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Thoughts on the New Crop of Ogg Aware Players?
Steve Andre' asks: " Given the approaching season, I'm wondering if many have used and have opinions about the new Ogg Vorbis capable portable players out there. What I'd like to find is at least a CD/MP3/Ogg capable player which sounds good and doesn't do 'odd' things. What's it like out there? Can I finally roast my Ogg files and take them with me for a walk?"
How about a head unit for my truck's sound system that plays Ogg? I have yet to find one, anyone have a link?
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
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).
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
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you might wanna check out the Neuros player.
small flowers crack concrete
here. Check the thread/archives, there's more.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
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.
My Zaurus plays them quite nicely, though only 2 hours per charge.
If Apple supported Ogg I would actually replace my current iPod to get it. I encode all my files at 384 with lame (extreme preset) and I'd love to move all my music to ogg just to save some disk space.
Of course, it is sort of a double edged sword with Apple. If they support a format that saves 30% more disk space than Apple then some people would buy the 20 gig model instead of the 30.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
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.
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?
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 :-)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
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.
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!
Rio Karma 20 is the One ;-)
...
...
.ogg yet ...
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
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
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
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 $99, it was worth taking a slightly less polished product, so that I could support an OSS / Linux-friendly company.
Zaurus is a good quality player and much more flexible than "normal" players. I use Open Zaurus the ogg tools you can get for it and CF. A 64 meg CF is cheap and loads up an hour's worth of music and a shell script or two for random play. Larger CF cards are getting cheaper all the time and a CF wifi card could eliminate the need for the clumsy transfer step. I'm sure people will make software that does all of this easier than my dinky shell script, but I like the speed of simple tools like sed and urandom. Don't forget to use the -q flag for ogg123 to silence the output and don't forget to change the power and light settings so the screen turns off but the power does not and you have a beautiful and very powerful jam box and rounds out an all free music system.
My next project for it is to get a car power adaptor and a little nicer mounting system than I already have.
Open Zaurus is a little more flexible than the software that comes with it, but you might not want to do that if you need to sync with nasty old Lookout or something. Debian Zaurus with X11 will be massivly cool when it settles down to stable.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Taking the time to put ogg into a player costs money in terms of labor and development, and for that .0001% (or less) of people actually interested in it makes it something of a questionable business decision to spend the time and money on.
Businesses exist to make money. By using OGG, they do not pay patent royalties or fees. If they charge the same amount per device as they do for MP3, they could make $5 or $10 more. Even selling 100,000 devices, they could make between half and a full million dollars in extra profit. That is enough to grab the attention of most businesses.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Whats this ogg thing? Some elitest-i-hate-the-matinstream-so-i-use-linux music format or something?
Ogg Vorbis is a free and very high quality encoding tool set. It supports variable bit rate while being very easy to use. Ogg files are generally smaller than mp3 for the same level of quality.
Software freedom confers several key benefits. There are no patents or royalties on the tools so manufactures are free to use them and you don't have to pay for their licensing. You will also always be able to find software players for any platform and don't have to wory about DRM unless the plaform itself has been cripled by it. Copyright and patent problems made players like Lame and Not Lame difficult for an average computer user such as myself. Not being able to encode my own music colection to mp3 was a real bummer. Vorbis tools is a deb package that requires no compiling and just works. Between it, abcde, audacity and gnuphonograph, your sound needs are covered.
Let's go over that again, beter, cheaper, easier, less encumbered, that about covers it.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I had a Neuros, I sent it back. It was huge, heavy, took forever to boot, and I was very disappointed in the FM broadcast feature's sound quality. The ability to record from FM and use soundprints to ID songs was very cool, but didn't justify the price.
I have a Rio Karma now. I love it. The form factor is excellent, the sound quality is amazing, the boot up is quick, the interface is incredibly responsive, I'm running out of adjectives, so I'll just leave it at "overall very impressive."
A huge factor for me though is the Ethernet capability of the Karma. Not only does it provide cross platform capabilities (the Neuros linux usb drivers were very immature back when I had mine), but it allows me to use my Karma as an AudioTron equivalent. I have the dock in by my stereo with a wireless bridge. A very elegant setup.
- Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.
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.
Adding support for a new format requires considerable time in the form of having not only the programming for it done, but then the considerable amount of testing before you start printing circuits. The development costs are a major investment.
I doubt they would sell 100,000 devices on OGG alone. OGG just isn't that popular. As a CS major at a major public university where CS is the 2nd largest major, I don't know of a single soul who uses OGG, even among those who use linux. And thats among college students who are by far the largest music file gatherering population.
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I like to see what song I have playing, how far into I am, and I like quick access to a simple, small playlist, etc. Being able to bind hotkeys isn't a substitute for a decent GUI. This is why Linux isn't ready for the desktop.
GL
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
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
Damn.. nothing yet..
End of line..
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.
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.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
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/ )
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.
Given the recent fuss over the iPod's $200 battery replacement charge, this should be worth checking out before purchase.
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.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
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)
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.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Just got my Karma yesterday.
:-) /hrf
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.
I bought the first 20GB Karma that appeared in the local Best Buy - I had promised myself a Neuros, but on hearing that there were problems with skipping on higher-bitrate oggs, I decided to wait until the firmware was improved. In the meantime, the Karma was announced, and I loved the size of it, and so it goes...
Anyway, same thing with the Karma, initially: skipping on high-bitrate tracks. About two weeks after I bought it, firmware 1.1.1 was released, and the skips disappeared completely. The unit is nicely compact, and sits nicely in the front pocket of my jeans. Battery life isn't bad at all - I commute an hour to work, and depending on how much I use it outside of the car, I can usually make it to the weekend before having to recharge. (No, I didn't buy the car DC adaptor.)
I do have a few issues - and these are minor - one being the transfer speeds (USB, dunno if it supports USB 2.0 as my machine doesn't have it and I'm too lazy to check the Karma's documentation). It took about six to seven hours to transfer about 14GB, which isn't terrible, since i just left it go overnight. The second issue I had was on the usability of the interface. Playback is a no-brainer, easy and fairly intuitive. Playlist building and sorting, on the other hand, didn't come quite as quickly to me. I have yet to thoroughly investigate that avenue, though, since I haven't fully checked out the Music Manager software and since I just tend to put "All" on shuffle.
My two cents, as it were.
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
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.
-Andrei
- $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 aroundComment removed based on user account deletion