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?"

Comments

Car Audio

[The Snowman]

How about a head unit for my truck's sound system that plays Ogg? I have yet to find one, anyone have a link?

Re:Car Audio

[Foz]

The empeg does, using the latest alpha release of the version 3 player software.

It's no longer in production, although it's still well supported and you can find them for sale quite often on the empeg forum.

-- Gary F.

Re:Car Audio

[LordMyren]

it also costs your first three children and the price of their college education.

Re:Car Audio

[Foz]

Not really. 30 gig Mk2 units are going in the 500 to 600 dollar range. That's hardly "the price of their college education" unless of course you're sending them to clown college.

-- Gary F.

Re:Car Audio

[joe_bruin]

how about a phatbox harddrive-based player for your car? there is probably one that is compatible with your truck's existing headunit (so you don't need to buy a new one), and you can have 20-60 gigs of music, instead of shuffling cd's. and yes it does support ogg.

this product is sold directly at audi and vw dealers so you can bet it's a pretty solid product. it's also the same as the kenwood music keg, but works with non-kenwood stereos.

i have one and i love it. i can't imagine having to deal with switching cd's to find my music ever again.

Re:Car Audio

[lingenfr]

Which is available where? An afternoon of googling and clicking through seemingly dead sites and the software you mention can't be found. The release notes for the latest software available on the empeg website does not mention ogg.

Re:Car Audio

[Foz]

It's available from the Empeg BBS

You can skip directly to the Software

I recommend using the latest releaes of JEmplode with it. There's an updated Emplode in the alpha firmware package, but it's rather flakey and JEmplode seems to be quite a bit stabler (and runs on Linux).

-- Gary F.

Re:Car Audio

[The Snowman]

how about a phatbox harddrive-based player for your car? there is probably one that is compatible with your truck's existing headunit (so you don't need to buy a new one), and you can have 20-60 gigs of music, instead of shuffling cd's. and yes it does support ogg.

My head unit (Aiwa MP3/CD player) has an aux in, so as long as this thing has a line output it should be compatible. I'll check it out, thanks.

i have one and i love it. i can't imagine having to deal with switching cd's to find my music ever again.

The only time I deal with CDs is when I put them in my DVD-ROM drive to rip them to make MP3 CDs for my truck.

Re:Car Audio

[joe_bruin]

it does have RCA outputs.
the problem is control, but that is easily fixed. you can buy a cheap kenwood rf (*wait, i know rf = bad) modulator. the rf modulator faceplate will control the keg, but the audio will go through the rca outs to your aiwa aux in. no rf-modulation will be done.

with this setup, you can buy the music keg, which is cheaper than the phatbox (but works the same).

as for dealing with cd's, i meant dealing with mp3 cd's as well. you can have what, 150 songs on an mp3 cd? that's not even 1 tenth of my collection. so if i wanted to listen to something in particular, i'd still have to find that disc, as opposed to having them all on one harddrive.

Re:Car Audio

[jrstone2000]

I actually have a spare 10GB (upgradable to > 120GB) empeg MKIIa that I have just put on the market to sell. I am offering it for $375 plus shipping which is a steal. It has never been installed, but I would be happy to ship with the alpha 3.0 Ogg-capable software pre-installed. I can be reached directly at jrs7r@virginia.edu You can check out my previous buying/selling history on ebay with the username jrstone2000 (rating 135, > 99% positive ratings)

Re:Car Audio

[batemanm]

That's hardly "the price of their college education" unless of course you're sending them to clown college.

<SIMPSON>
"I'll thank you not to refer to Princeton that way."
</SIMPSONS>

Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time OV was mentioned on /. (the last beta, presumably) I download the same encoder and xmms plugin for playback. I encoded a couple of CDs and tried it out. Here's what I found:

First, the sample encoder is MUCH easier to use than what I've already been using (GRip). I don't know if that's because my current method is so terrible or because the new one is so great.

Second, the resulting files were about 10% smaller. Others may say "so what, hard drives are cheap", but:

1) I only have 4.5 GB and don't have the extra cash to buy larger.

2) Larger hard drives make a 10% savings even MORE worthwhile. Consider: If I saved 10% of a 4 GB drive, that's 40 MB--room for maybe 10 additional songs or about one CD. But if I saved 10% of a 400 GB drive, that's an extra 4 GB--enough for 100 CD's.

Third, the sound quality was "equivalent". That is, I couldn't tell the difference, BUT I'm not an expert and my sound equipment is FAR from top of the line (just some computer speakers plugged into an AWE32).
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[birdman666]

I like your point, but your math is a little off.

10% of 4GB is 400MB

10% of 400GB is 40GB

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[ispepalocacoc]

If you can't afford a new hard drive, there is no point in even bothering with a player....sigh

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[Drakonian]

But you don't have the cash for the 400 GB drive.

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.

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[BigBlockMopar]

First, the sample encoder is MUCH easier to use than what I've already been using (GRip). I don't know if that's because my current method is so terrible or because the new one is so great.

I like to use crip to make backups of my CDs to Ogg Vorbis. (Backup isn't really the term, it's just so much easier to play my CDs when I don't have to physically put them into the drive!)

crip has minimal dependencies, and runs quite happily on a machine without X.

Second, the resulting files were about 10% smaller.

For a given sound quality, yeah. A -q 4 Vorbis file is about comparable to a 128kbps MP3 in size, but absolutely better in sound quality. After 192kbps in MP3, I can't reliably tell it from a CD. My compromise is to use -q 5, which yields the same filesize as a 160kbps MP3, which I cannot tell from a CD.

Third, the sound quality was "equivalent". That is, I couldn't tell the difference, BUT I'm not an expert and my sound equipment is FAR from top of the line (just some computer speakers plugged into an AWE32).

I'm a former professional sound tech. I use a Sound A-5000 amplifier and a pair of Acoustic Research AR-4x speakers plugged into a modified (new op-amps, loads of shielding, separate linear DC supply to the analog stages) ISA SoundBlaster 16. I cannot tell an Ogg Vorbis file at -q 5 apart from the original (CD-quality) WAV file, or from a good ($900 when new) NAD CD player connected to my sound system.

Be careful compiling the Ogg encoder - specifically libvorbis - on older distros with the flaky Red Hat compiler. You'll get nasty artifacts in your audio.

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[Lord_Dweomer]

So you're basically saying that people who use free software, like Linux, have less money than people who don't use free software? What kind of logic is that?

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[Jodka]

I only have 4.5 GB and don't have the extra cash to buy larger.

Dude, that's pathetic. What's your mailing address ?

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[magnum3065]

Hmm, well if you compare the percentage of Linux users who use Ogg versus the percentage of Windows users, it would probably be higher on the Linux side, but among the other people I know who use Ogg, plenty of them still use Windows. Reguarding running Linux on old hardware, this has not been my experience. Certainly your Linux users may have some old machines running Linux on them besides their primary machine, but as Linux users tend to be more passionate about computers I've seen them be more willing to upgrade their machines. Many Windows users are happy as long as they can run Office and use the internet.

Still, none of this goes to show that Ogg users somehow have less money to spend on hardware. People who simply don't want to pay for an operating system don't use Linux, they pirate Windows.

The real issue behind lack of Ogg players is that there's not enough of a market. Adding Ogg support would take time and money, meaning that in order for it to be profitable it's addition would either need to sell more units, or support an increase in price. I don't think the Ogg users out there would be unwilling to spend money on a player, just there aren't enough of us to make it profitable.

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[log2.0]

How many people do you know who make their music collection in WMA?

Mp3's are mostly used because thats what the average Joe knows about.
For instance, Mr Joe will say "im gonna download some mp3's" not "im gonna download some music"...

The technically minded people didnt switch to WMA because its all closed and mean :)

However, people are using ogg's for their music collection. When I rip CD's, I use ogg now, but I wont be converting the mp3's that I have.

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[Enahs]

Ogg Vorbis will also do ABR files; that's what I use. I find that using ABR with both LAME and OggEnc yield files that are slightly smaller than CBR MP3s, yet superior sound quality. This is what I use, because I like semi-predictable filesizes, and even prefer this over the slightly higher sound quality. :-D

To get close to Vorbis (and I prefer Vorbis even if it does emphasize the high frequencies) you'll need to add several flags. I've just wiped my Debian install clean to make way for a Gentoo LiveCD, and have yet to dump my old home dir off of backup (so I can't look at my .abcde.conf, sorry.) But I've got a nice set of options for LAME that make for 128 kbps ABR MP3 files that're very clean sounding. However (and maybe this is because the Vorbis files emphasize the high frequencies; I'm not sure) the MP3s sound "flat", somehow. I've managed to ignore upper-frequency scintillation! Eep! They sound slightly flat compared to the WAVs I've made.

And about the compilers: you might also consider disabling MMX, 3DNow!, and SSE/SSE2 optimizations in both LAME and libvorbis. The performance-optimized routines tend to produce somewhat lower-quality audio. Personally, I don't have great speakers, and usually listen to Ogg Vorbis files on a Sawtooth G4's internal speaker(!) at work, and my home speakers were Radio Shack-rebranded "multimedia" speaker, so I'm not nearly as picky as many "audio snobs." But I do hear a difference.

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[ArchAngelQ]

Not to conclusively prove or disprove your theory here, but I am one user of Ogg that deffinately breaks that mold. My main workstations are Windows (I do tech support, so I have to use windows a lot and be familiure with it, but god, anything on servers, give me Linux or BSD or death (or maybe cake)), and I run on moderately high end stuff. Not cutting edge, but nothing outdated.

And, I tend to run generally moderately high quality sound systems. Nothing surround sound, but deffinately seperate subwoofer, and I have to say, the general quality of ogg vorbis at 128 (ish, vorbis is VBR) is higher than the mp3 equivilent. Not all mp3 encoders are created equal though, and not all ppl use their encoders well, but my own rips strait from Lame vs Ogg have generally had Ogg coming out on top, especially for trance tracks and classical. Harder to tell the diff on rock stuff, but hey. And as others have noted, about 10% smaller file sizes! Except the trance and techno tracks, then it's more like 5%, but hey, is sounds so much better than the other, and is still smaller! Who am I to complain?

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[ergo98]

I don't think your "Linux user's are shoeless beggars" angle is going to win you many friends here (there are a lot of people using Linux because it's the only platform currently fully supporting the Athlon 64FX, for example -- it isn't the financial dregs that use Linux). Then again, you did get moderated up heavily...

