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Rio Announces Networked Ogg Vorbis Player
Alexander writes "Rio has announced several players, among them the Karma 20GB Ogg Vorbis music player, which also sports Ethernet as the preferred connection method. Is Ogg Vorbis finally gaining industry acceptance?" There's more information on the new Rio line-up via an article at The Register.
And don't forget that according to this link, there is also going to be a 40GB for around $499!
Unique signatures are rare.
finally: a player with 2 weeks of continuous music.....
Who took my tinfoil hat?
Cynics are numerous and void of ideas. Ignore them. I hope Rio is giving to Xiph for using Ogg (I hear Xiph takes contracts to develop for a particular hardware), but anyone getting one of these should be donating. If Rio says they are giving a portion of the proceeds to Xiph, I'd be even more likely to buy from them.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
Woohoo!
Of course, Ogg is good for Sonic|BLUE since they don't have to liscense an MPEG decoder for each player they sell, correct?
The software that runs on the thing is based on the software used in the Empeg linux player.. the Karma runs linux, and has a usb2 hub, not a client.. lots of hack potential.
I'd be happy with 20GB of Karma!!!
(I think I just soiled myself).
We'll have to wait for a dupe until ThinkGeek starts selling it..
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
The proof of the first posting is in the reading. -- Miguel de Cervantes
New MMORPG called Lineage 2 uses OGG for its sound,at least in beta. :-)
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
Anti SCO T-Shirt. $1 donated to OSI Fund on each shirt.
Oh, it plays Ogg. Well, if't less then $20 I'll buy it!
Even though Digital Innovations got my money for being the first out of the gate with Neuros support for Ogg Vorbis, competition is always a good thing, and having more players that support Vorbis means lower prices and less potential for lock-in or obsolescence.
Ogg Vorbis destroys MP3 in terms of quality, and is competitive with all of the newer proprietary codecs (e.g., AAC, MP3Pro, WMA) at high bitrates while providing much better performance than those at low bitrates (e.g., sub-64kbps).
Don't let the intelligentsia decide whether Vorbis is the right codec for you or not: the free market will decide this question, and as a result of this development, that market just got more interesting.
[ home ]
Maybe my (family_member) will get me one! I should make sure to let (him_her_them) know I'm interested.
Seriously, gotta get me one. Looks awesome.
You are not the customer.
but does it play WMP files?
Using ethernet to transfer the data seems like it's a great idea and long overdue in the portable media player market...
Although with the advent of firewire and usb2.1, it doesn't seem that big anymore
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
They all look like they were designed by Mike Brady.
In a pocket-sized box, I'd be looking for Wi-Fi rather than a cabled connection. USB would suffice for music transfers over a cable.
Of course, if its got Ethernet and runs Linux, it'll be hacked into a server in about ten minutes after it's been released to market.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
Looks like this one does MP3s as well, so you don't have to worry about MP3s you already have. Of course you could convert them, but you lose more quality (lossy-to-lossy conversion loses more than either original encoding).
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
Slashdot review...
Karma: Excellent
Thank you.
We all know about the Neuros Player (right? right?!) but it's nice to see Rio join to help us crush those dirty abberations known as mp3 files. *spit* OGG SHALL PREVAIL!!!
I have an old empeg. No longer made, but they still find time to make refinemenats toit. They are a bunch of linux geeks like the rest of us. Since Tremor (the fixed-point Ogg decoder) came out, there's not been any reason to not have Ogg. They've got a tight code base too, and if they can find the time, the old empeg people might get the capability to play Ogg, which is something I've been requesting a while. But these discontunued products are last on the priority list. The 3.0 alpha code plays on the player, and when it goes beta, we (empeg owners) might just get Ogg...
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
RioKarma 20:
20G 2.7 x 3.0 x 0.90 = 7.29 inch^3 5.5oz
ipod specs
10G 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.62 = 6.10 inch^3 5.6oz
15G 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.62 = 6.10 inch^3 5.6oz
30G 4.1 x 2.4 x 0.73 = 7.18 inch^3 6.2oz
So it's pretty comprable size-wise and breaks from the pcmcia 1.8" hard drive mold (0.20" x 2.13" x 3.37") that defines the ipod.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
After the third remote control broke, and I tried to buy a new one from Rio itself (rather than Amazon, where I bought it) it turned out that not only would they not ship items from their e-store, they would even accept a non-US credit card it (when I tried to buy and have it sent to a US friend to send on to me). Needless to say, I'm not impressed by a company quite happy to take foreigner's money while giving them a shoddy service.
P.
From the listed specs, it appears that this device is almost exactly the size, shape, and weight of two boxes of paperclips side-by-side.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
The problem with the Karma here is it doesn't appear to have a radio tuner, unlike the Neuros. The Neuros also:
The main thing the Neuros doesn't have that I would like is a line-out, but oh well. It does nearly everything else I'd want.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
You know you have your priorities straight when you buy a geek toy that's more than your rent!
+5, Female
Does this mean we *finally* have a portable mp3 player (non-cd based) that can play back gapless recordings? This is one of the few features that has held me back from buying an iPod.
...but someone else may donate twice what your share should have been.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
The answer to this question is irrelevant. The real question is "Is Ogg Vorbis gaining consumer acceptance?" It doesn't matter if the music industry thinks Ogg Vorbis is good, as long as consumers aren't using it. And the answer to the question is a definite no. How many people talk about ogg sharing, the same way they talk about mp3 sharing? How many casual music downloaders have heard of Ogg Vorbis, let alone know what it is? As long as these numbers are low, products for playing ogg files will fail, and the industries acceptance of Ogg Vorbis won't matter, until consumers play ogg's instead of mp3's, and know that they are using ogg's.
