Slashdot Mirror
OGG Capable Car Stereos?
ZephyrXero asks: "I'm looking to buy a new in-dash CD player for my car, but I can't seem to find any that support Ogg Vorbis. There are numerous players out there that support MP3 & WMA, but the majority of my music collection is in OGG. I even found a definition of what Ogg Vorbis is at the Crutchfield site, but the only player they have for it is this thing. Have any of you been able to find a simple car stereo that will play your OGGs? Or are my only options to re-encode to MP3, connect a portable music player to it, or try to build something like the Cajun project?"
Have any of you been able to find a simple car stereo that will play your OGGs?
I think your definition of "simple" is a bit different than mine. I have an AM/FM car stereo and was thrilled to have a clock and digital presets! Seriously though, just re-encode or use an FM-transmitter.
I've got a mini-itx that boots FreeBSD from a 64Mb CF card and then proceeds to play whatever is in my NEC MultiSpin 4x4 CD-ROM Changer.
It boots to playing music in 30s from power on.
Use a DVD Rom drive and you'll hardly ever need to change a disk !
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Yes, your only option is to transcode or re-encode to MP3. Or buy a portable player with an audio input that you can connect to your stereo.
Its nice to think that manufacturers will provide multiple format capability, or (in the more general case) Linux drivers, open specs, real warranties, timely rebates, etc, but its really not worth it to them. For every geek that asks for Ogg, there are 9,999 people who won't. I'm sure at this point, MP3 decoding can be had on a DSP for 8 cents. If they sell 1,000,000 decks, and it costs double the 8 cents to add Ogg support, they just lost $80,000. Believe it or not, companies DO care about this stuff. I've known of guys whose business it was to analyze circuit board layouts, so that by optimizing trace patterns, they could take advantage of natural capacitance and inductance, and reduce the board component costs. Fractional pennies add up in this kind of volume.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Duh, he could build his own Ogg Vorbis compatible car stereo receiver from scratch. Or perhaps, he could hire lobbyists to blanket the campi of the major car stereo makers and persuade them to build one. Maybe he could even hack into the computers that automatically load the firmware into the receivers and replace MP3 support with Ogg. Is building a time machine and going back to the point before the Fraunhoffer group developed MP3, brainwashing them, and then hypnotizing them and implanting Ogg Vorbis specs into their minds out of the question? I can't really think of anything else.
Oh wait, perhaps buying a reciever with RCA connectors, an RCA cable, an RCA to mini 1/8th inch jack, and an Ogg Vorbis compatible portable audio player would do the trick. I know, I'm crazy.
A B A C A B B
I'm not just trying to flame or be a know-it-all, part of this issue is adoption of ogg for personal audio.
Support is one of the main reasons why my music isn't in a format like Ogg Vorbis. I know the whole argument of "If more people used it they'd support it!" but that's putting the chicken before the egg, so to speak. Vorbis is very good, but LAME encoded VBR mp3 is very good and portable to boot.
My advice would be to re-encode to mp3. It's a car, so you're not going to have some kind of audiophile experience, and if they were high enough quality vorbis files, encoding them as high bandwidth mp3s shouldn't hurt the sound too much.
vk.
You're not going to find a "conventional" car stereo that supports .ogg for under $500. There are a few that do, if I remember right, I think one was a Kenwood. The only way you're going to .ogg support in a car stereo other than dropping ~$500+ is to do one of the "homebrew" or "DIY" solutions that have been posted on Slashdot before. Possibly a mp3/ogg player with an FM transmitter would be the best/easiest/cheapest solution.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
I know in the past it was choppy with ogg vorbis playback. But I would think with the new iPod photo and video players, it will surely have enough horsepower for Ogg.
Unfortunately, they have limited features working on the newer models. I'm a sucky programmer, but maybe there are some others out there who could contribute...
Cowon makes a fantastic audio player that supports Ogg Vorbis. It's called the iAUDIO x5. I bought it to replace my aging Rio Karma(which also supports ogg), and am ecstatic with the features, battery life(35 hrs), storage(30 GB), and aesthetics of it.
That said, I'd recommend just getting a stereo with an aux-in port on it, and plug your player in whenever you get in the car. That way, you don't have to futz with primitive CDs either.
