Slashdot Mirror
iRiver Adds Ogg To Audio Player Firmware
Sesse writes "iRiver has just released firmware updates for its iFP-300T and iFP-500T flash memory-based audio player series. According to a news story on their site, this update includes features 'supporting the Ogg file format', so it looks like iRiver
can finally be added to the quickly growing list of
Vorbis-capable
hardware!"
Does it play ogg?
one more nail in the coffin of recording artists. not that i'm suprised. take a moment to think about the poor musicians freezing out in the street while you sit around the fire sipping eggnog and listening to pirated music on your new MP3 play this christmas you smug fucks.
I wish I'd known about this only 2 or 3 hours ago, I could have picked something up for my special someone.
One thing to note, though, is that if you encode your Ogg to reasonable quality (500Kbps) this patch isn't going to support you, so you will have to use a converter (they will soon provide for free) to actually downsample the music. I guess it's portable, so it isn't like I'm listening to the stuff through expensive high-quality speakers, but it is an extra step.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
the IMP series (though not sure which models) is what I'm waiting for. If that wasn't promised, I'd try to find a reader in Korea who'd be willing to help me import a Samsung Yepp ogg-capable CD player.
Shame about the 96kbs floor, though -- that's far more than I need for audiobooks. Still, CDs are cheap enough I should not complain.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
rideculous grammer/spelling mistakes
heheh. that's priceless. i agree with what you wrote though. insightful, but it'll probably get modded as flamebait by some mod that's never read a techical manual in his/her life.
If Apple is so pro-open source, when are they going to add Ogg Vorbis to the iPod?
...something tells me that hot redhead has no idea what an iRiver is, much less ogg-vorbis. I bet she knows what an iPod is!
Please help metamoderate.
...right?
How about adding AAC support? And making it work with iTunes?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Well, the iRiver players exist, while the mini iPod is a rumor that may not exist.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
But producers of audio-playback devices are stuck with a problem: because the vast bulk of digital sound out there stored on PCs is in MP3 format, they have to support MP3, and both Microsoft and Apple are not helping by pushing users to their own particular patented formats, thus providing little incentive to support an open format. This causes problems: it encourages people to continue using the closed formats, and that in turn encourages manufacturers to only support the closed formats. This is wrong, seriously wrong, and serious issues of liberty - both personal and civil - are at stake here. For without an open format, the plug can be pulled.
This quagmire of open formats dying because they need to dominate the market before they can dominate the market will not disappear by itself. Resources need to be devoted, and unless people are prepared to actually act, not just talk about it on Slashdot, nothing will ever get done. Apathy is not an option.
You can help by getting off your rear and writing to your congressman or senator. Tell them that free and open music is important to you. Tell them that you appreciate the work being done by the open source and free software communities to create an infrastructure that will support truly free - as in liberty - music, but that if the problem of lack of commercial support for open file formats is not resolved, you will be forced to use less and less secure and intelligently designed alternatives. Let them know that SMP may make or break whether you can efficiently deploy OpenBSD on your workstations and servers. Explain the concerns you have about freedom, openness, and choice, and how patented file formats harms all three. Let them know that this is an issue that effects YOU directly, that YOU vote, and that your vote will be influenced, indeed dependent, on their policies on open file formats.
You CAN make a difference. Don't treat voting as a right, treat it as a duty. Keep informed, keep your political representatives informed on how you feel. And, most importantly of all, vote.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
Yes, It's called Eggn'Ogg
Help fight continental drift.
It appears that these players only have internal flash memory. So, I'm guessing that they're not expandable?
In any case, are these Mac compatible? If they can be setup as a universal-storage USB device (?), I would think so.
Alex Bischoff
HTML/CSS coder for hire
Right now I am getting good use out of gnupod/gtkpod for my iPod, but would love to see more vendor support from day one for linux.
You do not have to use Linux to appreciate Vorbis;-)
Help fight continental drift.
Remind me again how AAC, the audio codec from MPEG-4, is "their own patented format"? Explain also how AAC is somehow not "good enough for music[sic]-based audio"? How is it that Dolby labs, renown for their contributions to audio quality since the early 1970's (Dolby A, B, C, HX, etc. NR) are somehow not smart enough to help build a truly "audio-quality" codec?
