Remember, just because Ogg Vorbis is (royalty) free doesn't mean that the player is royalty free. The point of royalty free is that Ogg Vorbis player manufacturers don't have to pay royalties to Xiph. This (hopefully) gives the end user a cheaper product. Of course it also allows OSS developers to create ogg vorbis players without having to worry about having to pay royalties.
We're heading for the stars. Obviously we still have to manufacture it, but let's be honest, after looking at those schematics does anyone doubt that we'll get there soon? BTW, that @ is me looking out a porthole, wearing a spacesuit.
Yes, well WinModems were designed to be lower cost, yet it didn't end up that way for the consumer. Also HP 820Cse were suppose to be cheaper but it didn't end up that way. What makes you say it's going to be different for these players.
What are you talking about? Win modems were (and still are) significantly cheaper than standalone modems. You can get a winmodem for $5 these days, but a standalone will cost you ten times that!
You have to wear a spacesuit????? You have an intergalactic spaceship without a shirtsleeve environment???
Do you realize how long of a trip that is?
Back to the drawing board! Your design sucks!!!
-- This space available.
Re:Umm
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Breaking news:
Slashdotter discovers that sometimes stuff on the internet doesn't work out the way planned. More to follow.
1) R2000 + software decoder on ROM
2) ????????
3) Profit!
Re:Umm
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
But the minimum is USD 25,000 (or maybe USD 50,000), so the royalty is only "trivial" once you've started producing and selling in volume. Hacking up custom hardware is right out.
Re:Umm
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Somebody is making a lot of money selling The Analog Kid winmodems.
I've just upgraded the firmware of my iRiver IMP-150 (dates from 2-Jul-2003) and the only things that add is a more beautiful start logo... and some other options...
I can just picture someone asking it...
by
zoeblade
·
· Score: 3, Funny
But will it support MP3?
No, wait, that's the other way around...
My first official KarmaWhoring action.
by
Trelane,+the+Squire
·
· Score: 0, Informative
FineArch, Inc., Tokyo Japan based semiconductor LSI design company, developed the system IP to decode the next generation digital music compression format, Ogg Vorbis(http://www. vorbis.com). FineArch successfully completed the Ogg vorbis sytstem IP to run at 12 Mhz. This is about 1/6 of the clock speed required to decode Ogg Vorbis with a single CPU system. This ultra low power IP fits well with the today's portable music player market where battery life is critical factor.
Ogg Vorbis is attracting much attention to the digital music world as a "license and royalty free" compression format. Ogg Vorbis is also known as its higher quality, higher compression ratio compared to MP3, current standard of the compression music format. Encoding and decoding process of Ogg Vorbis is more CPU intensive task than those of MP3. Hardware implementation of Ogg Vorbis has been scarce. FineArch.Inc fully noted the potential of the Ogg Vorbis, developed the Ogg Vorbis playback System IP.
This "System IP" consisted of Hardwared IP and Software IP which needed to build a portable music player. It has all the necessary components to build a standard portable music player.
"Hardware IP" includes "MultiCore Architecture"; CPU and DSP, Memory card interface, External memory interface, LCD controller, and Key input function. Only external memory and audio D/A converter is needed to build a complete portable player system.
"Software IP" includes DSP firmware do decode Ogg vorbis and the CPU firmware for overall system control. Fully utilizing the advantage of MultiCore architecture system sofware stacks are carefully distributed to CPU and DSP, achieving 12 MHz. This is the lowest system clock speed in the industry known today.
This "System IP" will be licensed to any customers looking for the royalty free, high quality digital music decoding capabilities on their system. Such system includes the portable music player,the game console, PDA, and the portable music entertainment system. FineArch also has the FPGA evaluation kit, which can be ordered directly.
in case of slashdotting by rabid mp3 advocates;)
do I get a cake?
Re:My first official KarmaWhoring action.
by
caluml
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
do I get a cake?
No, because you have messed up big time in public. Hang your head in shame, and never try this again, as it is well out of your league.
Re:My first official KarmaWhoring action.
by
grumpygrodyguy
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· Score: 1
Ogg Vorbis is also known as its higher quality, higher compression ratio compared to MP3, current standard of the compression music format
Ya, but too bad it sounds so retarded to say. Noone will adopt it because it's ugly. Facts a fact.
-- The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
Re:My first official KarmaWhoring action.
by
erikdotla
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I agree.
That, and the fact that when laymen try to get involved in the community to get familiar with it, they run into fanatical Linux-types who refuse to answer any question directly without criticising the person's lack of intelligence and unwillingness to find the information themselves, as well as the hordes of fanboi's who respond to everything with "OGG RULES! MP3s SUCK!".
I use WinXP at home because my home box is purely a game machine, no room for Linux. I use Winamp, and fact is, Ogg's take an extra half-second or so to load up than MP3s do, which are nearly instantaneous. The zero-patience attitude of technology consumers does not allow for such sloppiness, which is a strong reason to not convert everything over to Ogg.
That's assuming they know how to convert, or are willing to learn, which most people don't and aren't. And even if they did, everyone has 7 million MP3s from the Napster days, and it takes a REALLY long time to convert just one song to Ogg. Why bother?
MP3 is here to stay for a long time. Unless serious IP issues crop up with it, it'll definitely stay.
Ogg sounds better, but to most people, it's "a little better" or "unoticably better but I trust that it is, since everyone says so."
-- # Erik
Re:My first official KarmaWhoring action.
by
Valiss
·
· Score: 1
I just wanted to quote this 'cause this is excatly how I see the situation. Really sums it up nicely:
MP3 is here to stay for a long time. Unless serious IP issues crop up with it, it'll definitely stay.
Ogg sounds better, but to most people, it's "a little better" or "unoticably better but I trust that it is, since everyone says so."
Well met.
--
-Valiss
Re:My first official KarmaWhoring action.
by
Shadestalker
·
· Score: 1
The zero-patience attitude of technology consumers does not allow for such sloppiness, which is a strong reason to not convert everything over to Ogg.
Or it's an indication that something's amiss in Winamp with regard to fully working Ogg Vorbis support?
Re:My first official KarmaWhoring action.
by
F117
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· Score: 1
You're not supposed to convert your current collection of Mp3s to oggs. you're supposed to convert newly ripped WAVs of your favourite music to OGG. I have a good set of headphones and I can "notice" the superior quality of OGGs in 128kbit compared to Mp3s. I don't mind a 1/2 sec load time vs. higher quality of music for 3 or 4 minutes (or howeverlong the music is).
Wait for it, Vorbis Ogg WILL BE the future. -amir
-- -573417h F16h73r
About time, but nothing special
by
brejc8
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
This isn't that amasing. Firstly this is done using a CPU and a DSP. No ogg specific hardware is mentioned. Secondly the chip isnt even a chip but a FPGA implementation. They can show that it works but mapping it out is another chalange if you want to keep it very power. Basicly what they have done was to pick up a core and stick it on an FPGA then compiled ogg/vobis for that CPU's ISA. Place a bit of a bootloader and something to handle the I/O and its done. No magic.
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
Aadain2001
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I have had the WORST experience with OpenCores! That place does nothing but point to company website who either want the core or have it and want to sell it to you! OpenCores is nothing but a front!
-- Space for rent, inquire within
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
deman1985
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· Score: 3, Insightful
It may not be in hard silicon yet, but it's a working design nonetheless. It can only be improved from here by using design-specific hardware.
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I agree, it's not that impressive, but I thought they grabbed a whatsit, then wrinkled a QT Pie implementation for the dingleknocker romper bootcruncher.
But then, I'm no expert.
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
brejc8
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· Score: 2, Informative
I can see the designer of this device going "Damn you slashdotters!".
:-)
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
jweeld
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· Score: 1
Let's see: a CPU and a DSP, an FPGA, bootloader, I/O...you've just described a large chunk of electronic devices on the market today. If this isn't ogg-specific hardware, then what is? (I'm impressed, but what do I know--I just design ASICs and FPGA systems for a living.)
QED
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
qbwiz
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· Score: 1
Are these cores nothing? You can download them from CVS, can't you? The only company websites it points to are those of the companies use the cores and have success with it. What more do you want?
-- Ewige Blumenkraft.
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
mikael_j
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· Score: 1
I think what the parent meant was that the hardware used wasn't specifically designed for decoding oggs but is just existing designs put together in such a way that they are capable of decoding oggs.
/Mikael
-- Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
brejc8
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· Score: 1
Well the CPU and DSP have allready been designed in the past. All this project needed to do is the software. My university has a third year student doing ogg vobid decoder for our ARM boards. All that has to be done is to get the original source and replace the IO functions with hand written ones to interact with flash memory reather than files. Then you just load your ELF with a debugger and watch the thing squeak.
This is not rocket science. If the thing was done using proper application specific units and layed and they had to reverse engineer the ogg format then I would be impressed.
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
Aadain2001
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· Score: 1
EVERY time I went there looking for something, I would find nothing. That has been my experience, which is why I said what I said.
-- Space for rent, inquire within
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
femto
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Either Aadain needs a lesson on using a web browser, he is an industry plant, or he was just plain unlucky when he visited OpenCores.
Opencores project page has many original works on it, all written by opencores users, released under an open license and hosted on the opencores website.
That's just five. There are 79 more. Hopefully that will debunk Aadain's misinformation.
Accusing OpenCores of being a front is bit like accusing Debian of being a front. OpenCores is not a front.
In the interests of openness, I will point out that I am the maintainer of OpenCore's FAQ. The root page of OpenCores contains some links to case studies of some companies who have successfully used OpenCores in implementations. I will discuss with the rest if OpenCores whether these links are too prominant and are drawing attention away from the original work on the site.
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I think that someone else has been there and done that already using this sparc compatible core. The sparc core can be used to create either an ASIC or FPGA.
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
anttik
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· Score: 0
No magic.
How lame. I'd never buy anything that works without magic.
Re:About time, but nothing special
by
GigsVT
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· Score: 1
EVERY time I went there looking for something, I would find nothing
Maybe the something that you seek is really nothing at all.
I recommend yoga.
-- I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
text of the article
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
System IP to decode New digital music format Ogg Vorbis is ready for a market from FineArch, Inc. Achieved competitive 12MHz operation, targeting portable music player
FineArch, Inc., Tokyo Japan based semiconductor LSI design company, developed the system IP to decode the next generation digital music compression format, Ogg Vorbis(http://www. vorbis.com). FineArch successfully completed the Ogg vorbis sytstem IP to run at 12 Mhz. This is about 1/6 of the clock speed required to decode Ogg Vorbis with a single CPU system. This ultra low power IP fits well with the today's portable music player market where battery life is critical factor.
Ogg Vorbis is attracting much attention to the digital music world as a "license and royalty free" compression format. Ogg Vorbis is also known as its higher quality, higher compression ratio compared to MP3, current standard of the compression music format. Encoding and decoding process of Ogg Vorbis is more CPU intensive task than those of MP3. Hardware implementation of Ogg Vorbis has been scarce. FineArch.Inc fully noted the potential of the Ogg Vorbis, developed the Ogg Vorbis playback System IP.
This "System IP" consisted of Hardwared IP and Software IP which needed to build a portable music player. It has all the necessary components to build a standard portable music player.
"Hardware IP" includes "MultiCore Architecture"; CPU and DSP, Memory card interface, External memory interface, LCD controller, and Key input function. Only external memory and audio D/A converter is needed to build a complete portable player system.
"Software IP" includes DSP firmware do decode Ogg vorbis and the CPU firmware for overall system control. Fully utilizing the advantage of MultiCore architecture system sofware stacks are carefully distributed to CPU and DSP, achieving 12 MHz. This is the lowest system clock speed in the industry known today.
This "System IP" will be licensed to any customers looking for the royalty free, high quality digital music decoding capabilities on their system. Such system includes the portable music player,the game console, PDA, and the portable music entertainment system. FineArch also has the FPGA evaluation kit, which can be ordered directly.
Please go to download page for more information about this product.
Contact FineArch, Inc.
E-mail pr@finearch.com
URL http://www.finearch.com/
FineArch, Inc.
TIME24 BUILDING 4W-2 2-45 Aomi Koto-ku Tokyo 135-8073 Japan
Download page: It contains a form asking you for name, e-mail, profession, etc. and then you get to a page with a bunch of PDFs.
wow. 2 threads up, someone posted this exact same thing, and even admited it might whore them some karma. his moderation:
40% Informative
60% Overrated
this guy does the same thing. his moderation:
30% Informative
30% Underrated
20% Redundant
i know its slashdot and all, but im suprised that that can happen anywhere.:P
portables
by
h4x0r-3l337
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Hopefully we will see portable players very soon now
What? Off-freaking-topic? This should be at least +4! It's completely ON-TOPIC. What are the mods smoking?
Either, they don't know what you're talking about, didn't bother to click the link, or think, omg, everyone knows about THAT. Well, in any case, let me try to help you out man:
Neuros Ogg Vorbis Firmware Released
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought neuros only works with windows. I'm sure that's fine for most people, but if I'm going to buy one, I'd need to drag files from OSX, Win2k and Linux.
Consider yourself corrected... Digital Innovations (makers of the Neruos) and Xiph.org have a working beta called Positron that allows you to synchronize your Neuros to Linux (and not limited to Linux necessarily, it uses Python and should be portable). From beta reports on the forums Positron is working nicely and should be out of beta soon.
However, this/. article was about -dedicated- Ogg Vorbis hardware and the Neuros uses a multipurpose CPU. It makes the Neuros more flexible but the dedicated chip would be cheaper. Both have their places.
-- It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Re:portables
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
The problem is that Slashdot does not allow enough people to moderate, that any given moderation influences a posting's rating too much, and that moderations are anonymous. There is a reason I only post here as an anonymous coward.
Yup, I just bought my
Neuros 20GB Audio Computer from Buy.com (I also had a $15 off coupon). They've currently got a promotion going for either a $100 rebate (making the player $300) or a free USB 2.0 upgrade.
The thing I like (and hoping works) is the built-in FM transmitter - no need to lug cable around, just fire up the stereo!
I always said I'd buy the first large capacity portable that did Vorbis. And here it is.
Nice. But I'm waiting for an OGG player that supports Compact Flash media. I have a 1GB CF stick here in my tiny Nex IIe mp3 player with a 12 hour battery life that i won't give up for any power hungry HD based or non-expandable memory player.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought neuros only works with windows
You're wrong. And so are some of the others, actually. The synchronization software (ie, the program on the computer that you would use to manage your music on your Neuros) is called Positron, and is officially released at 1.0 for Linux. It hasn't (as far as I know) been ported to OSX, but that shouldn't be too hard.
The firmware for making the Neurosetta firmware capable of playing Oggs is still in beta (prone to skipping at >200k encoding and takes up a bunch of battery life, but supposedly otherwise fine).
One more point for the open source community
by
deman1985
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Hopefully this will be just one more step towards commercially available, open source-based devices. I can't wait to get my hands on one of these devices, personally.
I wonder if any of the big vendors will pick them up?
Re:One more point for the open source community
by
Anonvmous+Coward
·
· Score: 1
"Hopefully this will be just one more step towards commercially available, open source-based devices. I can't wait to get my hands on one of these devices, personally.
I wonder if any of the big vendors will pick them up?"
Yeah because Open Source zealots are known for throwing money around all over the place!
Re:One more point for the open source community
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
>I wonder if any of the big vendors will pick them up?
No, they won't.
How are they supported?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I admit I haven't looked over their license agreement lately, but I was under the impression that these people don't receive any royalties regardless of how and where Ogg Vorbis is deployed. If this is the case, how can they keep operating? How can they be supported?
