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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!
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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...
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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.
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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.
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Well, I wouldn't go that far... but if a company's website functions poorly it does reflect negatively on the company and its products.
I know I am definiately less likely to purchase something if can't easily access information on their products.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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
Marketing folks must hate putting "Ogg Vorbis" on things.
Do we need this one every time?
Names do not matter. If they did, MP3 and MS-DOS would hardly have caught on. At least you can sort-of pronounce Ogg Vorbis, rather than having to spell it.
Yup. It works out about the same CPU usage as MP3 for normal (64-128) bitrates, but seems to scale with bitrate a lot more than MP3 does; by the time you get to 256Kbits/s, Vorbis is really hard work.
Peter
No, it's BSD-licensed.
It would be interesting to see what kind of optimizations they used such as special DSP instructions.
Actually we use the Tremor (integerised) Vorbis library almost completely stock -- it already came with optimisations for ARM. The only thing we've really had to take a hitting thing to is its memory allocation.
Peter
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.