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40GB RCA Lyra: Apple Fans Needn't Fret
PaulEshoreLives writes "The Globe and Mail isn't taking too kindly to RCA's Lyra 40GB iPod 'competitor.' Amongst its gripes are a crazy-slow FFW. How slow? Like 6 minutes to get to the end of a 60 minute file. Gotta wonder how these things get missed at the beta stage."
I'ed like to take this opportunity to remind you of the Goatse !
Smile, don't click...
What's a FFW ?
And have these 6 minutes something to do with the 17-minute file copying troll ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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The requested URL (articles/04/10/27/1315231.shtml?tid=184&tid=141&
If you feel like it, mail the url, and where ya came from to pater@slashdot.org.
Come to wonder how these things get missed at the mod stage....
Will it make your iPod quit working? Or make you love your iPod less?
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
.. are conducive to rapid-scan indexing of frames.
..
Sure, on an uncompressed mpeg4, you can just fseek() where you need to go and pick right up, but some codecs (not gonna mention names) are designed with limitations that make faster-than-1x speed indexes exceedingly difficult for simple lower-power processors
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Might sell my iPod for one of these. Infact, I might start using Windows as well..
"Sweet llamas of the Bahamas !"
Why does every new hard disk mp3 player have to be labeled an iPod competitor? Some of these devices aren't even close to the iPod.
I am submitting an article on the Archos Gmini 400. This has gone too far. 'oooh the ipod can view photos!' jesus christ.
I have a Lie-ra too. The 128MB version. It claims to play MP3s but you must convert them to MPY format using a MusicMatch plugin!! (BTW: it plays WMA files too but without a conversion to MPY )
I wonder if this Lyra play MP3s or MPYs?
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
"Just another case of a geek trying to imitate the popular people and failing miserably."
You know, that White-Picket Fence "keeping up with the Joneses" agitated nervousness that comes as a result of being breast-fed consumerican ethics from the day you were born ..
..
Its sickening, really, to watch consumericans eat themselves over such things as 'competitive marketplace economics', but hey, when you live in a society that has to mask its innate desire for fascism with product-owning mechanics, you're gonna get sick a lot
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I'll check out the market in a year or two when my iPod is getting old and clunky and I feel like getting a new gadget. Until then, I'm not really thinking about mp3 players honestly...
In the software development world that would be the alpha stage. I can just see it now.
Engineer to Management.
We are trying to work on the fast forward function and we would like to do that before shipping.
Management to Engineer.
We must ship by this date, we don't care if the software is done correctly or not, just get us revenue.
Engineer to Management.
Ok, me must remove the FFW button from the machine.
Management.
No, leave it we have a great idea.
Management to end user and press.
"This is a new feature of the ffw button, we think that it should be a super slow function, for those times when you just have a little too much time on your hands."
Happens all the time
That every portable hard disk based music player is inferior to an iPod until we hear otherwise? We get the message.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So the forward-scan button gives you a 10x speed ffw. And? Why is this bad?
But then, I'm not getting my head round having single mp3 files that are 60 minutes long either, so that might explain it. I mean, there's Eno's Neroli, but I can't think of any others off the top of my head.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
Most cassette players and VCRs can go from start to end of a tape in about 1-2 minutes. That's sad.
It always strikes me as strange why a company would believe that simply jumping on the MP3 Player bandwagon, and not actually producing a superior product to the iPod, would yield better sales results than the iPod. Absolute insanity.
IGB: More fun than eating oatmeal!
