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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.

5 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. 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