There aren't many ogg players quite simply because technologically mp3 is adequate for the marketplace (that is the majority of people). As mp3 got the first mover advantage both from a tool and market perspective, any contender to the thrown will require either a concerted effort by all vendors (a large "multilateral force"), or it'll have to be so superior that there is a very clear choice. Ogg doesn't fit the bill -- it is superior, but only marginally, and most end-users couldn't care less about licensing or patent issues.

As an example, overwhelmingly the compression format used on the Windows platform is ZIP, and on the UNIX platform it's GZIP. In either case there are a large number of superior solutions (such as BZIP2), yet ZIP/GZIP is adequate, so it entrenches (people would rather not deal with compatibility issues if they send a file to someone and then have to tutor them on getting a utility, using it, etc). The Qwerty keyboard is notoriously inefficient, yet again it is entrenched and most of us continue on it because we don't want "compatibility issues" when we need to type on other people's keyboards. There are examples abound.

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[ArchAngelQ]

Oh, and, duh, forgot to add, am making enough money that just post holiday season when I have some cash to spend on myself again, I plan to get one of these ogg playing portables myself, so I put my money where my mouth is on liking it.

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[Kyouryuu]

My opinion on Ogg Vorbis is that it's generally a bit larger than an equivalent MP3, but sounds like a higher bitrate recording. I've found that Ogg Vorbis files have the tendency to sound much more "crisp" than MP3 files, which sound a bit muffled in comparison.

In other words, I feel a 128 kbps OGG is larger in size than an equivalent 128 kbps MP3, but the sound quality is more akin to a 192 kbps MP3, yet it isn't as big as a 192 kbps MP3.

Just mah 2 cents. ^_^

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[Anonymous Coward]

simple... if the people had money, why would they be using free software??

only kidding, calm down...

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[joe_bruin]

not quite true. the real reasons most players don't support ogg are:

1. flash costs money. the amount of sales generated from adding ogg support are not sufficient to justify adding the additional 128kb of flash or so that would be required to throw in an ogg decoder on every single device shipped. you'll notice that most harddrive based devices (such as the phatbox or audiotron) have quickly added ogg support, since it essentially costs them nothing.

2. integer-math ogg decoders have not been around for too long, and are still fairly processor intensive. as optimizations to the tremor code occur, expect to see more ogg implementations out there.

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[sjlumme]

I beg to differ. The average Mac is in use longer than the average PC. I can only guess at the reasons.

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[gnu-generation-one]

10% of 4GB is 400MB

No it's not, 10% of 4GB is 409.6MB

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[nolife]

I assume the people that use WMA have no idea what they are doing and do not use it long once they try to listen to that music on something other then the computer they encoded it on. I do not know much about WMA and the DRM involved when using MS media player but that seems to be the most frequent method of "Encoding for Dummies". That being said.. When I do freelance computer work for some small businesses or fill in for someone else that does the same. Every so often, someone asks me why they can not listen to the music that the other secretary copied to her computer. I do not go into details but I suggest they find something that uses MP3 and not use Media player. What I'd really like to do is bust out EAC and Lame, show them how to use a Sharpie and disable autoplay if needed and how to get to the real audio tracks on a multisession disc. Way beyond the scope of why I am there.

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[magnum3065]

Well, I never used it myself, but I pretty sure that the DRM can be turned off when you rip songs from a CD. I believe that would be a better option than trying to explain how you do your rips. Although you may not like to admit it, WMA is a better codec than MP3. Now, it won't match MP3 at half the bitrate as Microsoft would have you believe, but it does produce better quality for the bitrate. As long as you can turn off the DRM, WMA is really no more non-free than MP3. I can play WMA just fine in Winamp.

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[Dwonis]

Bytes work as power of two.
1KB = 2^10bytes namely 1024...
1MB=2^20 and so on....

Nope. Not since 1998.

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[damiam]

There isn't really such a thing as a 128kbps Vorbis file, because the encoder doesn't normally encode at constant bitrates. That means that the bitrate will vary during the song, and some easy-to-encode songs will come out below 128kbps and some more challenging ones will come out above 128kbps. If you went through the hoops to force the encoder to encode Vorbis files at a true constant 128kbps, they'd be the same size as the corresponding MP3s (give or take a few bytes).

Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account

[Kyouryuu]

I mean a 128kbps "on average" OGG file. I know well that they use variable bitrate recording methods. :)

miniDisc

[Anonymous Coward]

Just buy a minidisc....the mp3/ogg players either take flash memory that's $70 for 256 meg or internal HDs that are fragile and chew up lots of power.

miniDisc media are $2 for about 200 meg (160 minutes of CD-quality audio). I record them from my mp3 library and the output from the $120 MD player is better than my computer with a SB live and $400 stereo system. Another point is the $120 for the MD is far cheaper than all but the crappiest of mp3 or ogg players.

hd based ogg

[saqq]

you might wanna check out the Neuros player.

Re:hd based ogg

[Foz]

The neuros uses a backpack hard drive though, which radically increases it's form factor.

Rio just released the Karma with Ogg support. Done by the same team that did the empeg, from what I understand. I haven't tested out a karma yet but I definitely love my empeg and if it's half as good it's much better than anything else.

-- Gary F.

Re:hd based ogg

[magnum3065]

Oooh, supports FLAC too. This thing has me drooling over some great features and it's nice compact form factor. Now, other than the price tag, it's only problem is that it's Windows only, or at least that's what the requirements say. Now, if it will just show up as a USB harddrive it may work fine on Linux or OSX, but what about firmware updating?

Re:hd based ogg

[PyromanFO]

That's not true from the reviews I've read. It comes with an ethernet docking station or USB. Either way, you use the Java software embedded on the device to manage your library. Therefore it's platform neutral, Mac, Linux and Windows. Anything that supports Java.

Re:hd based ogg

[Foz]

Pyroman is correct. The Rio music manager software is in java and is platform neutral.

-- Gary F.

Re:hd based ogg

[sydb]

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...).

Re:hd based ogg

[Mithrandur]

I own a Neuros. It's total crap. The radio-related features are worthless, because the reciever and transmitter both suck. Linux support is practically non-existant (from DI, NDBM works fairly well, when the Neuros doesn't crash). The unit is bulky and feels like a cheap plastic toy. It's been like six months since they "released" Ogg support; it's still not out of beta and it's still unstable.

To me, an mp3/ogg player is a piece of consumer electronics; it should just work. I don't want to hack it. I don't want to wait half a year for the features I bought it for to stabilize.

Neuros is not that. Buying a Neuros is like paying hundreds of dollars for a piece of half-done open source software; it may be worth it in the future, but not today.

That said, the iRiver IHP-120 has everything the neuros has (except Song Identification - no linux support - and the radio transmitter, which hardly works anyway), except it's not perpetually beta, it's very thin (like the ipod) and it looks sexy. Plus, optical I/O.

The Rio Karma looks good too, if you don't need recording, FM radio, or a USB Storage interface (which is what kills it for me; I need to be able to transport files on my MP3 player), and want Ethernet.

CNet has in-depth reviews of various models of MP3 player. It's a good place to go for research.

Mini-review from Ross Vandegrift

[eddy]

here. Check the thread/archives, there's more.

Re:Mini-review from Ross Vandegrift

[wed128]

Ross it's woody...

Good review...i was lookin for an ogg player myself...cross the karma off the list!

Here's a few

[Cyph]

There are 3 that are fairly well-known

1. Neuros, though I'm wondering how commited they are to their player. Ogg support is still in beta.

2. iRiver iHP-120, which I personally think is the best. 20Gb hard drive, built-in mic, ogg playing, et cetera. Great player.

3. Rio Karma. It has a bit less features than the iRiver, but it seems pretty nice overall.

Re:Here's a few

[KnightStalker]

I have a Neuros -- the Ogg support is very good & they are good about keeping it up to date. Xiph themselves wrote the ogg-playing firmware. It's got some other wonky stuff -- sometimes it will just refuse to work for a couple of days (but on the other hand, I haven't been very kind to it.) It will play through your car -- it has a built-in short range FM broadcaster which even sort of works, and it records from a built-in mic or a line-in jack. There are also two separate Linux managers for the database. They have a very good community forum section on their website which you can check out at http://www.neurosaudio.com/ .

There are some irritating problems... the menus aren't threaded so you have to stop playing a song to change settings or look for another song. It's only USB-1.1, so it's also kinda slow on the transfers. Both of these are slated to be fixed, but there's no word on when.

Re:Here's a few

[Adam9]

DI has been very committed to their Neuros Audio player. I have one and I love it. DI is still creating firmware updates AND continuing development on their new Neuros units.

Someone else has mentioned this before. The founder, Joe Born, responded.

This may also explain some more on the rumors.

Re:Here's a few

[Cyph]

Ah-ha, thanks for the info. Seems like they're still working on it, but Ogg's still in beta. I might purchase their player at some point, just for the hell of it, the 20Gb USB 1.1 one is sure to heavily drop in price around the time when they release the 40Gb 2.0 one Joe mentioned. I just wish my 30Gb iPod had nice, or any, Ogg support. Meh.

Re:Here's a few

[Anonymous Coward]

A perhaps important thing to mention is the Rio Karma has FLAC support if you don't want the size of WAV files but want music compressed in a lossless fashion. Does anyone know offhand if the iRiver does? I'm trying to make a decision on one of the two but I haven't found anything regarding it on the iRiver (but all the recording features are fairly interesting).

Re:Here's a few

[Amiga Lover]

> 2. iRiver iHP-120, which I personally think is the best.
> 20Gb hard drive, built-in mic, ogg playing, et cetera.
> Great player.

I'll back that up too. It shreds the iPod in every way. Plays WMA and OGG like the iPod doesn't. 20GB drive, records standard like the iPod doesn't, has built in radio as the iPod doesn't, mic input (yes it records standard) true SRS surround sound, USB2.0 like the iPod doesn't, digital and analog audio out, the sexiest case on a portable music player ever, and all for $370.

go to http://www.outwardsound.com/products.php/7/278/ for a look.

Re:Here's a few

[nytes]

Hi, Neuros-newbie here. (Got mine about 10 days ago.)

I have no experience with other players. Neuros is my first one, so my expectations may be a good deal lower than people who collect them as a hobby.

But so far, it's working like a charm. I updated with the latest firmware/software (technically beta) as soon as I got it out of the box, because I bought for the Ogg-Vorbis support.

I haven't had the slightest problem with either the Neuros itself or the sync software (NSM). They've both been working without any hiccups.

Re:Here's a few

[Hooded One]

Nope, no FLAC on the iRiver.