The empeg/Rio Car player is a Linux-based, HDD pullout car stereo (I've had one for years and love it). Although the product was discontinued in 2003, there are still units available on eBay and user-supported sites like riocar.org. According to the FAQ on riocar.org, there is a 3.0 beta version of the software that added .ogg support. I don't know if it's easy to find the image for the beta, but the folks in the user community are very helpful and can probably help you find it.
It looks like the latest firmware for the iRiver imp550 cd players does ogg vorbis audio; but I'm not sure how "car-stereo" it is...
- "History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men" -- Blue Oyster Cult, 'Godzilla'
I'd like to see a nice Linux powered car stereo head unit that would read flash or SD memory cards. A built in card reader could replace cd's. Also it'd be nice to allow recording from the radio to the card. I think I'll go build one. Who wants to buy one?
Beer! It's what's for breakfast!
Either use a portable music player (I use a Rio Karma), or transcode your files. If your car's anything but off, it's going to make some background noise. The more background noise it makes, the less important the audio quality of your files.
Little Debian: America's #1 Snack Distro!
...or maybe the 'Kenwood Music Keg' which seems to run the same firmware.
...and no telltale iPod wires hanging out of the dash, or proprietary closed formats.
The ogg question is addressed here.
I bought a PhatBox that works well for me, on account of the fact that it can handle flac - Free Lossless Audio Codec. flac gives you the option of compressing like MP3 or OGG, but at best those are still lossy, that is, you lose some data. I ripped my entire CD collection to "full quality" which, the claim goes, gives you the identical information as the original WAV file, but it's only about 70% of the size.
A 20 GB media player gives me 800-900 songs, though some of those are MP3s, so a flac-only disc would be 750+ songs. You can also get up to 120GB of storage now.
The other draw for me was the fact that it took the place of my 6-disc changer, and I just had to plug it in; no head unit surgery was required. It took seconds to install it, though I also opted to rip the unit out of its 8 pound steel casement and jam it in where my 6-disc changer was. It works with your existing head unit, that is, you use the 6 CD buttons on the existing stereo to browse the songs by playlist, artist, genre, etc.
The downside is that they have a 'list' price of $800 (not sure about the Kenwood Music Keg). I happened to find one on a VW enthusiast site for $120. The firmware is written to particular type of car stereo, so the same piece of hardware will be $800 for a Porsche, $600 for a BMW (as my BMW-owning boss discovered to his irritation), $400 for a Toyota, or $120 if a VW dealer is trying to get rid of them, as in my case.
That's true, but I haven't found a receiver with an 1/8th inch input that was of any outstanding quality . . . at the very least in the power and output connections departments. If he's not looking for audiophile quality, then, yes, that's a much better solution.
A B A C A B B
Even if you get a car stereo that supports ogg, you haven't solved the problem. The real issue is that even though ogg is a better format, not everything supports it. I decided on a solution a year ago.
I have reencoded all of my CDs as FLAC. It takes some time, but it was well worth it. I use a script out there on the Internet called oggify.pl to generate mp3s and oggs. When I can use ogg, I take my ogg files, and when I can't, I use mp3s.
My method was just a pair of amplified computer speakers, plugged into an inverter and into the media playing device (which in my case is now the amazingly good "The Core Media Player" running on an IPAQ- does everything the link in the summary does and then some thanks to also having iGuidance, a 2 GB Hitachi CF Format Hard drive, and a bluetooth GPS unit, for a lot less cost). I believe that media player plays OGG, or at least, you can install a codec for it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I've started to rip my 2.000 CD collection in ogg. This was a mistake. MP3 has won. I know it isn't free, it has patents and licensing, but it is better than any closed format. All the big corp hate MP3. They can't lock you with it. They must support it. They (and you) will have to live with mp3.
I'm now re-encoding everything in high quality MP3 VBR. Portability wins.
use an FM-transmitter.
Many developed countries where English is the national language (and which are therefore part of Slashdot's audience) do not allow private citizens to transmit on the commercial FM radio band at all, not even a couple milliwatts. I seem to remember the UK being one of them.
