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Beta Ogg Vorbis Firmware For The Neuros [updated]
volsung writes "It's finally here! Xiph.org has made a beta release of firmware with Ogg Vorbis support for the Neuros portable music player. You can grab the firmware from the Neurosetta site. Note that this beta release only plays Vorbis files, and may skip on very high quality files, like average bitrates above 200 kbps. Also, you'll need to head over to the positron website for instructions on how to upload Vorbis files. Big thanks go out to Monty all of his hard work, and Digital Innovations for supporting the project.
(See the DI press release here.)"
Update: 07/01 15:26 GMT by T : Stan Seibert writes with an update: if you'd like to get one of these players, visit open.neurosaudio.com to find them on sale.
What sort of portable system are you going to play it on that over 200 Kbps would even make a difference?
We have so much time, and so little to do - strike that! Reverse it. Tryn Mirell
I've been planning to buy a portable audio player for a while now - for those rare moments in the gym - and this should be the clincher.
Hope it's available in the UK...
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
According to neurosaudio, this beta firmware upgrade will disable mp3 playback support. You can have one, but not the other. Looks like it would be better to wait until the beta stage has been passed before upgrading your firmware, since this will be resolved in later releases.
"I am not bound to please thee with my answers" [William Shakespeare]
With such things like Personal Submarines, Personal Rockets, Z80 based webservers etc., can't we have a Slashdot store or something?
The would probably be a little redundant, taken that thinkgeek already exists.
I'm all for competition, but running a store takes some serious logistics.
.: Max Romantschuk
Beta Ogg Vorbis Firmware For The Neuros
Is it just me, or does it seem a bit wierd the fact that we understand what this sentence means...
-- the only thing we have to fear is really scary things
Ogg Vorbis truly is a superior format. In some circles, it has already gained an enormous amount of mindshare. I did end-to-end tests on my PC comparing MP3 and Ogg files, and I found out that Ogg files were smaller, and of higher quality, than MP3 files that were equivalently-encoded from the same WAV file. As much as 20% of your disk space can be saved by using Ogg Vorbis instead of MP3. Also, Ogg Vorbis is free from dodgy commercial patents and general legal cloudiness. The quality of Ogg Vorbis is beyond question. Ogg Vorbis is taking over in South Africa. Several people I've talked to have been moaning about the lack of car Ogg Vorbis players, stating that the current MP3 front-loaders are no longer sufficient, and that they would rather have Ogg Vorbis players in their cars. Whether manufacturers take note of this or not isn't even the question. The question is: WHEN is it going to happen? Pretty soon, I'd say.
The above was taken from a link in the above story. Now, the problem I have is that I own three of these, Acorn Electrons. Can I simultaneously use an Electron and Positron, or am I going to end up annihilating something?
TIA LOL Me too!!!! etc.
Does it play oggs?
Ill only buy it if it plays oggs
oh wait damit need another reasons umm... its too exspensive yeah thats it
Not that everyone cares, but a major selling point for the OGG/Vorbis format is that it is an open standard (MP3 is not). Want to learn more (or about the other projects by the same people/groups) check out their website.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
to support Ogg Vorbis with the next release of iPod firmware.
Since changing to Ogg Vorbis encoding early this year I've been very impressed with the space savings and quality over MP3. I have since re-encoded most of my CDs into Ogg format and thanks to the team at Neuros supporting Ogg, I plan to buy one of the 128MB units with the addon 20GB hard drive in the near future based on that feature alone.
With its FM transmitter as well, I look forward to taking my entire 8GB of music on the road with me to listen to non-stop on long journeys.
This is a clear example of the customer buying a product because it offers what WE want, not what corporations dictate we should have.
Well done to Neuros Audio, for looking after the geeks, because it is our recommendations that often lead to many others buying a tech product that otherwise may not get so much exposure.
Visceral Psyche Films
Yay for this. I've been waiting for this (and so have a few friends) for a long time. I don't care for the Neuros, but i'm hoping this will lead to Vorbis support for something that's not retarded, like the (now-dead) Rio or the iRiver. My RioVolt is starting to wear out on me, but i'm hanging on to it until a good Vorbis/MP3 (gotta have both) hardware solution is available. I can't really say i have a lot of high hopes for that, though. People don't really seem too interested in Vorbis, and AAC is obviously "supposed to be" the next-generation audio format. Sigh.
That's right. Give me that cutting edge NOW! :)
Less is more !
I am sorry to inform you that "Ogg Vorbis" infringes on SCO copyright. We believe it was developed on the illegal Unix system "Linux" and under our EULA it belongs to us. We plan to file suit immediately.
Chris Sontag - Senior Vice President and General Manager, SCOsource
" To be honest, you probably don't need much more than 128Kbps on a portable player."
To be honest with who? Your ear doctor?
128kb is *bad quality*. Only apple fanatics defending the iTunes kingdom say otherwise.
Let me repeat that... *128kb is bad quality*.
Even with Ogg, you need to go 192 to get decent quality.
Is this great product available in Europe? Or any other portable player that has support for excellent Ogg Vorbis?
Live long and propser!