oh man. ah've gotta yeast infection. ah hear that they's ack-chully quite common. one tahm mah brother smashed 'is toy truck on mah head. ah loved dat truck. my mamma gave it tuh me. she sez, "here yuh go betty, here yuh go. ya'all go on en have some fun now. dis is your truck betty, dis is your truck." den after he smashed it, ah pulled my pants down and ran towards the doughboy. dare it was! it was mah dolly steven! i swam over to the other end and sqeezed my dolly. i said, "i love you, steven." and the dolly said, "thank you very much ma'am, i love you very much too!" he's mah boyfriend now. now dat duh real steven ain't around no mo'. he ran off tuh some other state. he told me everything would be ah-ight. den ah went over tuduh liquor stowe down duh street en bought me a small plastic rose innuh glass tube. steven always takes duh rose out en uses duh case ez a crack pipe. he burns muh titz up wit' dat pipe sometimes, he does-he does! but et's a differnt burn den duh yeast infection. uh thinks uh gotta yeast infection. muh daddy says det et's from not warshin' mah ginnertuls wit dah erttention dat et dizerves. he says yuh havetuh maintain yer vurgina like a lawn mowah. but when i pour gasoline intah mah hole it burns even more! especialy when uh lite it up! oh man. ah've gotta yeast infection
Going through a 60 minute file in 6 minutes is still a fast forward. Fast is just a very ambibious term.
I don't think that every slashdot topic with the words "iPod" in it deserve to be on the front page.
I also wouldn't call every single device that plays MP3s an iPod competitor. The next thing you know you'll be throwing up newsposts about IBM laptops not having a scroll wheel.
Gotta wonder how these things get missed at the beta stage."
PHB: Beta stage? What beta stage?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
I have a few that are MUCH longer then an hour..
And are not split up by chapter... so its one huge file..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Apple Fans Needn't Fret
What is that saying about a group of people, that a competitor's product to Apple might cause you to "fret"? I guess its implying that Apple users don't like competition? But beyond that, why should competition cause anyone outside of Apple cause any stress for anyone that doesn't make a living selling Apple realted products? Its just wierd thats all. I understand that we can all get caught up in fandom every now and then, but geez louise give it a break.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I believe "apple fans" have a reason to fear iRiver and the Nomad Zen more then this.
since IMNSHO both of these give you far better bang for your buck, not to mention the iRiver has more features.
Just my two cents really.
Does the Lyra support the seek to xx:xx time function ?
Otherwise high speed ffw is not a very frequently used function... in winamp eg. i would directly click at the approx position from where i would like the play to continue instead of ffwding.
but as someone has already posted it depends on the codec also.
vik
[all generalizations are untrue except this one]
I really wonder sometimes why people make statements like this. I just got my free ipod from the freeipods.com deal and I love it. I am not fearfull of some other mp3 player any more that I am fearfull of of tin foil hats.
In that case: have a look at the Rio Karma. 1. It's cheaper 2. It plays Ogg 3. It has a better screen resolution 4. It has cross platform support (a java client that uses an ethernet connection to download/upload music from/to it)
"I Just Want You To Hurt Like I Do" - Randy Newman
Sounds like a big minus for fans of Spock's Beard, Yes, Klaus Schultze, Brian Eno... and the many other artists who have escaped the bounds of single-digit minute compositions.
If I could have mass storage on my PocketPC it would be the best music player out there... because it uses a Windows CE port of WinAmp (still beta unfortunately)... what could be easier to use? For now, I have to settle with a 1GB SD card, but that's not bad... and I can play games or read while I listen.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
...makes sense it would bleed over to the user base.
Blar.
They had a Beta stage?
Linux fans don't want any competition for Linux. They want everybody to use Linux, and tries to make all their friends use Linux. :-)
Believe me, I do
... with a CD or even a vinyl LP you can skip to wherever you want in seconds or less. This player is supposed to be the next generation of music machines and yet it appears to be a lot more awkward to use in some ways than the technology its supposed to supercede! For me thats hardly a selling point.
According to the article (sorry):
The 154 gram unit comes in at 8.5-by-13.8-by-7.2 centimetres and 2.5cm thick
Should we fret about the 4th dimension instead?
it plays every format you can throw at it, including
That's the design "feature" if the ipod which really is a flaw. Yes the interface is great, so is the integration with itunes, but it's dependancy on only 1 format is not.
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
In other news, the phrase "ipod killer" has been replaced with a new foriegn phrase on slashdot: "ipod competitor."
It seems the Rio Karma hasn't had a feature bump since it's introduction last year. Sure, it's pricing is on par with the 20 GB iPod (and the Karma comes with a dock, featuring an ethernet port, not to mention native support for Ogg Vorbis and FLAC), but I think Rio can do even better. =)
When I type this link from outside the US I get Access Denied.
n keyboy
What's that all about?????
http://www.georgewbush.com/cheeseburger_eating_mo
When I saw the headline, I figured this was going to be an article about how more MP3 players were going to start offering support for Mac computers.