Re:Here's a few

[gnu-generation-one]

"iRiver iHP-120"

It looks nice. Anyone have any thoughts on how it compares to the similarly rated/priced Nomad Zen NX?

iRiver: 20GB, OGG, GBP350, fancy remote control
Zen NX: 30GB, MP3, GBP195, new plasticky lightness

(offtopic because zen only plays MP3s, but relevant nonetheless because I'm about to buy one)

Re:Here's a few

[c0d3h4x0r]

All three of these are ludicrously expensive solutions. Why isn't there a simple CD/MP3/OGG player out there (NOT hard-drive based, just CD) for under $10? For example, I'd be totally happy with my RioVolt SP-90 if it played OGG.

Re:Here's a few

[Cyph]

A lot of the iRiver CD/MP3 players are getting an OGG upgrade. For example, my Rio Volt SP-150, which is actually a rebranded iRiver iFP-250 is getting a firmware upgrade from iRiver that supports Ogg and MP3.

don't forget Zaurus

[cbc1920]

My Zaurus plays them quite nicely, though only 2 hours per charge.

Re:don't forget Zaurus

[pantherace]

Argh, what player/firmware are you using?

Mine gets at least 3 hours (up to somewhere around 6 max) if I am only playing ogg (oz 3.2 w/xmms-e)

Re:don't forget Zaurus

[serial frame]

When I play oggs, I use vorbis-plugin for the stock media player. However, outside of that, I use xmms-e for streaming audio, since I'm usually plugged in when I'm using wifi. Meh.

Re:don't forget Zaurus

[Beowabbit]

So does an older iPAQ (3600-3900, although I think audio playback is working on the 5500 now too) if you put Linux on it. On the other hand, that's a lot less space for music (in my case, approximately the size of a MMC and a CF card) than a music player with a spinning disk.

Re:don't forget Zaurus

[pantherace]

If it is the stock media player from 2.xx roms, I highly suggest upgrading to OpenZaurus if you use Linux or if you use windows OZ or Sharp 3.xx series.

People agreed with many early reviews that said the Zaurus lacked battery life, so people fixed it by rewriting the power support... isn't open source great?

my 3-6 hour estimate may be a bit low, given that I was thinking with the screen on, very low, and with it off someone timed it at 10 hours (on the original, not-too powerconcious rom w/xmms-e)

Re:don't forget Zaurus

[serial frame]

I'm sticking with the Sharp 2.38 ROM for now, until my shiny 256MB SD card comes in. And then I'll be running straight towards OZ 3.2. I was using theKompany.rom for awhile, but having to install the extra packages only leaves me with 16MB of space for precious media, rather than 32MB with the stock ROM, which has all of those packages in place to begin with. Plus, it lacks IPv6 support, in which case, I'll see what happens when I steal OZ's kernel and IPv6 userland utilities. (The non-Sharp-2.3x ROMs are great and all, but they tend to assume everyone has an extravagant amount of insertable storage space.)

Speaking of battery life, I thought I may add that I was able to get about 5 hours of warwalking in, using a quick little hack I wrote to provide information via the LEDs, a-la Geiger counter. This is with a run-of-the-mill Linksys WCF12.

Anyhow, tonight, I shall put the Z under the ultimate stress test: I'll be timing how long the Z lasts playing ~192kbps Oggs via NFS over wifi on the other side of the house, with LCD and backlight on. However, regardless of the results, I'm still convinced that the Z is the ultimate mobile tool; and just so happens to be a pretty bitchin' conduit for multimedia, too.

Re:don't forget Zaurus

[pantherace]

Tried to reply to this earlier, apparently it didn't work...

This was conducted very early on (look at the zaurus mailing-list that was originally on SF.

It was a 5500 with either sharp 2.x or a OZ pre-3.0 release.

Re:don't forget Zaurus

[ToyKeeper]

I've been enjoying my Zaurus as a music player too. My setup is unusual (running mostly the familiar-unstable distro, with OpenZaurus's kernel, and a semi-wonky X11 setup), but it does what I want.

When I host parties, I hook up the Zaurus to some speakers, a power outlet, and my CF wifi card. It plays music off my server elsewhere in the house, and I can control it easily from my notebook without having to go anywhere near the "stereo".

Or, for just myself, I often stick it in my pocket with a 256MB CF card in it, and listen on headphones for up to 4 hours. If I turn the backlight off, it plays about that long before the battery gets dangerously low.

Perhaps the best part though, is being able to customize everything as much as I like. Half the software I use on it is stuff I wrote myself. And with a SD/MMC card, there's plenty of room for me to tinker.

More review links.

[Anonymous Coward]

There are links to reviews from the Xiph Wiki also.

I would purchase a new iPod

[Jordy]

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.

Re:I would purchase a new iPod

[Drakonian]

Well, they arguably do support a format that saves 30% more space - AAC. While I'm no audiophile, I'd say (and many others) a 128 Kbit AAC sounds at least as good as a 160 Kbps VBR MP3s. If I understand correctly, it's also less computationally intensive than Ogg. (No floating point required?)

Re:I would purchase a new iPod

[Eric Smith]

Ogg doesn't require floating point either.

Re:I would purchase a new iPod

[Anarchos]

There's an integer-only version of Ogg Vorbis as well. From what I have heard AAC and Ogg Vorbis are basically equivalent in terms of filesize, quality, and encoding algorithm.

Re:I would purchase a new iPod

[dydxjessedydt]

I know the feeling. If we want the iPod to support ogg then we need to let them know... http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html

Re:I would purchase a new iPod

[Mr. Darl McBride]

Apple supports MP3 because they have to. Apple supports AAC because it's their controlled format. Nothing else is getting in the door if they can help it.

There have been free plug-ins for Ogg forever, and people have petitioned apple for support for about as long. But do you see it supported by default in Quicktime or iTunes? No. And I promise you that it's not a technology issue.

Re:how about ogg software for a wintel machine??

[phreak03]

I think he was talking about portable players, there are tons of good computer based players (foobar, winamp, windows media) well maybe not the last one but anyways

iRiver Has an OGG Blitz Planned for Christmas

[DeckerEgo]

Check out iRiver's announcement on it's OGG Support Plan. Most 200-level and above players should have OGG support by Christmas eve.

The coolest by far appears to be the iFP-500 series, which has been release internationally (a while ago) but not released in the US yet. So impatient me went out and asked Santa for a Squeezebox.

Mini flash drive ogg players?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:how about ogg software for a wintel machine??

[eddy]

The decoder is included with winamp (at least the standard and full versions). They might have added it to the lite version too recently thereby making the "plugin" pointless? (Peter's plugin is out there, if you really want it)

Besides, everyone who was using the Winamp "classic" is using foobar2000 now anyhow :-)

Best Buy is shunning mp3 boombox/mini-systems

[Anonymous Coward]

Used to be Best Buy had a good selection of CD based MP3 boombox and mini-systems. No longer. Ogg is out of the question. I think they carry one Sony boombox for about $130, and most mini-systems with mp3 start at well over $200. There are a lot of Best Buy CD systems which will play CD-Rs but only if they are straight cdda tracks.

Beware, some Best Buy CD systems that claim "mp3" can't play mp3 CDs. You have to use your computer to decode the mp3 and send it to the boom box via USB cable (i.e. the boombox is a glorified speaker system for your computer).

Of course a lot of DVD players can handle mp3 . . . I'm told that Best Buy has some kind of stake in the music industry and that they are trying to suppress mp3 hardware.

YOU ARE A TROLL

[Anonymous Coward]

You linked to the same thread.

foobar?

[Angram]

I'm still using WinAmp 2 (I'm running XP, not Linux). How is foobar2000 (or any other replacement)? I haven't tried any yet, so I'd appreciate feedback on players with a small footprint that play m3u playlists of ogg files.

Re:foobar?

[Angram]

Disclaimer: This is not a troll. It's an honest review.

I just downloaded foobar2000, and I've got to say, I'm let down. Not only is the footprint virtually identical (playing music in... foobar2000, normal install, with no optional components = 2,536 vs WinAmp2 in WindowShade mode = 2,660 // fb minimized = 2,060 vs WA2 minimized = 2,160), but it looks TERRIBLE. WinAmp2's WindowShade is excellent - allowing instant access no matter what app is running without interfering with the screen. Foobar2000 is a big black-and-white window. I don't see what you gain by using foobar - it's got a terrible interface and the footprint isn't significantly different. I'm all for independent projects (I'm using ogg files, after all), but I don't get this one. Can someone please tell me what the benefit of foobar is (or if there is a decent replacement for WinAmp2)?

Re:foobar?

[Magila]

I don't know of anyone who actualy uses the GUI with foobar, you just bind some global hotkeys for the functions you use the most and use thoes with foobar sitting in the systray. It's great because it doesn't matter what you have running, you can always control the player with just a keystroke and absolutly no lost screen real esate. Foobar also has nice added features like replaygain and a masstagger that's seccond to none.

Re:foobar?

[Angram]

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.

Re:foobar?

[leshert]

Are you trolling, or just confused?

The player they're talking about isn't even available for Linux. It's Windows-only.

Re:foobar?

[leshert]

You might want to look info Zinf (formerly known as Freeamp). Development for the Windows port has somewhat stalled, but the latest Windows binaries are available at zinf.sf.net.

Zinf has the best playlist interface I've seen in any MP3 player.

Disclaimer: I did contribute some code to zinf, but I'm not really a very active contributor anymore...

Re:foobar?

[Angram]

Linux isn't ready for the desktop for the same reason foobar2000 will never have more than a handful of geeks using it; the OS it runs on is irrelevant. My point is that the lack of GUI on this independent nerd project is the same as most others.

Re:foobar?

[Angram]

I NEVER SAID FOOBAR WAS FOR LINUX!

I was making a general statement that apparently went way over your head. Foobar suffers from the same problem that Linux does - bad GUI, which is why neither is in any way "ready for the desktop".

Re:foobar?

[Quest171]

I agree completely. However, you don't have to be without bindable hotkeys with winamp. Using The Wonderful Icon to provide the hotkeys, and a simple program to control winamp by passing command line parameters, I can hit Ctrl+Alt+(Up|Down|Left|Right) to control winamp no matter what I'm doing on my machine.

Re:foobar?

[menders]

Hehe...you can change the foobar2000 interface so it doesn't look like Notepad (default). Check out format strings or use foo_look. Here's what my foobar2000 looks like after configured:

Tell me that's terrible. ;)

Palm

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a Palm Tungsten T3, and use AeroPlayer as an audio player. It supports MP3, Ogg Vorbis, MIDI, etc. Very high sound quality. There are other similar music players available for PalmOS, so shop around before settling on a particular one.

