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Dcube: Portable Audio With Ogg And A Scroll Wheel
Slowtreme writes "There have been many attempts recently to cash in on Apple's iPod success. Napster, Dell, and others have made iPod clones. This Korean Dcube looks like they are going all out. With 1.5 gig, Ogg and MP3 support, grey scale display, USB2.0, wireless, FM radio, it looks like a nice device. Most noticeable however is the scroll wheel, Apple holds patents (pending) on scroll wheel design. How much noise will this make?" (The Napster-branded one is actually a Samsung product; Samsung, too, is supporting Ogg Vorbis in some models, though not in that one.)
Rio Karma supports Ogg-Vorbis and FLAC files already, is 20gig, and can be had for less than $250. Where's the justification for buying a 1.5gig player? Apple is on crack and the Dell is just a rebadged Creative Labs Nomad Zen.
:(
BTW: IRiver also makes an Ogg-capable portable, several of them, but their 20gig model is about $399.
It even LOOKS iPod-ish
My wife would love the FM recording, too.
I'm on a chair.
Don't confuse this Dcube with NEC's D-Cube .
My lack of God, it's Trotsky!
Ogg is simply a better codec than MP3. The codec simply makes music sound better when played back. In MP3, you get audio artifacts (usually higher frequencies). Ogg/Vorbis attempts to minimize this, and the result is simply a better codec. The downside to Ogg is that it takes a fairly hefty processor for a mobile player to reproduce the sound. Thus, the player costs more because you're using a faster/more complex processor. For audiophiles, Ogg is a very good thing. For budget listeners, MP3 is a compromise.
Too bad the average sustained transfer rates for USB 2.0 are far lower than those of FireWire, despite the peak rate being higher.
My last MP3 player was a Compaq IPAQ-1. Compaq stopped supporting it and I had a lot of problems trying to get their software to work on Win 2000/XP/20003. I can't just copy my music to its memory cards because guess what? It is stored in a proprietary format. That means you need to have their software which means that if they go out of business or don't support your OS, your nice little gadget is worthless!
With my NexIIe, I can just plug the device in via a USB cable to my computer and it shows up as a disk drive. I can copy music files (or even copy other files for storage). If I want better performance, instead of connecting the NexIIe, I just pull the CompactFlash card and put it into a card reader. I use no tool more complicated than explorer to manage my music.
The current firmware even supports CF up to 2GB. I don't see why you would want a 2GB hard drive when you could have 2GB of solid state. That said, it would be nice to have a 10+ GB version of my player.
Evolution: love it or leave it
USB 2.0 has a higher peak speed than Firewire 400, but Firewire sustains higher speeds, so it works out to be faster at copying large amounts of data.
Isn't USB 2.0 faster than first-generation firewire? I think USB 2.0 runs at 480mbps and firewire runs at 400mbps.
That's the theoretical maximum output, never actually matched in real life. Real life benchmarks usually display much better performance of Firewire 400 over USB 2.0. There is a FAQ on USB that sums up the difference as follows: USB and 1394 are complimentary technologies. 1394 is for devices where high performance is a priority and price is not, while USB is for devices where price is a priority and high performance is not.
Lower, but not far lower (USB 2.0 ~ 34MB/sec, FW400 ~ 40MB/sec). As others have pointed out, the transfer rate on USB 2.0 is not the bottleneck in this type of device, it's usually the storage device.
I always find the flip side of the equation funnier... When people buy external USB/Firewire hard drives, they select 7200rpm drives over 5400rpm drives. The bottleneck on those devices is the USB 2.0 or Firewire interface, so the (lower cost, cooler running, lower power consumption, quieter) 5400rpm drive is actually the better choice.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
The dimensions are comparable to iPod.
The iPod mini is 3.6 by 2.0 by 0.5 inches
The iPod 15GB and 20GB is 4.1 by 2.4 by 0.62 inches
The iPod 40GB is 4.1 by 2.4 by 0.73 inches
The D-cube is 88 by 48 by 19 mm (3.46 by 1.88 by 0.74 inches) using the conversion chart
So, the DCube is smaller in height and width compared to the mini although almost as thick as the 40GB iPod.
Free XBox, PS2
I can VERY strongly recommend the Rio Karma to you. Point by point . . .
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* Native Ogg-Vorbis and FLAC support
Check
* Regular firmware updates that include customer suggestions
Check, double. The community surrounding the Karma is incredible, and the developers are amazingly responsive
* Optional remote (preferably with its own display
Not at the moment. The campaign goes on
* Ability to input audio via line-in and/or microphone. On-the-fly encoding not required
No, and very unlikely to happen IIUC
* FM radio tuner
No, ditto. But you've got 20Gb of *good* music in your pocket, why listen to the radio?
* Semi-decent interface with well-organised playlisting and options. So many cheap flash-based players coming out of Asia these days have terrible interfaces. Also, an iPod-style scroll wheel or similar input device is necessary for scrolling through thousands of songs
An emphatic YES. The Karma's interface is amazingly intuitive and fast, particularly when it comes to navigating your collection. Artists appear under first-letter tabs, for example, which when you have 500+ different artists makes a whole lot of difference!
* Ability to sort folders/playlists by date, album, last modified, year and artist et cetera (i.e. dynamic rearranging of playlists, song lists according to ID3 tab information)
Hmmm. Interesting - I suspect not, though I haven't tried. On the other hand, this is exactly the type of thing the developers at Rio are eating up at the moment . .
* Access to other parts of tag information including year and lyrics
All tag information is available. "Wicked cool" lyrics functionality in the works
* On-the-fly playlisting
Check
* Gapless playback
Check, for any format that supports it - including mp3.
* USB 2.0 or Firewire connectivity. Additional ethernet highly desirable
Check to USB2 and ethernet
* Can be mounted as external hard drive
Not at present, although apparently this is in the works
* 15+ hour replaceable battery essential
Check to battery life. It's currently replacable in Japan and the word is that this will spread to the US / UK soonish. However, the battery will last for about three years when used 6 hours a day as it is . .
The Karma is SUPERB. Really. I may come across like a fanboy, but that's cos I am - it's the first DAP which works EXACTLY how I want it to. The responsiveness of the community makes it second to none IMHO . .
P
Sorry to go around Slashdot being some kind of mp3-champion but i think it gets an unfair bashing around here sometimes. The LAME team (which I'm not part of) has put an enormous amount of effort into getting transparency at around 200kbps and to say otherwise is doing them a disservice I feel. It is true however that the design of MP3 as a spec has some limitations which are not completely solved even by using very high bitrates, for example, however your post exaggerates the severity of these in real situations. OK I'm done :)
OT: How do you spell art[e/i]facts anyway? :)
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