This isn't a troll, I'm legitimately interested in keeping projects like this alive..
Re:How are they supported?
by
zoeblade
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· Score: 1
I think they're supported via donations and merchandise. I must say I'm tempted...
Re:How are they supported?
by
deman1985
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It's supported by the same means that any other open source project is supported-- various contributions in time, code, and money. The best way to keep the project alive is to get involved somehow or another.
Re:How are they supported?
by
stonecypher
·
· Score: 5, Funny
It works the same way all OSS does. Someone wants it and thinks it should be free. So they write it on their own free time and put it on the net. Somebody else goes "oh, good idea, let's make it do this too," and adds to it. Repeat until you have an audio format powerful enough that a company feels it's worth implementing in a chip.
Now, the company doesn't have to pay anyone, so it's much cheaper than developing MP3 chips. They're gonna make money by fabricating them and selling them to other companies which want Vorbis decoding (It's not ogg vorbis: ogg is the container format.) Or, at least, that's what the fab/design company is gambling on.
Then, the player manufacturer, who bought these chips, puts them in players and sells them to a public for some enormous amount of cash. I say enormous because MP3 CD players are $40 in Target now, and frankly a 10 gig hard drive isn't that many CDs (especially now that CaseLogic sells CD cases whose sides are speakers.) Okay, the 60 gig models still have some appeal, but when we get portable DVD MP3 players, it's *over.*
I mean, shit, then I'll be able to keep my whole audio collection on six discs. (RIAA notice: I still have all the CDs they came from, with the exception of a few which have suffered pets, so back off in preemption, you self appointed gestappo. Do something useful and constructive with your dollar, instead of making yourself the butt of "look what DirecTV/SCO is becoming" jokes. Assholes. Maybe find a musician that isn't paint by number.)
In the meantime, the parent was modded insightful? Interesting I could see (I don't think it is, but there's a sensible stance for it.) But what insight did s/he provide? Do you people pay attention when you moderate?
I'm gonna go back in my cave and grumble at the walls for a while. f'ing rock.
Re:How are they supported?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
It exists. http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/s ony-mpd-ap20u.html
Re:How are they supported?
by
Anonvmous+Coward
·
· Score: 3, Funny
I mean, shit, then I'll be able to keep my whole audio collection on six discs. (RIAA notice: I still have all the CDs they came from, with the exception of a few which have suffered pets, so back off in preemption, you self appointed gestappo. Do something useful and constructive with your dollar, instead of making yourself the butt of "look what DirecTV/SCO is becoming" jokes. Assholes. Maybe find a musician that isn't paint by number.)
That was worth an instant replay.;)
Re:How are they supported?
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Yeah, I have one and it works pretty well with the beta Neurosetta Ogg Vorbis firmware.
At first it locked up frequently, but this was determined to be an issue on files encoded with the pre-1.0 oggenc. I had to re-encode a few CDs, but I did also gain about 50 MB by doing so.
BTW, according to the New Features Schedule the integrated firmware is due by the end of July.
-- This user account is inactive account replaced by the PDA
My understanding is that many of the limits of the beta are due to Vorbis decoding being such an intense load relative to the Neuros' processing power.
Xiph says they'll optimize the code and I believe them. But having a dedicated chip to take all that load off of the wimpy CPUs found in embedded devices, well, that would be really swell. I mean, I'd rather monty be working on new things (e.g. Vorbis 1.1, Theora 1.0, or something), than working on manually 'compiling' his C code to assembly code simply because some TI compiler sucks.
-- As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
One of the main problems with the Ogg Vorbis firmware is that it spins up the HD (for the 20gb version) too much and it doesn't use the cache properly. This, of course, will be fixed [and released] very soon.
When OV support goes go public, I'll be re-ripping all of my CDs.
Wow, very low power!
by
nacturation
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Runs at only 12MHz (!), so this is going to be great news for portable devices which need long play times to be worthwhile.
Now the question is will the Apple Music Store start offering OGG format files? Maybe an iPod update?
-- Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
Jucius+Maximus
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"Now the question is will the Apple Music Store start offering OGG format files? Maybe an iPod update?"
Do Apple's DRM (yes, it is DRM) and Ogg Vorbis's specifications play nicely together? I do not know...
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
Now the question is will the Apple Music Store start offering OGG format files? Maybe an iPod update?
An ipod update? Unlikely.
OGG tracks on the music store? Never.
As far as I know there's no security of any kind built into OGG.
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
leviramsey
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
As iTunes is AAC (MPEG-4 audio) with DRM wrapped around it, I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to wrap DRM around Ogg.
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
Threni
·
· Score: 2, Funny
"The four pillars of the male heterosexual psyche: naked women, lingerie, lesbians, and James Bond."
I thought it was:
1) playing high-contact sports such as American Football/Rugby/football/soccer.
2) Naked showers with other men
3) Getting drunk, locking arms with another man and singing very loud.
4) Going on and on about sex in a way which suggests a need to show one is straight.
Hmmm. Think i'll stick to lying around in bed with a couple of girls watching Judy Garland films...
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
You are abusing the word "security." What you really mean is "digital restriction ability." Ogg files are perfectly secure already, since they don't contain executable code.
Apple doesnt even offer native support to QuickTime for OGGs.
Their ad for QuickTime Pro boasts compatablitiy with over "200 digital media capabilities and components"... so why do they leave out the free-to-implement, open source audio OGG Vorbis?
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
How about if I abuse you. And then after that I'll abuse the word "recognizable" when I talk about your facial features.
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
.com+b4+.storm
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Now the question is will the Apple Music Store start offering OGG format files? Maybe an iPod update?
Not to be rude, but... Why the hell would Apple do that? As far as the Music Store is concerned, it will not happen - Apple's AAC format works just fine, and it has the lite DRM that makes the RIAA happy while not pissing off customers. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. And they won't.
Then there is the fact that Apple primarily targets the 'average' computer user, which is not you and me. Joe iPod Owner does not know or care about OGG, and he has no reason to. His 2GB collection of MP3s and his fledgling assortment of iTunes AAC files serve his needs. Since he does not care, there's little reason for Apple to.
-- "Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
yeah they totally wouldnt care, but it seem's like the question was good for karma!!
As iTunes will come to windows, the masses will not all have an iPod, and unless the price of one is slashed dramaticly, a large percentage won't have one.
AAC doesn't really play on anything else.
That's where Ogg/Vorbis-drm comes in (it's not actually called that, but I can't remember the name). This will allow the masses to use it!
As iTunes will come to windows, the masses will not all have an iPod
AAC doesn't really play on anything else.
Perhaps, but how is OGG any better in that regard? I can count the number of portable music players that support OGG on one hand. Which do you think will be more successful in penetrating the market currently dominated by MP3s: AAC, which is pushed by Apple and given the blessing of the media companies; or OGG, which is pushed by Slashbots and a small portion of the open source community?
-- "Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
-- Ryan Stiles
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
Wesley+Felter
·
· Score: 1
There's also no security of any kind built into AAC, so Apple added it. No doubt they could do the same for Vorbis if they wanted to.
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
While ogg's claim to fame is that it is not encumbered by patents, there still seems to be some skepticism among some corporations over this claim. This may explain Apple's lack of support for ogg (in iTunes at least). When it becomes much more clear that ogg is not covered by patents, then we might see support for it in a much broader sense.
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
m0rbidini
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The current implementation (12 MHz) is limited to 64 kbps. For more, a higher frequency is needed.
http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200307/0242. ht ml
If Apple's hardware upgrade policies are like they were in the old days (early 90's) the upgrade will be about $375, whereas a new iPod will be $379.99. And available sooner.
-- Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Re:Wow, very low power!
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 0
You are gay. That is hot.
will it make survive?
by
Mr2cents
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
The cost of chips depends mainly on the number of them you produce, so won't the mp3 players be much cheaper? I personally use ogg, but mp3 is still much much more popular. I know people (ordinary computer users) who haven't even heard of ogg! (don't wory, I 'fixed' it;))
-- "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
iTMS offers protected AAC files only. Even though the iPod is cabable of playing MP3 files they are not available so there is no reason to suspect that Apple will either use these chips in iPod v4 or support Vorbis in software on the current or future iPod generations strictly because of the music store when they aren't even offering downloads in all of the ipod supported formats (AAC, MP3, AIFF, WAV)
Cool factor? Maybe, but there are plenty of other formats (even more common than OGG/Vorbis) that are likely to be supported on the iPod because they're in much wider spread use by the average joe such as RA, WMA, etc. We as geeks may not like those formats but a sizeable portion of iPod purchasers - >50% - are using Windows and just plain don't know any better and will use WMP to rip their tunes which defaults to WMA. RealPlayer also has a bad habbit of defaulting to formats other than MP3 when ripping - or at least that's how I remember it the last time I installed it years ago.
Adding another lossy but near-cd quality format doesn't help the situation. I'd bet on seeing FLAC on the ipod long before vorbis because at least it provides something the other formats don't: lossless compressed audio.
Re:will it make survive?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
>The cost of chips depends mainly on the number of them you produce...
That's why a sausage and _large_ chips is only 15 pence more than sausage and chips.
Well, for one, there's the fallacy of building the 20th country music station in country music country. If you built a rock-and-roll station instead you might get a larger audience than if you capture 1/20th of the more popular country market.
If you buy an mp3 player today, you have a plethora of choices. They all compete for the same mindshare. If you buy an ogg player, you look to Neuros. Neuros is going to make some good money (and acquire a lot of goodwill) by being the first to support a desireable but previously unsupported format.
FPGA Version?
by
tunabomber
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Does anyone know whether there are music players equipped with Field Programmable Gate Arrays to allow new codecs to be programmed in as technology advances? That would really be nice if they made a lightweight player with a generic FPGA in it so you could burn whatever codecs you want into it without needing a microprocessor and an EEPROM chip.
--
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory71...
FPGAs are overkill. Just use a standard small processor and some good tight ASM in an EEPROM. (Yes, I know that's what you just said you wouldn't have to do. When you go check the price, speed, and work effort differences involved, you'll realize why FPGAs are generally relegated to testing chip designs.)
For Digital stuff, yes. Analog systems are a completely different story.
FPGAs can do things easily that would be very hard to do in software when you're in the analog domain. (Offtopic, i know, but interesting none the less.)
-- -twb
Re:FPGA Version?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
FPGAs cost usually more than music player without HDD...
FPGAs are really neat, but waaay to expensive for a consumer product. (High-end FPGAs run $1k+, the cheapest moderately compex ones* are still $50-150). Audio is still relatively simple in processing and data thoroughput requirements - an FPGA would be overkill. For expandability, it would be best to get a cheap massively-overpowerful DSP and do it all in custom software. For power, an ASIC would be most efficient (also cheapest, but the least flexible)
---- *Yes, with a lead-in like that, I must have pulled that number out of my butt!
Re:FPGA Version?
by
stonecypher
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Not really. IBM's PPC PDA design, for example, has an FPGA for misc. functions like modems.
Yah, they also used to do that with their PCMCIA modems. Wave something or another, too lazy to check. That's a little different: IBM was producing those for a vareity of devices, all being sold at IBM scale, all fairly tiny devices. The part of the modem that's actually an FPGA is relatively small: it's just the encoder, the decoder, the modulator and the demodulator. The rest is still IC. That way, they can pick up new V standards without relying on software running on a general purpose CPU from flash.
On the other hand, this guy is talking about taking on whole new audio codecs. Modems don't change a bunch: they're tied to an analog carrier with certain characteristics that aren't expected to change. (That's why Big Blue stopped this tactic for a while - when we switched to 56k, we were really just taking a direct line to the multiplexer at the telco digitally, instead of having a d->a converter in the way like traditional; this implied a lot of new characteristics, and the old whateverwave modems couldn't be upgraded to match.)
A new audio codec could be tremendously larger and/or more complex than an older one. Granted, this is also a problem for GP CPUs; they're finite speed, and what's good enough for something like MP3 can't handle something like VQF; I expect this isn't a fluke. Later codecs will need more horsepower too. But the kind of near-identical situations you get with modems are seriously smaller problems than switching audio decompressors at the scale that these hashing monstrosities work.
No, they don't. FPGAs are extremely expensive and are utterly unnecessary in a music player. They are basically prototyping a chip in an FPGA. What you are looking for is a player with a DSP/processor and upgradeable firmware. Those do exist (check out the iRiver SlimX -- it uses a Cirrus EP7212 system-on-a-chip). Good luck rewriting the firmware though (nevertheless, it's easier than making a CPU on an FPGA).
Palm's OS 5 PDAs can play Ogg Vorbis with the addition of either Aeroplayer [aerodromesoftware.com] or the other one (Pocket Tunes). Aeroplayer is notable for, among other things, being free (as in beer) for use with Ogg Vorbis (registration is only required for MP3 playback.) These PDA's all have an SD/MMC slot and accept standard MMC and SD cards which is better than most standalone players out there which have proprietary memory modules or no expansion possible. Note, however, that the Tungsten C only has a monophonic headphone jack. The Tungsten T and Zire 71 do stereo out of the box. I can vouch for the TT, which has excellent sound quality with Aeroplayer. Having said that, since I don't like listening on headphones (gives me a headache), I find that there is little value in a portable music player that does not have enough space to contain your entire music library. In that situation (use only hooked up to car and/or home stereos) the constant need to swap songs out renders even an overpriced 512 MB SD card pretty pointless - the same can be achieved more conveniently with a handful of (much flatter than a Tungsten|T) CD-RW Audio CDs or less than one MP3 CD-RW with an appropriate CD player (which are cheap as dirt these days). Moreover, the loss of a CD-RW disc is inconsequential while the lose of a Tungsten T or even just an SD card would be quite distressing.
Better still, and what I do, plug your PowerBook into your car stereo's AUX input and control iTunes or what have you with Salling Clicker and a T68i or equivalent bluetooth phone. Talk about geek cool.... Further I'm considering acquiring an old G3 or G4 tower to mount in the trunk of my car - I envision automatic music syncing via an 802.11b connection with my home iMac jukebox when I get in range. Surely someone has done this already?
I have read bits and pieces on/. and other site about Ogg, but I really don't see the appeal. For example, mp3's are so prevalent and portable recorders for them already exist, why would I change to a new format? Is Ogg clearer or cheaper or have smaller file sizes? Do p2p for Ogg exist? I'm interested to know what the appeal of this technology is.
If someone like myself was going to convert my mp3's (if that is even possible) not only would it take a good amount of time, I'd no longer be able to share files with my peers as not a soul I know owns a single Ogg file.
Noone asks you to switch at once to ogg vorbis completely and abandon mp3. This is why ogg only players would not be helpful - we need compatible players.
The appeal to Ogg Vorbis is that it's an open standard that can be constantly improved upon. I have also read that Ogg potentially has better sound quality than MP3 under certain circumstances, although the compression ratio is roughly the same.
Re:Is it needed?
by
n0nsensical
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· Score: 3, Informative
Is Ogg clearer or cheaper or have smaller file sizes?
All of the above. You get better sound at lower bitrates royalty-free.
Do p2p for Ogg exist?
Not sure about Kazaa, etc., but I do see.oggs occasionally on SoulSeek.
If someone like myself was going to convert my mp3's (if that is even possible) not only would it take a good amount of time, I'd no longer be able to share files with my peers as not a soul I know owns a single Ogg file.
You wouldn't want to bother converting them because the resulting sound quality would be worse than the original MP3s, so you'd have to rip them again. (Since you do own the original CDs, don't you?) Nothing's stopping you from sharing files though, since any self-respecting software player (including Winamp, but I prefer Quintessential) plays oggs fine. Hardware, of course, is a different story.