I'm obviously mistaking these guys as people who know something about audio. I suppose these are issues better settled by my congressman and/or senator, who are no doubt well-versed in the intricacies of noise-masking, audibility thresholds, and data compression algorithms.
Tim
I hate to break it to you, but being patented and being open are not mutually exclusive.
MP3 and ACC, like pretty much everything else that comes out of the MPEG, are pattented, but the formats are completely open and well documented complete with sample code.
Their liscences are focused on getting money, for the algorythims they spent their time and money developing, from the people who make money off of their work: comercial software and streaming systems with thousands of clients. They generally don't charge any fees, or even require any contact, from small free projects.
I'm all for open source, but this feeling that it's wrong for people to get paid for their hard work is just plain bullshit.
That's not true. I found some spelling mistakes in my A7N8X-Deluxe manual, ones that were rather obvious-- "teh" instead of "the", for example.
Perhaps they simply spend more time on the product than the manual? After all, most people buying a motherboard, for example, know what they are doing.
Hell, I have seen programmers write English rather poorly (hell, you occasionally find typos in the program's comments, or even the program itself) but the code otherwise is sound and clean. Haven't you? After all, just one typo in a program's code and bug up the whole program... yet they misspell words...
It just seems to me tech companies don't care about the manual's grammar very much. I see typos all the time in tech stuff that otherwise works fairly well.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
As for AAC being "not good enough for music[sic]-based audio". That claim appears nowhere in my comment. Nor was music misspelt, either in what you quoted and followed by [sic], or in the instances of the word in my comment.
I did say that Dolby's AC3 is good, but not considered good enough for music based audio. AC3 is a codec oriented towards the requirements of movies. Regardless of whether you consider it an acceptable container for music (most, I suspect, would rather use Ogg, AAC, MP3, or WMA), it's patented, requires licensing, and therefore subject to the same complaints as AAC, MP3, and WMA.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
...ogg on its face?
Tim
Please note that iRiver has actually had a multimedia player capable of playing OGG Vorbis files for quite some time now. I refer to their iHP-120, their 20GB hard drive player. Nevertheless, it's nice to see OGG Vorbis support on their flash devices as well now.
Bravo, you managed to write a large amount there without really saying anything. What are you trying to get at? What are we voting for and writing to congressman about?
It's not the governments right to tell audio playback manufacturers what to support nor is it governments right to say Apple, Microsoft, and Farunhoffer are not allowed to patent their formats. They worked just as hard as the ogg vorbis team to develop theirs, and they deserve to do what they see fit with their format.
Or perhaps you intend to use the government to force broadcasters of digital content to use open formats for audio. It's shady enough forcing them to broadcast in digital as it is.. now you want the government to force them to use a certain digital format? If it was my business I'd want the right to broadcast how and what I choose, so long as I abide by the regulations of the FCC in what frequencies I use. Frequency allocation is all they should be controlling as chaos would ensue and no wireless communication at all would be reliable if they did not.
Perhaps it's DRM you want them to vote against. Again I must defend the rights of the music and movie industry to use DRM, however in as much as I defend their rights to use I I'll defend your right to not buy hardware or listen to/watch content broadcast in a drm enabled format. I don't support the government forcing people to use DRM anymore than I support the government forcing them not to.
Legislating an open format to popularity is just as wrong as the opposing side using law to make such formats illegal or ensure they remain unpopular.
Perhaps none of these was your point and I completely missed it. If I did please make it clearer what your point was. Ogg vorbis support in digital audio players is being adopted very quickly. Check the list yourself! I was amazed when I saw just how many players support the format.
Oh, and one more thing..
This is wrong, seriously wrong, and serious issues of liberty - both personal and civil - are at stake here. For without an open format, the plug can be pulled.
Please elborate on how this plug can be pulled exactly when there are millions of mp3's and if not millions then hundreds of thousands of hardware players out there. Not to mention the plethora of freely available decoders and encoders of the MP3 format available on thousands of websites all over the world. That is an awefully big plug to pull. At best Fraunhoffer could prohibit the manufacture and sale of any new hardware players, and if that happened the public would very quickly move to another format... maybe even ogg vorbis because hardware players are becoming very wide spread and are growing in popularity by the day. People will continue to want to use them, and if they must they will switch formats to do so.
