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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
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.
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.
Price wise, the Neuros is no worse than the ipod, and while the hard-disk backpack version is larger, it does substantially more (including the possiblity of hardware upgrades). The big selling point for me is the built in FM Transmitter. A close second is the (beta) Linux support. The Ipod has neither of these. Although several of the (relatively) cheaper Archos Jukebox devices have offered good GNU/Linux support for some time now (because they are fundamentally external harddisks).
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
The iPod is fully usable under linux, has been for some time. Mounting to add and delete files was easy since it's just a firewire disk, the db support to actually list the songs took a little while, but since Ephpod was open source all that work was easy to replicate on linux.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
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
Is this great product available in Europe? Or any other portable player that has support for excellent Ogg Vorbis?
Live long and propser!
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 ]
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
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...
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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 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.
USB 2.0 support's coming - and you get a free hardware upgrade if you buy before the 31st of July.