Re:Is it needed?
by
stonecypher
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· Score: 4, Informative
Is Ogg clearer or cheaper or have smaller file sizes?
Yes to all three. The sound quality is better than VQF, MP3, AAC, or WMF for the size. It's an opensource codec, so it has no patent encumberments. The files tend to be smaller because people encode (usually) at the minimum size to catch a CD quality track. Moreover, you can thumb your nose at Frauenhoffer.
Do p2p for Ogg exist?
Peer to peer exists for arbitrary files; therefore, for any such question, yes. Hell, you can also share them over the web, on CDs, or with smoke signals.
However, in answer to what I expect the real question is, no, they're quite a bit more difficult to find than MP3s. MP3 is very entrenched, it's the one people that aren't activists know about, and it's the one that nobody wants to spend the time crosscoding from (both because it's time consuming/boring and because the crosscoding leaves you with a file with the errors of *both* formats, and it's a noticable downgrade; people should start from the CD again, but nobody wants to do that.)
To be honest, I believe this chip's strongest market is in players that can handle MP3, Ogg with vorbis, speex, etc, WMF, and so on. The question isn't whether you start over. It's whether you move on with legacy support.
And that's pretty much how we've always done it, right? I don't make MP3s anymore.
I'd no longer be able to share files with my peers
Wrong. It doesn't matter if they have one already. It matters if their player can use them. Almost all players can (Winamp, and... well, who really uses anything else?:D )
AFAIC, that's bullshit. I re-encoded all my mp3s (mostly 100kbit VBRs) to quality-1 oggs with no detectable loss of sound quality, and a savings of about 25% on file size.
Variable bit rate encoding is nice. You can chop an Ogg Vorbis into pieces, and stick the pieces back together using scripts. Bit rate peeling is promised soon (oooh). You can't convert MP3 to Ogg Vorbis without nasty side effects, but this holds for transcodes between other formats so isn't unique to Ogg Vorbis. Sorry about P2P but maybe you should start uploading Ogg Vorbis if you want to download Ogg Vorbis:-) This may sound picky, but you should say Ogg Vorbis, take a look on xiph.org for why.
Anyone care to enlighten me why the serial number generation for Ogg Vorbis streams seems to use a one second resolution clock as a seed? I haven't had time to look at the source or RTFM vry closely.
Re:Is it needed?
by
groomed
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Ogg is supposed to be better than MP3 in two respects: firstly, it is unencumbered by patents. Secondly, Ogg appears to deliver better quality at low bitrates.
As to whether Ogg is necessary, well...
I'm ambivalent. On the one hand I don't want to slag off the guy who put so much work into Ogg. On the other hand, I don't support the idea behind Ogg at all. Ogg was created to protect us against the evil of software patents, but in doing so, it legitimizes that same evil. I would rather not acknowledge it at all: I'd rather see it die through a massive failure of enforcement (after all, in retrospect, what was all the brouhaha over the GIF patent good for?).
MP3 works. I don't have to worry about my player supporting MP3. I don't have to worry about other people being able to play my MP3s. And I don't worry about MP3 licensing terms either. To be honest, I don't anybody should.
Re:Is it needed?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Anyone care to enlighten me why the serial number generation for Ogg Vorbis streams seems to use a one second resolution clock as a seed? I haven't had time to look at the source or RTFM vry closely.
Portability would be my guess. High resolution timers (ex: Pentium rdtsc instruction) tend to be platform specific. But you've piqued my interest so I'll probably go dig into the Vorbis source now, instead of doing my real job:)
Re:Is it needed?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Who is this Noone guy, and why is he asking me to switch? No one will tell me!
The appeal is that it's free from patent licensing problems. The format and encoder are very stable (as in unchanging) so there's not much constant improvment to make.
Ogg _certainly_ has better sound quality at the same bit rate, which implies that the compression ration is better (around 2 times better or more)
-- MRSH-Recording device, corned beef sandwich with kraut,
seafaring bird, and the foamy top of a beverage.
Re:Is it needed?
by
bn557
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· Score: 2, Insightful
well, it might not sound different, but if you compare any of those oggs to a fresh rip at q1, your fresh rip will be around the same size and sound better.
P
-- Humans are slow, innaccurate, and brilliant;
computers are fast, acurrate, and dumb;
together they are unbeatable
I'm ambivalent. On the one hand I don't want to slag off the guy who put so much work into Ogg. On the other hand, I don't support the idea behind Ogg at all. Ogg was created to protect us against the evil of software patents, but in doing so, it legitimizes that same evil. I would rather not acknowledge it at all: I'd rather see it die through a massive failure of enforcement (after all, in retrospect, what was all the brouhaha over the GIF patent good for?).
You're a little wrong here -- Ogg wasn't created to fight software patents; it was created to provide an unencumbered multimedia format. If you want to use that sort of thing, Ogg is your choice. It turns out that Ogg Vorbis is also very good, so it's a good choice even if you're fully willing to use encumbered formats.
But your purpose is different; Ogg isn't for you. You want to do civil disobedience to protest a bad law. I'm all for you doing that, even though I can't join you (I'm not capable of infringing on this patent even if I wanted to), but you need one friendly warning: the result that all civil disobedience users need to expect and prepare for is punishment according to the terms of the law. I'm not saying you're *not* expecting that, but it's certainly not what you're advocating when you say that nobody should worry about MP3 licensing terms. No, only those who are willing and prepared to pay the price should set out to battle.
But other than that -- go for it. I'll keep using and developing free alternatives where I can, since I don't want to take something that's not offered freely.
-Billy
Re:Is it needed?
by
edhall
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You're forgetting something.
OGG shows the world that free software can do as well
or better than proprietary.
OGG's existance and prevelance has everything to
do with discrediting the model you despise.
You're just pissing in the wind by using MP3; if you use,
demand, and support OGG, you're sending a stronger
message IMHO.
Is Ogg clearer or cheaper or have smaller file sizes?
Yes, yes, and yes.
Do p2p for Ogg exist?
Apache and ProFTPd exist, and will work with all file formats now known or to be invented.
If someone like myself was going to convert my mp3's (if that is even possible)
It's possible in theory, but you probably wouldn't want to. MP3 has already lost material in the compression, and this won't ever be recovered. Even if Ogg Vorbis didn't introduce errors of its own, the result wouldn't be any better than the original MP3.
It's not about translating existing files, it's about using a new format for new files. And there are no patent issues with Ogg Vorbis {not that there ever should have been any with MP3, it's a mathematical process for crying out loud, what would happen if absit omen somebody patented addition? but I'm digressing}. OK, the cat is well and truly out of the bag now, and anyone could write an unlicenced MP3 encoder or decoder if they really wanted, but you would never get away with selling it commercially.
MP3 works. I don't have to worry about my player supporting MP3. I don't have to worry about other people being able to play my MP3s. And I don't worry about MP3 licensing terms either. To be honest, I don't anybody should.
Here's why you should care about MP3 licensing: the licensing terms make it impossible to legally ship a free MP3 encoder. That's why Audacity can't ship with an MP3 encoder built-in, but forces you to download it separately from out of the U.S.
Wrong. It doesn't matter if they have one already. It matters if their player can use them. Almost all players can (Winamp, and... well, who really uses anything else?:D )
Actually, I much prefer the non-bloated VUPlayer for playing all my media files. Fuck WinAMP and Windows Media Player with their giant, over-engineered bloated interfaces and difficult-to-understand-and-use playlist and media library concepts. VUPlayer is simple, fast, and supports basically everything. And when I found a bug in it and reported it to the author, he e-mailed me a private patch the next day and a few days later the official release on his website was rev'ed to include the fix. You can't beat that without going open-source.
-- Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Converting from mp3 to ogg or vice versa means you lose a lot of range. Oggs are good for mid range frequencies, VQF mp3s are good for high and low range frequencies. At 196, it's nearly impossible to see any difference between the graphs for an ogg or an mp3, except that the mp3 will generally have better low frequency waves. MP3 is also still a lot easier on the cpu. I have a P3-1gHz and Ogg will jump my cpu up to 17% from 2% at times. MP3 hovers in the 8% range. When playing a game alongside this, it's a pretty big impact.
--
-]Phreak Out[-
Re:Is it needed?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It's an opensource codec, so it has no patent encumberments.
What? Being open source in no way guarantees against infringing patents.
Fuck WinAMP and Windows Media Player with their giant, over-engineered bloated interfaces and difficult-to-understand-and-use playlist and media library concepts
Wha? You must have one hell of an unorganized filesystem if making a playlist is hard. (in Winamp or xmms) Click the button that says "File" in the lower left corner, pick whether you want a directory, url, or individual files. Pick the target(s) and then click "Ok". Files are now on your playlist- and they can be deleted or re-ordered with single commands. How freakin' hard is that?
If you can operate a stereo and CD Player, you can operate Winamp. Don't try to dredge up bullshit reasons to hate it for not being open-source.
VUPlayer is simple, fast, and supports basically everything.
After checking it out for a while, I would also add "ugly" and "redundant" to that list. Even if you only look at open-source players, there's still XMMS, which is actually pleasing to the eye rather than looking like just another vanilla-style Windows app. Not to mention that both Winamp and XMMS will do (almost, I don't think Winamp will have CD ripping for another update or two) everything VUPlayer can.
Re:Is it needed?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
The existence of OGG will keep MP3 licensing fees down.
Why is it that media players need skins? You look at them less than other apps (movie players use the full screen to play a movie; sound programs are minimized and play sound while you work). Word doesn't have a skin, nor does emacs, mozilla, etc. I spend most of my time in these programs (save Word, I never use it), and don't expect them to be skinned. I don't quite understand why media players need skins! (Drawing that stupid waveform thing is just wasting my CPU!)
-- My other car is first.
Re:Is it needed?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I sure hope it sounds better than WMF, as WMF is ye olde Windows Meta File format used for vector clipart back in the day (and probably still is..):P
For the simple reason that it's easier on the eyes, and because people love to customize their desktops - they're called personal computers for a reason. If you don't want to skin anything, then fine, but you're in the minority.
Forgive me if i'm assuming too much, but you give the impression that you're one of those types that does almost nothing but use office programs or bang out code, and generally sees games/pretty graphics as a waste of time. There's nothing wrong with that, but, again, you have to realize that most of us don't care enough about optimizing every last CPU cycle to not have some graphical enjoyment.
And, if you can legitimately say that drawing a waveform while playing a song is wasting enough CPU time to have a serious impact, you need a new computer.....It just doesn't take that much power, plain and simple.
Wha? You must have one hell of an unorganized filesystem if making a playlist is hard. (in Winamp or xmms) Click the button that says "File" in the lower left corner, pick whether you want a directory, url, or individual files. Pick the target(s) and then click "Ok". Files are now on your playlist- and they can be deleted or re-ordered with single commands. How freakin' hard is that?
The WinAMP playlist isn't part of the main program window -- it's a seprate window you have to manage or attach and drag around. The UI widgets are not standard windows controls, and at 1280x1024 or larger they are too small to comfortably read. On top of that, the little abbreviations and symbols used on the various controls aren't intuitive, so you have to try things out to figure our what they do and how it works.
The Windows Media Player Media Library is even more obnoxious, because it requires you to enter, maintain, and store metadata in the Media Library database that isn't correspondingly present on the filesystem, and you can't pick up that metadata inside other programs.
The main complaint I had wasn't with the usability as much as it is with the bloatiness of the programs. WinAMP has degraded through the major releases into a giant bloated "let's skin everything, fuck performance" mess. It eats up memory and causes song playback to suffer when you've got numerous other programs running (which I almost always do when listening to music files on my PC).
After checking it out for a while, I would also add "ugly" and "redundant" to that list. Even if you only look at open-source players, there's still XMMS, which is actually pleasing to the eye rather than looking like just another vanilla-style Windows app.
I don't care about or want "pretty". I want efficient, simple, and functional. I want the bare minimum necessary to get the job done. VUPlayer meets those desires perfectly.
Not to mention that both Winamp and XMMS will do (almost, I don't think Winamp will have CD ripping for another update or two) everything VUPlayer can.
Yes, they can -- and a bit more -- but I dont' want or need their extra bells and whistles. I just want something that works reliably and efficiently and offers the functionality I care about.
-- Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
The WinAMP playlist isn't part of the main program window -- it's a seprate window you have to manage or attach and drag around. The UI widgets are not standard windows controls, and at 1280x1024 or larger they are too small to comfortably read. On top of that, the little abbreviations and symbols used on the various controls aren't intuitive, so you have to try things out to figure our what they do and how it works.
These issues are one the main reasons Winamp is totally skinable. 27,613 skins for the Winamp 2 branch at last count. If you can't read the widgets on the default skin, then change it to one you like better, or make your own.
Last I saw, the playback controls all looked like those on a regular stereo, even with the wierd-ass skins I use, so i'm not really sure where you're coming from on that. Even at 1280x1024, i've never had trouble navigating, but if you can't read a button for some reason, there's keyboard shortcuts for everything that stay consistent accross different skins.
The Windows Media Player Media Library is even more obnoxious, because it requires you to enter, maintain, and store metadata in the Media Library database that isn't correspondingly present on the filesystem, and you can't pick up that metadata inside other programs.
I won't argue with you on this point, mainly because WMP is so fux0red on my system at the moment that it won't even start:):P
The main complaint I had wasn't with the usability as much as it is with the bloatiness of the programs. WinAMP has degraded through the major releases into a giant bloated "let's skin everything, fuck performance" mess. It eats up memory and causes song playback to suffer when you've got numerous other programs running (which I almost always do when listening to music files on my PC).
Yeah, if you're using Winamp 3, that's been an issue for just about everyone. It's the main reason development on the Winamp 2 branch is still continuing, and tons of people have backpedaled a bit.
I don't care about or want "pretty". I want efficient, simple, and functional. I want the bare minimum necessary to get the job done. VUPlayer meets those desires perfectly.
That desire is fine, but making other non-bare-bones players out to be junk because they look nicer is just stupid.
Yes, they can -- and a bit more -- but I dont' want or need their extra bells and whistles. I just want something that works reliably and efficiently and offers the functionality I care about.
I have around ~10,000 songs in a playlist most days. Winamp handles that fine, doesn't crash, and doesn't slow my system down - hell, when Windows freezes up sometimes, Winamp is the only program that keeps functioning and playing somehow.
I sure hope it sounds better than WMF, as WMF is ye olde Windows Meta File format used for vector clipart back in the day (and probably still is..):P
Ahahahahaha. Yr right. WMA is what I meant.
(On a side note, I notice a number of posts not long after mine which not only carry the same example format list but the same mistake. Things that make you go "hm.")
It's an opensource codec, so it has no patent encumberments.
What? Being open source in no way guarantees against infringing patents.
I should have been more specific. You're right, but in a pain-in-the-ass sort of way. The reason the codec was deisgned, and the reason that it's been open from day one, is to ensure patent disentanglement. Everything was written clean from the ground up from new work without using existing methods.
What rock have you been living under: Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format. It is roughly comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music, such as MP3, VQF, AAC, and other digital audio formats. It is different from these other formats because it is completely free, open, and unpatented.
Ogg Ogg is the name of Xiph.org's container format for audio, video, and metadata. Vorbis Vorbis is the name of a specific audio compression scheme that's designed to be contained in Ogg. Note that other formats are capable of being embedded in Ogg such as FLAC and Speex.
Picture MP3 only you don't have to pay royalties and it sounds better. Actually, I heard it's more similar to ATRAC, the audio encoding format used by Sony.
No, seriously. I'm not attacking the vorbis codec. I love vorbis, and want a good hardware decoder for portable players, but I really need pigs to fly.