Alright! All you need now is OpenSource Music! Start by getting this song here!. Ph33r a day in the life of a geek.
do() || do_not();
The nice thing about the Neuros is the "backpack" system used, which will allow users to upgrade to USB2 and/or a bigger hard drive in the future.
Personally, I'm waiting for a portable player that supports open source codecs from the future.
I can't view the site in mozilla firebird or opera properly, so I can't see if the price is listed there, but I've been looking for somethign to replace my 4 year old minidisc player and depending on the price, this could be really good. Is there a MSRP anywhere on the page that might have been covered by the menus?
It sounds like the ethernet port is only attached when the player is docked?
So this basically means you could dock it in your living room next to the stereo..and update it via the network, and use it as a mp3 server, etc. This in itself would rock.
GeekWares - Buy and Download Today!
Powerful tools include cross-fader, 5-band parametric equalizer, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC support, and a huge, backlit display capable of visualizations, animated menus, and 16 shades of gray.
Now this is a reason to celebrate! I can get rid of my audiotron and my portable for one system that supports OGG and FLAC. FLAC support is huge for the thousands of people who download and share legal lossless music.
But does it play...oh, never mind.
I meta-mod all positive moderation Unfair, because it's abuse of the system.
But is it 10 or 100 mbps ethernet? Everything USB device I plug in now seems to require more power than my hub can give it. If I could just copy the files over to it with ethernet the world would be a better place.
Maybe it's just me, and maybe I'm an idiot (there's always a good chance of that), but does using an Ethernet connection make any sense? Most computers used by typical home users only have one Ethernet port, and that's usually already used by their cable/DSL modem. Meanwhile, there are plenty of empty and/or shareable USB & Firewire ports available...
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde
I tend to disagree. While many definately never heard of Ogg Vorbis, there probably won't be any ogg only player in the near future. For that reason, ogg products won't fail. But if there are players, buyers of these products might notice ogg and try it out.
First... cool tune, man. I dig it.
But what is Open Source about that music?! You've given us a link to the binary. Where's the source? Raw tracks? Midi data? Lyrics? Sheet music? Lead sheet? Chords? Anything?! Lame.
Quickly! To the Stores! Or to the Online Merchant of Your Choice!
Since this is exactly what you've been calling for, I expect this thing to outsell the iPod in a week or two. I mean, Ogg Vorbis is the super format that's been the only thing keeping a legion of geeks from buying an MP3 player, right? Go hang a salami...I mean, hang Interface and Availablity, it's all about the Ogg.
Mind you, if this doesn't sell like hotcakes, well, Vorbis won't have been quite the driving market force that you'd been preaching, will it? So you might want to by 5, just in case. Don't worry, if the market's there, you'll be able to sell them on ebay, sometimes for more than you'd bought them for. If the iPod is any benchmark, that is.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
Marketing folks must hate putting "Ogg Vorbis" on things. It could easily be confused with onomatopoeia for vomitting.
What's the point of using Ogg Vorbis when there is AAC+? AAC+ is better than Vorbis at all bitrates. Vorbis is not even good past 128kbps unless you're using the unofficial GT3b1 tuning. If you're going to spend so much money on a multimedia player, I don't think it would break the bank to buy Nero or Quicktime for AAC encoding. Vorbis doesn't even seem to be in development anymore, while AAC is being developed by many other companies.
Vorbis can't compete.
In related news, iRiver gave this update on Vorbis support earlier this week: here
The player itself looks great, and just might be worthy of my money in the next year or so.
The site, though, works like crap in mozilla. Can anyone post links to the menu-driven pages that we mozilla users can't access? I'd like to know if they're planning on making it OS-agnostic with the ethernet interface. Maybe a crappy web-based upload thing to be hacked into a little FTP server or something would be terrific.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Looks like this site does use correct html. Comes out all messed up in Mozilla.
You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me.
How about we finally get ogg support in digital video players, too?
More and more video is being encoded as OGM (Ogg Media Stream) which usually involves xvid-encoded video and ogg-encoded audio; I can attest that the quality is superb but there is one clear downfall: at this moment, no DVD player or portable media device can play the format, thus requiring you to watch such encoded video on your computer.
I look at this development as good progress towards finally getting something that supports both ogg and xvid out of the box.
According to several articles I have read, such as the one on gizmodo.com, the Rio Karma will have USB 2.0 as its native interface; it will also come with a dock that will plug into an Ethernet network.
If you can just use standard file server protocols (NFS or SMB, I don't care) to put files on the Karma, I will buy one. If you have to run some modified jukebox app to move the files, so it can wrap your files in DRM junk, I won't buy one.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
The consumer has already come to think of "mp3" as short for compressed digital music. This doesn't mean that Vorbis doesn't have a chance, though. Once the industry has accepted it, consumers will use it, even if they don't realize that their "mp3"s aren't actually mp3 at all. People will download and play Ogg files without knowing the technical details. People already don't know the difference between avi, wmv, and mpg, and really don't know that there are tons of different sorts of mpegs; there's no reason audio won't be the same, with nobody understanding or caring what format they're using, so long as it works, and always calling it "mp3" regardless of what it is.