Use of an FM transmitter without a licence is an offence throughout the European Union.
They used to make a single-DIN in-dash unit, but it's discontinued...
Anyway, the fanless model in the first link has SPDIF outputs, and (of course) normal 1/8" phono, which you can slap an RCA adapter on. If you can't use that to play OGG through your stereo, you ain't tryin'.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
...that with so many corps trying to push flash-based phones and other cramped audio players, that they would take the tiny step to support Vorbis.
I guess ideology isn't dead after all.
Get a stereo with audio in and plug in the portable ogg player of your choice.
Seriously, I think that's your best bet.
I bought my stereo with one and although it also has the capability to play mp3 CDs, I plug in my portable player nearly as much.
What carpool? I don't drive to work, well, not more than a mile to the light rail station anyway. Walk the rest of the way. TCMP helps on the train- I watch TV on it, recorded the night before with Beyond TV.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
At home I like to use OGG files mainly because it seems easier to get a good sounding encoding by using the default settings. Or if you were making music for a game that you were going to put on the net, then it would make sense to use OGG files. For listening to music in a car, MP3 is good enough.
Clickety Click
Get a car tape player, and a 2.5mm to tape adapter. Done. Plug in a CD player, and no need to worry about the built in one dying. If you want power, get a cigarrette lighter power adaptor, or a 120 V car inverter... or just charge a lot of batteries.
Hey, this is slashdot, not pimp my ride.
I have freaks! I did something right...
At home I like to use OGG files mainly because it seems easier to get a good sounding encoding by using the default settings.
lame.exe --preset-extreme file.wav file.mp3
I know this is not simple but it plays ogg and you can take it with you but the real down side is space and its ugly. lol :( but you have to give it to me i found something different than everyone else. :)
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000953056118/
Stan M. ~~~Verbal~~~
Amazon UK sells the Yakumo Hypersound car, an ogg-capable in-dash CD unit with USB and SD card support, for £80.
Link to Amazon Page
According to Amazon, mine's in the post and should arrive monday. The OGG support isn't made obvious, but if you go to the manufacturer's website and download the manual, it's there in the back. NOT a high profile promo for OGG, but it's a nice cheap unit and my tape player was dying anyway.
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
30 seconds is a pretty long time to boot. I have an Mp3 deck with the annoying 'feature' that when playing an Mp3 file, it will start from the song beginning after the power has been turned off. That's annoying enough (if you take a trip with lots of short stops you hear the same song over several times).
Having the thing need 30 seconds to boot is even worse though... that's just way to long a delay. Have you looked at ways to trim-down boot-time? I've have a mini-ITX system originally intended for the car (until I got a new car and DVD-mp3 deck).
I've been looking at the possibility of having a good 'session' saved using the suspend-to-disk feature (obviously needs >64MB space). Restoring the memory contents from a disk-based suspend could cut your boot-time down significantly, especially if you're loading from a fairly fast cardreader (I know my USB2 memory stick is very fast for loading files, I'm not sure how fast the Epia M-2's cardreader would be though since I've never bothered to get it working).
As a moderator you should quickly realize that your posts were pretty damn troll-ish and flame like, right? ;)
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
It's funny...ya know, when I wrote this article, I specifically ended it by stating how I was already aware of my options to re-encode/transcode, get an external player and attach it to a jack, or install some sort of file server in my car, yet if you look up at the majority of these posts they go on to suggest these things to me like I've never heard of them. Thanks guys...this has been alot of help ;)
It's always funny to me as well how so many people are so quick to write off vorbis. About 7 years or so ago many people would have told you it was crazy to expect a plain jane car stereo to be able to read Mp3s, let alone a CDR, but look at things now. If people would just stick to their guns and wait it out, it would happen...giving up will never get you anywhere. I hate how apathetic most people are these days...
To those few people who actually gave relevent replies, thank you.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
As a moderator you should quickly realize that your posts were pretty damn troll-ish and flame like, right? ;)
I realized it at the time.
But I wasn't trolling/flaming without a purpose. I find that there is way too much blind worshipping of Open Source on Slashdot. The proponents will tell you that using open source means that you can port it to any system you like. Yet how many of them have ported Ogg to an in-dash music player? I'd just like to see a little balance restored here.