See, I got this all figured out:
1. Jump on the ogg bandwagon.
2. Get pigs to fly.
3. Profit!
-- - I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
If blurred vision, migraine or night sweats occur, discontinue use of Happy Ogg Vorbis immediately.
-- Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Forgive my ignorance, but...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
What exactly is Ogg Vorbis? From the context I've seen it mentioned in, it seems to be a type of compressed music, but what differentiates it from MP3 exactly? Anything significant beyond (I assume) better compression and higher quality? Is it an open source format, and if so, how exactly does this make it better than MP3?
Re:Forgive my ignorance, but...
by
mofochickamo
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· Score: 1
I forgive your ignorance, but condemn your laziness, even though it is supposed to be one of the virtues of a programmer.
Re:Forgive my ignorance, but...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Ogg vorbis is an open source audio format. Its superior becaus it has better compression, higher quality, and as its a open codec, no patents to pay royalties on, which means CHEAPER hardware can play it. More ogranistions are choosing it due to the increasingly dracronian licencing on mp3 royalties
I worked on a Ogg on FPGA project as an end of study project in university. It's not quite difficult, but it takes a lot of time for a student without experience;-) I based my project on the LEON-2 open source processor and I coded a MDCT coprocessor for better performances (I was inspired by the oggonachip guys). Great fun!
I did not finished this project, but I'm sure there's other somewhere like me who tried and maybe a couple succeeded.
Ogg Vorbis was a character in a shootemup game, now the name of a superior audio compression scheme, which happens to be the standard used for my whole music collection. I use and old IBM Thinkpad running Linux to play it and has it connected to a 600W stereo amplifier - woohoo!
-- Oh well, what the hell...
A huge market!!!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Man has the market been waiting for this! There is so much pent up demand for an Ogg player you can't even calculate it. Just the other day, Steve Jobs was talking about ditching MP3 and AAC for the iPod and going directly to Ogg because the marketplace is so hot for Ogg. Apple can expect to go from 300,000 iPods a quarter to about 10 or 20.
Hm, isn't ogg very fp (floating point, not first post) dependant? If so, this is just another one of those examples of floating point gaining dominance over integer ops. This may not be important to anyone else, but I fear for the day when all integer ops a performed as floats. I mean, for embedded/small system uses, wouldn't it be easier to use a format that is integer heavy? Then again, there are lots of ogg files out there, and I guess *something* has to play them...:)
Re:Floating point?
by
stratjakt
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Some time back there was an article about an integer based ogg playback core for hardware designs or some such silliness.
I dunno. There's no money in ogo vorboses - it's not percievably better than mp3 to the end user, and it will cost more due to smaller production runs and a niche market.
The average joe doesnt care that the company that made his walkman got the IP for free.
Hell, even the above average joe doesnt care.
Anyways.
Shmogg wogg
--
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Re:Floating point?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Informative
From xiph.org:
"Tremor" integer-only codec now under BSD license The "Tremor" decoder library, an integer-only, fully Ogg Vorbis compliant software decoder library is now available under a totally free BSD-like free software license.
They have the integer decoder. It's FREE. BUT, it takes a hefty CPU to do it.
If someone wants to use the xiph FP decoder, it's there for them, too.
I don't think you have to worry about interger ops being done as floats, unless there is a specific performance advantage that comes about because of it. But there is'nt going to be one, so calm down chicken little.
Re:Floating point?
by
leviramsey
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· Score: 2, Interesting
For a while, the only freely available codec for Vorbis was floating point. However, there's been an integer decoder for a while (Tremor, IIRC), and it's now BSD-licensed.
Er. This seems to be based around the expectation that there's a desire to maintain integer use because it's faster. This is a dedicated chipset; it doesn't matter whether integer or floating point is faster, as they're going to clock it to whatever it needs to do the decoding.
In the meantime, it's the reconstruction that was floating point heavy, not the decoding, and the reason it was floating point was for sound quality. The Tremor library is a pure integer decoder and reconstructor. It's recently under a BSDish license. Yes, the old decoder was FP heavy, but not by necessity, by design choice.
Re:Floating point?
by
TheCrazyFinn
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· Score: 2, Informative
No, it's because many low power CPU's for embedded work don't have an FPU and are impossible to use as the basis for a Ogg Player (Not that there's even a market for one)
-- "You've got an invalid haircut"
-Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
Re:Floating point?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
This may not be important to anyone else, but I fear for the day when all integer ops a performed as floats.
That will never happen. Imagine if a simple for-loop failed because of round-off issues. Not to mention precision losses, you cannot say, for example, 2^32-1 exactly in 32 bit floating point (you only get 23 bits mantissa). That would rather mess up bit tests as well, wouldn't it?
it's not percievably better than mp3 to the end user
So, sounding much better, being less than half the size, and being integrated into just about every piece of audio software as MP3 is being pulled-out aren't percievable to the end user? I might give you the first point, but not the other 2.
and it will cost more due to smaller production runs and a niche market.
It's a niche because nobody is making any portably players for ogg yet. When a couple exist, the format may explode. Besides, as Apple well knows, even a niche can be very very profitable.
Whoa! lack of FP doesn't imply Ogg Vorbis is impossible - just use integers sensibly. It can be done for MP3 too. Think about it (simplistic) if audio has a 120dB dynamic range, that's 20 bits so throwing around some 32 bit ints should cope (yes, I know, I did say "simplistic").
A business person wants to find the easiest, cheapest, way into the market that will give them the most exposure. I have a hard time beliving joe regular will walk away from MP3 for a long time.
No one will care about Ogg until it gets more exposure, and this device will hopefully help with that process. My guess would be to get a major brand to support Ogg along with MP3 and the others.
I think that "major brand" could be Apple, if they ever add.ogg support to the iPod. It would be the start of a movement towards the better format.
Re:Exposure
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
In case you didn't notice, Apple IS trying to start a movement towards a better format. It's called MPEG-4 (AAC). The new version of iTunes encodes in this format, and the iTunes Music Store sells only this format. It is touted as superior to MP3. In order for this to really work, AAC needs to be widely adopted. Now explain to me why Apple would want to introduce Ogg into the mix. There is no chance in hell that would happen, unless AAC went down in flames.
I think they've chosen AAC as their better format. Ogg's rise may be tied to the rise of Linux. Windows will have MP3, Macs will have AAC, and Linux will use Ogg.
"Hardware IP" includes "MultiCore Architecture"; CPU and DSP, Memory card interface, External memory interface, LCD controller, and Key input function. Only external memory and audio D/A converter is needed to build a complete portable player system.
It sounds like it would be super-easy to build a homebrew portable audio player now! I wonder what memory interface the chip uses? Could you simply wire something like a memory stick or MMC, battries, a couple buttons and be good to go?
I find that extreemly cool.
-- autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Re:Oh wow!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
No easier than it was yesterday.
BTW, you dont know how a memory stick or MMC works, do you? Think proprietary lisensced stuff.
Maybe compactflash, which will eventually not exist - you know, because it's cheap and open.
Slightly condensed vapor ...
by
syknes
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· Score: 1
So basically it seems they've developed some FPGA program that decodes oggs. An impressive first step; they now have the necessary data to send it out for fabrication. Now all they need to do is get enough money to pay for the NRE of setting up that facility. All well and good, and I applaud their efforts. But to scare up the necessary capital, they sent out a press release that looks like it belongs on engrish.com. Not terribly professional, boys. These are probably some very proficient college students hoping to make some bucks (er, yen). Something tells me they're not getting backing from Goldman-Sachs any time soon. I'll believe ogg-playing portables when I see 'em, thankyouverymuch.
Oh....For some Karma.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yep. I'm sure that we will see Ogg-capable portable players really soon now. If I had any Karma I'd post a +2 informative post telling you which one.
12MHz!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Funny
imagine a beowulf cluster of these....
ah, don't waste your mod points on me
12Mhz
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Which, if you read further, is 1/6 of the **CPU** power needed to play an ogg in realtime.
By the time someone has the decoder in an ASIC, the power drain will be quite small.
I would think that these days (depending on application) it would be a better idea to use a slightly more generic processor of some kind and firmware.
Media codecs are developing all the time and hardware boxes can't keep up. Although this does generate more business as people will buy new media players once formats change.
Conversion is not a reality...
by
darth_silliarse
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· Score: 1
...especially when I've encoded my entire CD collection to 192k/s MP3's and burned them all off to CD. Now if the portable player was able to directly convert MP3's to OGG's whilst copying to the portable player such as dBpowerAMP's excellent Music Converter can do then I may consider buying one, but I like many other people will not go out of our way despite whatever MP3/WMA/etc licensing issues exist just to promote Open Source. Don't get me wrong Open Source is the bees knees but un-necessary labour on my part is not!
-- I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
Excellent!
by
DaedalusLogic
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Now this free codec will inspire me to re-rip all my audio to this new format and promptly go out and buy $1200 worth of computer equipment to do a home audio server up right!
Who says OSS fans are cheapskates? We just believe that all our money should be spent on durable goods. Which raises a couple of questions...
1. Is the reason that OSS fans don't like to pay for software because they think some people over-value their intellectual property?
2. Will the creation of an Ogg Vorbis decoder really creat the economies of scale that would allow hardware makers to make the jump.
In other words, will the money that they save in buying an Ogg Decoder for their player be worth the few cents per MP3 decoder royalty when coupled with the marketshare lead that MP3 now enjoys?
I'd like to see Ogg do it personally, but can it penetrate a mass market? I'd like to take Ogg out for a Jog.
Re:Excellent!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
1 - Who says oss fanatics dislike paying for software? 2 - No, but it will be nice when the other mp3-ish devices add ogg as a supported format
Is the reason that OSS fans don't like to pay for software because they think some people over-value their intellectual property?
No, it's because commercial software is usually proprietary.
And FWIW, I'm willing to be taken hostage by some proprietary software, as long as it's something I don't use for anything "important." For example, I'm willing to buy proprietary games. I mean, what's the worst thing that can happen with a game? My saved Mail Order Monster is stored in a format that locked me into a specific product, and since I migrated to a platform other than the C64 and Electronic Arts didn't port their software, now my enhanced Lionbear with his great beastfu, is lost. Oh, the horror.;-)
But you'd have to be pretty masochistic to tolerate that sort of situation with financial records, letters, multimedia, etc. Especially since you don't have to.
-- As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
OK jackass think about what goes into a computer before you flame. Two things that it MUST have are a good audio card that will send a nice clean digital signal to the reciever. The other thing it needs is PLENTY of disk space. Part of the reason I got into MP3's is because I don't like combing through all my CD's. I'm also going to buy it a nice case, maybe a video card with TV out, remote... etc. And build it to last because not much is going to change as far as audio is concerned to make it obselete anytime soon.
By the way if you know where to get a decent dual P4 Xeon with 4GB for $1200 send me the brochure from the fantasy world you live in... you giant flamer.
Re:Excellent!
by
m0rbidini
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· Score: 2, Informative
"but can it penetrate a mass market?"
Ogg Vorbis is now the third most used lossy format (in audio only, not counting movie rips and etc..), following mp3 and wma.
MP3 is losing users to other formats, such as Ogg Vorbis, Musepack and AAC. Everyone watching P2P (:O) networks can note this. There're already release groups that only release in one these formats (Ogg Vorbis or Musepack).
Disadvantages of MP3:
- MP3 can't be gapless. - No standard tagging system (id3 is not in the specs). - Ogg Vorbis and Musepack have way better VBR so less bits are wasted where they are not needed and VBR limited to 320kbps. - No sample-accurate seeking.
Well, it's not as great as I thought it was before, but it's still a wonderful game, and I wish they'd port it:)
I have a C64 emulator for almost the sole purpose of playing that game. (And I have a Win98 VirtualPC install so that I *can* play it. 1gb of software to play a game that takes up about 60k.... go figure.:p)
that's one big step, though
by
SweetAndSourJesus
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Designing a working model is probably 90% of the effort.
Now it's just a matter of finding someone who wants to build them.
--
-- the strongest word is still the word "free"
Re:that's one big step, though
by
stratjakt
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· Score: 1
But if someone wanted to build them (any big electronics manufacturer) they would by now. I dont believe that Sony and Panasonic, hell even hong kong knockoffs like Panaphonic have been scratching their heads puzzling about how to play ogg vorbis.
It's just not useful.
Getting someone to make, market, and profit from it is 100% of the battle. It would have to be MUCH cheaper than existing mp3 players (under 40 bucks these days), since quality wise noones going to be able to tell the difference on a portable device.
--
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Re:that's one big step, though
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1
The nice thing about Vorbis is that it gets a nice-sounding stream in about 90kbps (-q 2 or -q 3), and a perfectly listenable stream at about 50kbps (-q 0 or so).
The problem is that Vorbis never really sounds any nicer than its -q 3 value; mp3 starts to sound decent at 160 or 192 kbps and can sound quite good at an average of 210 kbps on a VBR stream. Yes, mp3 at 210 kbps sounds better than ogg at any kbps, but the files are that much bigger.
Re:that's one big step, though
by
jrockway
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· Score: 1
I think that ogg's the best for portable devices because you can "peel" an archive-quality version on your computer down to a portable-player quality one without re-encoding. Re-encoding is bad because it introduces _more_ artifacts, and takes time.
-- My other car is first.
Re:that's one big step, though
by
binarytoaster
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· Score: 1
While that's possible, they haven't come up with a working implementation yet.
Here is a supposed "working implementation"... but it's an April Fool's joke, and only reduces size to 0.
While it's truly POSSIBLE with Ogg, the way the files are organized right now is not conducive to peeling. There's talk on the boards of a tool that would reorganize the data frames and make it much easier, but most want to see the codec tuned as well as MP3 has been.
Re:that's one big step, though
by
ckimyt
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· Score: 1
since quality wise noones going to be able to tell the difference on a portable device.
Nope. I can always tell an MP3 at less than 224 Kbps, even on my portable. Even with really good LAME settings (to my ears, better than R3Mix, which I can't find a good link for right now...where'd it go???).
I will certainly purchase an Ogg device; the audio quality is just so much better.
--
Putting the sig back into +1, Insightful since 1995!
Unlike People who are just going to use their PCs to play pirated audio files anyway, if you're going to actual sell hardware to all those pirates you're probably going to want to actual pay the license fees for the mp3 codec. Free vorbis means cheaper hardware. Maybe not that much cheaper, but every peny counts. And if you have a chip does that OGG and MP3 you might as well use it, since it won't cost anything more and it'll be an extra bullet point on the box.
And if you're going to rip CDs you actualy own, might as well do it in OGG if you have an OGG player, as the quality is a bit better.
-- autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Sorry about Broken link
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
MP3 devices are on the market for a good time and most users dont give a sh*t if ogg vorbis offers better technical specs. They just want to play music at a reasonable quality and have the ease of stuffing their media (CD, memory card, etc.) with tens/hundreds of titles...
Doubt if any big consumer electronics brand will ever pick up it...
On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of users just count ticks in boxes when comparing portable players, and vorbis support is another tick in a box, which helps to differentiate your product from your competitors'..
Why would you want this?
by
Mike+McTernan
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I don't see why you would want specific hardware for this. Adding another chip to a product will make it larger, use more power and cost more.
The article says that they have "Hardwared IP and Software IP which [is] needed to build a portable music player" but realistically most portable music players will surely contain a general purpose CPU or DSP, meaning that they need only a good reference implementation which can be ported to common platforms (e.g. ARM) with little optimisation.