Many people bought an iRiver device in the hope that it will support ogg soon. They made a statement about the codec a few days ago saying that ogg isn't really ready for emedded devices yet:
= 34 7
http://www.iriver.com/company/news_view.asp?idx
Ok, I'll admit up front that I don't own a portable lossy audio device. I do, however, use Vorbis on my PC and think it is great. But, does anyone else think that these things are insanly expensive? I mean, $399 for a portable audio player?! I'd be happy with an Ogg Vorbis player that's about the size of a pager that I can take to the gym or wear while cutting the lawn. I'm thinking like 1-4 hours of music, maybe use a CF card or just sync via USB into on-board flash or RAM. I'm also of the belief that as much as vorbis rocks the world, I won't be getting rid of my CDs or non-lossy versions of the recordings.
Anybody else think this way, or am I in the minority?
Since the devices support MP3 (in addition to Ogg Vorbis), the manufacturer must pay a license for the MP3 decoder.
Am i mistaking, or wouldn't playing Ogg Vorbis files instead of MP3 files result in decreased battery time since it may take more processor time to decode these files. Is this an issue to anyone?
MP3 is just another word in most people's vocabularies now. It's similar to "Kleenex vs. tissue" or "Q-Tip vs. cotton swab". When people say to go download an MP3, they really mean download some music in miscellanious format.
;)
I would sooner take an ogg than an mp3 anyday though
Does this link: http://www.digitalnetworksna.com/shop/_templates/i tem_main_Rio.asp?model=220&cat=53 display properly for anyone usng Mozilla? I am using 1.5A and the menus(which don't work) are displayed on top of the specs which run off the window.
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
Products playing for ogg won't "fail", because they can also play mp3 and any other format the designer wants to add.
The unwashed masses can download low quality mp3's all they want. I prefer to rip ogg's off my cds and won't buy a player that won't play them.
Successful devices will be any two of: cheap, flexible, or high quality.
I also have two Volts (90 and 150), and while they work quite well with MP3 CDs (esp. after flashing with the iRiver f/w), they're very temperamental with Audio CDs. Which I find strange, I would expect a dinky little gadget like that to choke on a file system sooner than on an established CD format that's been around for twenty years. Still, since you can get the 150 for $35 now, they're still worth the money. Of course, the Riot I got for $130 will also hopefully be worth the money :-)
Isn't ethernet going to be substantially slower than firewire or USB?
http://threetechguys.info Come, discuss Technology. Got a technology question? Come ask!
Er.. waitaminute. I better go back and check my logic.
Its 20GB* drive can carry over 5,000 songs ...
*1 GB equals 1,000,000,000 bytes
Why do people have such a hard time wraping their heads around the fack that 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes?
Let's review:
1GB = 1024 MB = 1024 * 1024 KB = 1024 * 1024 *1024 bytes
OR
2^30 = 2^10 * 2^20 = 2^10 * 2^10 * 2^10
This lesson was brought to you today by the letters P H B
All your base are belong to us!
I have been listening to ogg vorbis files for months now using my Palm Zire 71 and Aeroplayer. I got myself a 256 Meg SD card and I was off to the races.
Okay -- admittedly, ethernet support is a very good thing, but IMO that just means it has a useful interconnect system available.
The more important question IMO is what protocols does it support over the ethernet connection? NetBIOS/NetBEUI? TCP/IP? Some custom protocol? If TCP/IP, does it support NFS? FTP? NetBIOS over TCP/IP? Something else?
The poorly designed/formatted website doesn't give much information in this regard. I'm assuming it's TCP/IP based, but even then, you need something that will allow you to transfer files to it.
Being NFS based would be ideal here. Being able to mount it from any of my OS/2 or Linux boxes as a drive would be perfect. NetBIOS/NetBEUI/etc. would be of secondary usefulness -- I don't run any of these protocols (as I don't need to -- they add overhead and don't do anything NFS and lpr/lpd don't), but have them available on all my systems. If they're FTP based, well at least NetDrive allows me to treat them as filesystem mounts. If they're using some "custom" protocol that only works with their Windows-based client software, then no thanks.
Anyone know?
Yaz.
#1 it has a stupid name
#2 it offers very little benefit over MP3's
#3 MP3 already has wide-spread support
#4 Plain and simple, nobody fucking cares.
This makes me remember, in the early days of the internet when the people with internet access were lucky and most geeks used BBS system. The clueless people here in brasil would call any image of gif. There were BBS with a gif download dir, usualy filled with porn jpegs.
[]'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins
^[:wq
Is says that windows is required. Is this true, or can we linux people rig it with dd or something?
It's great to see more companies supporting OGG. I use it exclusively for all my CDs and the sound quality is excellent, not to mention the open source (read spyware free) software apps that make for easy audio extraction.
John the Kiwi
"It's worthless to me unless it plays MP3."
>>In a pocket-sized box, I'd be looking for Wi-Fi rather than a cabled connection.
And in short order, you'd be looking for an electrical outlet to recharge it. The power demands of wifi considered with the size limitations of the device makes the idea of a pocket-sized wifi mp3 player impractical for all but short durations.
