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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.
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.
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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