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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'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)
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.
Ha! Apple should be happy if they aren't sued because of patent infringement. The australians patented the wheel before them.
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
However don't set your expectations too high, it seems they still need to work a bit on their Korean translation engine:
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
As regards portable music playback devices, don't compare apples and ogg ranges.
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.
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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