The idea is interesting, though allow me to shift into Devil's Advocate role for a moment... wouldn't this device, if it transmits music via Wifi, effectively be a low power radio station? After all, it's broadcasting music, and that requires an FCC license and permission from the "intellectual" property owner, which could give the RIAA an excuse to demand commercial broadcast licenses (e.g. many thousands of $$s) per device.
if they're going to put OGG Vorbis reading support in some of their products, I really wish they'd consider their older lines too. My RioVolt SP250 is attractive because it plays MP3 and WMA CD's, but it would be totally killer kick-arse if it also played OGG CD's. They already have the code for playing it on a hard drive-based system--how hard could it be to port that and make one last upgrade to the SP250 firmware? Until I see Rio supporting older hardware (and, in the case of my RioVolt, still among the best in terms of CD music file play-ability), I'm not sure I want to be buying any of their new hardware.
We recently had heard in the office over one of the Yellow Machine that's made by Anthology Solutions.
I see it says Ogg/Flac...anyone know if it still has MP3 support or does it just support those formats....and can anyone point to documentation that says it supports Ogg, and MP3....
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
KARMA!!! thats what they call it?? rofl!
hahahahahahahahahahaha....
talk about the most abused sanskrit words.
Not only does it have Ogg Vorbis support, it has FLAC support too. I'm definitely considering this now...
We are the music makers. We are the dreamers of the dreams.
Exactly. If the industry supports it, it stands a good chance to get used because people don't really care for the most part. All they care about is that when they click on the link, it plays in their player of choice. Or that if they look up download a Dave Matthews Band song from Kazaa, it plays in their portable player.
Now that many of the major PC-players and portable players are supporting Ogg, it won't matter if a site/person/whoever is offering something in MP3, WMA, AAC, Ogg - to the end user, if it works, it's great.
And hey, if this song over here with the .ogg (as if they ever see 3-letter extensions in Windoze) sounds better than the one with .mp3, I'll go with that one. And if I can fit 35 songs from this place that has "Oggs" compared to 30 from this other place onto my 128MB player...
I picked up a Neuros and am loving it. Still needs some work, but they seem to be pretty connected to their user community, which is nice.
lament.
including those of us whoare subjected to va lairIE's whoreabully infactdead, pateNTdead, PostBlock(tm) devise, which is a product of the hedgemonIEd SourceForgerIE(tm). we don't think robbIE had a clue about what he was signing in blood for.
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- In an Aug. 7 story about a challenge by the SCO Group to the Linux operating system's royalty-free status, The Associated Press reported erroneously that Microsoft Corp. was among the vendors of Linux-based servers.
While Microsoft recently purchased a license from SCO for Linux copies it owns (in GLARING 50 pt.), the software giant (fauxking morons) does not sell the operating system.--
what a hoot
details @ trustworthycomputing.com(edyroutine)
back on task.
we're editing this soon.
about va lairIE/robbIE et AL touting/shilling for their corepirate nazi life0cide sponsors, whilst avoiding anything/everything that really matters
this fauxking avoidance of the planet/population rescue project (previously unknown as the oil for babies program), & failing to fess up on the stock markup swindles, is disheartening, to say the leased, robbIE. you sure spouted off A LOT before you became won of those phonIE Godless payper liesense stock markup billyonerrors. same with va lairIE, & his whoreabull patentdead PostBlock(tm)/SourceForgerIE kode stealing/censoring devices. that's ok dough, as it's not yOUR worst problem.
no matter. back on task.
as to the free unlimited energy plan, as the lights come up, more&more folks will stop being misled into sucking up more&more of the infant killing barrolls of crudeness, & learn that it's more than ok to use newclear power generated by natural (hydro, solar, etc...). of course more information about not wasting anything/behaving less frivolously is bound to show up, here&there.
cyphering how many babies it costs for a barroll of crudeness, we've decided to cut back, a lot, on wasteful things like giving monIE to felons, to help them destroy the planet/population.
no matter. the #1 task is planet/population rescue. the lights are coming up. we're in crisis mode. you can help.
the unlimited power (such as has never been seen before) is freely available to all, with the possible exception of the aforementioned walking dead.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator. more breathing. vote with yOUR wallet. seek others of non-aggressive intentions/behaviours. that's the spirit, moving you.
pay no heed to the greed/fear based walking dead.
each harmed innocent carries with it a bad toll. it will be repaid by you/us. the Godless felons will not be available to make reparations.
pay attention. that's definitely affordable, plus you might develop skills which could prevent you from being misled any further by phonIE ?pr? ?firm? generated misinformation.
good work so far. there's still much to be done. see you there. tell 'em robbIE.
the europeeons are laughing/crying at/for US in sympathy/disgust, as we fall/jump into the daze of the georgewellian corepirate nazi life0cide, whilst criticizing their ip gangsters, which are also members of the walking dead.
The answer to this question is irrelevant. The real question is "Is Ogg Vorbis gaining consumer acceptance?" It doesn't matter if the music industry thinks Ogg Vorbis is good, as long as consumers aren't using it.
You would think that is how it should work but (un?)fortunately it doesn't. If a ogg is going to be accepted by the consumer that means the industry has to support it first because they control the vast majority of the infrastructure used to play music. Consumers other than us geeks aren't going to use ogg unless the big media players allow you to play it and rip to it and it becomes available in download services. I can say I never even heard of ACC until the Apple Music Store. Industry leads and the consumers may or may not choose to follow, that's how it works.
I stole this Sig
Karma Hogs
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
The label of being "hackable" makes the device more desirable for a lot of us.
"Hackable"
A definite good thing in this forum, where the difference between a hacker and a cracker is appreciated. And someone who deliberately makes hardware that is flexible is appreciated, not scorned.
