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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.
$250 for the 128 meg, $400 for the 20GB.
In other words, more than my main desktop computer cost.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Nice, but I already have a portable Ogg Vorbis player: tkcPlayer
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.
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.
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?
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]
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.
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.
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).
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
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.
>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.
Almost. Peeling will not give *exactly* the same quality, but much better than decode/reencode, and it will be faster too.
>But there is no tool yet. When can we expect to
>see one?
There is a proof-of-concept tool available right now, but it does not get good quality yet. There hasn't been much demand for it yet so developers have focussed elsewhere - maybe with the portables out this will change.
--
GCP
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.
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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.
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.
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.
Anyone care to compute out how long it would take to actually fill that 20GB hard drive that USB 1 speed?
If the patent owners on the toothpaste dispenser started charging at $50 royalty, obviously you would switch brands. If Thomson Conumer Electronics or MSFT started demanding outrageous royalties for MP3/WMA, you would switch to OGG, yes? Wait, your entire music collection is encoded in WMA ... you're out of luck until you re-encode. Maybe at the time this happens, you are running MSFT's super DRM operating system with palladium and you can't even transcode your WMA/MP3 to ogg because you don't want to pay to access them. We shouldn't just pay a small fee and settle for MP3/WMA because unlike the toothpaste, you entire history of useage of the product is what they use to force you to stay with it. Re-encoding an entire music selection is not easy work.
" 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."
Thompson shut down BladeENC which was an open source encoder with patent litigaton. Fraunhofer's original purpose for creating MP3 was clearly stated: They want to make money from patent royalties on streaming audio. That's why the original FHG encoder was so bad above 128 kbit/s. It was designed for low bitrate streaming -- most people did not have broadband back then and Napster did not exist. In the long run, they will not tolerate companies or individuals who make free products to compete with paid ones. They, like any commercial entity, are out to make money!
" 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."
Of course OGG is around to keep Thompson reasonable. Although Thompson has said that they think there's patent infringing code within OGG Vorbis. (You'd think they would know considering that it's open source.) As to losing a couple of hundred dollars on new devices, you're saying that you would PAY to get into a world where you use products where a company can just instantly decide that you have to pay additional fees to access your music collection, and you're happy with that?
" 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."
This is what the people who stand to make a lot of money from you on patented audio formats WANT you to say and think. Apathy in changing formats will just let them snare you that much more easily. It is just like with banks -- I work in the banking industry and I know that it is only apathy that keeps most people banking with their bank. If they woke up and looked at their situation, they would probably be able to find a better deal where they get the same services at much less cost with higher interest rates for their savings.
" 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?"
Once you start going with mp3pro, you run into the same problems with mp3. The cycle of exploitation by patents starts again.
If you were trying to write FUD, I hope you now realise that you need more practice because you are a poor FUD-spreader. If you honestly believed what you said, I hope you have learned something by reading this.