the vendors wised up!
Really, even swappable proprietary batteries are a pain in the neck. It's best to stick with good old standard NiMH AA's, or (if you really need li ion), use a standard camcorder pack that's available from multiple vendors.
The Neuros player's features are kind of interesting but as a buyer, the battery issue kills my interest in it all by itself.
Would putting firewire or USB2 on really have been so hard? As it stands, the player seems to be in the 'so close but' category.
Yeah that's right. My girlfriend's Archos 20GB Recorder cost half the list price for this Neuros and has USB2. *And* it's Mac-compatible, which is why it was chosen over the Nomad or other PC-only devices.
Da Blog
Winamp as of version 2.8 supports ogg. Use Winamp 3 for the full experience. There are some mp3 to ogg converters at http://www.vorbis.com just check the software page under your platform. Enjoy
Ogg finishes last on the sound quality test every time. All you are doing is making the world wsound a little worse by supporting it.
MSVCRT.DLL!!! :-)
Trainling MS now and forever...
Ya know, I work for a major company that makes portable devices that play MP3 CDS. We've supported other formats in the past, yet we get so few requests for Ogg Vorbis. For people who seem to want this so badly, it's so rarely asked for at least at my company. Only MP3 and WMA.
What's the deal folks? Why aren't you writing folks requesting Ogg?
Since flash is so quick, so handy and well just so damn cool I think my investment has already saved me tons over constantly recording new CD's. The modern floppy it is... lets sit down and talk about those portables that use flash memory and play nicely with Ogg!
Some nice information I didn't know about minidiscs. :)
But you can get a 256MB CF card for $100. Its stores around 250,000K of data, or about 2,000,000k. Compressing oggs at 128kbps still gives CD quality sound, equivelent to about 160kbps MP3s. That yields 15,625 seconds of audio or around 4 1/3 hours of CD quality music.
The price is impractical, unless you weigh in the benefits. My ogg player connects to my network over 802.11. It stores my data on an SD card, about the same price, and I have the option of having a card range from 32MB to 1024MB. I can use ssh/scp and rsync to move and organize data. And in the future I can use these SD and CF cards in other devices. But its still $5 for 5 hours of minidiscs vs. $100 flash RAM solution.
But let's say we don't care about CD quality music. What if we just need our entire collection of books on tape available on our PDA? Then we can store over 17 hours on that 256MB card or nearly 70 hours of audio on a 1024MB card. I guess it all depends on what you need it for.
The only reason I don't use minidics is because it was a proprietary Sony format and the players cost $500. If the data really is $1 ea and the players have come down in price it might actually be worth it.
And it doesn't actually go nearly that fast. You're looking at more than 8 hours, easy. For starters, you assume every sector is only written once. That's not the case, the catalog gets written over and over.
Try using USB 1.1 to fill a 20G HD and get back to me at out it isn't bad.
Lisa: What position have you got for me?
[crowd gasps]
Lisa: Thats right. A girl want to play football. How about that.
Ned: Well, thats super-duper, Lisa. We've already got four girls on the team.
Lisa: [let down] You do?
Ned: Ah huh. But we'd love to have you onboard!
Lisa: Well... football's not really my thing... after all [indignance returning]... what kind of civilised person would play a game with the skin of an innocent pig?!
Ned: Well, actually, Lisa, these balls are synthetic!
Janey: And for every ball you buy, a dollar goes to Amnesty International!
Lisa: [verge of tears] I've gotta go.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
You don't want to convert to ogg. Leave it as MP3s, converting it will make it much worse
...until it plays MP3's!
Make a portable MP3 device that has a MIC LEVEL input, a QUALITY A/D converter, and support for recording at HIGH BITRATES (>=320k) As far as I know, such a device does not yet exist.
PLEASE, SOMEONE. LIBERATE ME FROM MY MD RECORDER.
And that's a reason for not including USB 2 why?
How much does a USB 2 device controller cost vs. a USB 1.x device controller?
So what if it takes an hour to compress an MP3 file?
I didn't say that. I claimed that a fellow could load the device with compressed audio files faster than he could compress them. There is a limit to the practical speed of compressing CD audio on a home computer, and that's the physical limit of how fast a CD can safely spin during digital audio extraction, somewhere around 48x. Even when Moore's Law gets us to the point where a PC can encode as fast as it rips, 48 times 192 kbps is still less than the 12 Mbps of USB.
Are you a mac person by any chance?
I currently use a PC running a Windows OS, but I did start out on Apple II and Macintosh computers.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Portable player?
I'll never walk that long!!