The Tungsten T3 has been widely criticised for poor battery life. My experience has been that I get about 6-7 hours of MP3/Ogg playing time before I get the first low-battery warning. That's pretty equivalent to what you get on an iPod, which won't play Ogg files. Plus the Palm gives you hard buttons, where the iPod has that weird touch-sensitive spinny thing. I have a personal preference for hard buttons, so that was a real winner for me. Other models of Palms have better battery life, and one can increase battery life further by underclocking the CPU, so one can certainly do better than the numbers I've mentioned above. But this was good enough for me.

Also, the Palm is, of course, a PDA. Bonus, from my point of view, since I needed one. :)

Cons, of course, are that the Palm's music needs to be placed on a flash card, which means that you're limited to the size of flash cards (I've seen them with capacities up to 512meg, but nothing close to even the low-end iPod's 10gig), the file writing rate of flash cards (very slow).. and so on.

I tend to fit a bit over two hours of music into 128 meg of space, or more if encoded at a lower bitrate -- I have some old mono radio shows which weigh in at about 6 megabytes for a one hour show, for example. So your 512 meg flash card (or two 256 meg flash cards) will last you for well over a full charge of your battery. So when I recharge at night, I also queue up the music that I'll be listening to the next day.

Works for me!

Re:Palm

[ajs318]

Sounds interesting. I have a Tungsten E with an SD/MMC card slot {126MHz OMAP processor IIRR}. Will that run such a player? Or will I have serious trouble with battery life?

Re:Palm

[ncc74656]

Sounds interesting. I have a Tungsten E with an SD/MMC card slot {126MHz OMAP processor IIRR}. Will that run such a player? Or will I have serious trouble with battery life?

The specs on that aren't too different than my Tungsten T...but more specifically, the Tungsten E is listed as a supported device. With a 256MB card, I usually get about 4 hours' worth of music at a time (give or take, depending on the bitrates). Playing all of that will run a fully-charged battery down to about 50%. I recently scored a deal on a 512MB card that should last all day, if I should ever need that much runtime.

Make sure you get a card reader if you don't already have one...it's the fastest way to load music. (I've not gotten music to load through a HotSync...I'm not even sure if that's supported.)

Re:Palm

[srussell]

I have the same experiences. None of the color PDAs can hold a candle, as far as battery life goes, to the older PDAs like the Palm V. However, I take my Tungsten without a charger on vacation for weeks at a time, and use it about as much as I normally do.

That said, I can drain the battery playing audio in a few (4-6) hours, so I watch that when I'm not near a charger.

Re:Palm

[astyanax]

Yes, I have a Tungsten E and Aeroplayer works great. Haven' regiestered it yet though, but it is a great player.

Re:Palm

[ajs318]

I was thinking to get a slot reader anyway with the card, as they seem to be quite reasonably priced. Do they just emulate a disc? I have USB mass storage compiled in my kernel already for my digital camera {Shameless plug: Fuji FinePix 2800 Zoom, 2MPx, 6x optical zoom, movie mode, voice caption recording}.

MMmm..

[eddy]

The iFP-500 looks nice (in fact, it looks like something I could buy -- I'm not interested in HD-players), but unless there's an actually honest to Gawd firmware shipping with good vorbis support (meaning it doesn't skip or crash on concatenated files or comments with international characters and the like) ...

Let's just say that there's been a lot of talking and a lot less doing in some parts of the hardware vendor world... A variant of the old 'bait and switch'

Re:MMmm..

[Drathos]

iRiver has already released Ogg Vorbis capable firmware for the iHP series (the iHP-120 comes with it right out of the box). If you look here you'll see their full Ogg Vorbis support plan. The iFP-500 series is the #1 priority of the remaining devices. By the time they show up in the US, they'll probably come with support just like the iHP-120.

..runs off to check the iRiver site again for any announcments..
Damn.. nothing yet..

high quality

[LordMyren]

any which excell in sound quality? i'm looking for something which will match my grado SR-80's. something with decent oomph behind it would be nice too, although i'm slowly becoming more and more resigned to needing an inline amplifier.

Re:high quality

[HardCase]

I use a pair of Grado SR-125's with my Neuros. It has plenty of power...I was surprised. It actually drives the headphones better than the headphone out on my Carver preamp. The sound quality is quite good...the limiting factor, as far as my ears can tell, is the encoding format. You can definitely tell the difference between VBR and mid bit rate CBR MP3's as well as the difference between q levels on oggs. The headphones make a huge difference.

-h-

Re:high quality

[LordMyren]

why is mpc in such a tight spot? i love my mpc files. :-/

Rio Karma

[FonkiE]

Rio Karma 20 is the One ;-)

20 GB
Ogg Vorbis
Multi Platform JAVA Interface
USB 2.0 ...

I'm owner of the first iPod model. Had to replace the battery 1 1/2 year after ther purchase. The new iPod's get smaller, the battery capacity gets shorter and to be honest I like mechanical parts like the scroll wheel. Furthermore they made a stupid cradle, so I don't have a direct IEEE1394 connector anymore ...

To make it short I would not buy a new iPod model, I'd buy the Rio Karma. I actually did some research after my battery was gone, but replacing the battery was $80 - thats a lot cheaper - and I have not converted my songs to .ogg yet ...

Re:Rio Karma

[eddy]

I'd never go for "Multi Platform JAVA Interface" unless it was something 'extra' you didn't have to use, and the device could be used as a normal USB Storage device also.

Re:Rio Karma

[Phroggy]

and I have not converted my songs to .ogg yet ...

I hope you don't mean convert them to ogg from mp3; that would be retarded.

Re:Rio Karma

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite frankly you are a fool. File Folders are completely useless as a music management system. If you want to limit yourselve to crippled players then go ahead. We can't stop you.

Re:Rio Karma

[Hobbex]

So add a database file somewhere on the disk, like the iPod does. If the file is in a simple transparent format, perhaps XML, then it will be easy enough to reverse engineer and implement for any platform.

It is a shame nobody standardized such a file for MP3 CD disks.

There is no excuse for using a non-standard USB protocol.

Re:Rio Karma

[wikki]

No, you cannot mount it like a disk. You can however copy files to it using their little utility.

Re:how about ogg software for a wintel machine??

[Anonymous Coward]

http://qtcomponents.sourceforge.net/

But don't also forget

[Kjella]

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.

More for less on lowest end model = new customers. Also the better a product is than your competition, the more mark-up you can add. As long as you're the only one, and you can deliver the same as a 30gb mp3 player in a 20gb ogg player, why not pocket the difference yourself?

I think it's more the low market share, and few percieved advantages among consumers that is the cause.

Patents? People typically don't pay anything at all for mp3 players, and if they rip their own they often use lame, also a free download. And as every hardware player they'd consider would have to have mp3 support anyway, the licence fee is already paid. Adding ogg support doesn't bring the cost down at all until you can live with ogg-only players.

Size/quality? Most people can't tell the difference anyway, and if they do they'd up the bitrate on mp3s. Compared to the big CD->mp3 revolution, mp3->ogg is well, a nice bonus, but not much more. In particularly if you have mp3 capable hardware players, it's a no-go.

Ogg just simply doesn't have any killer features. It's a very good product, but it's one in a pack. Same with Ogg theora. There is DivX, which everybody knows. Once Theora is done, I predict a good product, but that doesn't get mainstream interest because there's already divx (or maybe the new MPEG4 AVC by then).

Kjella

The Neuros is not bad.

[pythian]

Nice features, Ogg support has been around for a bit, it's in the company's official beta firmware with pretty good results. I still haven't played with it myself, but the forums are rather active with experiences etc.

It plays pretty much any quality ogg fine over headphones. With MyFi (the FM transmission) I hear it still has some problems with transmitting high quality some -q6 and higher oggs. I'm a regular MyFi user, so I've held off for a few more optimizations.

That and, of course, the Linux sync situation is rather good with positron or the Java NDBM.

I'm really liking the player -- they want to release the source to their Windows sync program in about a week, and they are (according to their forum posts) working on getting in some nice new features.

Re:The Neuros is not bad.

[Yort]

That and, of course, the Linux sync situation is rather good with positron or the Java NDBM.

Honestly, I'm surprised the Linux geeks don't hail this more than they do. A lot of the Neuros stuff is open, such that a completely independent project like the NDBM is possible. So if I, the loyal Slashdot geek, don't like a particular feature of the sync manager, or wish there was a particular super-cool option like playlist rating - do it!

No need to whine to the company and hope, blessed hope, that they hear your pitiful cry and find a big enough business case to pay attention to it. Just do it yourself.

Do any other portable media projects have this? Ogg or otherwise?

Troy, who's still wishing for a PDA+20/40GB hard drive...

Look at Neuros

[DoofusOfDeath]

They're kind of a funny company. They're very open source / Linux friendly, and seem to be very into their user community. It's basically like the kind of coolness I'd want to exhibit if I started a tech company.

That being said, I'm a little concerned about their solvency, and their technology is getting old.

BUT, the good news is they're having a clearance sale right now. I just ordered a 128 MB Neuros for $99, and I'm really looking forward to getting it.

From what I can tell, their Ogg support is perfectly usable, and there are two open source programs on Sourceforge for managing its songs. You can even flash its BIOS using a Linux host - you don't need to boot up into Windows to do it.

So my basic take: For $99, it was worth taking a slightly less polished product, so that I could support an OSS / Linux-friendly company.

Re:Look at Neuros

[DoofusOfDeath]

Oh, btw:

Their website is neurosaudio.com, not neuros.com.

AND, the Neuros can be used as a USB storage device, in case you're so inclined.

Re:Look at Neuros

[Propagandhi]

The price and the freatures are reason enough for me to look at Neuros. I'm thinking about getting a 20gb HD based player from them, simply because they're $100-$200 cheaper than other HD players on the market right now. Decent battery life and some awesome features (ability to broadcast to an FM radio). Only drawback is the size.. little bit bigger than other players on the market, but still small enough to fit easily into (my) pockets..

Re:Look at Neuros

[DoofusOfDeath]

Yeah. I was worried about the size because I specifically wanted an Ogg player to wear while jogging.

I asked on their message boards, and people said that it was still light enough to not be a problem. The 128 MB (non-HDD) version comes with a belt-clip.

The Rio sports-versions come with an arm strap, which I like best for running, but only the Rio Karma supports Ogg.

I liked the idea of not booting into Windows, so I chose the Neuros. And like you said, the price is quite good.

Also, there's an aftermarket guy who will install any HDD (notebook size, I presume) into the HDD-based Neuros. So you can actually get a pretty huge (80 GB?) collection if you care to.

Re:Look at Neuros

[Robert The Coward]

Do Not go jogging with a HD based player. The Flash based one are fine for that but as someone who has owned a HD based one it would last though 1 Jogging session without the drive going bad.

Amen.