-- --
Mike
Re:Why would you want this?
by
brejc8
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· Score: 2, Informative
Actually they havent any specific hardware and it is just a cpu and a dsp. But specific hardware is very good for your size and power consumption. You consume less power because instead of for example working out a sin function with software you have a piece of hardware to do it. You save on power because youre not wasting it on fetching instructions and running your circuit extra fast and on maybe a little on area as you have just made your memory requirements little smaller.
Currently with ultra low feature size technology and memory for free you can easily get away with just using a simple CPU. After all its cheaper than putting in some effort. But this is a reason why my mp3 player only lasts a couple of hours on an aaa battery.
Reprogrammable? It is.
by
pclminion
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· Score: 3, Informative
Did you actually read the article?
"Software IP" includes DSP firmware do decode Ogg vorbis and the CPU firmware for overall system control.
Basically, it's designed how it should be designed: seperate CPU and DSP cores, and both are independently programmable. It would be incredibly stupid to design a "pure" hardware solution (decoder in silico) since everyone admits that Vorbis is going to evolve and change, especially right now, during its "adolescent" period.
Don't worry, they've done the right thing:-)
Re:Reprogrammable? It is.
by
gilesjuk
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· Score: 1
Nobody reads the article:)
Besides when I do it either fails to load or takes too long.
game companies like Ogg
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Most games nowadays have large amounts of compressed music and voice tracks. The mp3 licensing has become a "requirement" for game companies who want to stay competitive. Some have used Ogg instead though. It's free, has a good libraries for developers to use, and gets better quality than mp3s.
The guys over at Epic are probably the biggest name in the industry to jump on the Ogg bandwagon.
Re:game companies like Ogg
by
Ella+the+Cat
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· Score: 1
Mod parent up. AC, you should get an account, why be shy?
While we're on the subject...
by
dbc001
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· Score: 1
I'm trying to start using Ogg files, but have had a hard time finding a player that is satisfactory. I just installed Winamp 3.0 because it supports Ogg files and I've been sorely disappointed. Can someone recommend a better Ogg player?
-dbc
Re:While we're on the subject...
by
FrostedWheat
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· Score: 1
I just installed Winamp 3.0 because it supports Ogg files and I've been sorely disappointed. Can someone recommend a better Ogg player?
Winamp 2.8x or 2.9x is very nice. Better Ogg support than Winamp 3.
If you like Windows Media Player, try OggDS - it will add Ogg support to that.
There's also a plugin for Real Player in development, but I don't think anyone really uses that beyond watching RM streams.
Re:While we're on the subject...
by
n0nsensical
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· Score: 1
Can someone recommend a better Ogg player?
I recommend Quintessential. Plays all your favorite formats, completely free as in beer, good skinnability, gapless playback, and built-in stream ripping unlike the new WinAmps. Some people find the default playlist which can't be resized annoying, but if you look around on the site you can find some modifications for it.
Re:While we're on the subject...
by
Likes+Microsoft
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· Score: 1
I like Zinf. Good points about it: it's open source, and it's cross-platform.
-- --
Who am I? How did I get here? My God, what have I done?!
Re:While we're on the subject...
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Foobar rocks. It's open, and written by one of the top guys from the old WinAmp days.
Re:While we're on the subject...
by
m0rbidini
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· Score: 1
OK, excuse for a daydream :)
by
timothy
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· Score: 2, Interesting
What I'd like to see:
1) An available, no-futzing, no-fooling portable ogg player
2) that uses AA batteries (rechargables are now well worth it, and standard battery sizes are so much more convenient than a billion sculpted-to-fit li-ions)
3) that reads from CD / CD-R / CD-RW
4) and hopefully from DVD / DVD recordable formats as well
5) and even more hopefully, a slot for CF would be nice, or some amount (even 64 megs) of built-in flash
6) that costs less than buying a middlin' color PDA;) [Except for the choice of media, my Zaurus with its AA external battery back for power is nearly there... ]
Re:OK, excuse for a daydream :)
by
Nucleon500
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· Score: 1
Something like this may be coming. Check out http://wiki.xiph.org/VorbisHardware for a list of hardware that can play Vorbis now, and also hardware that will be able to do so. There are currently 2 CD-R players in the "Coming soon" list. The Freemax has an external battery pack, will cost about $150, but will be sold in Korea.
Re:OK, excuse for a daydream :)
by
N8w8
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I have a Nex II MP3 player from Frontier Labs. It runs on 2 AA batteries, has a Type I/II CF slot, costs 100 euro, is flashable, can be used as a standard USB HDD (in Linux too) and has the same size as a pack of playing cards.
The only thing I hate about the player is that shuffle mode isn't 100% random.
They plan to support Vorbis in the next firmware release, which should've been ready in Q2 2003, but still isn't.
Re:OK, excuse for a daydream :)
by
0x12d3
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· Score: 1
Personally I'd like:
1) ultra small (like dlink dmp100)
2) uses 128MB flash cards (can encode 1 cd/ card --I'd settle for 64MB w/ no gripes).
3) over 8hrs of battery life (I listen @ work!!).
Re:OK, excuse for a daydream :)
by
0x12d3
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· Score: 1
I wish I had mod points, yo. Even w/o the vorbis support this is quite Schweet. I wish I had read your post before I posted my wish list as this actually does what I'm looking for (minus the ogg). I'm also very impressed that they have an intrest in ogg... the price is good too!!! This looks great, are you happy with yours?
Re:OK, excuse for a daydream :)
by
N8w8
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· Score: 1
Like I said the only thing I hate about it is the shuffle randomness. Apart from that I think the thing is great:) I use it with a 512MB CF card which amounts to about 11 hours of acceptable quality MP3s, and about 25 hours of Vorbis (again, that isn't supported yet). Note that this is my first MP3 player so I can't really compare it with other experiences. Of course it's worth taking a look at the Nex IIe/IA players from Frontier Labs, but I don't know about them since at the time I bought the Nex II (year ago), those didn't exist yet.
2 Many formats...2 Much Work
by
felonious
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· Score: 0, Troll
MP3, OGG, WMA, RA, etc., etc.
There are too many formats as it is and now we have players supporting different types. Some more than others. I know they all have their +/-'s but it's almost like the browser war. Our format can do this and sounds like this and is only this big, etc. Same old game. That goes for IM clients too, as well as, many more products out there.
I know this is about competition or as Microsoft spins it..."The ability to innovate" but it's hell for Joe Average who doesn't know what a hard drive is much less ogg, encode, decode, bitrate, etc. Mp3 and ogg are great formats but the Microsoft version of the mp3 formats so we should just concentrate on those and refining the quality and file size. The rest should be tossed so we can have the best players and quality formats that will improve exponentially.
Too many choices muddy the water and confuse consumers. We don't have the compatibility issues that frustrate software formats, i.e. ms word vs word perfect but having players out there that don't support all of the formats sucks. The newer players are getting better at this but I'm sure the do-it-all,multi-function pda's only do so much. Oh well it's all a matter of taste...
-- You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Re:2 Many formats...2 Much Work
by
chunkwhite86
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· Score: 2, Informative
Besides the fact that this is an obvious troll, I feel compelled to correct some of these points.
I know this is about competition or as Microsoft spins it..."The ability to innovate" but it's hell for Joe Average who doesn't know what a hard drive is much less ogg, encode, decode, bitrate, etc.
How exactly is it hell for joe average? All the modern media players support all the modern formats. Joe Average doesn't need to know the difference.
The rest should be tossed so we can have the best players and quality formats that will improve exponentially.
If as you propose, all the music formats are eliminated except one, it will cause quality and file size to NOT improve. When has Microsoft innovated when faced with 0 competition? Never.
Mp3 and ogg are great formats but the Microsoft version of the mp3 formats so we should just concentrate on those and refining the quality and file size.
And just how do you propose that we "concentrate on those and refining the quality and file size" on a closed source microsoft proprietary format?
Sorry troll, Ogg is the only way to go.
-- I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Re:2 Many formats...2 Much Work
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Yeah, you really suck. Go back to your games and leave the thinking to us.
Re:2 Many formats...2 Much Work
by
felonious
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
I swear to god there's so many fucking pompous dickheads on this site who think they know it all and flame someone because they misinterpret everything they read.
How exactly is it hell for joe average? All the modern media players support all the modern formats. Joe Average doesn't need to know the difference.
What if J.A. wants to burn a cd to play in his car stereo? There's a lot of mainstream support for doing this with mp3's that are easily found but not for the rest of the formats. Yes people who know how to find shit can get what's need but not most
If as you propose, all the music formats are eliminated except one, it will cause quality and file size to NOT improve. When has Microsoft innovated when faced with 0 competition? Never.
I said elimate all but two dumb fuck so if you're going to flame me read the shit right. Two at least guarantees competition one doesn't.
And just how do you propose that we "concentrate on those and refining the quality and file size" on a closed source microsoft proprietary format?
You are a serious fucking illiterate idiot. Once again you prove you skim not read. I never said microsoft only. Fuck Microsoft and you. I said the two formats should be mp3 and ogg. Read the fucking post dumb fuck.
Yes this is a return flame so mods work your magic.
What's even more sad is the fucking mod who gave you +1. That dipshit didn't must have been skimming too or he would have figured it out. Aren't mods supposed to read a post completely before scoring it?
Lemme guess I get -5 now for telling the truth and returning a flame although I am replying to a flame that is incorrectly aimed because the dumb bastard didn't read the post correctly.
One more thing...the dipshit who then posted after you can suck my cock:)
-- You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Re:2 Many formats...2 Much Work
by
felonious
·
· Score: 1
..."The ability to innovate" but it's hell for Joe Average who doesn't know what a hard drive is much less ogg, encode, decode, bitrate, etc. Mp3 and ogg are great formats but the Microsoft version of the mp3 formats so we should just concentrate on those and refining the quality and file size. The rest should be tossed so we can have the best players and quality formats that will improve exponentially.
When I'm on slashdot I have to type fast so I might make typos so to clear up the above statement read below......"The ability to innovate" but it's hell for Joe Average who doesn't know what a hard drive is much less ogg, encode, decode, bitrate, etc. Mp3 and ogg are great formats The Microsoft version of the mp3 formats, wma isn't as well done so we should just concentrate on those (ogg/mp3) and refining the quality and file size. The rest should be tossed (ra/wma/etc.) so we can have the best players and quality formats that will improve exponentially.
I think faster than I type so i can agree it wasnt exactly clear. Even i had a problem understanding what I meant but if you read it enough then you can see what i meant. All that being said I still meant everything in my flame because thats the way i am.
-- You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
It's entirely possible.
by
mindstrm
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· Score: 2, Insightful
But why would apple bother. It won't yield a significant advantage over what they have now.
Low clock rate != Low power
by
pslam
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· Score: 3, Informative
It's generally true that low clock speed gives you low power, but when you're throwing a custom core at a problem, that's not necessarily true. The amount of power is basically proportional to the number of gates you have to switch. If you're running at 1/4 the clock speed, but you're switching 4 times as many gates, you'll probably end up with the same power requirement. Put simply: imagine running 4 processors in parallel at 1/4 the clock speed - assuming perfect parallelism, I'd say it'd still take at least as much power. If you run into limits such as having to turn up the voltage at higher clocks, that's another matter, but at these clock speeds it's not a major factor.
The trick is they have is a single issue RISC core (1 instruction per clock) running in parallel with a 4 issue VLIW DSP core (4 instructions per clock). Assuming it's all running at peak rate (which it hopefully will be for the majority of time) that's about 60 MIPS of processing going on there for a 64kbit Vorbis stream. Compare that to an ARM7TDMI (which a lot of players are based on), which requires (ball park) 30-50MHz for the same stream. The figure they state of 74MHz is nonsense - that's the general class of processor you require, not the actual MHz. You'll find higher bit rates requiring most of that 74MHz, though.
If they can come up with a real piece of hardware or a simulation that says it takes less than 100-200mW in an actual system, then I'll be impressed. That's about how much your average MP3 player takes. (Power = Battery mAh * Battery Voltage / Time in hours, work out how much yours takes). Just having a low clock speed is as incomplete a power consumption picture as Intel's use of high clock speeds alone is to performance.
An Ogg-only player dropped onto the market today would be a complete no-op, and nobody's going to want to make a player that takes an extra chip for something only a fraction of a percent of the users are asking for right now.
I want this, and I want it badly... but I don't think the device manufacturers will care.
Well how about some other embedded devices other than digital players? If you have some thing where you have control of the media files, you can make sure you encode everything with Ogg, and then this chip is perfect for you...
Maybe the next version of DVDs will have Ogg soundtracks? Maybe Tivo will record the audio as Oggs? Maybe your next digital audio player will work like Sony's Minidiscs, and use your computer to re-encode your audiofiles to the proper format (Ogg) on the fly, before copying it over?
Besides that, what about audio device manufacturers that don't want to get screwed over by MP3 license fees? They just sell this thing, and include instructions on how people can convert their files to this "new format".
If OV ever gets popular...
by
PylonHead
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· Score: 3, Informative
Then we'll find out whether they infringe on any patents. Remember this article:
clicky , clicky News.com from 2000
The Ogg developers staunchly defend the notion that they have created everything from scratch, or at least have built their system without using any of the Fraunhofer-owned technology. But their rivals say they aren't so sure.
"We doubt very much that they are not using Fraunhofer and Thomson intellectual property," Linde said. "We think it is likely they are infringing."
Whether this is true, analysts say Thomson and the German company are likely to file patent lawsuits the moment Vorbis appears to be a viable market candidate. By creating a perception of uncertainty around Vorbis' future, MP3's parents could prevent conservative digital music companies from adopting it.
"If you're going to go into a marketplace where people play hardball, that's what hardball looks like," Scheirer warned.
-- # (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
Re:If OV ever gets popular...
by
DWIM
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Why is it even a question whether they have violated IP rights? Isn't Vorbis an open standard? Can't they verify whether their IP has been violated by looking at the code?
Re:If OV ever gets popular...
by
imroy
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· Score: 1
Read that second-last paragraph again:
Whether this is true, analysts say Thomson and the German company are likely to file patent lawsuits the moment Vorbis appears to be a viable market candidate. By creating a perception of uncertainty around Vorbis' future, MP3's parents could prevent conservative digital music companies from adopting it.
IOW, it's a hollow threat to the future adoption of Ogg Vorbis. They're pulling a SCO. Those open source savages could never have come up with something better than our codec. They must have copied some of our IP.
Re:If OV ever gets popular...
by
Insanity
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· Score: 1
Fraunhoeffer has done the analysis in great detail, of that you can be certain.
They have almost certainly found a patent in their extensive portfolio that applies to vorbis. They're not going to waste time and money suing the developers - they can't really profit from that. Instead they'll sue a large company that uses vorbis in a successful commercial product.
They'll do this if or when vorbis gains significant market share. Sue one large company, win, and then you can demand license fees from that company's competitors.
Let everyone ignore the patent until the product gets popular, then sue for license fees retroactively. A tactic straight from the books of Rambus and Unisys.
--
Nix absolutably seriousness.
Re:If OV ever gets popular...
by
PylonHead
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· Score: 1
Try not to read too much into that paragraph.
Sure.. they'll sue whether they have a valid claim or not. You can't infer from this that they don't have a valid claim.
-- # (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
Re:If OV ever gets popular...
by
GigsVT
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· Score: 1
"If you're going to go into a marketplace where people play hardball, that's what hardball looks like," Scheirer warned.
I'm generally a pacifist, but don't assholes like this get anyone else's blood boiling?
I guess it's time to give more money to the EFF.
