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Thoughts on the New Crop of Ogg Aware Players?
Steve Andre' asks: " Given the approaching season, I'm wondering if many have used and have opinions about the new Ogg Vorbis capable portable players out there. What I'd like to find is at least a CD/MP3/Ogg capable player which sounds good and doesn't do 'odd' things. What's it like out there? Can I finally roast my Ogg files and take them with me for a walk?"
If Apple supported Ogg I would actually replace my current iPod to get it. I encode all my files at 384 with lame (extreme preset) and I'd love to move all my music to ogg just to save some disk space.
Of course, it is sort of a double edged sword with Apple. If they support a format that saves 30% more disk space than Apple then some people would buy the 20 gig model instead of the 30.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
All these ogg players I've heard of so far are great, but also really expensive and overkill for my needs. I'm looking for a usb flash drive (I like devices that save/load files with a usb hdd interface - no driver issues ever, works on any pc all the time.) about 128mb that has a built in mp3 player with ogg support as well. I've seen loads of mp3/wma models but no mp3/ogg, some are firmware upgradeable via usb port though so I'm wondering if anybody has hacked a patch up to replace wma with ogg?
That made me think of something. I wonder if the reason why there are so few hardware Ogg players because Ogg is mostly used by Linux users. And to some extent, Linux is often run on old hardware. More so than Windows and certainly more so than Mac. Linux is also free as in beer. Like you, maybe many Ogg users don't have the cash to pay for new hardware. So they don't have the cash/won't spend it on Ogg players either. So they don't sell, so companies don't make them.
Random is the New Order.
Taking the time to put ogg into a player costs money in terms of labor and development, and for that .0001% (or less) of people actually interested in it makes it something of a questionable business decision to spend the time and money on.
Businesses exist to make money. By using OGG, they do not pay patent royalties or fees. If they charge the same amount per device as they do for MP3, they could make $5 or $10 more. Even selling 100,000 devices, they could make between half and a full million dollars in extra profit. That is enough to grab the attention of most businesses.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
$120 base price plus you need 100x 200MB discs to equal 20GB at $2 a piece that's $200 total price of $320 and you have to carry around a whole bunch minidiscs...this is why it failed!
The modern age is of HD players especially ones that play Ogg.
I think Goatse plays minidisc if you're interested!
I had a Neuros, I sent it back. It was huge, heavy, took forever to boot, and I was very disappointed in the FM broadcast feature's sound quality. The ability to record from FM and use soundprints to ID songs was very cool, but didn't justify the price.
I have a Rio Karma now. I love it. The form factor is excellent, the sound quality is amazing, the boot up is quick, the interface is incredibly responsive, I'm running out of adjectives, so I'll just leave it at "overall very impressive."
A huge factor for me though is the Ethernet capability of the Karma. Not only does it provide cross platform capabilities (the Neuros linux usb drivers were very immature back when I had mine), but it allows me to use my Karma as an AudioTron equivalent. I have the dock in by my stereo with a wireless bridge. A very elegant setup.
- Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
Adding support for a new format requires considerable time in the form of having not only the programming for it done, but then the considerable amount of testing before you start printing circuits. The development costs are a major investment.
I doubt they would sell 100,000 devices on OGG alone. OGG just isn't that popular. As a CS major at a major public university where CS is the 2nd largest major, I don't know of a single soul who uses OGG, even among those who use linux. And thats among college students who are by far the largest music file gatherering population.
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I like to see what song I have playing, how far into I am, and I like quick access to a simple, small playlist, etc. Being able to bind hotkeys isn't a substitute for a decent GUI. This is why Linux isn't ready for the desktop.
GL
I don't mod these days, but even if I did I wouldn't want to have to go google all the text, interview their in-laws, and use my semi-fantastic ESP to determine to within 0.0000000000125% accuracy that the post did indeed deserve a freakin' mod point.
Man... Who would think to check that stuff out... Reminds me of the phrase, "He who smelt it, dealt it."
It's a shame the marketing blurb for the Karma describes Ogg Vorbis as "a new audio compression format similar in function to MP3 or WMA. It is different from these formats because it is completely free, open-source, and non-patented." with no mention of better compression/quality tradeoffs. They mention FLAC but give no information about what it is (don't tell me, I know...).
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
I bought the first 20GB Karma that appeared in the local Best Buy - I had promised myself a Neuros, but on hearing that there were problems with skipping on higher-bitrate oggs, I decided to wait until the firmware was improved. In the meantime, the Karma was announced, and I loved the size of it, and so it goes...
Anyway, same thing with the Karma, initially: skipping on high-bitrate tracks. About two weeks after I bought it, firmware 1.1.1 was released, and the skips disappeared completely. The unit is nicely compact, and sits nicely in the front pocket of my jeans. Battery life isn't bad at all - I commute an hour to work, and depending on how much I use it outside of the car, I can usually make it to the weekend before having to recharge. (No, I didn't buy the car DC adaptor.)
I do have a few issues - and these are minor - one being the transfer speeds (USB, dunno if it supports USB 2.0 as my machine doesn't have it and I'm too lazy to check the Karma's documentation). It took about six to seven hours to transfer about 14GB, which isn't terrible, since i just left it go overnight. The second issue I had was on the usability of the interface. Playback is a no-brainer, easy and fairly intuitive. Playlist building and sorting, on the other hand, didn't come quite as quickly to me. I have yet to thoroughly investigate that avenue, though, since I haven't fully checked out the Music Manager software and since I just tend to put "All" on shuffle.
My two cents, as it were.
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.