But in the world at large, hackable is regarded as a negative attribute, something that allows vague unknown bad people to do bad things to MyComputer.
It's sad that there is such a large gap in understanding what "hackable" means between the inside expert press and the world at large.
Someone with a loud voice ought to educate the masses with some kind of analogy to cars with locked hoods being unhackable.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
You keep forgetting to tell us how we can subscribe to your newsletter!
Industry doesn't produce what the consumers don't want. Consumers don't demand music they can't play (on their MP3-capable devices). Both need to happen to make ogg big.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
You know what?
For what it's worth, iRiver (the same people who make the original RioVolt line and the current SlimX and flashplayer things you find at Bestbuy) just made a news release detailing their Ogg efforts. http://www.iriver.com/company/news_view.asp?idx=34 7
Essentially what they're saying is that Tremor is too big for their embedded devices (read: CD players and flash players). I suppose this can be an excusable claim, depending on the device. However, I'm really disappointed their hard drive doesn't include Ogg support, as a hard drive is a bigger and heaver item, and it shouldn't hurt too much for them to include Ogg support on the ROM.
oh wait... no it doesn't.
TY, now STFU.
an old Thinkpad makes a great networked Ogg Vorbis player and second hand it costs less than this toy, but it is a wee lil'bit bigger...
Oh well, what the hell...
"When people say to go download an MP3, they really mean download some music in miscellanious format."
Actually I'd disagree. If they are in fact going online to download some music chances are its going to be MP3 and not some other format.
From a consumer perspective(not that most people have even heard of ogg) Ogg is still a solution in short of a problem.
From an IP point of view I agree and think that Ogg is great. It's also cool to see so many game designers switching to Ogg for their games. At the same time personally I have absolutely no use for Ogg.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Anti SCO T-Shirt. $1 donated to OSI Fund on each shirt.
Two years ago, I bought a Rio 600 new for ~$180.
The device was crippled, can only write, can't read files, must use their application to transfer files, no external power source, LOW battery life (batteries drain even when powered off). Not only that, but the promised 320MB memory add-on never saw the light of day.
Now, they not only have stopped selling, but also supporting the things. The application doesn't work under Windows 2K, you must use RealOne (which I despise), and which doesn't allow (who knows why?) you to transfer WMA files to the device. It's firmware-upgradeable, and otherwise a spiffy device, so NO REASON they couldn't provide updates, or at least source code so some project could take it over, provide support for Ogg, etc.
It will be a cool day in heck before I consider the purchase of any more Rio products. I'd like to be comfortable that products I purchase (especially for a premium price) will be usable more than six months down the road.
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
Can someone tell me why Apple has avoided the Ogg codec on the iPods w/iTunes? It would seem like common sense to deploy this in the next firmware/software update to keep up with the Joneses.
Right, because those of us that care enough about sound quality to use Ogg just rip the CD.
TODO: Something witty here...
What I'd love to see is a device this small that can play internet radio, and output through RCA output. Anyone know a device like this?
-- Casper Bonk.
...here. It features a web server and Java applet for tune addition (along with other methods) - looks extremely cool.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
The majority of my music listening time is spent between work and my commute. Listening to Ogg Vorbis files at work is easy, but once Kenwood (or another equally good car stereo manufacturer) gets on the Ogg bandwagon, I'll be more than happy to re-encode all my CDs to Ogg instead of MP3. Until I have a car CD player, I can't switch.
And no, an FM modulator, casette adapter or aux input thing is not acceptable in the car... People are dangerous enough using their cell phones in the car, can you picture straining to see the display on your iPod or something?!
I think the least a company who implements the Ogg Vorbis protocol should do is donate some small percentage of profits from each sale to xiph.org to support continued development. Not that they have to (do to it being patent and royalty free) but it would be a nice gesture.
Is Rio required by the Ogg Vorbis license agreement to release the microcode they used to implement this protocol? It would be interesting to see what kind of optimizations they used such as special DSP instructions.
Maybe you were unfortunate enough to get a few duds, or the firmware needs to be updated(or maybe updating was the problem).
I'm curious to know which firmware version you're running.
"People should be allowed to keep midgets as pets."
- Gov. Jesse Ventura
The answer to this question is irrelevant.
No it's not. The manufacturers are the ones who (I think) will be mostly responsible for introducing Ogg to the masses. The reason is that the money they don't have to pay to Fraunhofer for the MP3 license goes right in their pockets. If they can sell a $200 music player that does everything in Ogg rather than MP3, they can save themselves $4 a pop (or whatever) on every unit sold. Do you think Diamond would be putting Vorbis playback in this new unit if it wasn't free?
Of course, this player does MP3 too, so they are paying anyway. But in a year or so I think we may start seeing Vorbis-only players.
Don't even tempt me until there's something that can play WAV.
are exactly the reason why the mainstream still doesn't care about Linux. Who wants to use an OS whose current core userbase consists of drooling mouth-breathers like you?
That whole IE arguement is for web babies and marketeers; Flash web designers and PHB's; the ignorant and the uncaring.
Many people who don't use IE use assistive devices and non-grafics browsers.
Do you think a potential customer who is visually impaired might be interested in an audio player?
It's not like their primary interface with the world is through auditory perception, now is it?
Go get some real life experience and grow up. Then you might have something to say that is worth listening to.
It's as big as a brick!
Well what you need to do is inform the people... or just be a cheeky bastard like me and set up your friend's computer to rip to ogg, they all have Winamp icons so she doesn't care as long as they play.