-- I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Tungsten T/C & Zire 71 can play Ogg for free
by
sjonke
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Palm's OS 5 PDAs can play Ogg Vorbis with the addition of either Aeroplayer or the other one (Pocket Tunes). Aeroplayer is notable for, among other things, being free (as in beer) for use with Ogg Vorbis (registration is only required for MP3 playback.) These PDA's all have an SD/MMC slot and accept standard MMC and SD cards which is better than most standalone players out there which have proprietary memory modules or no expansion possible. Note, however, that the Tungsten C only has a monophonic headphone jack. The Tungsten T and Zire 71 do stereo out of the box. I can vouch for the TT, which has excellent sound quality with Aeroplayer.
Having said that, since I don't like listening on headphones (gives me a headache), I find that there is little value in a portable music player that does not have enough space to contain your entire music library. In that situation (use only hooked up to car and/or home stereos) the constant need to swap songs out renders even an overpriced 512 MB SD card pretty pointless - the same can be achieved more conveniently with a handful of (much flatter than a Tungsten|T) CD-RW Audio CDs or less than one MP3 CD-RW with an appropriate CD player (which are cheap as dirt these days). Moreover, the loss of a CD-RW disc is inconsequential while the lose of a Tungsten T or even just an SD card would be quite distressing.
Better still, and what I do, plug your PowerBook into your car stereo's AUX input and control iTunes or what have you with Salling Clicker and a T68i or equivalent bluetooth phone. Talk about geek cool.... Further I'm considering acquiring an old G3 or G4 tower to mount in the trunk of my car - I envision automatic music syncing via an 802.11b connection with my home iMac jukebox when I get in range. Surely someone has done this already?
Great, you don't need a license from the guys who invented the format, but you'd need to license the decoder from these guys... How is that different? Besides, a system will need a micro of some sort anyway and it could do the decoding.
OT: if you must know
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
AC, you should get an account, why be shy?
- not all anonymous people are bad - not all registered people are good - registered people on/. can be, in reality, just as anonymous as ACs.
When Slashdot got started, CmdrTaco was a big supporter of anonymous posters. Since then he has slowly but surely chipped away at their ability to participate in a conversation.
For example, default view used to be at a 0 threshold instead of 1. ACs were not limited to 10 posts per day (hell I'm already at 5/10 on this article alone).
You can blame the trolls or whatever, but the response from the Slashdot maintainers has created a hostile atmosphere towards the AC which I disagree with. And lately when I see other posters deriding ACs simply for being ACs, it makes me sad.
You can blame the trolls or whatever, but the response from the Slashdot maintainers has created a hostile atmosphere towards the AC which I disagree with. And lately when I see other posters deriding ACs simply for being ACs, it makes me sad.
And in fact, it is because of said Trolls, etc. that I typically just skip over AC posts. I read this one mainly because I started the tread.
But I feel your sentiment on this, but that is the reality of the situation.
Seems that Ogg is just different. Not really much better and not any worse. The real issue with mp3, ogg, et al. is that it'll still be illegal to poses the files if you do not, in fact, own the original.
Is Ogg attempting to circumvent this?
Considering the lack of files (mp3's are EVERYWHERE) and the lack of motivation on my part, I really doubt I'll switch anytime soon to Ogg. Even so, how is Ogg fairing with legal issues of copy write etc? How is mp3 limited that Ogg is not?
--
-Valiss
Re:Then here is the Big One
by
DWIM
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Seems that Ogg is just different. Not really much better and not any worse.
Then you might want to re-read the previous reply. Specifically, it is free from royalty fees and encodes to a smaller file size for a given level of quality compared to mp3. That can translate to better quality sound if you find the current, typical mp3 file size acceptable, since you can encode at a higher level of quality and keep that file size. The main negative, which you correctly identified, is the general lack of files. This can be rectified over time as people adopt ogg. I encode my CDs now with Ogg Vorbis. I also have lots of mp3s. I look forward to the day when a decent portable music player is available that will play both, have a 20+GB capacity, a decent form factor, and a reasonable price (the iPod is not a reasonable price, IMHO).
Also, Ogg Vorbis does not circumvent IP issues. The issues are the same for both ogg and mp3.
Re:Huh?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Musepack and AAC offer superior quality than the vorbis encoder.
Are there any pieces of hardware (DSP boards, or similar) that would help speed up the ecoding process? And if so, what is the support?
I vaguely remember seeing MP3 hardware like this, but I've noticed it's "not a big deal". Maybe it's due to the bad press that compressed formats get (RIAA/piracy/etc.), but I think that there could be a strong case for hardware like this.
I believe the Sony MP3 units (MD) can record directly into MP3 formats, anyone have any experience with this?
Re:Encoding hardware?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
sony music players (MD and otherwise) are music players, but not mp3 players. They store their music (on MD or in memory stick cards) in ATRAC format. ATRAC (v3 anyway) sounds much better than MP3 for the same bitrate, but if you are uploading mp3 files to it, you won't notice this, since they will be recompressed from mp3 to ATRAC anyhow.
I don't mean to sound like a troll, but...
by
fobbman
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· Score: 3, Insightful
...why would Joe User consider buying an Ogg portable player? I just pulled up my Netjuke and it says that I have 189 mp3-encoded albums in there, encoded that way because I have a portable mp3 player. I sure don't want to go through the bother of re-encoding my music. Why would any user want to go through the bother of a) re-encoding all of their CDs in Ogg format when they won't notice the difference with their crappy Walkman headphones, or b) re-pirating all of those songs that they like in Ogg format (as if they would find them)?
I just don't see a compelling reason for the portable music crowd to want to do this, and I don't think that there are enough./ fanatics to make it financially viable for a company to produce.
Re:I don't mean to sound like a troll, but...
by
OzJimbob
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Well, you've got to look at it the other way round. The only reason I have gigabytes of mp3 files instead of oggs is because my car stereo / home DVD player / portable only support mp3s. I think ogg is a much better format, and I'd love to use it for everything, but with the rising popularity of mp3-playing hardware, it faces a big fence to climb over.
Certainly, an ogg-only player isn't fantastic news, but any step towards players that will decode mp3 AND ogg AND whatever else you want to throw their way is a good thing.
-- -"I still believe in revolution; I just don't capitalize it anymore." - srini!
Re:I don't mean to sound like a troll, but...
by
SagSaw
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· Score: 1
Good point. I'll be much more impressed when/if when a chip design is introduced that can decode MP3 and OGG.
Yes I know there are licencing issues with MP3, but it is still the de facto standard for lossy audio compression.
-- Come test your mettle in the world of Alter Aeon!
Re:I don't mean to sound like a troll, but...
by
0x12d3
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· Score: 1
When I decided to start getting rid of my CD's, w/ losseless being ideal but a non-option for me I encoded all my cd's to high quality ogg. Ogg, for me, seemed like the most resonable solution for archiving my music, as the quality is better and the compressn rate is better. Hopefully, If I get really lazy and don't keep my files in a current format, I'll be able to come up with some reasonable solution to decoding and transferring my music 30 years from now if need be more easily as well (hopefully!!). To enjoy all these plus'es at home, I don't mind piping oggenc to lame to mkiso to cdrecord for music on the go, but I'd much rather not.
Re:I don't mean to sound like a troll, but...
by
evilviper
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· Score: 1
...why would Joe User consider buying an Ogg portable player?
Maybe because it sounds FAR better? Okay, lets say you don't care about sound quality... Well then it allows you to encode your audio to less than half the size, all still maintaining better quality.
Maybe quality isn't a big deal to a lot of people, but the price of CF cards is, so I'm sure they are big on that size thing. Also, they can spend less time and bandwidth downloading their Oggs, and, unlike MP3s, there is very little chance they will pop, click, go silent, etc.
I just don't see a compelling reason for the portable music crowd to want to do this
Of course, since you don't see it, it must not exist.
Re:I don't mean to sound like a troll, but...
by
MrMickS
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· Score: 1
Maybe quality isn't a big deal to a lot of people, but the price of CF cards is, so I'm sure they are big on that size thing. Also, they can spend less time and bandwidth downloading their Oggs, and, unlike MP3s, there is very little chance they will pop, click, go silent, etc.
Storage always gets cheaper. By the time devices containing this chip design get onto the market, if they ever do, the price of CF cards etc will have halved at least and will continue to fall. The same goes for bandwidth. People won't care that they can get a smaller file, only whether they can use their music in many devices.
-- You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
Re:I don't mean to sound like a troll, but...
by
evilviper
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· Score: 1
People won't care that they can get a smaller file, only whether they can use their music in many devices.
...which is why uncompressed wav files are popular, and MP3s never went mainstream...
Ok, I see a lot of people looking at this and either complaining, because they think they know how this is a non-achivement, or not really useful.
On the other end, you've got people AOLing with crap like "This looks great!" and "I can't wait for my vorbis player!". Ok, yes, we know. So do many of us. Thanks.
This really does look to be useful in getting ogg into portables, and I belive the reason for this is simple. If this has the ability with a low power cpu and dsp to decode ogg files, it may well be able to decode mp3s or some other format as well. Meaning it would be possible to have this be the single setup solution for a player, not this + an mp3 and windows media or whatever else decoder. Without more information from the design company, we can't be sure, naturally, but consider that before you immediately deride this as useless.
Winamp, and... well, who really uses anything else?:D
I used to like Winamp before AOL took it over.
I've had more problems with Winamp 3.0 that it has totally destroyed my whole view on the winamp product.
I found a program called "foobar2000" and I like it as much as I did the old winamp. It lacks all those teenie bopper popular skins, but underneath a very ugly, so simple yet confusing interface, it just sounds better then Winamp.
I use Winamp2 for a very nice reason. I *like* the SqrSoft Advanced Crossfading Output plugin. Gapless playback of anything, crossfading that's just beautiful. If foobar2000 had that, I'd switch.:)
OMFG! OMFG!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
THAT IS TEH FUNNAY!!!!!!!!1 U R l33t!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
... for a good QT plugin for playing OGG Vorbis files. One exists, but it apparantly wants to read the whole file before beginning to play, making it unbearably slow. (especially when streaming over 802.11)
insert subject here
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
I don't see the mainstream ditching MP3 any time soon. And in the long term, there's a good chance that by the time Vorbis would surpass MP3 we'll have so much bandwidth and disk space that compression will cease being necessary and we'll just use WAV instead. (That could, depending on any number of factors, end up being [i]very[/i] long term prediction.)
Let's face it, the appeal is ideology first and secondary is IP concerns using reverse-engineered MP3 encoders and/or the MP3 file format. Vorbis is bit more tighly compressed, but when youre dealing with portable music devices with drives measured in gigabytes and broadband connections its suddenly not that important.
I guess, like linux, it has its niches. Some companies are using ogg in their software to avoid any potential lawsuits and licensing costs associated with the MP3 format. It may have noticable benefits in low-bitrate streaming. It has a seperate codec for voice.
I'm sure it has other uses than listed above, but when it comes to MP3 players and and typical MP3 uses there is little incentive for most people to switch formats.
Also, if you do switch, you'll need to re-encode from the original uncompressed recordings. You can't just take an MP3 and turn it into am Ogg Vorbis without losing a signficant amount of quality.
ooh
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
is that ogg player in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Look at the market for MP3 stuff, from keychains in happy meals to the same thing sold to old yuppy joggers with many hundred dollar features. If you make any of these, you can pay a license for your MP3 recordings or you can get one of these ogg widgets. Tick-tock, tick-tock, hurry and make up your mind. Every day you punch out thousands of toys. The toy and music industry will embrace these gadgets as quick as the film industry has embraced free software.
For those of us who have actually had sex with a female biped (sorry, mares dont count), can you tell us "Ogg Vorbis" is what, exactly?
I believe part of the Ogg Vorbis specification prevents people who had actually had sex with female bipeds from being able to hear it - but I'm not sure - I'm going to go back to my parents basement and reread the RFC.
PocketMusic Player from Pocket Mind already lets you play back OGG, MP3, and WMA files from your PPC. It even accept Winamp skins! http://www.pocketmind.com/pmfp.htm
From what I hear, it works great. I would tell you personally how it works but I use an iPod and plays back AAC.
Well, that's nice, but...
by
Chris+Mattern
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· Score: 1
Color me ignorant, but is an entire hardware-based chip really necessary for decoding ogg vorbis? It would seem to me that this could be done relatively easily via a firmware upgrade.
I mean, isn't that a big selling point for a lot of the mp3 players anyway, the ability to upgrade the unit to allow for future audio formats?
It depends. No, it's not strictly neccesary (I had a Creative Jukebox which did it all on the one processor), but it has real advantages. The most obvious is power consumption. My Jukebox lasts about four hours on a full charge; recent hard disk players with seperate DSP chips last more like twenty. Another is responsiveness; when playing a 256k MP3, my Jukebox was as responsive as a turtle in treacle. DSP based players can continue to serve the UI in real time, even when playing or encoding.
DSP chips are mostly manufactured to proprietary designs, and upgrading them means shelling out $$$ to the manufacturers/designers. This is why Rockbox, the open firmware for the Archos Jukebox, although theoretically capable of playing vorbis files, will never do so, because no-one can afford the proprietary information on the DSP. OTOH, using an open format like they are here (not that I RTFA) means it is possible.
-- [FUCK BETA]
But will it support .ogg ?!?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Err...I mean...
Re:Huh?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Wow...you know stuff!;-)
Ogg is a word.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It's Ogg. Not OGG.
Re:Ogg is a word.
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
And you're gay. Not GAY.
Yes !!!
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
Oggy, oggy, oggy, oi, oi, oi !
Re:Tungsten T/C & Zire 71 can play Ogg for fre
by
evilviper
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· Score: 1
Palm's OS 5 PDAs can play Ogg Vorbis with the addition of either Aeroplayer or the other one (Pocket Tunes). [..] These PDA's all have an SD/MMC slot and accept standard MMC and SD cards which is better than most standalone players out there
Well, most stand-alone players use something standard, like CF, SD, etc. Secondly, there is also the Sharp handheld that runs Linux and has an Ogg player. I have played Oggs on my crappy WinCE device as well.
Still, I wouldn't use Ogg on any of them. Handleds use up too much power, are too expensive, and don't have a good set of controls on them, as stand-alone players do.
the same can be achieved more conveniently with a handful of (much flatter than a Tungsten|T) CD-RW Audio CDs or less than one MP3 CD-RW with an appropriate CD player
Indeed, CF cards are far too expensive for the small ammount of storage they give you. Personally, my ideal music system would be a very small Ogg player that uses MiniCD-R/RW discs. Very inexpensive, compact, and great quality ogg audio.
plug your PowerBook into your car stereo's AUX input and
Nice, but not very portable. Also, not terribly easy to take one disc from your car to your home... Just not the solution for me, nor a lot of people, I'm sure.
I really don't want this to be but it looks like WMA format is pervading and infesting MP3 players to an alarming extent.
I just bought an I-bead which, like many MP3 players in that price range, features WMA format.
Since WMA format is built into MS Media Player along with the facility to rip CDs it is obvious that folks will soon start using it.
Even if OGG does make it into the portable players it won't make it into MS Media Player so most people will never encode anything into it. Why should they? They have MP3 and WMA on tap.
Sad but true:-(
Ogg would be a must-have format if...
by
erik_fredricks
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· Score: 1
A few things that would make me switch to Ogg in a second would be if:
It supported gapless playback between one file and the next (something mp3 is spotty at),
It ran with lower power consumption, and of course,
if it had firmware support for the Nomad Jukebox and Samsung Yepp (more a vendor issue, true).
If it could do these things, I'd be willing to re-encode my collection. I can attest to the better sound quality/lower bitrate quotient from experience, and finding.ogg files on SoulSeek and the like isn't a problem for the P2P crowd.
