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.
Yes, that is true. I am not saying that Vorbis players will be cheaper, I am hoping that they will be cheaper.
-- ...interesting if true.
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...
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
·
· 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
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.
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.
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
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.
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?
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
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
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.;)
Who needs a chip?
by
bytesmythe
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· Score: 4, Informative
-- bytesmythe Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together. -- Scott Meyer
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
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
.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
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
cya
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
FPGA Version?
by
tunabomber
·
· 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...
Re:FPGA Version?
by
stonecypher
·
· 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.
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
Re:Is it needed?
by
n0nsensical
·
· 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
·
· 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 )
Re:Is it needed?
by
groomed
·
· 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
bn557
·
· 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
·
· 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.
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.
Links to more information...
by
n0nsensical
·
· Score: 5, Informative
"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 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.
Excellent!
by
DaedalusLogic
·
· 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
m0rbidini
·
· 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.
cya
that's one big step, though
by
SweetAndSourJesus
·
· 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"
Why would you want this?
by
Mike+McTernan
·
· 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
·
· 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
·
· 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:Floating point?
by
stratjakt
·
· 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
·
· 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.
game companies like Ogg
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· 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:Floating point?
by
leviramsey
·
· 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.
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
OK, excuse for a daydream :)
by
timothy
·
· 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
N8w8
·
· 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.
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.
If OV ever gets popular...
by
PylonHead
·
· 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
·
· 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?
Tungsten T/C & Zire 71 can play Ogg for free
by
sjonke
·
· 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?
-- ---
What?
Re:Car audio player soon
by
pchan-
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· Score: 4, Interesting
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:Floating point?
by
TheCrazyFinn
·
· 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
I don't mean to sound like a troll, but...
by
fobbman
·
· 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!
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.
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:Ogg would be a must-have format if...
by
bilgebag
·
· 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.
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!!!!
But will it support MP3?
No, wait, that's the other way around...
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..
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.
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
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.
You forgot a step:
1. Jump on the ogg bandwagon.
2. Get pigs to fly.
3. ??????
4. Profit!
-Valiss
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.
"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.
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.
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"
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 :-)
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!!!!
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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?
sooner than you think.
the phatbox and kenwood music keg already support ogg.
volkswagen and audi sell these as dealer installed options. and they are compatible with a wide range of car stereos.
here's how to play ogg files on it!
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.
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
...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
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.
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.
> 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.