For people who own only Macs, the iPod is pretty much the only choice for MP3 players, apart from MP3-playable CD players. Are any of Apple's competitors going to offer support for OS X?
What's with the vintage case design? Looks like my AIWA walkman knock-off from 1988. Bleah.
slashdot has been bought out by doubleclick.
welcome to www.slashad.org
I for one welcome our new..... so on and so forth
If you are keeping a 60min file to go over on 6 mins... and kill your battery doing so.. over and over. Wouldn't you better.. skip it? If you don't want to hear it... delete it!
Besides, how long does it take to your walk-man FFW a 30min cassette?
I thing the fact that you are not able to hear MP3s is more important.
It's the Lyra RD2840. It's got it's faults but overall it's a great player for what I need it to do. Initially, it had lots of problems. You couldn't resume a track from where you left off if you turned the unit off and back on, the track would start over. If you had both mp3s and wma files on it, there was static when it switched between the 2 formats. Shuffle was buggy, etc... these were all fixed in a recent firmware upgrade though. FFW is slow on mine, but not as slow as the review says it is on the new model. Playback isn't gapless, but it's "pretty close." Battery life so far seems to be about 10 hours continuous play, 7-8 if I shuffle around, so that's not bad. It comes with an AC adapter, cigarette lighter adapter, carrying case, and the headphones are better than the typical stock headphones. The downside: For some reason, the line-out is a 1/16" jack instead of the usual 1/8" headphone sized. An adapter is included though. Also, it requires a 5.5v AC adapter, which I have had trouble locating online... so if you lose your adapter I'm not sure what you'd do. Occasionally, if you shuffle around to songs that aren't in order, the song will start about 1/2-1 second into the track. The one feature that sold me, over everything else, is that it's one of the few players that doens't require any special software. It's recognized as a standard external USB drive, you just copy files over to it like you would any normal drive (so you can also use it to store other files besides music). There IS a Windows system tray application that you use to "profile" the device, which scans all the id3 tags so that you can browse your songs by artist/genre/album/etc. But you don't need to use it, because the player has a profiling feature built in! It's just a little slower than using the windows app. In other words, this player is PERFECT for linux users. And, they're cheap. I got mine refurbished on ebay for only $160. At that price, for a 40 gig player that includes all the accessories and requires no software and runs effortlessly under Linux I don't mind the few faults it has!
1.) it's ugly
2.) no integration with iTMS
3.) too big to fit comfortably in a pocket
4.) doesn't play AAC
-mkb
It's not surprising that it's crap: we've known for decades that RCA stood for Remarkably Crappy Apparatus.
See what I've been reading.
Would you Apple zealots really get upset if there was something out there better than the iPod? You're paying all that cash for a "lifestyle", not a piece of electronics. If it doesn't have the Apple logo, and the hipster douchebag image that comes along with it, then it's not real competition.
For most of the rest of us, a $30 mp3-cd walkman is more than we need.
Whoopty do the FFW is only 10x, so what? Lots of people don't listen to 60 minute tracks, most are smart enough to break 60 minute performances into several 5-10 minute tracks to facilitate jumping around (look at Mike Oldsfield's Tubular Bells on CD for example).
I'm so sick of reading iPod ads here. Can you please create an iPod section so I can block it from the front page?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Initially, it had lots of problems. You couldn't resume a track from where you left off if you turned the unit off and back on, the track would start over. If you had both mp3s and wma files on it, there was static when it switched between the 2 formats. Shuffle was buggy, etc... these were all fixed in a recent firmware upgrade though. FFW is slow on mine, but not as slow as the review says it is on the new model. Playback isn't gapless, but it's "pretty close." Battery life so far seems to be about 10 hours continuous play, 7-8 if I shuffle around, so that's not bad. It comes with an AC adapter, cigarette lighter adapter, carrying case, and the headphones are better than the typical stock headphones.