This is not a company that's gone good all of a sudden, they're just doing this because they know that this will make you guys buy iRivers instead of iPods. Where were they when I wanted my Rio 500 firmwire update to the Mac? Nowhere. Rio didn't care jack about me who spent money on their product at all. Good luck guys...
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
This only applies to the memory based players, it looks like. Hopefully they will also upgrade their line of CD players to play Ogg Vorbis discs. (do such things exist?)
I have an iRiver 180T and I love it. The battery life is exceptional and the earphones are the best in the market. The player does have its faults but would I buy a player from iRiver again? Absolutely. They know what they are doing, well at least their engineers do.
I'd recommend that you try the product before you bash it...basic logic dictates that you do this other wise you'd be committing a fallacy.
Your logic is flawed even if you have a Ph. D.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
Playing ogg-files isn't diffcult as far as I know ...on the vorbis website there is a link to a website that contains a plugin for media player that lets it play ogg-files. I think it should work. So, giving them the ability to play ogg-files is not so difficult I think. (winamp has built-in suppot for it, don't know from which version). So, you can exchange ogg-files with them, with not much setup-work.
p id=2
searched the link:
http://tobias.everwicked.com/oggds.htm
and for the rest on the vorbis-site:
http://www.vorbis.com/software.psp?
The [sic] was in reference to the implication that audio can somehow be based upon music. "Music-audio data" is most likely what you meant. (In contrast with "speech-audio data," which most of the aformentioned formats are suitable for.) It was also an ill-formed attempt to play on the "mu-sic[sic]" coincident location.
But I digress.
To use your argument about patented formats being inherently bad, consider the LP and 45 record formats, or the CD-Audio format. Each of these were covered by patents, and yet they each thrived as a medium for music delivery.
Simply suggesting that because AAC, MWA, or MP3 are covered by patents (and therefore protected against unauthorized use) they are somehow inherently evil or less desirable than OGG is as goofy as assuming that all open source solutions are inherently technically superior to any closed-source solution. It may or may not be, but the bozos in the House and Senate are surely not the ones who should be making such decisions.
Tim
I bought myself a sexy iMP 350 about a year ago, and last night negotiated it's sale hoping to put the money towards a Creative Zen Xtra 30gb or MuVo2 1.5gb (anyone know somewhere in America that ships these internationally?) but now I'm having second thoughts.
I love to put alot of research into products before I buy them, and the iRiver is one of the few products I've come across with *very* few negative reviews. It makes changing to a newer player kind of unnerving, especially with the kind of dedication the Firmware developers are putting in. Actually listening to customer requests.
Incidentally, if any iRiver reps are listening, (IMO) you really need to redesign your HDD players, the features are so nice, but the design is so poor. Why an LCD on the main unit with the quality of iRiver remotes?
"mp4" is here allready, as a matter of fact. However, any audio encapsulated in an MPEG-4 file that employs a bitrate higher than 64kbps is most commonly going to be MPEG-2 AAC encoded audio, and MPEG-2 AAC is nothing new. There are some fancier stuff for the lower bitrate audio streams in the MPEG-4 standard, but if you're like me, you tend to encode your music files at bitrates above 64kbps. For more information regarding MP4 (MPEG-4), see this FAQ from the Motion Picture Experts Group.
Does Winamp 2(.81 and above, iirc) not come with ogg support as standard?
Here you can see a list of all the devices they want to implement Ogg support for sooner or later. For some of the devices, it's never going to happen because of hardware limitations.
:-)
As someone else here already said, the iMP-400 and iMP-550 (IIRC) will get Ogg support in January. I'm certainly looking forward to it. As soon as they release the firmware, I'm going to buy one of those devices, I guess.
It looks like some things didn't really go as planned, with the iFP-300 support coming so quickly. But hey, isn't that good?
I proposed the absolute minimum because I do not consider myself, or anyone for that matter, a person whose views should be slavishly followed. I believe that we are all individuals, that we must all think for ourselves. And that, as Thomas Jefferson once said, it is far better to show someone the door, so that they may go through it. In many ways, we've lost sight of what leadership should be. Leadership is about trust, and freedom, and when people put their hands up and say "I believe! I believe! But I need YOU to tell me what to do! I need YOU to tell me what to write next!" then we don't lead, we dictate.
