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.)

Comments

Rio Karma supports Ogg and FLAC with 20gb for $250

[Anonymous Coward]

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. :(

OGG? What is that about?

[Anonymous Coward]

When I hear OGG, I immeidately think that it must be whack, but slashbots constantly say that won't buy something unless it supports OGG. Is it like 220V power or USB something? What is it? good or whack?

The price matters

[MooCows]

If this is cheap enough, I'll definitely buy it.
The one thing still preventing me from buying a portable audio player is the price.
I don't need 20GB of music in my pocket, 1,5GB is more than enough for me.

Re:The price matters

[harlows_monkeys]

I don't need 20GB of music in my pocket, 1,5GB is more than enough for me

Don't underestimate the convenience. 20 gig is enough for many people to rip and download all of their CDs. They don't have to plan ahead what they want to take with them.

1.5 gig is 10-20 albums, depending on how you rip. I would not like to have to pick what 10 albums I'm going to take to work each day.

Sometimes I listen to something like Pink Floyd or Neil Young, and then feel like more, and might end up listening to 5 albums in a row from that artist. Other times, after one album, I want something totally different next, like Garrison Keillor.

It would be horrible to have to pick in the morning which 10 albums are going to fit in with my mood that day.

Apple Music

[mgs1000]

It's also kinda funny that, on the web page, the device's display shows a couple of Beatles songs. (The Beatle's record label is Apple Corps)

Amazingly bad copy

[elliotj]

I never fail to be amazed at how often companies try to copy Apple's design only to produce a product that looks similar but is noticably uglier.

It's like on Charles in Charge where one of the sisters was noticeably hotter than the other one, and yet in one episode the ugly sister won a beauty contest just to show that there's more to a person than looks but that didn't change the fact that everybody still would rather jump the hotter sister.

Apple patented the wheel?

[gst]

Ha! Apple should be happy if they aren't sued because of patent infringement. The australians patented the wheel before them.

Re:Apple patent on scroll wheel is ridiculous

[rev063]

It's not just a wheel. The wheel is just the physical interface. There's also the way it scrolls through long lists quickly, and the way it interacts with the other buttons, that make it such a great and unique piece of interface design.

All the best interface designs are obvious ... in retrospect. You can't just say "It's a wheel!" without recognizing the enormous amount of effort and care that went into its design and engineering.

The wheel is what makes the iPod unique, and it deserves its success because of it. This is one of the good uses of patents, in the sense that it gives a manufacturer a temporary monopoly as a reward for innovative design, and will hopefully spur other innovative designs in the iPod comptetitors. Seems like a good thing to me.

Babelfish Translation of the Korean Product page

[rcastro0]

Easier if you can't read Korean:
Babelfish Translation of the Korean Product page

However don't set your expectations too high, it seems they still need to work a bit on their Korean translation engine:

The NHD-150D supports a next generation digital sound cause OGG VORBIS file format (ogg) . The MP3 the sound quality and the enemy who jump over a file 500Kbps until it will be able to remake the ogg file which is proud a dosage from the NHD-150D. (sic)

Dcube vs iPod

[tarzan353]

As regards portable music playback devices, don't compare apples and ogg ranges.

Re:OGG? What is that about?

[HeX314]

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.

WTF?

[thatguywhoiam]

If this is cheap enough, I'll definitely buy it. The one thing still preventing me from buying a portable audio player is the price... I don't need 20GB of music in my pocket, 1,5GB is more than enough for me.

NO! Nonononono. Dude. Come on.

This is Slashdot. "I don't need 20 GB of music".. of course you don't need it. But you will demand it. As a... nerd, or something.

Now suck it up, and demand a 1 ounce 50GB overmediaplayer with a folding plasma screen and support for Ogg Stupidname. For $50. It is your goddammed right!

:)

Re:FireWire

[Durandal64]

Too bad the average sustained transfer rates for USB 2.0 are far lower than those of FireWire, despite the peak rate being higher.

If I were to buy a new mp3 player...

[turkeyphant]

I bought a second generation 20GB iPod soon after they came out. However, I now have more music than I can fit on it and I'm getting interested in re-ripping my tracks at higher quality or even investigating FLAC. Also, Apple is doing me a disservice by preventing me from using Ogg-Vorbis which I still think is superior to LAME's output. If I download .oggs, I then have to go through decompression and another round of lossy compression to create mp3s that will play on my iPod.

As such, I'm very interested in the latest releases of hard-drive based mp3 players. I especially like the look of the iRiver players and I'm hoping to try out my friend's new Rio Karma. Nevertheless, I will have to save up again if I want to get a new player and there are a few minimum feature requirements I can't help thinking would be easy to include on a new player.

• Native Ogg-Vorbis and FLAC support
• Regular firmware updates that include customer suggestions
• Optional remote (preferably with its own display
• Ability to input audio via line-in and/or microphone. On-the-fly encoding not required
• FM radio tuner
• 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
• 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)
• Access to other parts of tag information including year and lyrics
• On-the-fly playlisting
• Gapless playback
• USB 2.0 or Firewire connectivity. Additional ethernet highly desirable
• Can be mounted as external hard drive
• 15+ hour replaceable battery essential

I don't give a shit for ITMS compatibility or crappy organiser-style features or games. I just want to be able to fit all my songs in my pocket and find the right tunes to play when on the train. Is it really too much to ask?

Re:If I were to buy a new mp3 player...

[big_gibbon]

I can VERY strongly recommend the Rio Karma to you. Point by point . . .

* 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

The question no one is asking.... DRM

[steppin_razor_LA]

I purchased a NexIIe from Frontier Labs because I wanted a player that had no (or at least did not require) DRM.

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.

the REAL winners in the mp3 player wars

[sbma44]

are going to be models with gigantic hands

Re:FireWire

[JonathanBoyd]

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.

Re:FireWire

[Trurl's Machine]

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.

Re:FireWire

[macemoneta]

Too bad the average sustained transfer rates for USB 2.0 are far lower than those of FireWire, despite the peak rate being higher.

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.

Calm Down Please

[subjectstorm]

Ok, this thing certainly has A TYPE of scroll wheel. And yes, Apple has patents for its own version of a scroll wheel - as well as the way the wheel itself works and how it works specifically with the i-pod. It could be that this company has absolutely ripped Apple off.

But Apple isn't suing anyone or releasing statements detailing its intentions to do so just yet, mnk? Lots of things have scroll wheels. My mouse has one. I don't think we can patent a simple hardware control itself. i mean, why not patent a toggle switch if that were the case?

How about we wait and get just a LITTLE more information before we start branding patents as ridiculous or, on the other end, start a wildly speculative crusade to protect Apple's intellectual property.

$1

[SengirV]

I wish I had $1 for every iPod killer MP3 player that has been released to date. I could then afford an iPod.

parent misleading

[real_smiff]

Ogg lets you avoid artefacts at a lower bitrate than MP3. To say "In MP3, you get audio artifacts [sic?] (usually higher frequencies)" is misleading because, if encoded properly (like LAME 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard) you won't get audible (which is what lossy codecs are all about: hiding audible errors) artefacts in a very high number (like >99.5%) of users&songs. Granted, Ogg is a better codec pretty much but please careful with the over-simplification in explanations :)

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? :)