Firstly, you don't need X to play audio files. Mplayer is a command line player.
Secondly, you can even watch movies on the console, using aalib (ascii-art rendering, I kid you not!). Not very useful, except as a last resort, though.
So is that actually usb 1.0 or 1.1 renamed as usb 2.0 (usb full speed) or usb high speed incorrectly labelled as usb 2.0?
I realise this sort of thing has been debated to death, but the Rio Karma is meant to be a new product, so why haven't they adopted the new USB nomenclature (which, in my opinion, is far less confusing than the old system now that it exists. However, in turn, its existence has made the old system more confusing. Can't win 'em all)?
I guess we just need some way of speaking in symbols:
"The protocol formerly known as USB 2.0 provides fast transfers while the included docking station also adds drop-in charging..."
Of course their website works with neither Mozilla nor Safari, so tell me again: Why should I buy their stuff?
The cool thing about ogg, and most technology today, is you don't need industry acceptance to use it today. I set my dad down with a Linux box, grip, ogg and his CD collection last year and wrote a quick script so he can burn his own mix CDs directly from ogg files. Its not perfect, but he's very happy with it.
This year I get to show him how to do the same thing with dvdrip, ogm and his DVD collection.
In a way I feel more secure knowing most people still use mp3s and avis. He won't have any problems using these formats, but he won't have to deal with the typical industry BS.
Anyone remember DAT? How about Beta-Max? How do you think they are related?
I don't need anyone who wants to take technology away from me or force DRM, encryption, macrovision, copyrights, patents and royalties down my throat. And neither does my dad.
how long would it take to convert 11,000 mp3's to ogg vorbis?
Here's a specification comparison with an equivalently priced (both at $399) iPod... info from dapreview, an excellent respository of specs of hdd audio players which reported on the Karma aka "Pearl" months ago.
iPod
Capacity: 15GB
Weight: 5.6 ounces
Formats: MP3 AAC AIFF WAV
Interfaces: Firewire 400
Battery Life: "Over 8 hours"
Extras: Games, Contacts, Calendar, Alarm, Sleep Timer, Clock, "20 equalizer settings"
LCD: 160x128 backlit
Karma
Capacity: 20GB
Weight: 5.5 ounces
Formats: MP3 WMA OGG FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec making WAV not needed)
Interfaces: USB 2 and Ethernet
Battery Life: 15 hours
Extras: Dynamic playlists, Dual RCA Line-Outs, 5 band equalizer
LCD: 160x128 backlit
Seems like if you want purely a music player that is conveniently-sized, supports OGG and has 25% more capacity than the iPod for the same price, the Karma is the way to go. The iPod's perks are tempting though, if you want more than just a music player.
They have broadcast adapters. Google Also, i dont notice any major battery life loss on my laptop with my 802.11g card running, it cant suck that much power. With hard drive MP3 players getting 10 hours of battery life and the flash ones even more its not much of an issue. I cant think of any situation where i use my mp3 player for longer than its battery life when i'm not near an outlet.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
For those of you who do not know what FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is, here's the link to the SourceForge page: http://flac.sourceforge.net/
How does it not have a line out? Your not gonna find a portable player with RCA jacks, but does it not even have a headphone jack? My archos player has a headphone jack and a line out jack thats a standard 1/8" just at a fixed volume. Just use a 1/8" to RCA cable.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
The Karma is very cool, and reading about it made my day. It's showing that Vorbis is gaining support. I guess this is another portable Vorbis player to add to the list.
Litigious bastards
I'm having trouble accessing the web site... Is this thing capable of being operated via remote control? I'd *love* to hook one of these up to my entertainment center. It'd also be nice to have one in my car with an 802.11g uplink. I'd rather use this unit in both cases instead of something in a home audio component or car stereo form-factor, because this seems to me would be more useful for the future.
One of the prime developers for this device has been talking about it in depth for a while over on the MP3.com forums.
The website does poorly reflect linux compatibility. According to Hugo the player sports a Java (and native Windows) interface via the Ethernet. It uses the same codebase as the Rio Reciever. It has a somewhat proprietary filesystem (for "stability" reasons) so it might be hard to pull the trick iPod uses like--using them as a portable hard disk.
Can't wait for the 40gb version.
One thing I'm sort of bothered about is the fact that 20gb = 20,000,000,000bytes. rather than 1000x1024x1024 or 1024x1024x1024. I guess DVDs are advertised with a similiarly quirked system and at least they mention the definition. Anyone know about the iPod?
Neuros is also notable for allowing the user to modify the software controlling the device. As I understand it, the software on the device will be free software so end-users can turn it into a device to do things Digital Innovations didn't predict. It's valuable to be able to inspect, enhance, and fix software, even if it's running in an audio player. Does the Rio device run on free software?
I appreciate the ethernet jack and that it plays Ogg Vorbis and FLAC files, but I want to be able to do other things with it that the designers did not predict. I'm willing to pay for the device, but I want freedom.
Digital Citizen
Or, you could encode to ogg and rename your files to an .mp3 extension. Any player worth the bytes it's compiled to will play those files just fine.
"...breaks from the pcmcia 1.8" hard drive mold that defines the ipod."
How? Because it has a bulge? Isn't that (making things bigger extraneously) worse?
as long as consumers aren't using it. And the answer to the question is a definite no
it's being picked up, more so than you'd think.