Every individual on Slashdot has their own view of how the world works, on how to best ensure that, say, Apple provides some sort of rational open format support. We can but tell our representatives that this is an important issue for us, and make our suggestions. They can then make the right decisions on the basis of the ideas and viewpoints expressed to them. I humbly request that my role solely be to initiate that process, by asking Slashdotters to contact those representatives.
As far as your second point goes, it's already a problem. We don't have that freedom with MP3 - we pretend to, but we can't even roll our own MP3 encoder without writing scripts for people who want it that grab sources from a German ftp site for dist11.zip, so that the authors can legitimately claim they're not shipping MP3 encoders themselves. It's a bad situation. It locks the open and free world out of MP3. It certainly makes it impossible to create an infrastructure for free and open music that works with existing players. What good is your infrastructure if it distributes Ogg and players play MP3?
KMSMA (WWBD?)
Another company using a lower case "i" to iDentify iTself?
The first time it was iNteresting.
The second time it was iRritating
Now it's just iDiotic.
here is my conclusion: you are full of shit. the iRiver is the best hardware out there. you buy one, you won't go back. i don't give a hard fuck what os you prefer, what liking you have as far as format for listening... this thing outperforms the ipod any day of the week. they don't use a house brand polymer compound battery in their hard drive players like the ipod... their flash players have a day's worth of battery life. i've NEVER had a problem with their customer service. the usability is fantastic. It's more durable than an ipod- i've run over my IFP390t with my fucking bike- it still works. the speakers are FANTASTIC compared to the ipod. you can keep your ipod and your ignorance... i've tried both products. you're stuck in your insignificant world of shit. enjoy it.
AAC, WMA, and MP3 are licensed formats. Someone without a license cannot produce a coder, media in that format, or player, or if they're able to do so now, they can't rely on the fact in the future.
With CDs this didn't matter. Anyone who could physically stamp a CD could afford to pay a royalty on it, simply rolling it into the cost. Anyone producing a CD player, likewise, merely needed to roll the royalty into the cost.
Show me how you can build a free and open infrastructure for the distribution of music where anyone can at any time put their hand up and say "Ok, we're now demanding royalties on..." clients, encoders, actual music, you name it.
You can't.
And I think you know that which is why you compared saying MP3 et al "are somehow {...} less desirable than OGG" to "all open source solutions are inherently technically superior to any closed-source solution". The latter is clearly hyperbole. The former is objectively correct when discussing the patent regime but at first glance sounds a bit like the latter. If you wanted to make a fair comparison, you'd have either said:
KMSMA (WWBD?)
no point going above 224, if you ask me (tho i encode at 320, just to be 'better').
---- oh no - it's the RIAA and their $100000000 fine. I'm gonna take that so seriously...
What in the world does SMP on OpenBSD have to do with the rest of your long-winded comment?
Forgive my ignorance, but isn't LAME compilable without either dist10.zip or dist11.zip? Blurb from the site: How am I being "locked" out of MP3s, when there exists free (as in free) software to encode my collection into MP3s?
I just got an iMP-550 CD based player from IRiver and have been trying to get my mp3 playlists working (no ogg vorbis support yet).
Turns out they only support CRLF linebreaks and \ path separators.
Since ogg vorbis is such a 'Linux' phenomenon I'd be pleasantly surprised to see LF and / support in the new ogg firmware for this player.
Does anyone out there with an iHP-120 know if it handles unix style playlists?
please please please please please Iriver please
http://ifp-driver.sourceforge.net/
Sure, vendor support is a nice thing but it typically means using crappy software. I would rather be able to just mount the device and drop files on it over using after-thought software any day.
This probably should have been linked in the article: http://www.iriver.com/company/news_view.asp?idx=35 5&page=1&mode=Total&strque=&field= 1
Also: http://slashdot.org/articles/03/09/30/006226.shtml
"..IFP390t with my fucking bike..."
did you hit it with your regular wheel, or one of your training wheels?