The downside: For some reason, the line-out is a 1/16" jack instead of the usual 1/8" headphone sized. An adapter is included though. Also, it requires a 5.5v AC adapter, which I have had trouble locating online... so if you lose your adapter I'm not sure what you'd do. Occasionally, if you shuffle around to songs that aren't in order, the song will start about 1/2-1 second into the track.
The one feature that sold me, over everything else, is that it's one of the few players that doens't require any special software. It's recognized as a standard external USB drive, you just copy files over to it like you would any normal drive (so you can also use it to store other files besides music). There IS a Windows system tray application that you use to "profile" the device, which scans all the id3 tags so that you can browse your songs by artist/genre/album/etc. But you don't need to use it, because the player has a profiling feature built in! It's just a little slower than using the windows app.
In other words, this player is PERFECT for linux users.
And, they're cheap. I got mine refurbished on ebay for only $160. At that price, for a 40 gig player that includes all the accessories and requires no software and runs effortlessly under Linux I don't mind the few faults it has!
risk looking even Session "and join in and personal spot when done For of the founders of Working on various Part of GNAA if world will have
Btw, how the fuck can something be "Overrated" if it hasn't been rated in the first place?
Answer me that, gropeadope.
"Can we stop grousing about this issue now? Please?"
You're so silly.
http://www.acronymfinder.com/af-query.asp?p=dict&S tring=exact&Acronym=FFW
Yeah, spending that much money on an iPod clone only to find it made my fully-figured woman slower would be a pain in the butt... I paid good money for that doll, too.
Why only 19 people Folding at home?
Because the program is apparently buggy and frequently runs away with all my CPU. I HAD to uninstall it to use my machine.
All this coming from the country that voted Hitler into power. I think you guys can keep your mouths shut for a while.
You're like an ex-con who recently found Jesus, now you go around thinking you're better than everyone else.
Well, whereabout is ogg used and evangelized apart from inside /. readership (and not all of them, from the number of iPod users)
Can we get past this?
Ogg is certainly a good format, it just happens to interest very few people.
As open format we have Ogg, but nobody is interested.
As open-standard format we have MP4 (AAC), and that is getting some traction, surely (not ALL AAC are copy protected, you know?)
As closed-standard proprietary format we have WMA, and we know we cannot accept it.
So Ogg could be the winner, but AAC seems second best.
Could have been worse. You know?
=====
I lie all the time, including now
>1) it's ugly
>2) no integration with iTMS
>3) too big to fit comfortably in a pocket
>4) doesn't play AAC
5) no integration with iTunes
6) ?
7) Profits!!!
I read that as RC Lycra for some reason (maybe as I grow older I am developing dyslexia)... I can't (won't!) imagine a whole bunch of Apple Fans running around with remote control Lycra pants/etc... in fact, the whole idea of Apple Fans in lycra/spandex is frightening (it is almost Halloween, though...)
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
The SDMI (http://sdmi.org/) specifies that portable music devices should only be able to fast forward at a certain speed (the reason for this escapes me). My MP3 player before the iPod actually stated this as a feature in the manual!
Rich
What are you talking about?
Apple fans WANT something to fret about because thats what makes thing better. The worst thing that could happen to the industry is for no one to bother challenging Apple.
See what happened when no one challenged Microsoft?
Apple fans WANT some one to beat the pants off Apple, 'cause it means that after Apple has gotten up off the floor and brushed itself off, it is going to come up with something freakin amazing to get back into the game.
Thats what makes healthy competition great.
Why would we Apple fans be upset if someone brought out a really cool portable audio player? Either we like the iPod or not. I know there are platform fanatics that confuse brand and personal identity, but most of us just like our gear for whatever it does. New products just drive prices down and give everyone more choices.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
To agree with Relativity, one of those numbers should be in units of time -- i.e. the product lifetime in seconds, if that review is accurate.
First, give us non-proprietary batteries. Not only to keep it from becoming a paper weight after a couple years, but also to be able to toss in some other batteries if you forget to recharge it.
Second, give us an easily to use intuitive interface. In other words, TEST IT WITH REAL PEOPLE BEFORE YOU EVEN ATTEMPT TO SELL IT!!!