Historically, formats like this start out underground (witness mp3 on IRC back in the day, or divx 3 years ago). But, reading places like the Divx forums, people are really starting to take notice of oggs. It's becomming integrated into the current view of compressed music.
Just give it a little bit. It'll be popular.
sig?
A phone call placed to Rio revealed that they won't be shipping until sometime in September :(
If it runs on free software, I'll do just that. If not, then it's not what I'm asking for. It's close, and I like the other features it offers, but I'm not interested in paying to become dependant on even the most beneficent proprietor. Viva software freedom.
Digital Citizen
Imagine the conundrum: Slashdotter cannot be satisfied until making obligatory it-doesn't-have Ogg-support-so-I-wont-buy-it rant.... but it does have Ogg support.
All we need now is for the Microsoft is to file a brief against SCO. Have you ever seen the movie Scanners?
See, this is what doesn't help. Not your stance, which is all fine and good in the scheme of things. Hooray for standards and all that.
What doesn't help is that it's, "Oh, I'll buy when it has Ogg Vorbis." "Did I say 'Ogg Vorbis'? I meant Ogg Vorbis when it's not a proprietary implementation."
Reminds me of, "Oh, I'll buy music when I can buy it online, track by track, and for a low price." "Good lord, $1.00 a track? No no no! I meant $0.50 per track. Yeah. I'll just keep Kazaa running. And besides, it's on a Mac, which is proprietary even if it's, you know, kind of free, but not free the way I like it, so I'll just keep not buying anything."
I mean, why would anyone want to go for this market? They'll probably complain when they release new models of hardware that do more than the old models, especially if they won't give away the software to do the new stuff on the old models. I mean, what could they be thinking?
And that is why so few companies support Ogg Vorbis. Not because it's hard to do, not because it's expensive, not even because it's for such a small market. They don't support Ogg Vorbis because it's for a group of people who, by and large, will never be happy when they're buying a product.
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
I don't know if they're pushing ethernet as the preferred connection method. But the device supports both ethernet and USB 2.0 (presumably HiSpeed). So you have your choice of traditional style syncing (via direct connection to the PC) or docked syncing. What could be better?
The description of how the ethernet stuff works in another comment is really slick, and makes me want one... especially if that can work for me in Linux and Mac OS X!
In my case, I care more about Xiph than cancer research.
Yeah, royalty free audio codecs are much more important than a cure for a horrible painful disease that kills millions. I'd would gladly give up years of my life (spent with friends and family) to keep programmers from having to pay for use of an audio codec. WHEN YOU ARE BURNING IN HELL, REMEMBER TO REQUEST THAT YOUR SOULS SCREAMS ARE RECORDED IN A PATENT FREE FORMAT.
I hate to rain on your parade, but I hardly see how one niche mail-order-only product with half-finished Vorbis support and another one that's not even for sale yet count as "many of the major portable players", unless RMS has included "many = none" is his word redefinition list.
Could I set this up as a network stream server? Ethernet is awesome. Everyone that has a network can access it at 10/100.
I've actually been looking to get music that is freely available but accepts donations. I'd like .flac or other lossless if possible.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
It should be pointed out that the Volts are actually re-branded iRiver players. iRiver is a Korean corporation that had been manufacturing cheap CD players under a variety of names until Rio sold their player as the Rio Volt and actually made it successful. Now iRiver is selling the players under its own name and undercutting Rio's prices.
This product is developed by the folks at empeg. I've been using a car player they built (now discontinued) that was marketed by sonic blue (Incidentally, I got the 60GB version for just over $400 when Sonic Blue was cleaning out their inventory!).
I haven't played with a whole lot of digital audio players, but the player software in the Rio Car (Player software 2.0) is simply awesome. The Karma will be using the next version (3.0 -- then us Rio Car owners should get it too!). With 2.0, everything is organized how you expect it to be. Playlist management is easy, yet highly customizable. Playlists organization allows nesting (I think this is pretty common) and allows files or playlists to reside in multiple places, so when I rip the new Plumb album, I create a playlist at "Rock\Plumb\Beautiful Lumps of Coal" and also "New Albums\Plumb\Beautiful Lumps of Coal", but of course there is only one copy of the audio on the drive(s).
There are plenty of "wouldn't it be cool if..." features like: multiple insert modes (Insert, append, enqueue) while queueing up music, multiple (customizable) randomizer algorithms (Least recently played, Least often played, Newest additions, Just plain random), plenty of shortcuts (Navigate 5 playlists down to find some album and queue it up... re-enter playlists and hold the button down; it re-navigates the 5 playlists so you can choose one of its siblings), 10-band parametric EQ, "Wendy" filters (filter all gangsta rap from the playlists when your girlfriend is in the car), Bookmarks (Store your current queue of music/audiobooks to one of three "bookmark" positions, play something else when your friends are in the car on Friday night, then jump back to exactly where you were within your original music/audiobook queue), and a bunch of nifty visuals.
Then, install Mark Lord's Hijack kernel, install Debian (if you want) and other apps that use Hijack, you get stuff like telnet access, ftp access, khttpd for web-based streaming (over ethernet) of .m3u/.mp3s, text-to-speech audio clocks, pacman, compression (not the space-saving kind... the audio level adjusting kind), and a bunch of other user-developed stuff.
The designers are regular posters on the bulletin board. You may have noticed a couple of them posting in this thread.
-- This post (c) 2003, Knights who say Ni, LTD.