Sorry but with Slashdot's known security problems resulting from its lunatic fringe open-source code... I would not trust them with my credit card.
Ogg won't make a big difference unless MP3's are not supported anymore. Once they drop MP3's, these players can get cheaper. Nevertheless, this is one mother of a step in the right direction.
You forgot to say "M$", that would get you mod points for sure
Parent is a troll
As I said long ago, I would buy the first portable player to have Ogg Vorbis support. Just 5 minutes ago, I ordered by Neuros. Sorry iRiver, you lose.
Cheers,
Kyle
[ home ]
Which is a shame, because iRiver make the sexiest MP3 portables IMHO.
Even better, make a PositronFS using LUFS so it's possible to just drag and drop files in and out of it (don't use kio or gnome-vfs though), with automounting etc.
Finally, integrate it with RhythmBox/XMMS/JuK/whatever. Hopefully Neuros owners won't be stuck with the command line UI for long.
Now I just have to ponder whether I can really afford one....
That thing is cool as hell. I personally don't have any real use for it, but I still have this urge to buy about 40 of them and then just roll around in them.
My dad is travelling and living out of his car right now and writing a book. He could really make use of a lot of the features of this thing.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I love my Neuros dearly. It's a part of the family now. It sits at the dinner table and has its own bedroom.
But it's a bit slow. At around 2 gigs per hour, it takes 10 hours to fill all 20 gigs. Those of you itching to buy one might do better to wait a couple months for the release of the USB2 HD backpack. Those of us who bought early will be recieving a free (or nearly free) upgrade to USB2, but I don't think that applies if you buy one right now.
It might, though. You should ask. Those guys are great.
Here is a good example of why an Ogg Vorbis player just isn't hip with the people who sell portable digital audio players:
When a portable player appears in an article on Slashdot, an onslaught of comments from SlashDrones ensue. "If the *insert player name* only had Ogg Vorbis...".
Well, here's your Ogg Vorbis player. Yes, it's beta, but so wasn't the Neuros when it was first sold. I can report that the Neuros is a solid player now, though it's not perfect, it's close. They have taken some of the love they have shown their customers and dedicated it to their products. And the response?
I'm all for Slashdot, you make me laugh, you make me think, you make me come back several times a day. Damn you! But, sometimes, you make me think this is a perfect example of why a better *insert anything here* does not exist. The world, as I see it from an American perspective, is full of vain, unreliable, pompous individuals who only care about what's in it for them. In this case, the small corner of the world I speak of is Slashdot.
What's next? When Vorbis support comes out of beta, has been through testing by a large user base, you're not going to buy one why?
1) It does not support Beowolf clusters?
2) In Soviet Russia, Neuros buys you?
3) ?
4) Profit
Give me a break.
... but I'm not buying a portable music player until it plays ogg files ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
APPLE?!
Go over to Apple's iPod forums and check out the humongous, multi-page petition for Ogg support. It has been growing for a long time now. And you know what? Apple does NOT care.
I sent them many requests on their feature improvement page as well, and so did many others. The end result? AAC. Funny, I don't remember anyone asking for AAC, certainly not with a huge petition. But DRM is all the rage these days...
I said "screw Apple" and got a Neuros. It just arrived this week, and now I see the Ogg beta firmware is available...I literally canNOT wait to try this. I've been waiting so long for something like this!
Apple missed this boat deliberately. To hell with 'em. The Neuros is one cool device, even if is a bit bigger than the iPod. But Apple doesn't have Emmett Plant working for them either!
And to me as well.
I recently bought a stereo for my car and bought the only deck that the shop sold with an aux input specifically for the neuros once ogg is supported.
OK Neuros, I've got RCA cables dangling on my floorboard that are just waiting to be plugged into one of your devices. However, as I've been waiting long enough, I will actually buy any portable device that plays oggs, so the race is on...
...I plan to buy one of the 128MB units with the addon 20GB hard drive in the near future...
just checked the site for neuros.. the 128mb unit ($229) costs more than the 256mb iriver ifp ($185) i bought in jan. the 20gb hd addon is a cool feature tho, and the bundle is a great deal.. hd addon is $399, bundle $418..
personally, i'd rather have an iriver w/ vorbis support, because the design of the device (of any iriver, not just the flash based) is so much better..
End of line..
With AAC, I can't really see any consumer value to Ogg -- other than to confuse confuse consumers and diffuse the popularity of AAC.
Ogg needs some marketing oomph. It doesn't have to ubiquiteousness of MP3, or the Dolby-related caché of AAC.
So what if it's slightly better than AAC?
check out this. ihp-100 coming soon to a retailer near you..
End of line..
Frontier Labs have likewise stated that they will be supporting Ogg very soon. The Neuros looks nice but it doesnt fulfil ALL of what I need
a). Uses normal AA rechargeable batteries
b). Compact Flash, so I can interchange with digital camera and have sizes the order of 500Mb
it does the first part, but not the second - but congrats on supporting Ogg
On the website it says:
'Recording to MP3 format from internal microphone, FM tuner, and line input'
So will this upgrade make it possible to record to OGG?
http://open.neurosaudio.com
Damn, radio has sucked so much. A couple of weeks ago I bought a car that only has radio, gambling that Neuros' MyFi feature would be all I need. Geez, half the time it's commercials, and the other half of the time, it's just the same bands over and over again, no diversity at all. By tonight, that'll all be behind me! Woohoo!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You WANT it to use AA rechargable batteries? Or did I misread that?