[twitter]

Zaurus is a good quality player and much more flexible than "normal" players. I use Open Zaurus the ogg tools you can get for it and CF. A 64 meg CF is cheap and loads up an hour's worth of music and a shell script or two for random play. Larger CF cards are getting cheaper all the time and a CF wifi card could eliminate the need for the clumsy transfer step. I'm sure people will make software that does all of this easier than my dinky shell script, but I like the speed of simple tools like sed and urandom. Don't forget to use the -q flag for ogg123 to silence the output and don't forget to change the power and light settings so the screen turns off but the power does not and you have a beautiful and very powerful jam box and rounds out an all free music system.

My next project for it is to get a car power adaptor and a little nicer mounting system than I already have.

Open Zaurus is a little more flexible than the software that comes with it, but you might not want to do that if you need to sync with nasty old Lookout or something. Debian Zaurus with X11 will be massivly cool when it settles down to stable.

Re:Amen.

[Permission Denied]

A 64 meg CF is cheap and loads up an hour's worth of music

I also play music on my Zaurus. Might I suggest: get a big SD card. That way, you leave the CF slot open for peripherals like wifi cards.

Re:Amen.

[allolex]

Although it's currently in B, the Opie Player 2 does this on OpenZaurus with a minimum of problems... But a caveat: there are search problems. It is, however, worth giving a whirl for any Zaurus user.

Opie Player 2 (op)

The new Opie mediaplayer. Does, mp3, shoutcast, ogg/vorbis, ogg streaming, mpg1, mpg2, divx3, divx4, divx5,XviD, mpeg4, wav. More to come. Still consumes a lot of memory. Make sure you have libopie and the codecs also installed. Since the 2.4.6 on zaurus also has some memory problems in the kernel, you might want to reboot the zaurus if you see problems with playback. New version, improved playback in nonfullscreen video mode. Also the ipk for the retail rom are now installable, but use the command line ipkg. The gui frontend does not find the ipk. Note: You also need zlib, both that and libopie_0.9.1 can be downloaded from - here !

Source

Re:Amen.

[josath]

I use xmms-embedded. I find it works /much/ better than the opie-player2, much quicker responding, supports all the formats, etc. Plus you can use the hardware keys for volume, next/prev, play/pause.

not so complex, really.

[rebelcool]

There are very few people who play ogg files. Even among linux users - whom there are very few of relatively speaking.

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.

Re:not so complex, really.

[The Snowman]

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.

Re:not so complex, really.

[ahaning]

But it takes time to add the support for Vorbis/MP3/WMA. Be it in an employee writing code, or a machine printing extra circuitry. The added time is where costs come in.

Re:not so complex, really.

[Crazy Eight]

There are very few people who play ogg files. Even among linux users...

Huh? I can't speak for the non-*nix heads out there but the only time I've ever played mp3 files is when browsing the game media of an unpacked pk3. There's nothing wrong with ogg and it has many advantages, so why would I use anything else?

Re:not so complex, really.

[viware]

I ripped all my cd's into ogg. Of course, it had a lot to do with the fact that grip did it automatically when I stuck a cd in...
None the less, I'm very happy with the format. I think probably a lot of linux users actually do use it, but maybe not so many windows users.

Re:not so complex, really.

[jeremyhu]

".0001% (or less) of people actually interested in it"

I love people who pull stats out of their asses. .0001% of people in the US is: roughly 300 people (300,000,000 * .0001% = 300)

I think more than 300 people in the US want to see ogg vorbis support...

Re:not so complex, really.

[fucksl4shd0t]

Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."

I like to refer to that as Mexican Roulette, although it would be more accurately described as Catholic Roulette. ;)

Re:not so complex, really.

[wolrahnaes]

"There are very few people who play ogg files"

Somewhat OT, but alot of people do play ogg files, just unknowingly.
Halo PC (and I assume Halo on Xbox) use Vorbis audio. For anyone who has HaloPC, vorbis.dll, vorbisfile.dll, and xiph_license.txt are in the Halo directory if you want to verify.

Symbian/Series 60 Player for OGG Files?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there a player (with OGG support) which can be used with Symbian Series 40/60/90 phones.

Here's where to get some Oggs for your new player

[MichaelCrawford]

There's a list of Ogg download sites here.

More music downloads (mostly MP3 though) can be found in my article Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads.

The article has a Creative Commons license. Please copy and distribute it.

Ogg is better quality, easier to use, lower cost.

[twitter]

A nasty little AC asks:

Whats this ogg thing? Some elitest-i-hate-the-matinstream-so-i-use-linux music format or something?

Ogg Vorbis is a free and very high quality encoding tool set. It supports variable bit rate while being very easy to use. Ogg files are generally smaller than mp3 for the same level of quality.

Software freedom confers several key benefits. There are no patents or royalties on the tools so manufactures are free to use them and you don't have to pay for their licensing. You will also always be able to find software players for any platform and don't have to wory about DRM unless the plaform itself has been cripled by it. Copyright and patent problems made players like Lame and Not Lame difficult for an average computer user such as myself. Not being able to encode my own music colection to mp3 was a real bummer. Vorbis tools is a deb package that requires no compiling and just works. Between it, abcde, audacity and gnuphonograph, your sound needs are covered.

Let's go over that again, beter, cheaper, easier, less encumbered, that about covers it.

I want a portable DVD mp3 player

[Sludge]

I don't mind the size of a discman. With the advent of cheap DVD burners, I've been creating mp3 DVDs instead of mp3 CDs. I haven't been able to find any players for this, though. Has anyone here heard of any?

Re:I want a portable DVD mp3 player

[gtada]

I haven't seen one. :(

I'd love to see a smaller DVD. I have a Teac MP3 player that uses those small 3" CD-R's (holds around 180 megs). It'd be great if those had the same data density as a DVD (with Ogg's smaller size, you could hold quite a few songs). However, while it'd be easy to produce, I think it'd cut into CD-R sales, so we won't see them anytime soon.

Re:I want a portable DVD mp3 player

[sbot5000]

Sony MPD-AP20U

But beware, the player is not without it's "quirks":

"Nice Idea; Poor Execution; Not Ready. Sub-1.0 release. 1 example: Plays MP3-DVDs containing upwards of 1200 songs (files). But device has only a single-line lcd readout & NO FILE BROWSE MODE. What does this mean? Say you want to listen to song #1172... 1. obtain carpal tunnel wrist brace. 2. hit up/forward on remote's jog-diall >> TIMES! (of course if you are a gambling man you could always just put it on random and take side-bets with your friends.) 3. enjoy?"

See also:Portable + MP3 DVDs = Sony MPDAP20U (no DRM)

Re:I want a portable DVD mp3 player

[Joe U]

I would love to see a revamp of the RIO Volt with DVD capabilities & OGG support. I've had the original Volt for a while now and it's a darn good player. CD, MP3, WMA.

I would like to re-rip my CD's in WMA 9 lossless and save them on a DVD+RW. I would still only get about 10 albums per disc, but it would sound darn good with my new headphones.

WOW...not

[Anonymous Coward]

$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!

Re:WOW...not

[Anonymous Coward]

The modern age is of HD players especially ones that play Ogg.

Because there are SO many.

Rio Karma vs. Neuros

[byrd77]

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.

Re:Rio Karma vs. Neuros

[ottffssent]

I couldn't find much about the network connection in the manuals on the Rio site.

How do you transfer files to the device over cat5? Does the Karma show up as an SMB share or something? Or is it necessary to use the java app? How fast is it? How's the interface?

Does it properly support ogg metadata?

Does it save your place in a playlist or directory while shut off (so I can listen to audiobooks on my commute)?

Anything else I'm forgetting to ask?

Re:Rio Karma vs. Neuros

[HardCase]

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've got a Neuros...it takes all of about three or four seconds to boot. I paid $200 for mine, cheaper than anything comperable. It's definitely bigger than a lot of others. The USB 1.1 is kind of a downer, but the upgradability (firmware and capacity) are big pluses. Digital Innovations continues to say that they will release a USB 2.0 upgrade. The latest that I read was that they have a 40GB unit prototyped and in testing.

-h-

Re:Rio Karma vs. Neuros

[Anonymous Coward]

On Windows you can use Rio Music Manager, Real, or Rio Music Manager Lite (the Java app). On Linux, OS X, etc, you need to use Rio Music Manager Lite. Because the drive runs a journaling filesystem based on another Rio product, it currently is not exposed as a USB mass storage device. Samba is GPL, which the Rio engineers said precluded them from adding SMB support (it would have to be directly linked into the player binary as the Karma runs ECOS).

You can see screenshots of Rio Music Manager Lite here

When you asked about the speed, do you mean the speed of the Java app, or the speed of ethernet transfers? It's USB1 ethernet USB2. I don't recall the exact #'s offhand, but there are threads on riovolution.com that have all the details. As far as the speed of the Java app, it's hard to quantify that. If I said "it runs like any Java app", that sounds bad because of a lot of superstition. All I can say is that it's very usable and the core is based on a similar app for the Empeg that has been in development for over two years, so it's got quite a few optimizations in there.

The Karma, RMM, and RMML all support Ogg metadata both as ID3v2 tags and in Ogg comments.

It saves your place in the playlist, in the currently playing song, and even lets you create bookmarks that snapshot your current playlist and position so you can go listen to something else and come back later.

Re:Rio Karma vs. Neuros

[Forkenhoppen]

Is this USB High Speed they're promising, or..?

Re:Rio Karma vs. Neuros

[byrd77]

You have to use their software, either RMM (win) or RMML (java). The karma has a built in DHCP client or you can hard code an IP. Once it has an IP, you can hit it with a web browser and actually dl the java client from the karma (however, newer versions are available online, so this is only useful in a pinch). The java client mirrors the functionality of the win client, it performs decently on my box, I have a AthlonXP 2000+ running Gentoo, kernel 2.6, JRE 1.4, and XFCE.

The karma organizes music according to it's metadata (album, artist, year, etc...). This frustrates me a little, since I like to keep some things segregated. But I can just make playlist or script some metadata changes on my files.

I highly recommend checking out the forums on riovolution.com, there's some chaff to wade through, but there is lots of great info.

Re:Rio Karma vs. Neuros

[HardCase]

Is this USB High Speed they're promising, or..?

Yep.

Re:MODS ON CRACK

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a troll because it seems to be fiction. It was posted AC, it is not specific at all, yet it still draws insindiary conclusions.

Uh, no.