As I'm writing this, I'm downloading the latest release version of SUSE, so I'm not some kind of Microsoft apologist. But Open Source isn't always the answer. It doesn't automatically mean that you have portability. And proprietary and patent-encumbered solutions are sometimes better. I just want people to keep an open mind.
What's "fucking stupid" is your recommendation of FLAC when Monkey's Audio offers better lossless compression.
Monkey's Audio is junk. I used it for a while but Matt was always introducing new bugs and people were always having problems with it. I had a few verify/reliability issues myself. FLAC is much more solid and is a 'proper' unix app (it appears you are a Windows user so don't worry about that - but last time I checked there was a half-arsed Linux version of MAC which didn't inspire confidence).
What's also fucking stupid is your assumption that everyone wants to eat up gigabytes of disc space to store lossless copies of CDs that they already own.
What's more fucking stupid is continually re-ripping said CDs everytime you find out about some new encoder version and everybody's latest listening tests. Lossless copies of CDs are ideal, and disk space is getting cheaper.
I am the moderator for the Exact Audio Copy forum on Yahoogroups and know more about this subject than you ever will, so go away little boy.
Haha. I suppose you've been putting up with that buggy piece of shit for years, convincing yourself that it's doing some funky mojo that makes it so much better than cdparanoia. Sure mate, you know more than we'll ever know, we believe you.
As while I completely agree that open source does not always equal better, I still perfer to use it whenever possible ;)
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Monkey's Audio is junk. I used it for a while but Matt was always introducing new bugs and people were always having problems with it. I had a few verify/reliability issues myself.
I've ripped many CDs with Monkey's Audio 3.99 and have done multiple checks, never finding a difference between the WAV and the uncompressed APE file. Perhaps it's operator error to blame for your problems.
What's more fucking stupid is continually re-ripping said CDs everytime you find out about some new encoder version and everybody's latest listening tests. Lossless copies of CDs are ideal, and disk space is getting cheaper.
I don't re-rip every time a new encoder or listening test comes out. I'm not that anal. If its for a portable player or for my car, it's not like some subtle difference between encoders is likely to be audible. If it's for home use, I play the original CD on my Rotel player, not some compressed file spewed out through a $99 sound card.
Haha. I suppose you've been putting up with that buggy piece of shit for years, convincing yourself that it's doing some funky mojo that makes it so much better than cdparanoia.
If you knew a bit more about this subject, then you would know that EAC is far better than cdparanoia and is considered to be the best ripper currently in existence. It's the gold standard by which all others are measured:
1. If you have a modern drive that caches audio data in a large cache, cdparanoia will only read the data twice from the cache, and no error correction will be performed (so it will be no more secure than just any other ripper - just slower). I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for cdparanoia to be fixed, because development on it has basically been dead since 2001.
2. cdparanoia lacks such basic features as a GUI front-end, freedb lookup of the CD in the drive, automatic creation of ID3 tags, invocation of the encoder, profiles so that you can easily go from one compression mode (e.g., APE, MP3 VBR, MP3 192kbps CBR, FLAC, etc.) to another. Don't waste my time telling me how to string multiple programs together via shell scripts or other kludges. That you would need to do such a thing to even approach the features that EAC has natively shows that cdparanoia is deficient by comparison.
Sure mate, you know more than we'll ever know, we believe you.
And now you have good reason to (see above).
Ogg/vorbis does not require a powerful system to decode. My iRiver iFP-799 (1GB flash) plays VBR ogg/vorbis from 64Kbps to 230Kbps and is usable as a USB mass storage device. (It plays the oggs/mp3s/wavs from the filesystem, too, unlike an iPod.) iRiver also used to make the H340, a 40GB HD player, that plays the same range of ogg/vorbis. They don't seem to be shipping these anymore, but you may be able to find one 2nd hand. Hell, I haven't check their website in a while, so they might have an even better HD based player now. (Careful, not all iRiver products play ogg/vorbis.)
Also, coming around to be article topic, iRiver provides an FM transmitter for the iFP-7xx series, or you could just hook as generic FM transmitter to the headphone jack.