The Neuros 20Gig has a LiIon battery and believe me, it lasts. I'm really impressed with how power efficient the whole thing is.
Emmett
If you listen to a lot of live music, you need high quality compression. Live music sources often have a lot of crowd noise. Compressing the crowd noise means you can't compress the music as well. Lossy stereo coupling can add artifacts when there's a lot of noise. Also, the acoustics in a concert setting are different from a studio. From my experience q6 ogg is the minimum necessary for good sound. That's roughly 192kbps. But really, until somebody tweaks a codec for the peculiarities of live audio, lossless is the way to go.
P.S. See furthurnet, etree and The Live Music Archive. For tons of high quality live audio from many of todays best bands. (Phish, Medeski, Martin, and Wood, Particle, Yonder Mountain String Band, and lots lots more.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'll be buying a Neuros as soon as it's available in the UK.
I was waiting for the for Ogg portable player, and it looks like this is going to be it.
As an active member of the live music community, I get a lot of losslessly compressed audio in these formats. With its 20gb backpack the neuros would be ideal for me. Yes, I could compress to ogg now. This is almost good enough. But live music does not compress very well. q6 ogg is the minimum for acceptable quality. Crowd noise detracts from the signal, lossy stereo coupling can cause noticible artifacts when there's noise on each channel that's not correlated. Plus, it takes me about 20 minutes to encode something to ogg. Why should I have to wait? Lastly, if I can haul around my lossless audio and listen to it, it's a lot easier to spread the music around.
Yes, this is a niche. But niches are why we need open source. I don't expect a company to cater to every odd use someone my have for their device. But I do expect them to empower users to help themselves. This is why the neuros needs an extensible plug in architechture that's open for everyone to use.
Digital out would be nice too.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Sorry to say, any multi-gig portable player just cannot cut it without USB2.0 What reasonable person will wait ten hours to upload or backup his music?
That being said, Archos' AV320 (capable of playing DIVX, XVID, MP3 as well as recording MPEG4 video and MP3, w/USB2 and FW) really kills everything in the category. I've had mine for about 3 weeks now, and its insane. Combined with a TV-capture card (WinTV) I can record shows to DivX and watch them while eating lunch, traveling home, taking a ****.
Point being all this masterbating over free formats is fun, but its not quite the most important feature, especially when most people already have large collections of mp3s.
(2,3-Benzopyrrole)
I just think it's wonderful to see a company and a free software project working together so closely and actually coming up with the goods. Neuros might not be getting my money just yet (I'm broke), but they do have my respect for their work on free software. The FM transmitter really is the seller for me. I know that the their are some mini-jack to transmitter adapters available that are sold for the ipod, but this just doesn't match the internal transmitter. Also the FM RDS is neat (station/song auto display for you non-radio junkies). Does anyone know of any other portable audio players with a transmitter feature?
Yay! This how means I can listen to my RMS ogg vorbis files on the road.
You didn't have to do that. The Neuros will play over your FM radio. :-)
want to come back to my place, bouncy bouncy?
"I think any time you expose vulnerabilities it's a good thing." -Attorney General Janet Reno
Yeah yeah, I know USB 2 is coming, but when?
Love the Neuros backpacking and built-in transmitter though. Great ideas.
Yese I DO prefer NORMAL AA batteries to a lithium ion battery that you have to carry around a recharger for etc. I can share NORMAL batteries with other devices ... I cant do that with Lithium Ion. I can buy them in many places, I cant do that with Lithium Ion. I actually get the order of 20 (or more) hours of use out of a pair of AA with the NEX IIe .... more than I've seen with any Li-Ion.
Why'd you waste your time on this completely unfounded rant? There are dozens of posts from people who are buying one now because of this!
You deserve to be modded (-1, Self-Righteous).
http://wiki.xiph.org/VorbisHardware
Litigious bastards
FM is pretty low quality, especially since the dynamic range is squashed so much.
I'm a musician with the good ears that come with it (and studio quality headphones), I rip my music at an ABR of approx 128 kbps in OGG, and 160 in MP3. I can tell the difference side by side, but OGG's artifacting is so unobtrusive (it generally manifests itself as a slightly "airy" quality, as if the high frequencies are being slightly accentuated) that I don't notice it when I'm just listening.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
Windows loses.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
finally a Ogg player for my brain! now i just gotta figure out where to plug it in..
I'm gonna be buying one of these in the next week unless some other product jumps to the fore - and even then...
Plus, the neuros looks sexy.
Granted, it's got that slow connection thing going on - but as I have less than 20 gigs of mp3's total, it's not too troublesome for me.
Granted, but for me it'd make little difference as the sound system needs to compete with the car noise anyway. I've found that pretty much kills any (reasonably priced) sound quality.