Third, allow us to sort and organize our music without any proprietary software crap. Simply let me transfer my MP3s by artist/cd name folders. If you want proprietary crap for newbies, let that be an option, not a mandate.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
I misread the post, I thought the complaints were about the speed of its FFTW, the Fastest Fourier Transform in the West! I thought the author wanted to criticize the quality of its fourier transform functions.
Yes.
It's got alot to do with validating a 300+ dollar personal music player to yourself and then seeing something better come out.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Get past the beta stage. Simple it was a purely marketing decision. Either they rushed it to market before they completed a full beta cycle. Or they knew about the bug and figured they'd fix it later. This common in the industry. That's why the 1st I do when I get a product hardware or software I look for an update. Also why I never buy something when it 1st comes out.
IANALBIPOOGL (I am not a Lawyer, but I play one on GrokLaw.)
no points today ...
One simple rule for its versus it's
The big revolution from, say, 1973 to 1980 was making computers affordable, an activity which the IBMs of the world had no interest in whatsoever. They saw microprocessors as a direct thread to mainframes and sought use them in limited ways and protect products like the DataMaster from cannibalization by cheap general-purpose PCs. The result was that the personal computer revolution was fueled by technies and hobbyists.
From 1980 to 1990 it was all about making computers usable and seducing ordinary people who had no interest in learning how to program in BASIC or learn a traditional CLI. The result was a revolution in usability. The overall computer usability experience (not just the GUI shell, but quality, installability, and usability of applications, ease of adding peripherals, etc.) probably peaked in the Mac world circa Apple System 7.
Ever since then, it's all been slowly downhill, as user familiarity and "computer literacy" have increased the tolerance of the general public for complexity, crashes, and other things that are now accepted as "what computers are like." Usability has been in a slow but perceptible decline.
You can see it in all sorts of little things. The latest Dell computer we got has six USB ports on the back, two of which are totally unlabelled and four of which are in close proximity to the letters "A," "B," "C," "D" in circles which are spaced closely together and are not aligned with the USB connectors they are probably labelling. There are color-coded, iconically labelled jacks for speakers and headphones, and but no obvious clue as to where mouse and keyboard are supposed to plug in.
Meanwhile, every new gadget I buy has a microprocessor in it... and usability problems. The $10 thermometer I bought in a drugstore has several different measurement modes, all incomprehensible, controlled by two unlabelled buttons and an LCD screen which displays not only the temperature but smiley faces and pictures of a running stick figure while emitting incomprehensible beeps. I can guess that if it tells me my temperature is 98-something degrees it is probably in Fahrenheit mode and if it tells me it's 37-something degrees it is probably in Celsius mode, but I'm darned if I know how to set it, or what it is that I'm doing that causes the mode to change.
My cell phone comes with a 100-page manual but frequently emits strange beeps and displays messages that the manual does not explain. (In this case, the explanation is that the cell phone user interface as experienced by the user is a combination of what the phone itself does and what the specific set of services offered by Verizon does. But the user experience is one of a low-quality UI.
Thank goodness there is at least one arena in which the market is apparently still rewarding usable design.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The number one MP3 player happens to use proprietary batteries, therefore validating the concept that proprietary batteries aren't bad. People DO buy them iPods after all. That and the batteries are servicable and replaceable!
The iPod already has one of the most intuitive and time tested interfaces.
And the iPod uses a proprietary software interface to sort and upload music. That has NOT stopped it's adoption, so again this shows that users don't care. At least, not enough users care. You may, but not the rest of the world who buys iPods.
It's very unfortunate for you.
GPL Deconstructed
Go with the iriver. :)
Functionally, I don't see much of a difference between the two. I was able to pick up a 120 for about $200 on ebay, and given that it plays ogg, it was a no brainer for me, as that's what much of my music is ripped in. Paying list for each, though, I'm not sure there's much distinguishing them except for the file formats each supports and the wheel thingy.
Well, i just looked closer at the ipod. It has contact lists and appointment reminders. If you use those, that might sway the decision. I preferred the built-in microphone in the iriver, as I've been able to record some meetings without having to use an external microphone. Ipod also has a sleep timer to fall asleep to music without using all the battery - I think my iriver has something like that, but I'm not sure (not on hand to check).