Anyone know anything about the first two points? For me at least, those would make it a killer app of sorts for portable use.
--
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
Re:Ogg would be a must-have format if...
by
bilgebag
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· Score: 2, Insightful
> A few things that would make me switch to Ogg in a second would be if: > It supported gapless playback between one file and the next (something mp3 is spotty at),
You have one second to switch to Ogg Vorbis! This is one of the design decisions these guys got right. The format was designed for streaming from the start, so this was a pre-requisite.
You can even cat two Ogg Vorbis files together and they'll play seamlessly...
Power consumption will probably be comparable with the fixed (not floating) point implementations (like Tremor).
The player vendors need to be aware of Ogg Vorbis before they can consider the market for it.
Re:Ogg would be a must-have format if...
by
erik_fredricks
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· Score: 1
Yeah. There's a Nomad/Zen (news.creative.com) newsgroup with which several of the folks from Creative correspond, and we've been bugging them to support Ogg forever. Their response thus far has been, "It's not out of the question, but we haven't gotten to it yet." It seems that they're aware of the demand, but they're dragging their feet.
--
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
Re:Huh?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0
It's an audio format just like MP3 that has the following advantages:
A name that manages to sound even more stupid than 'GNU'.
Zero mainstream recognition.
Blind support from linux fanatics.
If that doesn't make your cock hard, go back to your femmial biprocessors or whatever they're called, looser. I bet you've never even compiled X.
I want portable SID-Player!!!
by
Lispy
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· Score: 1
Yup, thats what I want. For some reason I am a SID-addict since last week. My coworkers are going mad but I dont care. Nothing better than listening to the BombJack theme four hours continously.
Maybe I should get a Sidchip and start my own project. Maybe a Gameboy would be a good starting platform for the mod?
Nice schematic but you do realize that you just left an open invitation for trolls to start posting more ASCII art of "birds on cocks" and whatnot.
The extent of my ASCII design capabilities::)
-- Karma: NaN
Article typo??? (1/6 speed)
by
jlockard
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· Score: 1
The article says "FineArch successfully completed the Ogg vorbis sytstem IP to run at 12 Mhz. This is about 1/6 of the clock speed required to decode Ogg Vorbis with a single CPU system."
Is that a typo? WHy would I want a chip that was 1/6 as fast as I needed?
-- --JLockard - "Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." - Emo Phillips
This isn't that amasing. Firstly this is done using a CPU and a DSP. No ogg specific hardware is mentioned........Basicly what they have done was to pick up a core and stick it on an FPGA then compiled ogg/vobis for that CPU's ISA.
Place a bit of a bootloader and something to handle the I/O and its done. No magic.
Don't you see - that IS the magic. This means that such a device can be firmware upgradable to support new audio codecs.
I'm kind of pissed that my $150 diamond rio can't be flash upgraded to support OGG.
Unless they are super CPU intensive (like DVD playback or MPEG2 used to be) I think that codecs should NOT be hard coded into the chips. The processors in these devices should be general purpose - not only to accept new codecs in the future, but also to "upgrade" the existing decode engines in the device as newer/better/more efficient ones become available.
-- I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
Slashdot Mirror
Seems to me the chip is not a reality.
A design for it is.
Which is merely one step past "idea".
By now I know i dont have first post, but shout outs to whoever does.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Dear Vorbis,
Can something like this be added to existing players through a firmware upgrade?
Love,
LETTER!!!!
But will it support MP3?
No, wait, that's the other way around...
FineArch, Inc., Tokyo Japan based semiconductor LSI design company, developed the system IP to decode the next generation digital music compression format, Ogg Vorbis(http://www. vorbis.com). FineArch successfully completed the Ogg vorbis sytstem IP to run at 12 Mhz. This is about 1/6 of the clock speed required to decode Ogg Vorbis with a single CPU system. This ultra low power IP fits well with the today's portable music player market where battery life is critical factor. Ogg Vorbis is attracting much attention to the digital music world as a "license and royalty free" compression format. Ogg Vorbis is also known as its higher quality, higher compression ratio compared to MP3, current standard of the compression music format. Encoding and decoding process of Ogg Vorbis is more CPU intensive task than those of MP3. Hardware implementation of Ogg Vorbis has been scarce. FineArch.Inc fully noted the potential of the Ogg Vorbis, developed the Ogg Vorbis playback System IP. This "System IP" consisted of Hardwared IP and Software IP which needed to build a portable music player. It has all the necessary components to build a standard portable music player. "Hardware IP" includes "MultiCore Architecture"; CPU and DSP, Memory card interface, External memory interface, LCD controller, and Key input function. Only external memory and audio D/A converter is needed to build a complete portable player system. "Software IP" includes DSP firmware do decode Ogg vorbis and the CPU firmware for overall system control. Fully utilizing the advantage of MultiCore architecture system sofware stacks are carefully distributed to CPU and DSP, achieving 12 MHz. This is the lowest system clock speed in the industry known today. This "System IP" will be licensed to any customers looking for the royalty free, high quality digital music decoding capabilities on their system. Such system includes the portable music player,the game console, PDA, and the portable music entertainment system. FineArch also has the FPGA evaluation kit, which can be ordered directly. in case of slashdotting by rabid mp3 advocates ;)
do I get a cake?
This isn't that amasing. Firstly this is done using a CPU and a DSP. No ogg specific hardware is mentioned.
Secondly the chip isnt even a chip but a FPGA implementation. They can show that it works but mapping it out is another chalange if you want to keep it very power.
Basicly what they have done was to pick up a core and stick it on an FPGA then compiled ogg/vobis for that CPU's ISA.
Place a bit of a bootloader and something to handle the I/O and its done. No magic.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
System IP to decode New digital music format Ogg Vorbis is ready for a
market from FineArch, Inc.
Achieved competitive 12MHz operation, targeting portable music player
FineArch, Inc., Tokyo Japan based semiconductor LSI design company, developed the system IP to decode the next generation digital music compression format, Ogg Vorbis(http://www. vorbis.com). FineArch successfully completed the Ogg vorbis sytstem IP to run at 12 Mhz. This is about 1/6 of the clock speed required to decode Ogg Vorbis with a single CPU system. This ultra low power IP fits well with the today's portable music player market where battery life is critical factor.
Ogg Vorbis is attracting much attention to the digital music world as a "license and royalty free" compression format. Ogg Vorbis is also known as its higher quality, higher compression ratio compared to MP3, current standard of the compression music format. Encoding and decoding process of Ogg Vorbis is more CPU intensive task than those of MP3. Hardware implementation of Ogg Vorbis has been scarce. FineArch.Inc fully noted the potential of the Ogg Vorbis, developed the Ogg Vorbis playback System IP.
This "System IP" consisted of Hardwared IP and Software IP which needed to build a portable music player. It has all the necessary components to build a standard portable music player.
"Hardware IP" includes "MultiCore Architecture"; CPU and DSP, Memory card interface, External memory interface, LCD controller, and Key input function. Only external memory and audio D/A converter is needed to build a complete portable player system.
"Software IP" includes DSP firmware do decode Ogg vorbis and the CPU firmware for overall system control. Fully utilizing the advantage of MultiCore architecture system sofware stacks are carefully distributed to CPU and DSP, achieving 12 MHz. This is the lowest system clock speed in the industry known today.
This "System IP" will be licensed to any customers looking for the royalty free, high quality digital music decoding capabilities on their system. Such system includes the portable music player,the game console, PDA, and the portable music entertainment system. FineArch also has the FPGA evaluation kit, which can be ordered directly.
Please go to download page for more information about this product.
Contact FineArch, Inc.
E-mail pr@finearch.com
URL http://www.finearch.com/
FineArch, Inc.
TIME24 BUILDING 4W-2 2-45 Aomi Koto-ku Tokyo 135-8073 Japan
Download page: It contains a form asking you for name, e-mail, profession, etc. and then you get to a page with a bunch of PDFs.
One already exists
Hopefully this will be just one more step towards commercially available, open source-based devices. I can't wait to get my hands on one of these devices, personally.
I wonder if any of the big vendors will pick them up?
KappaStone
I admit I haven't looked over their license agreement lately, but I was under the impression that these people don't receive any royalties regardless of how and where Ogg Vorbis is deployed. If this is the case, how can they keep operating? How can they be supported?
This isn't a troll, I'm legitimately interested in keeping projects like this alive..
You mean, will MP3 support it?
The Vorbis team is working with the makers of Neuros to update the player's firmware to decode Ogg Vorbis files.
It's nearly complete.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Runs at only 12MHz (!), so this is going to be great news for portable devices which need long play times to be worthwhile.
Now the question is will the Apple Music Store start offering OGG format files? Maybe an iPod update?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
The cost of chips depends mainly on the number of them you produce, so won't the mp3 players be much cheaper? I personally use ogg, but mp3 is still much much more popular. I know people (ordinary computer users) who haven't even heard of ogg! (don't wory, I 'fixed' it ;))
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
In not sure if it will hold for much longer so heres a mirror.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Does anyone know whether there are music players equipped with Field Programmable Gate Arrays to allow new codecs to be programmed in as technology advances? That would really be nice if they made a lightweight player with a generic FPGA in it so you could burn whatever codecs you want into it without needing a microprocessor and an EEPROM chip.
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
I have read bits and pieces on /. and other site about Ogg, but I really don't see the appeal. For example, mp3's are so prevalent and portable recorders for them already exist, why would I change to a new format? Is Ogg clearer or cheaper or have smaller file sizes? Do p2p for Ogg exist? I'm interested to know what the appeal of this technology is.
If someone like myself was going to convert my mp3's (if that is even possible) not only would it take a good amount of time, I'd no longer be able to share files with my peers as not a soul I know owns a single Ogg file.
Enlighten this open mind!
-Valiss
What rock have you been living under:
Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format. It is roughly comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music, such as MP3, VQF, AAC, and other digital audio formats. It is different from these other formats because it is completely free, open, and unpatented.
Ogg
Ogg is the name of Xiph.org's container format for audio, video, and metadata.
Vorbis
Vorbis is the name of a specific audio compression scheme that's designed to be contained in Ogg. Note that other formats are capable of being embedded in Ogg such as FLAC and Speex.
Picture MP3 only you don't have to pay royalties and it sounds better. Actually, I heard it's more similar to ATRAC, the audio encoding format used by Sony.
OGG to MP3
No contest if you ask me.
Here are the "more information" PDFs so you don't have to fill out the form...
Press release on 2003/7/15 (English) Ogg Vorbis Player System
Press release on 2003/7/15 (Korean)Ogg Vorbis Player System
Ogg Vorbis player system product summary
that pigs will soon fly.
No, seriously. I'm not attacking the vorbis codec. I love vorbis, and want a good hardware decoder for portable players, but I really need pigs to fly.
See, I got this all figured out:
1. Jump on the ogg bandwagon.
2. Get pigs to fly.
3. Profit!
- I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
Do not take this Ogg Vorbis player outside in bad weather, as rain can damage the player and also poses an electrocution hazard.
Honk if you're horny.
What exactly is Ogg Vorbis? From the context I've seen it mentioned in, it seems to be a type of compressed music, but what differentiates it from MP3 exactly? Anything significant beyond (I assume) better compression and higher quality? Is it an open source format, and if so, how exactly does this make it better than MP3?
What's so special about that? These guys have done something similar before as a university project: http://oggonachip.sourceforge.net/
And probably others have done this as well.
Ogg Vorbis was a character in a shootemup game, now the name of a superior audio compression scheme, which happens to be the standard used for my whole music collection. I use and old IBM Thinkpad running Linux to play it and has it connected to a 600W stereo amplifier - woohoo!
Oh well, what the hell...
Man has the market been waiting for this! There is so much pent up demand for an Ogg player you can't even calculate it. Just the other day, Steve Jobs was talking about ditching MP3 and AAC for the iPod and going directly to Ogg because the marketplace is so hot for Ogg. Apple can expect to go from 300,000 iPods a quarter to about 10 or 20.
Hm, isn't ogg very fp (floating point, not first post) dependant? If so, this is just another one of those examples of floating point gaining dominance over integer ops. This may not be important to anyone else, but I fear for the day when all integer ops a performed as floats. I mean, for embedded/small system uses, wouldn't it be easier to use a format that is integer heavy? Then again, there are lots of ogg files out there, and I guess *something* has to play them... :)
====
Crudely Drawn Games
now let's make .ogg format music p2p propigation a reality
A business person wants to find the easiest, cheapest, way into the market that will give them the most exposure. I have a hard time beliving joe regular will walk away from MP3 for a long time.
No one will care about Ogg until it gets more exposure, and this device will hopefully help with that process. My guess would be to get a major brand to support Ogg along with MP3 and the others.
"Hardware IP" includes "MultiCore Architecture"; CPU and DSP, Memory card interface, External memory interface, LCD controller, and Key input function. Only external memory and audio D/A converter is needed to build a complete portable player system.
It sounds like it would be super-easy to build a homebrew portable audio player now! I wonder what memory interface the chip uses? Could you simply wire something like a memory stick or MMC, battries, a couple buttons and be good to go?
I find that extreemly cool.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
For those of us who have actually had sex with a female biped (sorry, mares dont count), can you tell us "Ogg Vorbis" is what, exactly?
"Google it:" the RTFM of the new generation.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
So basically it seems they've developed some FPGA program that decodes oggs. An impressive first step; they now have the necessary data to send it out for fabrication. Now all they need to do is get enough money to pay for the NRE of setting up that facility. All well and good, and I applaud their efforts.
But to scare up the necessary capital, they sent out a press release that looks like it belongs on engrish.com. Not terribly professional, boys. These are probably some very proficient college students hoping to make some bucks (er, yen). Something tells me they're not getting backing from Goldman-Sachs any time soon.
I'll believe ogg-playing portables when I see 'em, thankyouverymuch.
Yep. I'm sure that we will see Ogg-capable portable players really soon now. If I had any Karma I'd post a +2 informative post telling you which one.
imagine a beowulf cluster of these....
ah, don't waste your mod points on me
Which, if you read further, is 1/6 of the **CPU** power needed to play an ogg in realtime.
By the time someone has the decoder in an ASIC, the power drain will be quite small.
I would think that these days (depending on application) it would be a better idea to use a slightly more generic processor of some kind and firmware.
Media codecs are developing all the time and hardware boxes can't keep up. Although this does generate more business as people will buy new media players once formats change.
# man hdparm
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
...especially when I've encoded my entire CD collection to 192k/s MP3's and burned them all off to CD. Now if the portable player was able to directly convert MP3's to OGG's whilst copying to the portable player such as dBpowerAMP's excellent Music Converter can do then I may consider buying one, but I like many other people will not go out of our way despite whatever MP3/WMA/etc licensing issues exist just to promote Open Source. Don't get me wrong Open Source is the bees knees but un-necessary labour on my part is not!
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
Now this free codec will inspire me to re-rip all my audio to this new format and promptly go out and buy $1200 worth of computer equipment to do a home audio server up right!
Who says OSS fans are cheapskates? We just believe that all our money should be spent on durable goods. Which raises a couple of questions...
1. Is the reason that OSS fans don't like to pay for software because they think some people over-value their intellectual property?
2. Will the creation of an Ogg Vorbis decoder really creat the economies of scale that would allow hardware makers to make the jump.
In other words, will the money that they save in buying an Ogg Decoder for their player be worth the few cents per MP3 decoder royalty when coupled with the marketshare lead that MP3 now enjoys?
I'd like to see Ogg do it personally, but can it penetrate a mass market? I'd like to take Ogg out for a Jog.