Your post makes you look like your about 5....with the mouth of a sailor.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually I wish that not only would they read the ID3, but take into account the file structure as well. If your restore from a Nomad (at least my Zen), everything is just dumped into one directory vs a folder per album and a folder with all of a artists albums per artist.
Gorkman
It's more durable than an ipod- i've run over my IFP390t with my fucking bike- it still works.
Holy shit!!
Why did you do that?!
I've seen at least one other story akin to this one. Once a few do it, they all have to do it lest their boards will bite their nails for each day their packaging doesn't feature some hip new standard. Be it 6,000,000===========D second skip protection, or some totally useless equalizer ( jazz | rock | pop | Bass Boot ).
Seriously, cool. Now I can start converting all my mp3s BACK to ogg after I realized the shit was useless for my car CD player.
It might interest you to read the following link: http://www.licensing.philips.com/licensees/conditi ons/cd/
At any point in time, Phillips or Sony could (even now) begin demanding royalties on new CD players, recorders, and so on, unless there was already an agreement in force with a particular manufacturer. I suppose this doesn't qualify as a "free and open infrastructure for the distribution of music," but it seems to have worked pretty well so far.
Tim
Means that the device will die off by flash memory exhaustion in the near future?
Can someone help me understand these players? I'm confused by a few things about them...
First off, why would anyone get a compactflash based player? CompactFlash is incredibly expensive.
The second issue applies to (almost) any type of media.
Sure, maybe now you don't have to bring a dozen CDs for your music, but you've only changed what you *do* have to carry around... Instead of carrying CDs, you have to carry tons of batteries, since the battery life on all solid-state digital players is terribly short.
Does anybody have an answer, or are digital music players all just selling for the novelty and "cool" factor?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I've found that actually customer support it quite decent. (or at least development) they even now still release new firmwares for their 2 year old cd players. Also they are great about replacing broken products. They used to be a lot better at customer support, like they responded to e-mails but since they've became the largest digital audio player company in Korea their support quality has slightly slowed and decreased... I'm just hoping they are building up for somethin fancy :=)
oh ive owned
iMP-250 (Actually RioVolt-250, but they are the same thing, broke)
iMP-550 (returned to buy an iHP-120)
iFP-300 (2, won one and sold it)
iHP-120 (current player i use most)
I use an i-Bead MP3/FM/Voice thingy to its full and record a lot of stuff on it (no ogg support yet though). I use it as a revision aid.
For recording voice & FM it would be great to have a decent speech encoder instead of the inefficient ADPCM WAV available. If Vorbis only goes down to 96kbps on this thing then that is not suitable for voice. In fact, Vorbis is just about OK for voice at 8kbps (I tried it) but obviously Speex would be better.
If the i-River had this facility I'd buy definitely buy it. But, as I already have an i-Bead, I'm not sure I can justify the expensive of just Vorbis.
n-t
__________
[Big Brick Wall]
n/t
Moof.
... which is why iPods are too lame for real geeks.
I sold my iPod for an iRiver and never looked back. Better sound, better interface, AA batteries, excellent FM tuners and recorder.
When everybody has an iPod, you know there's something better out there. Many iPod fans are simply too excited about the idea that they can afford it.
And having more than six yourself is intent to distribute. Sex shops get around this by saying they're "personal massagers" and "anatomically correct sex education models."
IAALS.
How much demand was there for AC3 before the ipod.
(Hint: none)
Apple users will take whatever Jobs shovels at them, assuming the quality is acceptable and its "blessed" by Apple.
The real asnwer is this: DRM.
They wont offer unencumbered format support, aside from those with massive user demand (read MP3), if they dont have to.
Think of the iPod as a tie in to iTunes music store, they certainly want to steer you towards the encumbered formats.
If quality was the only concern, it would be ogg+vorbis support without question.
CD->OGG->MP3->OGG is probably not going to sound as good as the mp3s you currently have.
Albuquerque PC
If Apple is so pro-open source, when are they going to add Ogg Vorbis to the iPod?
.ogg does not fit into that plan anywhere.
.ogg somehow becomes such a popular format in other mp3 players that it starts to bite into iPod sales. Yeah. Right.
In my opinion, never.