Good luck - either unit would be nice.
creation science book
So after they chose the iPod and they find the next week that XYZ company produced a better product or an equilvlant product at the same or less cost. Then the consumer feels like they have made a bad decision and have wasted their money.
The great thing about living in a consumer oriented society is that companies will take back ANYTHING in around thirty days. Didn't like the color? Back it goes. Sure there are downsides but the very liberal return policy most stores have is not one of them. Smile at the return counter people and you can return anything. And really, a lot of people do take advanatge of this so I don't see it as much of an issue.
So if a better player really comes along, people need not shed a tear - just return it, or head over to eBay where (for an iPod at least) you'll get almost full price anyway.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
RCA announced a new portable 40 GB tape back-up device.
I looks like some Apple Zelot Moderators got to this one. And Overrated it to oblivian, to help their egos with their product that they bought they decided to Mod the writter down because he doesn't feel that Apples are a good value. Just as the kid when he runs out of good comebacks on why his toys are better will often result in fighting with him or just instults. There will be people who don't care for apple products and people like the parent who have used apple but doesn't consider it a good deal for his use. Apple loyalist are not amune to the phenomenon proven by the action of lowering the parents mod. Because when they feel infearior they will often strick back in other ways to protect their ego.
Yea I am not going anonymous coward on this one and I am a Apple User and I like apple. But his post was valid and worth at least the score of 2 if not a 3 or 4
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I'm not a big fan of Apple's stuff but even to someone like me it's clear that Apple is so far ahead of the rest of the industry on this, I can't even say that it makes sense for Sony or MS or anyone else to even bother. This is a case of innovators vs. corporate money-hounds, and Apple has learned from their past and covered their bases and built up a formidable wall around themselves before bringing the iPod and iTunes store out. Maybe this will be a lesson to the rest of the industry, that there is some wisdom in investing time and money and ideas into products, not just marketing research and half-assed guesses. It sure feels good to watch a company nurture a great idea that everyone else said was certain to fail while would-be competitors throw themselves on their own swords in a rush to get a piece of it all (even if it is Apple.)
I bought a 2840 around this time last year, for just over $450 cdn. This at a time when 40gb ipods were > $700 cdn. Hell of a lot of money saved for something that's still smaller than my old Walkman (but my ipod-owning friends insist my player is waaaaay to heavy and large to carry around...). But, same capacity, better features overall, for $250 less? That's a lot of extra ramen in my diet.
:) Playlists pretty much cover this for me.
It's a pretty damn nice unit too, as the parent mentioned. Ideal for use under Linux, and as a portable hard drive in general. I have to laugh when I want to borrow a song from a friend with an ipod and he/she tells me "um, you can't find specific FILES, they're just numbers". As I use my mp3 player as backup for my desktop's mp3 files, it's nice to know that I can just copy them back if I lose a hard drive.
One other cool feature is it supports the playlists that Winamp and XMMS use - so it's easy to make custom playlists for the thing. One issue with the built-in profiler that the parent may not be aware of - it can only handle about 1600 files. I imagine it's RAM-limited, so when it builds its tables they can only get so big. But who the heck browses by the old standard of artist/genre anyway?
Having said all that, if RCA is trying to compete dollar for dollar with the ipod, they don't stand a chance. Not enough people care about the USB hard drive factor, sadly (and no, being able to store only non-playable mp3s on an ipod is just not enough).
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Well, ugly is debatable.
Not everyone wants to use iTunes, so being almost forced to do so with an iPod is a disadvantage as much as the Karma not being integrated is.
And if you're not using iTunes, AAC isn't really a concern.
I don't know about the size.
Be careful. Buyer beware, this product may not be as good as the specs say... if these build quality and durability issues haven't been addressed that these reviews mention.
GPL Deconstructed
The Lyra RD1071 128Meg Flash MP3 player (2003 model?) has a painfully slow FFW (5x) and the FRW doesn't even work unless you get the latest firmware patch (try explaining that to your grandmother who wants to listen to audio books). It has many other design flaws such as not remembering where in the file you were when you last stopped listening, and remembering which file was playing when the batteries fell out. All of this could be fixed in firmware by a single Indian developer working 1 month costing Thompson/RCA a huge $500.
