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Neuros Audio Releases Its Hardware Schematics
iswm writes "Neuros Audio has released the schematics to their Neuros Digital Audio Computer. Now with open source firmware, hardware schematics, ogg support, tons of other cool features, and an amazing price tag, The Neuros is looking like an awesome competitor in the audio player market."
Maybe Slashdot can make some money by letting them license their name. Then all the Nerds could recognize each other in real life by observing their official Slashdot audio player.
Ogg support is very nice, but I hope this device can play other formats as well. One of the things that is making media-playing consumer devices so popular today is the support for all different formats of media. DVD players that can play every type of file format out there, and car cd players that can play mp3. The key to success is multi format support.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
I have one of these ( practically smuggled from US), and it is impressive what they did. It works perfect, it's open, it works with Linux, you can hack it, you can broadcast radio, etc, etc.
Kudos to the Neuros Audio! Keep it open!
So far all the hardware players had that "Ipod Killer" tag, which isn't the TFA :).
Open firmware is cool - but hardware schematics are more iffy. All in all, I'd put open firmware over hardware schemas any day :)
Have you seen Simputer General Public License which Simputer uses for their hardware ?. I suppose Neuros has some kind of licensing model at least for defining copyright and that kind of stuff. This is kinda blind faith to re-use or work on.Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I have both an iPod and a Neuros. I got an iPod through the freeipods.com thing, and I've had the Neuros for a little over a year now. The iPod was the shiny new toy for about a month, and hasn't been used since. The Neuros is just better. Better menu interface, better sound, better features.
I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
I actually have a Neuros. I bought one about 2 years ago. Honestly, they're a lot larger than ipods, so I doubt that they will catch on with the portable audio market. It's not really 'pocket-size.'
However, it is perfect for carrying in a backpack. The built in mic is sensitive enough for recording interviews, and the harddrive can hold alot more than other portable recorders you can buy.
FM transmitting- I love it, but it's not really powerful enough here in the Washington, DC area with all the background noise to be picked up more than 3 or so feet away.
The sound quality is decent, but the included headphones broke within two months. I did go jogging with them, so that might be the reason.
Also on ThinkGeek, the product cannot be sold outside the US, unlike the iPod. Sigh.. I was looking very much forward to it!!
If anyone can hear me, slap some sense into me But you turn your head, and I end up talking to myself
The disk would be running less than recording a line input at 44.1Khz WAV though. The reason I mention this is that a couple of my friends are audio engineer types and keeping an eye open for an iPod-like (loosely speaking) that has lots of storage, can record full quality audio at line level, and perhaps compress to lossy format as well, without shelling out thousands of dollars for "professional" solutions. On-site recording would be less of a need than a portable music library, but if they can kill two birds with one stone... why not?
The iPod supports AIFF, WAV (always has) and now Apple Lossless formats... Granted it doesn't play Ogg or FLAC but if it is just lossless formats you want they are available.
I've got a Neuros...the USB1.1 version from about two years back. I gotta say -- it's a sweet device.
-- I like the swappable backpack idea because it makes for cheaper upgrading and the ability for more than one person to use the same device with minimal difficulty.
-- I absolutely LOVE the integrated FM broadcast. This hit the market before everyone and their mother was making add-ons for this functionality, and it's still a really handy feature. It means that _I_ always get to hear my music in other people's cars, because no one else has this ability!
-- HiSi (the song-identifier) is a pretty nifty gimick, too, although of minimal use (more to the point is the built-in FM reciever...something that I think EVERY audio player should have -- it costs about 20 cents to include at this point, why not do it?!?!)
(disclaimer at this point -- mine IS the old version)
!!!HOWEVER!!!
The one failing of the Neuros is in its interface. Navigation is painfully slow. You cannot queue up songs while it's playing. Organizing songs into playlists inexplicably takes about 3 or 4 seconds once you've decided upon a song and selected "Add to my playlist". There is no way to play a series of albums, so you are stuck playing alphabetically by song title, by artist (and then within the artist by song title) or album-by-album. See previous statment about creating custom playlists. Oh yeah, and for some reason, it takes about 3 seconds to boot each time you start it. My PC starts faster!!
So, to put it lightly, the interface plain SUCKS! And ultimately, that's what matters. I love the tech aspect of this device. The open-standards are awesome (ogg support used to require a separate version of the firmware -- dunno if that's still true); there's a thriving developer's community which is fully supported by the company. Their customer service is phenominal (a broken mini-audio jack took 5 days to fix -- shipping time to Chicago included!). But the interface needs a lot of work.
And the interface of an audio player is the make-it or break-it point, IMHO. It's what you see every day. How quickly can you play your music? Good interfaces are invisible. You don't notice that they are there. You just notice that you can get the job done and do it quickly. I think this is more important in the portable-audio market than anywhere else. If I have to make the decision whether or not to turn on my device because there is a 10-second lead-in before music starts and a 5-second end sequence, then they've lost me...
I haven't had a chance to get my hands on a generation 2 device yet, so perhaps there has been a massive improvement. However, as of now, my next audio player purchase will be an iPod -- unless someone can point me to a better interface!
~i = an imaginary being~
The best part about this whole article is that it _didn't_ include the phrase "iPod killer". Why I'd want any product to kill my daughter's iPod is beyond me anyway. I paid $400 for that thing and I want it to stay alive as long as physically possible.
Three cheers for the phrase "awesome competitor" instead.
TW