The iPod can play MP3 files becuase without it, the iPod would be dead in the water. However, what Apple really want is for you to migrate over to iTunes and Apple's very own proprietary, DRM-encrusted format, where you don't really own the files and can't play them on your machine when you upgrade the motherboard, and suchlike drivel. Suprisingly, it seems to be working so far.
Support for
I'd love to be wrong about this, but logically I don't see how. Unless
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
i can also write a simple script to do file globbing on the command line - but hey, i can just do a cat * and it works. pretty cool when something just works.
sorry, i'm not trying to be a punk about this, i'm really trolling around for users that have the ogg update to see if they can use unix native playlists.
cheers -pp
I have no experience with the iRiver 180T, but I have a very hard time believing the earphones are the best in the market.
The etymotic earphones that I use, which as far as I know are the best sounding earbud headphones in the world, cost (for the headphones alone) almost three times as much as the iRiver mp3 player. If iRiver can sell better headphones than the etymotics for 1/3 the price, and throw in an mp3 player along for free, then I'd be very interested in buying one.
KMSMA (WWBD?)
The notion that actual individuals would do the encoding, in a non-commercial environment, and only be encoding audio, really never occured to anyone until people started doing it, and even then those people who started doing it were usually (so usually it drowned out the others) doing so illegally - making MP3s of music they'd bought copies of to distribute to others via IRC, and then Napster, so even at that time it wasn't seen as an application that would take off.
If Fraunhoffer had seen the potential in the early nineties, I suspect they'd have directed the market a little more than they ended up doing.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
IRIVER - 20 GIG - auto-mounted drive: "I-RIVER IHP 120 20GB HARD DRIVE MP3 JUKE BOX WITH MP3 ENCODING FM TUNER &VOICE RECORDER # IHP120" http://www.compuplus.com/insidepage.php3?refer=pri cewatch.com&id=1001602
that's my christmas present :>
--even a broken watch is correct twice a day.
I'm a computer consultant, and on the road a lot. I'd love to have car stereo that would accept CDs full of MP3s and Oggs. Mostly Oggs since my music collection is mostly my own CDs which I have ripped to Ogg on my computer.
Are there any car CD players that support Ogg? And I don't mean an add-on that sits in the trunk, I'm in a pickup and don't have room for it. (although the kenwood music keg does look really cool.)
Got Apathy?
You are talking about professional grade earphones. Obviously you can't compare Sennheiser earphones that come with the iRiver with Etymotic.
-----
One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
You're welcome to your iPOD. I'll keep my iHP-120 which I can connect to modern Windows or Linux boxen without installing any device drivers, and onto which I can drag and drop my MP3/OGG files to directly without any silly jiggery pokery. And if I like, I can use it as a 20GB portable hard disk.
" full of mistakes and rideculous grammer/spelling mistakes."
Oh, that's just fucking rich!! Hahaha, PhD, my ass.
Mr. Lamer:
... Neat stuff :)
... If one existed, I'd like a CD-based player that also had a CF card slot, unlikely as that sounds, but when iRiver (or someone else) starts shipping a CD/AA ogg player in the U.S., they'll get my money ...
Huh, so you got a Neuros
I'm still waiting for an available CD(R(W)), AA-powered Ogg player, but it looks like next month there may be what I want from iRiver
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
The IRiver can do both, database and directory, so whatever floats your boat.
keep it simple.
If the price is right, then it has a chance of being an iPod-Killer.
heh etymotic earphones are absolutly worth every mother fucking penny!
I bought a pair of ES-4 earphones because they were the only things I could find that looked like they would work underneath my motorcycle helmet. They did, mostly at least. Hurts a bit to take the helmet off but hey... I only need to do that once or twice a day anyway.
They sound awsome... and with 29 db noise reduction, nothing says "I am not listning to you" quite like the completely oblivious expression of someone who can't even hear the slightest peep.
Of course you do have to get used to wearing them. They are basically built around reusable ear plugs, so there is a soft material (either foam or a rubber/plastic frob depending on which fits best for you) shoved into your ear canal.
and the cord... oh my god.... its like 9 feet long. great for routing in weird ways through a jacket. Out the helmet, clipped so there is plenty of slack, down my jacket, then out to the tank bag... soo soo nice.
-steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
that's actually kind of funny :) a gem lost amidst the dross. Thanks
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?