But I have been dealing with Microsoft products for many years now and I expect to see bugs and report them. However, when you call their technical support, you get a neophyte that is only capable of reading the manual back to you. When you ask for the next level of technical support you will hear her say
"We don't have a technical support department, just a customer support", and
"We don't have an engineering department so there's nobody I can submit your feedback to", and
"The Lyra can't play audio books, just music", and
"You have an older model. Perhaps you should buy a newer one".
After writing a few emails and getting past the automated responses, I think I made it to the next level of hell because I got this response:
You may write to Manager, Consumer Relations at Thomson. The mailing address is: Thomson, PO Box 1490, Durant, OK 74702-1490.
Needless to say, Thompson's LYRA products aren't iPod killers, they are Thompson killers. I know Apple tech support isn't all that great either (2 personal experiences), but at least they have a tech support.
In the end, I downloaded a bunch of free software and wrote myself a perl script to convert large MP3 files (such as audiobooks) into 5 minute segments.
--NerdMachine
mp3splt (http://mp3splt.sourceforge.net/) is an awesome tool to split large MP3 files (audiobooks) into smaller ones and even can auto-adjust the break so it's at the nearest silent part. Alone this is a great tool:
.wav files, you need mpg123 and lame and a perl script like the one that follows to pull the whole thing off.
/\\ /g; ;
mp3splt -f -a auto -t 5.0 *.mp3
However, most audiobooks are a little slow, but with soundstretch (http://sky.prohosting.com/oparviai/soundtouch/sou ndstretch.html), you can increase the tempo without changing the pitch. The result is an audio book that you can "read" 50% faster without losing any clairity. Tune to your own tastes.
Since soundstretch only works with
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# Speedsplit.pl
#
# Use at your own risk.
#
# 1) convert mp3 to PCM (wav)
# 2) speed up PCM file
# 3) convert it to mp3
# 4) split it into 5 minute fragments (at whitespace if possible)
#
use File::Copy;
my ($file, $glob, $path, @command, $tmp, $ext);
foreach $glob (@ARGV)
{
$glob =~ s,\\,/,g;
$glob =~ s/
@glob = glob($glob);
foreach $file (@glob)
{
next unless ($file =~ s/.(wav|mp3)$//i);
$ext = $1;
# print ("SpeedSplit: Splitting \"$file\"\n");
$file =~ s,\\,/,g;
if ($file =~ s,(.*[:/]),,)
{
$path = $1;
$path =~ s,:$,$/,;
}
else
{
$path = "./";
}
$tmp = $file;
mkdir "${path}${tmp}" || die "Cannot make directory ${path}${tmp}";
# mp3 -> wav
if ($ext eq "mp3")
{
@command = ("mpg123","-v","-w","${path}${tmp}/${file}.wav","$ {path}${file}.mp3");
if (system (@command))
{
print STDERR "command failed: ", join(" ",@command),"\n";
next;
}
}
else
{
copy ("${path}${file}.wav","${path}${tmp}/${file}.wav")
}
# wav -> increase tempo
@command = ("soundstretch","${path}${tmp}/${file}.wav","${pat h}${tmp}/${file}_f.wav","-tempo=50");
if (system (@command))
{
print STDERR "command failed: ",join (" ",@command),"\n";
next;
}
unlink "${path}${tmp}/${file}.wav";
# wav -> mp3
@command = ("lame","-mm","-b","64","-q","0","--tt",$file,"--r esample","22.050","${path}${tmp}/${file}_f.wav","$ {path}${file}.mp3");
if (system (@command))
{
print STDERR "command failed: ", join (" ",@command),"\n";
next;
}
unlink "${path}${tmp}/${file}_f.wav";
# mp3 -> split
@command = ("mp3splt","-f","-a","auto","-t","5.0","${path}${f ile}.mp3");
if (system (@command))
{
print STDERR "command failed: ",join (" ",@command),"\n";
next;
}
unlink "${path}${file}.mp3";
rmdir "${path}${tmp}";
}
}
--NerdMachine