[magnum3065]

For information on MP3 patent licensing see: http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html

Licensing for the decoder runs $0.75 per unit or a one time fee of $50,000. Nowhere close to your $0.5 - $1 million figure. Plus in order to save this money they would have to completely drop MP3 playback from the player, rather than supporting both it and Ogg Vorbis. Despite the fact that I use Vorbis when I rip my CDs, I still have many MP3s I've downloaded from emusic.com that I'd like to be able to play without converting them.

xiph's list of vorbis-supporting hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Xiph maintains a wiki that has a list of Vorbis (and occasionally FLAC)-supporting hardware.

This list isn't authoritative, however, as companies do have a habit of implementing our stuff in things without telling us first.

Nathan Sharfi
Webmaster

they pay their employees...

[rebelcool]

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.

Re:they pay their employees...

[trisweb]

Also a CS major at a major public university where CS is the 2nd largest major, I would like to inform you that I use Ogg, and I know several people who also use Ogg, and I reccomend Ogg to all of my tech-savvy friends.

Maybe it's a different major public university...

I do agree with you, but it's not hard for companies to simply add Ogg support to players that already support mp3 and/or WMA; iRiver, for example announced some time ago (it may have been recently, I have no idea) that they are adding Ogg support to several of their players, including both their hard disk players, their mp3/WMA-CD player, and some of their memory-based players.

I should also note that it's quite a bit easier than you think to add a new format. It simply involves adapting the decoder API and codec to the player, and storing it on the flash RAM on the device. No new chip printing is required in most cases, unless it's a cheap player with non-flashable decoder storage. There are limitations to the flash RAM storage though, and iRiver, for example, works around this by providing two sets of RAMs for different formats: MP3+WMA, or MP3+Ogg. Somehow I doubt there'd be any conflict -- anyone choosing Ogg would probably shun WMAs, and people using WMA wouldn't even know what Ogg is. It works, sort of, or at least until we have newer better players which support all the codecs in existence. Give it a few years...

Re:they pay their employees...

[Daniel]

I think that the usefulness of Ogg is dependent on what you are using it for. As you mention, network effects probably make it useless for file-sharing -- but if you're mainly interested in making compressed audio for your own use it's great. I have a huge stack of CDs that now sits on my hard drive and Neuros as about 3GB of Ogg files.

I'm not sure why printing new chips should come into it -- I got ogg support on my Neuros by upgrading the firmware.

Daniel

Re:they pay their employees...

[jafuser]

The 3D virtual world I spend all my free time in, Second Life, lets users upload sound clips in WAV format, then the server converts it to Ogg format for streaming audio back to the nearby users whenever the sound file is requested to be played (usually by scripted objects).

iRiver Players Will Support OGG by Christmas...

[Spikeman56]

for the iMP-250, iMP-350, iMP-400, iMP-550, iFP-300 series, iFP-500 series. The iHP-100 series already supports OGG (iHP-100, iHP-115, iHP-120.) Some of the players will support either OGG or WMA at one time... the iMP-250, iMP-350, and iFP-300 series by using two different versions of the firmware (MP3 & WMA and MP3 & OGG), the rest of the ogg supporting players (iMP-400, iMP-550, iFP-500 series, and iHP-100 series) will be/are able to support the formats MP3, WMA, OGG and the iHP-100 series supports WAV as well at one time using only one version of the firmware. For more info check out iRivers website at http://www.iriver.com/company/news_view.asp?idx=35 5&page=1&mode=Total&strque=&field= 1 ~spikeman56

I disagree, and here's why

[The Tyro]

Linux geeks are hardware and gadget freaks (you know you are... admit it). Hell, look at all the new gee-whiz hardware reviews that get reposted here from every other tech site on the 'net.

I have an enormous MP3 collection.... and I reencoded everything as high-bitrate OGGs using GRIP (easy... set it up to autorip any CD you load, with the desired settings, and just change CDs while you surf... took me weeks to work my way through my CD collection).

Adding OGG support can only help... and will be sure to attract those Linux hardware geeks. I don't know about you, but my friends and family members often come to me for hardware and gadget recommendations...

I'll always recommend a linux-friendly solution if one is available.

Re:I disagree, and here's why

[Frizzle Fry]

going from one lossy compression to another is a bad idea

No one here is endorsing doing that.

Rio Karma

[wikki]

It's very funny that this article came out tonight. I got a Karma for "christmas" but couldn't resist opening it early. It's been sitting on my desk for a few days now, but tonight it is plugged in. I must say that I'm very delighted about my new MP3 player. Not only does it play OGG Vorbis files, but it also plays FLAC tracks too. I've never heard of a portable player that plays FLAC files(however I don't really keep track of these things). Anyway so far it's a great player. Switching between tracks is almost instant, playlist editing on the device is cool.

Now just when you thought this thing was cool with the FLAC and OGG support just wait. It's got a (drum roll please) ...

ethernet port.

WOW!!! A++++

So far the ethernet port allows you to transfer files to and from the karma with the java client, but they claim to be working on streaming and kicking off tracks. It's got RCA jacks on the dock so you can hook it to your stereo. I'm really not sure if I could have asked for a better device. Maybe if it had a line in for recording it would get the highest score. I give it a 9.9

Not may to choose from

[savetz]

I just wrote a big roundup of portable music players for a computer-magazine-that-you've-heard-of. Of the 55 players I researched, three support Ogg.

iGP-100
Capacity: 1.5GB
Features: USB 2.0, FM tuner
Formats: Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WMA, ASF
Manufacturer: iRiver (www.iriveramerica.com)
MSRP: $249.99

iHP-120
Capacity: 20GB
Features: USB 2.0, FM tuner, built-in microphone
Formats: Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WMA, ASF, WAV
Manufacturer: iRiver (www.iriveramerica.com)
MSRP: $399.99

Rio Karma
Capacity: 20GB
Features: USB 2.0, docking station with RCA line out and Ethernet port
Formats: Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, WMA
Manufacturer: Digital Networks (www.rioaudio.com)
MSRP: $349.99

There may be others (I missed the Neuros, apparently) but those were all I found.

Re:Not may to choose from

[Nucleon500]

http://wiki.xiph.org/VorbisHardware

There are a few others, but mostly only available in Asia.

Re:Ogg is better quality, easier to use... (OT q.)

[mrdogi]

Between it, abcde, audacity and gnuphonograph, your sound needs are covered.

What is gnuphonograph? I did a quick search on Sourceforge, Freshmeat, and Google, and didn't come up with anything. I'm guessing it is something to help record audio from vinyl? If so, could be handy for me. I'm looking for software that can help remove the pops and similar from such recordings.

mrdogi

parent is NOT INFORMATIVE

[Doktor Memory]

Would it have actually killed you to mention the MAKES, MODELS and REVISIONS of the players you've allegedly had such poor experiences with?

Oh wait, you're trolling.

Open up the players

[CoolGuySteve]

I hate consumer electronics for this very reason. I end up buying a computer where I have no control over what software is running on it. It's my damn hardware.

Provide an SDK for your device and within a month, there will be tons of value added to your device for free. Things the engineers would have never thought of, neat visualizations, usability enhancements, alternative formats, the list is endless. The open source movement has shown that there is an endless supply of free labour to be provided by tinkerers.

That companies like Apple, Creative, whoever owns Rio this week, and iRiver rufuse to to acknowledge this when making their MP3 players is simply insane. It's like they're all covering their eyes, hoping it'll go away. The first to cave in will make a huge return on investment.

Re:Open up the players

[Daniel]

I generally get annoyed about this too. One thing to remember, though, is that a lot of these devices use specialized chips for which compilers may not be readily available. For instance, the Neuros uses a DSP chip which needs a $4000 development kit (gcc doesn't support it as a target).

Of course, an interpreted language could be used to get around this problem, but then you have the overhead of an interpreter on top of a chip that's already struggling to keep up with its duties.

Daniel

Big Math?

[BigBlockMopar]

However (and maybe this is because the Vorbis files emphasize the high frequencies; I'm not sure) the MP3s sound "flat", somehow.

My understanding of the sound quality difference between MP3 and Ogg Vorbis is that MP3 uses a full Fourier transform (sine, cosine and constant) on the audio, while Ogg Vorbis uses wavelets and does a cosine transform only.

Discontinuities between blocks sent to the sine transform would cause the Gibbs effect; these would be heard as a garbled low-amplitude reverberation of the high frequency components and transients in the audio. This is consistent with the effects of low bitrate compression; at higher bitrates, there would presumably be more terms used in both the sine and cosine transforms, so the amplitude of the compression artifacts would become smaller and therefore inaudible.

Cosine transforms, on the other hand, don't have problems with discontinuities, so there'd be an immediate increase in sound quality, at a given bitrate. Transients (attack on cymbals or the rattle of the chain across the membrane of a snare drum, for example) would be handled by wavelet functions - there's probably some sort of mechanism in the code which sees the sharp attack or decay as fast risetimes or falltimes, ignores processing it by cosine transform, and uses wavelets instead.

But I don't know for sure. For one thing, I am *not* a programmer. I can make "Hello, World" and compile my own kernel, but you really don't want me poring over the source for libvorbis.

Re:Big Math?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Vorbis does not use wavelets. It is an IMDCT-based codec like MP3, although it has much much better block shaping (one reason it allows for true "gapless" playback and mp3 in fact does not, although this can be worked around by using LAME --decode for LAME encoded files, or just cutting the silence between tracks in an output driver).

Its better quality is principally due to better residual encoding. Quality 6 is transparent for most people, though even low bitrates sound quite good. It is fairly weak on classical, but strong on techno - a discontinuity that future versions of the encoder will address, as the codec becomes more mature. It supports super-stereo formats like 5.1 and 7.1, although currently the main branch of the encoder does not actually perform channel coupling on anything other than pairs of channels, so that could be improved very considerably - it needs -q8 at the moment, really. The format can also be very rapidly "peeled", although the quality of doing so is less than encoding to that bitrate directly at the moment - future versions of the encoder - and peeling tool when developed - will address that too.

But it's here, it works, it's better than MP3, it's better than WMA by virtue of actually working and stuff (talking to users, main WMA experience is it's good, kinda metallic sounding, until the DRM screws them because they didn't realise they had licenses to back up and they lose all their music - then they switch to MP3 or OGG).

I don't care really about FLAC support in my portable - there isn't enough hard disk space. And MP3 with LAME 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard is easily good enough for my portable (some of the rips are --alt-preset extreme too, though there's not much difference anymore). I can't ABX the difference at all. But because of the gapless support, my own rips are in Ogg Vorbis GT3b1 -q8. Lots of leeway, great high end definition, Garf's tunings are even more optimised for high bitrates, and there's no sodding gaps between the tracks. It's good.

Re:Big Math?

[tho 1234]

Nope.