- Moderate computer player support
- Moderate portable player support
- Default format for some rippers
- Offered by online music store
- Complete portable player support
- Default format for most rippers
- Offered by all non-DRM online music stores
- World domination
MustLitigious bastards
AND now that Winamp plays ogg's I wonder how many folks actually have them, but don't know it.
hey i just got a new Sony D-NE710 MP3/ATRAC3/CD Walkman for 99.99 at radioshack and got a free spool of 50 cd-rs with it. if you burn with the atrac you can get a lot more songs on there, but they dont sound as good to me. i just burn my 150 song mix cds at 32x 3 minutes before i leave for work and i deliver pizza and have no repeats all night when i drive. and ive got so many mp3s. it works out really nicely for a hundred bones. only problem is is that it isnt real good at playing very scratched cds. but it only skipped on mine that were super scratched. whats the best cd cleaner? oh yeah this is my first /. post.
I don't owe them business. They have to come up with something I'll like before I'll buy it. I'm doing them a favor by telling them what I want rather than silently rejecting the product. Furthermore, what I'm asking for can be accomplished without altering the hardware they've already built.
I never asked for anyone to give away software, perhaps you should reread what I am asking for. I want software freedom and I'm willing to pay for it. Free software, the kind I'm asking for, has to do with the freedom to share and modify the software, not price. If someone sells me a copy of the device software under a free software license, and/or distributes the specifications for the hardware (so I can make my own controlling software or hire someone to make it for me), I'm satisfied.
As I clearly stated before, the Rio device already has attractive hardware features. It would be more attractive with free software so I can study, change, share, and freely use the unit as I wish. I believe this poses no threat to any portable digital device business because they make their money from selling the units, not the software. To the contrary, I think this information is critical to developing a sustainable diverse userbase and a good relationship between the consumer and the businesses that deliver the goods.
First, your critique has shifted off-topic from talking about digital music player hardware to talking about delivering audio tracks. Second, to answer your question directly: Because they have little choice but to go where the market leads. The alternative--using legalized bribery to buy new laws to protect old business models--is possible but doesn't pay off quickly or thoroughly enough for those businesses and commercial artists who don't innovate. People are discovering the weaknesses in the old distribution model; as more people become distributors, we have a decreasing need for the distribution aspect of recording studios. Studios need to change their business model to become less dependent on distribution. Ultimately, no laws will change the technology that lets people share.
I doubt it. Do you have any evidence to support this?
Digital Citizen
Right now Ogg/Vorbis really needs to be implemented on the standard chip sets out there.
I have an I-bead, the development kit for the chipset it uses costs $12k. As an amature, with no prior DSP experience, I am not about to fork out $12k only to find out that for some reason it is not even possible to implement a Vorbis codec on it.
Any manufacture who is doing this work, at this moment in time, is benefitting Xiph tremendously.
Does anybody know ANY portable player that is able to show UTF-8 encoded filenames and/or tags? It is just a PITA to latinize many russian songs (yes, my system is Debian Linux Sid with an UTF-8 locale and yes, I have already written a script to automatize latinizing filenames).
Old school Jungle/Hardcore webcast
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
...that's more than the head rate of the winchester
Ahhh - the Winchester... it takes me back to when we first got an RM Nimbus network in school (around 1986, I suppose) - we had a network with a 20 Megabyte Winchester. I thought it was awesome. 20 Megabytes!
"Think of Ogg as MP3 only better."
That is EXACTLY what I tell my friends and anyone who asks what Ogg is after I mention it in passing.
Everyone knows what MP3 is - compressed audio you can get from the internet that plays on some cool portable players. (Joe Sixpack thinking)
Ogg needs to elevate itself into the psyche of the general Joe Sixpacks with a catchy, easy to remember phrase anyone will remember. Sure, it's really called Ogg Vorbis. Yeah, it's not exactly like MP3. Forget that it's open source and royalty free. Those are geeky points we know about, but Joe doesn't.
Joe will remember this if you gently say it enough and burn it into his brain:
"Think of Ogg as MP3 only better."
Quizo69
Visceral Psyche Films
To modify a complex device or system so as to exceed its previously known capabilities or limits. Such a change is known as a hack (noun).
This refers particularly to the skill required of the hacker to perform the modification and the usefulness or interestingness of the result. Whether it is appreciated by the original designer or maker is not relevant to the quality of the hack, except insofar as deliberate attempts to prevent hacking require additional skill of the hacker.
A hack is sometimes packaged in the form of a tool which performs the change on command. The use of such a tool does not constitute hacking, as the result is not unexpected nor is particular skill required.
While hackers use tools developed by others, it is the use of those tools to achieve novel ends that is hacking.
A system that is particularly extensible in interesting ways is "hackable".
Too bad, but with this doohickey you won't be able to play Apple Music Store AAC files... I don't know if iTunes will support this new Rio...
Although I'm in Canada and I can't use this feature yet, it would be a major annoyance for me...
Also I want to point out that the iPod dock does include a line out. It is not of RCA type, it's actually a 1/8" plug, but it does sound wonderfully. The volume level of the iPod does not affect this line out.
Now if only we could get a Super Dock with a Remote...
The geekness factor is high, but still, the elegance and ease of use of the iPod is neat...
"I've heard nonsense, compared with which that would be as sensible as a dictionary." Through the looking glass and what
>>> I'm not interested in paying to become dependant on even the most beneficent proprietor.
Just out of curiosity, do you rent or own?
Read the FAQ.