Designing a working model is probably 90% of the effort.
Now it's just a matter of finding someone who wants to build them.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Unlike People who are just going to use their PCs to play pirated audio files anyway, if you're going to actual sell hardware to all those pirates you're probably going to want to actual pay the license fees for the mp3 codec. Free vorbis means cheaper hardware. Maybe not that much cheaper, but every peny counts. And if you have a chip does that OGG and MP3 you might as well use it, since it won't cost anything more and it'll be an extra bullet point on the box.
And if you're going to rip CDs you actualy own, might as well do it in OGG if you have an OGG player, as the quality is a bit better.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Heres the fixed one
MP3 devices are on the market for a good time and most users dont give a sh*t if ogg vorbis offers better technical specs. They just want to play music at a reasonable quality and have the ease of stuffing their media (CD, memory card, etc.) with tens/hundreds of titles...
Doubt if any big consumer electronics brand will ever pick up it...
I don't see why you would want specific hardware for this. Adding another chip to a product will make it larger, use more power and cost more.
The article says that they have "Hardwared IP and Software IP which [is] needed to build a portable music player" but realistically most portable music players will surely contain a general purpose CPU or DSP, meaning that they need only a good reference implementation which can be ported to common platforms (e.g. ARM) with little optimisation.
-- Mike
"Software IP" includes DSP firmware do decode Ogg vorbis and the CPU firmware for overall system control.
Basically, it's designed how it should be designed: seperate CPU and DSP cores, and both are independently programmable. It would be incredibly stupid to design a "pure" hardware solution (decoder in silico) since everyone admits that Vorbis is going to evolve and change, especially right now, during its "adolescent" period.
Don't worry, they've done the right thing :-)
Most games nowadays have large amounts of compressed music and voice tracks. The mp3 licensing has become a "requirement" for game companies who want to stay competitive. Some have used Ogg instead though. It's free, has a good libraries for developers to use, and gets better quality than mp3s.
The guys over at Epic are probably the biggest name in the industry to jump on the Ogg bandwagon.
Ogg Vorbis compatible car audio SOON!
I'm trying to start using Ogg files, but have had a hard time finding a player that is satisfactory. I just installed Winamp 3.0 because it supports Ogg files and I've been sorely disappointed. Can someone recommend a better Ogg player?
-dbc
What I'd like to see:
;) [Except for the choice of media, my Zaurus with its AA external battery back for power is nearly there ... ]
1) An available, no-futzing, no-fooling portable ogg player
2) that uses AA batteries (rechargables are now well worth it, and standard battery sizes are so much more convenient than a billion sculpted-to-fit li-ions)
3) that reads from CD / CD-R / CD-RW
4) and hopefully from DVD / DVD recordable formats as well
5) and even more hopefully, a slot for CF would be nice, or some amount (even 64 megs) of built-in flash
6) that costs less than buying a middlin' color PDA
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
MP3, OGG, WMA, RA, etc., etc.
,multi-function pda's only do so much. Oh well it's all a matter of taste...
There are too many formats as it is and now we have players supporting different types. Some more than others. I know they all have their +/-'s but it's almost like the browser war. Our format can do this and sounds like this and is only this big, etc. Same old game. That goes for IM clients too, as well as, many more products out there.
I know this is about competition or as Microsoft spins it..."The ability to innovate" but it's hell for Joe Average who doesn't know what a hard drive is much less ogg, encode, decode, bitrate, etc. Mp3 and ogg are great formats but the Microsoft version of the mp3 formats so we should just concentrate on those and refining the quality and file size. The rest should be tossed so we can have the best players and quality formats that will improve exponentially.
Too many choices muddy the water and confuse consumers. We don't have the compatibility issues that frustrate software formats, i.e. ms word vs word perfect but having players out there that don't support all of the formats sucks. The newer players are getting better at this but I'm sure the do-it-all
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
But why would apple bother. It won't yield a significant advantage over what they have now.
The trick is they have is a single issue RISC core (1 instruction per clock) running in parallel with a 4 issue VLIW DSP core (4 instructions per clock). Assuming it's all running at peak rate (which it hopefully will be for the majority of time) that's about 60 MIPS of processing going on there for a 64kbit Vorbis stream. Compare that to an ARM7TDMI (which a lot of players are based on), which requires (ball park) 30-50MHz for the same stream. The figure they state of 74MHz is nonsense - that's the general class of processor you require, not the actual MHz. You'll find higher bit rates requiring most of that 74MHz, though.
If they can come up with a real piece of hardware or a simulation that says it takes less than 100-200mW in an actual system, then I'll be impressed. That's about how much your average MP3 player takes. (Power = Battery mAh * Battery Voltage / Time in hours, work out how much yours takes). Just having a low clock speed is as incomplete a power consumption picture as Intel's use of high clock speeds alone is to performance.
I like STFW better. *g*
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
An Ogg-only player dropped onto the market today would be a complete no-op, and nobody's going to want to make a player that takes an extra chip for something only a fraction of a percent of the users are asking for right now.
I want this, and I want it badly... but I don't think the device manufacturers will care.
Not necessarily.
Sailormusic.net anyone?
-uso.
Dreams, dreams, don't doubt dreams, dreaming children's dreaming dreams. Sailor Moon SS
Then we'll find out whether they infringe on any patents. Remember this article:
clicky , clicky News.com from 2000
The Ogg developers staunchly defend the notion that they have created everything from scratch, or at least have built their system without using any of the Fraunhofer-owned technology. But their rivals say they aren't so sure.
"We doubt very much that they are not using Fraunhofer and Thomson intellectual property," Linde said. "We think it is likely they are infringing."
Whether this is true, analysts say Thomson and the German company are likely to file patent lawsuits the moment Vorbis appears to be a viable market candidate. By creating a perception of uncertainty around Vorbis' future, MP3's parents could prevent conservative digital music companies from adopting it.
"If you're going to go into a marketplace where people play hardball, that's what hardball looks like," Scheirer warned.
# (/.);;
- : float -> float -> float =
Having said that, since I don't like listening on headphones (gives me a headache), I find that there is little value in a portable music player that does not have enough space to contain your entire music library. In that situation (use only hooked up to car and/or home stereos) the constant need to swap songs out renders even an overpriced 512 MB SD card pretty pointless - the same can be achieved more conveniently with a handful of (much flatter than a Tungsten|T) CD-RW Audio CDs or less than one MP3 CD-RW with an appropriate CD player (which are cheap as dirt these days). Moreover, the loss of a CD-RW disc is inconsequential while the lose of a Tungsten T or even just an SD card would be quite distressing.
Better still, and what I do, plug your PowerBook into your car stereo's AUX input and control iTunes or what have you with Salling Clicker and a T68i or equivalent bluetooth phone. Talk about geek cool.... Further I'm considering acquiring an old G3 or G4 tower to mount in the trunk of my car - I envision automatic music syncing via an 802.11b connection with my home iMac jukebox when I get in range. Surely someone has done this already?
--- What?
Great, you don't need a license from the guys who invented the format, but you'd need to license the decoder from these guys... How is that different? Besides, a system will need a micro of some sort anyway and it could do the decoding.
AC, you should get an account, why be shy?
/. can be, in reality, just as anonymous as ACs.
:)
- not all anonymous people are bad
- not all registered people are good
- registered people on
When Slashdot got started, CmdrTaco was a big supporter of anonymous posters. Since then he has slowly but surely chipped away at their ability to participate in a conversation.
For example, default view used to be at a 0 threshold instead of 1. ACs were not limited to 10 posts per day (hell I'm already at 5/10 on this article alone).
You can blame the trolls or whatever, but the response from the Slashdot maintainers has created a hostile atmosphere towards the AC which I disagree with. And lately when I see other posters deriding ACs simply for being ACs, it makes me sad.
Best regards,
Some-will-know-who
Seems that Ogg is just different. Not really much better and not any worse. The real issue with mp3, ogg, et al. is that it'll still be illegal to poses the files if you do not, in fact, own the original.
Is Ogg attempting to circumvent this?
Considering the lack of files (mp3's are EVERYWHERE) and the lack of motivation on my part, I really doubt I'll switch anytime soon to Ogg. Even so, how is Ogg fairing with legal issues of copy write etc? How is mp3 limited that Ogg is not?
-Valiss
Musepack and AAC offer superior quality than the vorbis encoder.
I vaguely remember seeing MP3 hardware like this, but I've noticed it's "not a big deal". Maybe it's due to the bad press that compressed formats get (RIAA/piracy/etc.), but I think that there could be a strong case for hardware like this.
I believe the Sony MP3 units (MD) can record directly into MP3 formats, anyone have any experience with this?
...why would Joe User consider buying an Ogg portable player? I just pulled up my Netjuke and it says that I have 189 mp3-encoded albums in there, encoded that way because I have a portable mp3 player. I sure don't want to go through the bother of re-encoding my music. Why would any user want to go through the bother of a) re-encoding all of their CDs in Ogg format when they won't notice the difference with their crappy Walkman headphones, or b) re-pirating all of those songs that they like in Ogg format (as if they would find them)?
./ fanatics to make it financially viable for a company to produce.
I just don't see a compelling reason for the portable music crowd to want to do this, and I don't think that there are enough
Ok, I see a lot of people looking at this and either complaining, because they think they know how this is a non-achivement, or not really useful.
On the other end, you've got people AOLing with crap like "This looks great!" and "I can't wait for my vorbis player!". Ok, yes, we know. So do many of us. Thanks.
This really does look to be useful in getting ogg into portables, and I belive the reason for this is simple. If this has the ability with a low power cpu and dsp to decode ogg files, it may well be able to decode mp3s or some other format as well. Meaning it would be possible to have this be the single setup solution for a player, not this + an mp3 and windows media or whatever else decoder. Without more information from the design company, we can't be sure, naturally, but consider that before you immediately deride this as useless.
I used to like Winamp before AOL took it over.
I've had more problems with Winamp 3.0 that it has totally destroyed my whole view on the winamp product.
I found a program called "foobar2000" and I like it as much as I did the old winamp. It lacks all those teenie bopper popular skins, but underneath a very ugly, so simple yet confusing interface, it just sounds better then Winamp.
THAT IS TEH FUNNAY!!!!!!!!1 U R l33t!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
... for a good QT plugin for playing OGG Vorbis files. One exists, but it apparantly wants to read the whole file before beginning to play, making it unbearably slow. (especially when streaming over 802.11)
I don't see the mainstream ditching MP3 any time soon. And in the long term, there's a good chance that by the time Vorbis would surpass MP3 we'll have so much bandwidth and disk space that compression will cease being necessary and we'll just use WAV instead. (That could, depending on any number of factors, end up being [i]very[/i] long term prediction.)
>but I really don't see the appeal
Let's face it, the appeal is ideology first and secondary is IP concerns using reverse-engineered MP3 encoders and/or the MP3 file format. Vorbis is bit more tighly compressed, but when youre dealing with portable music devices with drives measured in gigabytes and broadband connections its suddenly not that important.
I guess, like linux, it has its niches. Some companies are using ogg in their software to avoid any potential lawsuits and licensing costs associated with the MP3 format. It may have noticable benefits in low-bitrate streaming. It has a seperate codec for voice.
I'm sure it has other uses than listed above, but when it comes to MP3 players and and typical MP3 uses there is little incentive for most people to switch formats.
Also, if you do switch, you'll need to re-encode from the original uncompressed recordings. You can't just take an MP3 and turn it into am Ogg Vorbis without losing a signficant amount of quality.
is that ogg player in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
Look at the market for MP3 stuff, from keychains in happy meals to the same thing sold to old yuppy joggers with many hundred dollar features. If you make any of these, you can pay a license for your MP3 recordings or you can get one of these ogg widgets. Tick-tock, tick-tock, hurry and make up your mind. Every day you punch out thousands of toys. The toy and music industry will embrace these gadgets as quick as the film industry has embraced free software.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I believe part of the Ogg Vorbis specification prevents people who had actually had sex with female bipeds from being able to hear it - but I'm not sure - I'm going to go back to my parents basement and reread the RFC.
From what I hear, it works great. I would tell you personally how it works but I use an iPod and plays back AAC.
When do we get the Ogg Vorbis decoder *ring*?
Chris Mattern
Color me ignorant, but is an entire hardware-based chip really necessary for decoding ogg vorbis? It would seem to me that this could be done relatively easily via a firmware upgrade.
I mean, isn't that a big selling point for a lot of the mp3 players anyway, the ability to upgrade the unit to allow for future audio formats?
The neutrality of this sig is disputed.
Err...I mean...
Wow...you know stuff! ;-)
It's Ogg. Not OGG.
Oggy, oggy, oggy, oi, oi, oi !
Well, most stand-alone players use something standard, like CF, SD, etc. Secondly, there is also the Sharp handheld that runs Linux and has an Ogg player. I have played Oggs on my crappy WinCE device as well.
Still, I wouldn't use Ogg on any of them. Handleds use up too much power, are too expensive, and don't have a good set of controls on them, as stand-alone players do.
Indeed, CF cards are far too expensive for the small ammount of storage they give you. Personally, my ideal music system would be a very small Ogg player that uses MiniCD-R/RW discs. Very inexpensive, compact, and great quality ogg audio.
Nice, but not very portable. Also, not terribly easy to take one disc from your car to your home... Just not the solution for me, nor a lot of people, I'm sure.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I really don't want this to be but it looks like WMA format is pervading and infesting MP3 players to an alarming extent.
:-(
I just bought an I-bead which, like many MP3 players in that price range, features WMA format.
Since WMA format is built into MS Media Player along with the facility to rip CDs it is obvious that folks will soon start using it.
Even if OGG does make it into the portable players it won't make it into MS Media Player so most people will never encode anything into it. Why should they? They have MP3 and WMA on tap.
Sad but true
If it could do these things, I'd be willing to re-encode my collection. I can attest to the better sound quality/lower bitrate quotient from experience, and finding
Anyone know anything about the first two points? For me at least, those would make it a killer app of sorts for portable use.
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
If that doesn't make your cock hard, go back to your femmial biprocessors or whatever they're called, looser. I bet you've never even compiled X.
Yup, thats what I want. For some reason I am a SID-addict since last week. My coworkers are going mad but I dont care. Nothing better than listening to the BombJack theme four hours continously.
Maybe I should get a Sidchip and start my own project. Maybe a Gameboy would be a good starting platform for the mod?
Cu,
Lispy
Nice schematic but you do realize that you just left an open invitation for trolls to start posting more ASCII art of "birds on cocks" and whatnot.
:)
The extent of my ASCII design capabilities:
Karma: NaN
Is that a typo? WHy would I want a chip that was 1/6 as fast as I needed?
--JLockard - "Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." - Emo Phillips
Would it be helpful to do 'open source' style work on the hardware side for Ogg?
What would help? Decoder chip design? Programming for available hardware (ARM, XScale)? Reference designs with available hardware?
This isn't that amasing. Firstly this is done using a CPU and a DSP. No ogg specific hardware is mentioned........Basicly what they have done was to pick up a core and stick it on an FPGA then compiled ogg/vobis for that CPU's ISA. Place a bit of a bootloader and something to handle the I/O and its done. No magic.
Don't you see - that IS the magic. This means that such a device can be firmware upgradable to support new audio codecs.
I'm kind of pissed that my $150 diamond rio can't be flash upgraded to support OGG.
Unless they are super CPU intensive (like DVD playback or MPEG2 used to be) I think that codecs should NOT be hard coded into the chips. The processors in these devices should be general purpose - not only to accept new codecs in the future, but also to "upgrade" the existing decode engines in the device as newer/better/more efficient ones become available.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.