MP3, Ogg, and ACC are all use the DCT (discrete cosine transform) The only major codec that differs from these is MPC, which is a subband codec. There are no wavelet codecs in common use, but may offer some advantages in removing the "time smear" produced by transform codecs.

Virtually all of the differences between codecs is in the tuning of the psych model, the filters that decide which frequencies to retain and which ones to remove. (it is also the reason there is a HUGE difference between encoders, so when you're comparing an MP3 to an OGG, make sure you use the best encoder for each one if you're trying to compare the merits of each format) There is no simple mathematical function or scientific pricipal behind this, most of the fine tuning is done by trial and error. Because MP3 has the largest user base and has had such a long development time, its psych models are incredibly refined, and for maximum sound quality, LAME encoded MP3 is still one of the best. Of course there are also lots of nasty MP3 encoders out there like Xing (which seems to be what most p2p files are encoded on) which can't compete with Ogg at any bitrate.

Ogg and ACC are much more modern codecs, with some new coding tricks to increase efficiency, but they have only had a short development time, and the small user bases limit the amount of beta testing/bug reports/ problem samples that can be obtained to fine tune the encoders. Right now, they are much superior to MP3 at low bitrates (due to their increased coding efficiency), but for maximum sound quality, they can't match LAME encoded MP3's.

In a few years, Ogg and AAC will surpass MP3 in every way, but right now neither is totally transparent even at the highest settings for me.

Re:Big Math?

[Dwonis]

Wrong. Vorbis does not use wavelets.

That depends on what you mean by "Vorbis". IIRC, the Vorbis spec (and thus, all compliant decoders) supports wavelet encoding. However, oggenc doesn't encode using wavelets yet, so users won't see the benefits of wavelet encoding quite yet.

The reason I mention this is that if you buy one of these Vorbis-capable devices now you should (theoretically) be able to reap the benefits of Vorbis files which use wavelet encoding, as soon as people start making them.

Re:Current Ogg Vorbis players are worthless

[llamaboy487]

Well, the Diamond/Rio ogg player that was on here earlier also had FLAC support. Would be nice for more portable players to have that now that the disks are getting huge.

Try your mobile phone...

[fellow]

If you own a SonyEricsson P800 or soon P900, try Leif Wilden's excellent Oggplay ( http://www.geocities.com/p800tools/ ) It's also available for Nokia's Series60 phones (7650, 3650, N-Gage) though as far as I can tell it only supports 16kHz playback for now. It's an excellent choice for the upcoming Siemens SX1 though where it supports the full 44.1kHz. And it's open source as well ( http://sourceforge.net/projects/symbianoggplay/ )

YOU MODDED YOUR SB16???

[pr0ntab]

I could post about 20 lines of AOL-speak and understate how cool that is. Please, post photos!

That is a MUCH more interesting topic than the rest of this thread. (sorry, guys)

...Best Buy has some kind of stake in the music...

[pr0ntab]

Yeah, they sell CDs

I'm sure WalMart has taken a similar position. Not much MP3 capable stuff there either.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN: PLAGIARIZED

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG You've got to be kidding... How freakin' obscure!

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."

Re:Beware of Sony "mp3"

[Anonymous Coward]

A bit offtopic by me but I wanted to get this off my chest: I just want to warn people considering buying Sony mp3-players.

They (for example the network walkman) are marketed as mp3-players but does not use mp3 recording. The players, or the software for them, converts the mp3/cd/wav/etc to their properiaty ATTRAC format when transferring the music to the device. The audio-quality transferring mp3 to ATTRAC is not good at all.

You've been warned.

Gramofile

[eetu]

I have never heard of gnuphonograph either, but Gramofile should suit your needs. I've used it myself to record music from vinyl to hard drive (just to encode it to ogg vorbis (to keep this post a bit closer to topic)) and I think it does a great job. Unfortunately the development of this nice little thing seems to have stallen.

iRiver

[marsonist]

I'm surprised that the iRiver line of products hasn't gotten more attention here. Their iHP120 is a 20GB harddrive based player that comes out of the box with OGG Vorbis support. It's predecessor, the iHP100, is a 10GB unit which recently received a firmware upgrade giving it Vorbis capabilities.

Both players are almost identical in features and capabilities and have received rave reviews from Cnet (Granted, Cnet doesn't carry a lot of weight in these forums, but it was the only review I could find on short notice)

I have the iHP100 with the latest firmware and couldn't be more pleased. The battery lasts the advertised 16 hours, The sound quality is outstanding, the included in-line remote control is the best I have ever seen. iRiver also makes flash based players that either do, or will in the near future, support ogg. If you are looking for quality Ogg vorbis players I suggest you really look at the iRiver product line.

Most players are just too small

[Trogre]

... storage-wise.
They just don't have enough capacity to hold enough music for a decent walk/car ride/whatever.

Music recorded at say 180Kbps will give 97 minutes on a 128MB player.

I'm looking for a good ogg player in a discman form factor. Pop in an ogg-encoded CD, and get hours of good-quality music.

Heck, a motor/laser assembly is probably cheaper than flash ram these days anyway. (must be, considering the number of sub US$20 discmans I've seen in stores lately).

what about mp3pro?

[krumbs]

not an expert on this topic, but aren't mp3pro files about half the size of regular mp3s, but with no discernable loss in quality? doesn't this make switching to formats like ogg vorbis sort of... unnecessary? also, do any of these mp3 players play mp3pro, too?

Re:what about mp3pro?

[Crypto Gnome]

Now that I seroiusly doubt. AFAIK MP3pro is more like MP3+ ie it's a "normal" MP3 file with a handfull of extra encodings (something about handling higher frequencies??). I'm sure I read in some review somewheres when MP3pro format was released "thingy X supports MP3pro, although it simply ignores the 'pro' bits in the file and plays a normal MP3 worth of sound".
So, if anyone knows any better please correct my comments, but "MP3pro half the size of MP3 with the same quality"?? Not on your life.

Re:what about mp3pro?

[krumbs]

hi crypto,
here's something i found on mp3licensing.com:
"Using advanced psychoacoustics techniques and music structure analysis, mp3PRO creates files that are more compact than original mp3 files, with equal or better sound quality and complete backwards and forwards compatibility... Offering 128 kbps (kilo bits per second) performance at a 64 kbps-encoding rate, mp3PRO doubles the digital music capacity of flash memory and of compact discs. For example, traditional audio CDs hold about 15 songs, and an mp3 CD can hold 150 or more songs encoded at 128 kbps. In the near future, when mp3 CD players incorporate the mp3PRO decoder, consumers will be able to store over 300 songs on an mp3PRO encoded Compact Disc..."

Don't forget the battery!

[Analysis Paralysis]

The Neuros battery is non-replaceable and is supposed to have a lifetime of 11/2-2 years according to their FAQ. So expect to have to send the unit back to them for a battery change (they quote a replacement charge up to $12 but this seems far too low for a new battery - it may simply be a handling charge).

Given the recent fuss over the iPod's $200 battery replacement charge, this should be worth checking out before purchase.

Re:how about ogg software for a wintel machine??

[way2trivial]

You missed my point. It's not included now.. or mine is fried, I downloaded the full version 12 filetypes listed no ogg.

A rose by any other name...

[t0ny]

I think Ogg's stupid name is what is holding it back.

Electronics company exec: "Hey boss, we want to make our new MP3 player also play "Gog Vorkas" files... I mean, Vorg Korbis... I, um, never mind, lets just stick with MP3s...

Boss: Good idea. Here's more stock options.

Ive written some E-mails asking for DVD players

[Schugy]

with ogg vorbis decoder. The Philips DVD 737 was almost perfect, DivX 3, 4, 5; WMA-free; but no ogg vorbis. Stupid thing.... I still watch my DVDs with mplayer.....

Zinf

[Angram]

Just tried Zinf on Windows XP.

1. There is no decent playlist editor, just a terrible "My Music" window. WinAmp2 has a bad playlist (can't customize at all), but its accessibility and integration are flawless.
2. The footprint on Zinf in its smallest view is about three times that of WinAmp2 in WindowShade mode.

Conclusion: Needs a lot of work.

Any more suggestions? There has to be something better than WA2 out there.

Re:Zinf

[yomegaman]

Have you tried one of the Winamp 5 betas that are floating around? I'm sure you could find one with a google search. I've been using beta 2 for awhile and I like it pretty well, although I can't really comment on playlist features since I usually just listen to complete albums.

i'd have to agree with the ac.

[gimpboy]

i've seen people saying that the neuros is going down, but most people are overreacting to a company that actually communicates directley with their customers.

i lurked around on the neuros site for a while before i got mine last week. the form factor is a little large, but i dont think it's that intrusive. the backpack gives the user something that most other portables dont consider: expandability. the myfi ability to broadcast fm is pretty nifty. and for the price i really couldnt beat it.

since i dont own a computer with windows, the fact that they dont turn your back on you when you ask linux related questions is a really good selling point for me. some other people mentioned upgrading firmware. it's pretty easy with the neuros under any os.

digital innovations is a good company that is deadicated to their customers. very few companies can make that claim these days.

Linux has some excellent GUIs

[Ender Ryan]

Please don't make ridiculous blanket statements. Linux has some great GUIs, GNOME and KDE have both proven to be easier to use than Windows in formal studies.

Linux has other problems that are holding it back, namely lack of out-of-the-box hardware support, lack of a good GUI is not the problem.

Back on-topic - Winamp has a piss-poor GUI. In fact, its GUI is second to worst I have ever used, worst being xine. I would prefer using the KB to using the Winamp GUI.

But why not try iTunes for Windows? It is really an excellent player. It categorizes all your music by Genre/Artist/Album, and you can make playlists, etc. I use Rhythmbox on Linux, which is almost a clone, and I have used iTunes, and they're very nice. I wouldn't go back to xmms/winamp if I was paid to.

Re:Linux has some excellent GUIs

[Angram]

Linux has some great GUIs, sure. However, some is not enough. The lack of decent installation/setup (GUI) for drivers that do exist is a huge problem. I might be using Linux now if I could figure out how to get my sound card working on it (apparently nerds spend most of their time coding for other nerds, not normal people or even advanced users).

Exactly what is wrong with WinAmp2's GUI? You don't give any reason for why you dislike it. Why would I use iTunes for Windows? I play m3us of oggs of my CDs, and like the smallest footprint with a decent GUI I can get. That's not what iTunes was intended for.

Re:Linux has some excellent GUIs

[Ender Ryan]

Try a new distro, most configure stuff like soundcards for you. There's also the possibility that your soundcard simply isn't/can't be supported in Linux.