I'm still waiting for the player in my car to play ogg, and the DVD-player at home
Hans ( hwit@a-domani.nl )
I wonder if we'll ever see a small computer(pda), that uses mini-cd-r's instead of compact flash? The minute a pda manufacturer decides to make one, flash will drop in price substantially. We need some competition to flash on pda's. As soon as color displays get reasonable, I suspect a whole bunch of "build your own pda" websites, which would be nice vs. paying out the arz for flash and proprietary applications that only run on specific pda devices. PDA's have managed to fragement very well, by making devices incompatible with one another; it's different from desktop computing whereby applications made for x86 will run on every x86desktop. Once we get some "standardized" pda hardware, I suspect we'll see the embedded computing revolution will be allow to mature. I'm disappointed in seeing compact move to their Xscale processor, a move microsoft loves, but as for adoption of pda's like desktops, it'll never happen until hardware makers decide to standardize. If only compact stuck with the strong arm, linux would rule, then adoption would be widespread; WAKE UP PDA MANUFACTURES! It's true the software drives the hardware market, yet it appears, that the manufacturers for whatever reason have decided to make the hardware drive the proprietary software market instead.
But, the Xbox at least will boost the sound levels on ripped tracks (which are internally WMA at some level, and sound like shit -- even vocals distort because of the shittyness of this codec).
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
After work I headed off to CompUSA to have a look at one of these. It looks great, and I will watch it's evolution for a while with the thought to buy one when a few firmware patches are released. The UI is a little unintuitive, and it appeared to crash at least once while I was mucking around with the controls. Hopefully, at some point they'll sell the 128Mb sleeve separately so that we have the best of both worlds :)
Just buy a Minidisc player/recorder/cheese-grater/thing-to-cuddle-up-t o-when-the-significant-other-is-out-of-town and be done with it.
I have yet to see a portable solution that suits my needs better than Mindisc. When you look at all the +'s and -'s for each, Minidisc wins....everytime.
And (this was mentioned previously in this thread) the battery life for Sony units is FANTASTIC! For God's sake, why can't solid-state units that have _no_ moving parts put even a dent in the lifespan that a single AA battery enjoys inside a Sony Minidisc player? (Other brands aren't too shabby, either.) It stuns me....
No, OGG definitely has most other formats over a barrel when it comes to the bit-peeling feature....that's really cool, expecially when you start thinking about how it can help with portable units....
winamp can do .ogg files. At least in winamp 3.0 without pluggins
Hey Emmett,
Congratulations on these latest agreements.
I've got a question that I'm sure you could answer. Is Rio ever going to upgrade the firmware in the Rio Volt to play Ogg Vorbis? Thanks.
I'm very happy with the AeroPlayer. Plays ogg by default, needs a plugin for MP3.
..
It's shareware, and you can find it here
http://www.aerodromesoftware.com/
Or was I just imagining that?
I saw the linked comment, too, and immediately thought of the mid-90's when I saw in a few MacMall catalogs a minidisc drive which I almost got for my Powerbook. Then after a couple months they just disappeared, never to be seen again. I always thought that was too bad, and yours and that linked post reinforce the positives about the media. Seemed like at least one version had non-cartridge versions of the discs, too.
Of course if they upped the discs to the new light spectrums, got a few orders of magnitude improvement in storage... Hmm, I thought someone else did have a tiny-disc product along those lines, holding a DVD or so size of data.
Here's hoping for something sturdy and usable,
8-PP
The one thing I haven't seen listed as a feature (and therefore I suspect it isn't included) is Fast-Forward within a song. I've decided that I'm not buying another music player that lacks this feature. The other bummer is the USB 1 thing - no doubt there is some great reason they couldn't use USB 2, but it makes it much less appealing.
Why do you feel that I would be more qualified to answer this than, say, someone who works for the company that makes the Rio Volt? We're software developers; We don't know what's going on at companies all over the place.
I don't know if Rio's going to upgrade the firmware, 'cause I don't work for SonicBLUE. Also; I work for Xiph, so I can't afford the call to Miss Cleo.
Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation
Perhaps I'm asking you because I've asked SonicBLUE and they don't answer. Perhaps I'm asking you because you're the CEO and I (incorrectly) assumed that you would know who you company is partnering with. Or perhaps I'm asking you because you're the one issuing press releases telling the community who IS releasing Vorbis decoders.
In the future maybe you ought to consider reserving your semi-clever, vitriolic responses for people who AREN'T your supporters.
Oh well, at least I gleaned some sort of information from this exchange: The "CEO" of Xiph is a patronizing asshole.
I'm sorry, but the press release linked to in the article only mentioned a sync manager, not anything else. The press release didn't say anything about being able to mount the player as a drive or anything else you just mentioned. Traditionally in the Win/Mac MP3 portable world having a "sync manager" typically means you can't mount the player drive or read/write it directly. Your above comment should have been part of the press release in order to avoid this type of confusion.
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
I'm sorry I unloaded on you, but please understand that I get questions about 'Hardware Company X' just about 24-freaking-7. It would grate on your nerves, too.
I don't think I responded well, but your remark wasn't exactly called for, either.
Emmett
I thought for sure that my IPod supported Ogg, but I did some more searching, and it is only ITunes that supported Ogg. I wonder if Apple can change that through a "BIOS" upgrade? Or is that impossible?
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
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