Company Solicits Feedback on Next-Gen Recorder

An anonymous reader writes "According to LinuxDevices.com a multimedia device vendor has asked the open-source community to help define its next product, a Linux-based handheld portable media player/recorder (PMP/R) featuring audiophile-quality sound. The new product is a successor to the popular Neuros 442 PMP/R. Neuros has published the specs for a development board it calls the first prototype, and has asked hackers, open-source software authors, and others to review and weigh in on the design, which is expected to be finalized in the near future."

Comments

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's audiophile quality, it won't be digital. fullstop.

If it's digital, it'll just be a good digital player, but not an excellent player all things considered.

Re:More format support

[daserver]

I'm pretty sure their new device will support ogg vorbis as they were one of the first companies with an ogg vorbis compatible player (Neuros Audio) back in the day :-)

Re:What I want

[Andy_R]

Since their previous device is colour, it would be insane for this one not to be. Almost as insane as putting the 4Gb drive from your wants list in to replace the 40Gb one the old device shipped with!

Re:More format support

[Anonymous Coward]

As their current 442 device supports no open formats (according to the spec) you cannot assume anything.

Re:Heh

[pev]

> If it's audiophile quality, it won't be digital. fullstop.
Er, no. Digital is fine, although higher bit-depth and sampling rate than CD-level is useful. It's the lossy compression that most of the stored audio will have that's the problem. Have you ever tried A-B'ing on a iPod or similar compressed audio player with a straight WAV/AIFF rip from CD to the MP3/OGG/Whatever compressed version? It's surprisingly noticable.

There's a fundamental irony when 'Audiophiles' harp on about how great their 30K setup sounds and how digital would never sound as good when the material they're listing to was mixed down using Pro-Tools in the first place...

FYI, the actual DAC in use (Burr-Brown PCM1803) can run up to 24/192 and have a decent S/N ratio. If the hardware layout is fairly quiet electrically it should be able to play back superbly to whatever you plug it in to if the source audio is of a decent quality.

~Pev

Where are the audio geeks?

[prof_peabody]

This whole topic shows that there are very few audio geeks in here.

First, here is the link to the Neuros wiki about the project:

http://www.theneuros.com/index.php/Category_Roadma p:Neuros_III

This link should have been in the article itself, but the editors here are not the brightest.

Most audio geeks who do field recording (what this device will primarily used for on the recording side) is:

-direct to FLAC encoding
-high quality A/D (better than sony dat or a nomad JB3)
-digital input (many of us have better/expensive potable A/D boxes that would outclass anything consumer grade
-24 bit 96 kHz recording

and a few other things.

Re:NOTE: you don't have to do it in hardware.

[bundaegi]

What you need in terms of USB host is USB on the go. That, the midi driver and a USB <-> midi dongle will do what you're proposing.

The main use for USB on the go (its first intended purpose) is to both

• download images stored in your camera onto your computer (camera is slave)
  
• control a USB printer from the camera (camera is master)
  

You just found a new use for USB on the go! Well done :-)