Winamp2's GUI is just stupid. I hate the skinning, etc., I'd rather have a "normal" GUI. Maybe I'm missing something, I haven't used Winamp in a while now.

iTunes is an excellent music player with the absolute best GUI, IMO. You'd probably have to remake your playlists, as I don't think it does m3us, though.

Meh, whatever, I was just offering an alternative. YMMV, whatever works for you, etc.

Cheers!

Re:Linux has some excellent GUIs

[Angram]

I have a Turtle Beach Santa Cruz DSP, and since I'm using a 4.1 surround sound speaker system, it's not simple to set up (I've tried help boards, but the answers are all Greek to me).

Switching away from m3u is simply not feasable for me at this point. I've got over 350 albums on my computer (370 m3us in all) - there's no way I'm redoing all of that now.

Cheers

Re:Linux has some excellent GUIs

[jeremyhu]

the m3us are just text files... write a script to parse them and remake them in whatever format your new player supports...

stay away from Neuros

[tuffy]

The official Neuros firmware version 1.38 (not updated since late June) doesn't play vorbis files at quality 5 or higher without major skipping. The unofficial Neuros firmware at open.neurosaudio.com (not updated since late August) plays most high quality vorbis files, but with very mild skipping.

That wouldn't be so bad, except the USB 2.0 hard drive promised to those that bought units before July 31 has been scrapped. And, no USB 2.0 drive at all is offered. Without one, it's difficult to recommend a Neuros above a Rio Karma or iRiver player.

I own one, but now consider it a mistake given the support - or lack thereof.

transferring the music

[Ender Ryan]

Do you have to use their software to transfer your music to the device, or can you mount the device as a filesystem and copy files manually?

I'm just curious, as I'm cautious about having to use proprietary software to use a device. What happens in several years if the company goes under and there was a bug in the software that prevents it from working on newer systems? I've been burned before... Burns are painful :D

Linux User - Have Rio Karma 20

[marienf]

Just got my Karma yesterday.

I'd been putting of buying one of these until one appeared that

- Played Ogg Vorbis
- Had non-trivial storage capacity in a form-factor what fits my pockets.
- Had non-trivial autonomy.
- Management App that ran on Linux, or USB storage device simulation.

I must say I'm delighted so far. The cradle is plugged in to my stereo and is banging out Mussorgski (New Zealand Symphony Orchestra) with excellent dynamics and clarity.

I left it on and playing when going to sleep, yesterday evening. When I woke up 6 hours later the battery indicated "half", which is about right for the predicted 15-hour playtime. Of course I don't know if the battery indicator is has been weighed for linearity.

I've played downloaded (from emusic.com) mp3's and self-ripped Oggs, so far, and they sound just great. I have them cross-faded, and ise nice classic VU-Meters for display.

After unpacking, connecting to the network (the Cradle has a 100BT connector - the device does DHCP or manual IP setting.) copying the jarball for the "Lite" versions (which is what the Java apps are called) to my laptop, and running it, nothing much worked,at first.

The app allowed me to delete the pre-stored tracks, and to copy new ones from my HD, but the player would not see them. Also, character translation didn't work very well in the app.
So In checked out software and firmware versions on the support site, and the ones on the device and CD were hopelessly outdated already.
After updating both (I had to drive to work to find a Windoze Box.. the updater is an exe file and will not work with Wine) everything was suddenly okay, and I'm now a happy Karma User.

One downside so far: The included earphones hurt my ears and don't sound too great. Both cushions spontaneously fell off as I was removing the plugs from my ears, and were lost, already.

"My Karma is Great" :-)
For what I know from 2 days ownership, I can certainly recommend it. /hrf

My thoughts on Rio Karma...

[hiryuu]

I haven't tested out a karma yet but I definitely love my empeg and if it's half as good it's much better than anything else.

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.

Re:My thoughts on Rio Karma...

[CritterNYC]

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)

The Karma is a USB 2.0 hi-speed device. You should definitely drop in a USB 2.0 card for your machine, it will greatly improve your transfer times.

Karma is nice

[Andrey]

I bought Karma a couple of weeks ago. I was going to Europe and wanted a player with a battery that would last longer than my typical excursion into the city.

Karma has lots of attractive features: compact shape, fairly good interface, Ogg Vorbis support, cradle that supports both USB and Ethernet, 12-14 hour battery life (from my experience), and a cool Rio DJ feature that can serve up tracks based on most/least recently played, by decade, random, etc. I abused the player pretty heavily on my trip and it has held up nicely. Granted, there were a couple of glitches when going between tracks with mode set on Random, but I expect that will be fixed in a firmware update.

The Rio Music Manager could use some work, especially in the area of playlist manipulation. But since there is an Ethernet interface, I expect someone will come up with a package that does a much better job.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with it and 20G will last me a while.

Re:The current state of Linux

[Herschel Cohen]

Sorry, I did not read this diatribe in its entirety - however - it sufficed to read up to the point where there was supposedly more 'content' that I stopped.

This note lacks credibility and sounds more akin to an out-of-work MSCE that is trying to suppress a new reality.

Sorry Linux has long since left the academic only space and even the SCO assault will only for a time delay the timid.

I suggest that this Fortune 500 IT Consultant take up writing fiction where his/her talents so obviously reside.

I don't understand.... OGG is better than that....

[Negativeions101]

I keep reading posts about people who say that OGG files are larger in file size than MP3s. In my experiences that it totally not true otherwise the whole purpose ot OGG would seem to be defied altogether, right? I usually encode at -q 4. That's 128KB VBR by default. Now there's no way a 128 VBR is going to be bigger than a 128KB CBR, right? I've seen the file sizes for myself and -q 4 OGG is always smaller than a 128KB MP3. To add insult to injury, the OGG sounds as if it was encoded in around the 160-170KB range in MP3 format. So in my experiences OGG files are smaller and sound better than MP3's. I don't know why others aren't getting the same results. To me, OGG is the greatest thing ever. It's awesome and free. If that doesn't rock I dunno what does. And why more people aren't using OGG? Beats the crap out of me.

Re:I don't understand.... OGG is better than that.

[Negativeions101]

oops... I wasn't thinking... ya, ogg would be bigger than an mp3 of equal bitrate VBR. Still, OGG sounds better, saves space... especially if you have a small digital music player, like a 128MB or something, than OGG would come in handy.

Re:I don't understand.... OGG is better than that.

[Negativeions101]

Didn't CT'd have an article where OGG was promoting the format by comparing OGG 64KB with a 128KB MP3 or something? That's kinda pushing it, but in any case, you don't have to go as high a bitrate with OGG to get the same quality of sound when compared with MP3.

Got New Material?

[tonedevil]

Oddly enough, the worst troll ever doesn't get better by being repeated.
www.linuxquestions.org
pub59.ezboard.com
docs.linux.com
www.kuro5hin.org

All-in-one device

[rwa2]

I have to admit that I'm not enough of a music fan to consider blowing over $100 on something that just plays music. But it would be cool to have it all with me everywhere I go. So far, I haven't seen any integrated small device that does it all, so I've found it cheapest to build everything around a laptop and lug around all the components in the bag:

• $1400 Dell laptop w/ NVidia 3D card, WiFi, bluetooth, IrDA, USB2.0, Firewire
• $150 Garmin GPS, plugs into serial port
• $80 tri-band GSM/GPRS phone w/ bluetooth & IrDA. Right now I just use dialup, but eventually I'll add $20 a month for unlimited GPRS service (~120kbps?) from T-Mobile. I figure I'll get much more use out of this than their WiFi access, since I don't spend all that much time in Starbucks & airports.
• $150 Quickcam Pro 4000 or whatever for laptops. Haven't bought this yet either, since I already have a normal digital camera ($200), as well as a firewire DV camcorder ($450).

So all this equipment fits in a bag together and pretty much lets me do whatever I need to do when I go somewhere, just about anywhere:

• Check email / Slashdot from anywhere around the world with GSM/GPRS/WiFi coverage.
• Find out where the hell I am, tell me where I'm going, and how to get to a good restaurant when I'm there
• Take pictures & movies of what I'm doing. Haven't worked out video conferencing yet (no one to video conference to) but it's on the list.
• oh yeah, play music / movies, both from my entire personal collection, or streaming from the internet
• Have all of my Personal Organizer info with me, as well as work
• ...and if I'm not having enough fun where I am, I can play games.

I'd love it if someone made a small pocket device with all that functionality (PDA, GPS, GSM/GPRS, WiFi, good quality photo & movie camera, music player, & >20GB storage), but I just haven't seen it yet - only in bits and pieces. Until then, I'll likely just continue lugging my backpack around :P

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Ogg is better quality, easier to use... (OT q.)

[twitter]

What is gnuphonograph?

I could have that one wrong. Gramofile, pointed to by another poster, looks like it. I saw it once in Debian unstable, before I had sound cards working. Under stable, I get the same thing done with krecord and audacity. I'm sorry I got the name wrong, but it's been about a year since I drooled over the package descrition.

Just a little problem...

[Angram]

I'm not a programmer.

Re:Just a little problem...

[jeremyhu]

well then this could prove to be a great way to learn a bit about perl. Tasks like this one were how I learned how to use regular expressions in perl...

Make your self and amp.

[Mastagunna]

I have the SR-60s my self, and they can be driven from any source I have. They are almost the same as the 80s, and can work with stuff as low as my 5mw+5mw Minidisc player. But if you do find any of the portables not driving them enough, spend like 20 dollars on parts and built a simple op-amp based amp. I know op-amps are not ideal, but you have them in the player already. They will really make the Grados shine, and you can configure them to make them bright or warm depending on prefernce, and pads used.

A easy design can be found at Headwize

http://headwize2.powerpill.org/projects/showproj .p hp?file=cmoy2_prj.htm

Sorry don't know how to make a link, but atleast you know it aint something gross!

Exactly (Codec name vs "file type" name)

[weston]

Exactly. And the stupid part about it is that they actually have some good names easily within reach. Ogg Vorbis is the name of the codec. It doesn't have to be the name of the "file type". Sorensen? QuickTime. Motion Picture Expert Group layer3? MP3. Ogg Vorbis? Perhaps: XPH audio. Xiph. Xip. Something else, for goodness sake.

jihaded

[MemeRot]

Submitted by mdog at 01:02:42 on Dec. 08, 2003 EST
I ripped off this comment:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10771&cid=40 26 69

Then posted it AC:

http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=88284&ci d= 7644888

Then called *myself* as AC:

http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=88284&ci d= 7645014

If it gets modded down as redundant, I will have sucked up 11 moderator
points...it only ended up at +4, but I saw it go back and forth several times, so I suspect it sucked up quite a few mods.

But I am only the messenger; it is all for the glory of Allah.

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