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Ogg Vorbis Portables On The Way

Posted by timothy on from the when-when-when dept.

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.

8 of 356 comments (clear)

  1. MP3 players by mschoolbus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  2. About time by Compact+Dick · · Score: 5, Insightful


    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]
  3. Re:It's about time by tsa · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I find the fact that Ogg Vorbis is an open format more important than the small gain in audio quality.

    --

    -- Cheers!

  4. Indeed. by Compact+Dick · · Score: 5, Insightful


    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]
  5. I want to upgrade, not go sideways by yelims · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    But my question is, why would I want to make a lateral move to something that plays .ogg files off of CD (vs. my RIO which plays mp3 off of CD)?

    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?

  6. Re:FLAC? by 0x0d0a · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I thought FLAC was a lossless format so one could record and edit sound files, not for listening

    Yup. You can certainly listen to it though.

    Do audiophiles really notice the difference between a high quality ogg/mp3 and FLAC?

    Not with a portable player and earbuds, they don't.

    Is the FLAC file smaller?

    No. It's much larger. At the bitrates I usually feel comfortable with, FLAC tends to be over five times as large as ogg. FLAC on this player would be more a gimmick than a useful feature.

    --
    May we never see th
  7. only usb1.1 by alanak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

  8. Re:It's about time by Emmettfish · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Thus Ogg doesn't have a "better audio", CD-quality Ogg just takes less space than CD-quality MP3. However with 20GB capacity in players, bitrate is quite irrelevant.

    There is no such thing as 'CD-quality' when dealing with a lossy encoder like mp3 or Ogg Vorbis. True CD quality can only be attained with a lossless encoder, like FLAC or Shorten.

    If you think Ogg Vorbis sounds better than mp3 at comparable bitrate or lower, then it's safe to say that you consider Ogg Vorbis representative of "better audio," or better reproduction of sound. If you do find this to be true, then you're in good company; Large amounts of double-blind testing agrees with you.

    Bitrate is never irrelevant. Bitrate multiplied by time equals size, and anyone who has ever filled a hard drive could probably tell you about how some things can look very large indeed from far away, but hit their limit of usefulness in a curiously small amount of time.

    Emmett Plant
    CEO, Xiph.org Foundation