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.

Comments

Re:High Quality?

[Max Romantschuk]

What sort of portable system are you going to play it on that over 200 Kbps would even make a difference?

While on the move: Not much.

But if you plug your player into a badass n-thousand-watt PA system it just might. HIFI applications could be another example.

I don't know about the quality of the Neuros's DA-converters though, they would have significant impact, that's for sure.

Re:High Quality?

[TheRaven64]

To be honest, you probably don't need much more than 128Kbps on a portable player. However, all of my Vorbis music is encoded at quality 8 (ABR 256Kbps). In order to use any of it I would need to peel it back to <200. It would be nice if it came with some kind of syncing utility that did this automatically.

Anyway, I still have a small pot of money waiting for Apple to release a Vorbis compatible iPod (or an iPod SDK so someone else can do it)

This is great.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Apple, now it's your turn...

[Ogger]

to support Ogg Vorbis with the next release of iPod firmware.

Having Vorbis support has guaranteed a sale to me

[Quizo69]

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.

Yay hooray, it's your birthday

[lvdrproject]

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.

Availability in Europe?

[jrepin]

Is this great product available in Europe? Or any other portable player that has support for excellent Ogg Vorbis?

Re:Availability in Europe?

[u38cg]

No, European rollout is supposed to be about August/September this year.

Personally, I can't wait. I used the Creative Jukebox for about a year, but it's become so buggy it's essentially unusable any more.

What I'd really like is a small portable stereo, w/ built-in speakers and a nice big hard-drive. It should be cheaper to make, as it wouldn't require woowoo miniatiurised batteries and amazing low-power dongles. Anyone know of something like this? I'm not after the hard drive hi-fi seperates, I want something entirely self contained.

Re:Availability in Europe?

[toasted_calamari]

i dunno if you have a need for a multi-gigabyte audioplayer, but if you get yourself a palmpilot, such as the palm Tungsten|T you can get a program called aeroplayer for that which plays mp3 and ogg. the ogg part is free, but the mp3 ability expires after 14 days and costs ~US$20

compared to a standalone audioplayer, the Tungsten is rather pricy, but keep in mind its really designed as a PDA. besides, your average audioplayer doesn't have a 320x320 color screen.

I put my money where my mouth is

[squarooticus]

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

PHB, Market Analysts and Decision Makers take note

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Having Vorbis support has guaranteed a sale to

[hackstraw]

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...

Re:Low quality is *not* okay

[TheRaven64]

Yes, 128K is bad quality, but so are headphones. 128K Vorbis or aac is higher quality than tape, and tape or more or less acceptable for listening to on the go.

Does it record OGG?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Live music

[Hatta]

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.