2. cdparanoia lacks such basic features as a GUI front-end, freedb lookup of the CD in the drive, automatic creation of ID3 tags, invocation of the encoder, profiles so that you can easily go from one compression mode (e.g., APE, MP3 VBR, MP3 192kbps CBR, FLAC, etc.) to another. Don't waste my time telling me how to string multiple programs together via shell scripts or other kludges. That you would need to do such a thing to even approach the features that EAC has natively shows that cdparanoia is deficient by comparison.
.wav file. It does that, and nothing more.
cdparanoia isn't an encoder. It isn't *supposed* to do all that stuff, any more than OpenOffice is supposed to do all that stuff.
If you wish to begin a discussion of why cdparanoia isn't as good a ripper as EAC, then you can perhaps make some valid arguments and perhaps educate some of us. If, however, you wish to proclaim to the world that EAC is a better encoder than cdparanoia, then you're clearly misunderstanding the situation. cdparanoia's one and only job is to take a raw audio datastream and convert it to a
If *I* want to do all of that stuff (encoding, ID3, etc) then I use a program designed and intended to do that stuff. Like, e.g., GRiP. Which was designed to implement a GUI for ripping, encoding, tagging, etc. It happens to use cdparanoia as a backend for ripping. Nonetheless, cdparanoia is still a ripper, not an encoder. A much more fair and reasonable comparison would be EAC to GRiP - don't tell me, I know. EAC is MUCH better. Clearly. Wow. I'm thoroughly impressed. Now, clearly there's no comparison (because EAC is the gold standard) but at least there is some correspondence between what those two programs are intended to do.
I would have assumed that you, being a moderator on the EAC Yahoo! forum, do know the difference between a ripper and an encoder. Was I mistaken, or are you simply in a mood to stir up shit?
If your intent is to point out to the great unwashed here on Slashdot that their precious open source is usually deficient to closed source, you'll need to do a few things differently: 1) Don't be a prick. At least, don't be the first to be a prick. The longer you can hold out before becoming a prick, the more likely people are to listen. 2) You'll need more street cred than "I'm a moderator on a Yahoo! group!" Sorry. See if you can convince Ken Pohlman to endorse your audio godhood. 3) Assertions of superiority are best supported with either unassailable facts ("Bill Gates sucks Satan's cock!") or legitimate, supportable testing performed by qualified persons. Arny Krueger doesn't count. 4) "If you knew a bit more about this subject, then you would know that..." convinces no one. It neither convinces anyone that you are right, or that you know more than they do.
These are just some little helpful tidbits that might get you through your day with a bit less frustration and a bit more success. Cheers!
Ce n'est pas un vrai mouvement de robot!
cdparanoia isn't an encoder.
Neither is EAC. It is just a ripper, but it can also invoke the encoder of your choice.
If you wish to begin a discussion of why cdparanoia isn't as good a ripper as EAC, then you can perhaps make some valid arguments and perhaps educate some of us.
I was really only answering the other poster, who wrote "I suppose you've been putting up with that buggy piece of shit [EAC] for years, convincing yourself that it's doing some funky mojo that makes it so much better than cdparanoia." I felt that I did a pretty good job of that with just the audio cache issue (without going into esoteric stuff about C2 error detection, overread into lead-in/lead-out, etc.).
A much more fair and reasonable comparison would be EAC to GRiP - don't tell me, I know. EAC is MUCH better. Clearly. Wow. I'm thoroughly impressed. Now, clearly there's no comparison (because EAC is the gold standard) but at least there is some correspondence between what those two programs are intended to do.
If you like GRiP better, don't care that cdparanoia misses errors with most modern cacheing drives, or don't run a Windows box for ripping, then GRiP is the better choice for you. My comments on EAC are not solely personal opinion. They take into account the multiple awards that EAC has won from reputable sources, the opinions and test results posted by experts on forums like Hydrogen Audio, and the fact that there are trading groups which only accept EAC-ripped audio.
I would have assumed that you, being a moderator on the EAC Yahoo! forum, do know the difference between a ripper and an encoder. Was I mistaken, or are you simply in a mood to stir up shit?
An encoder doesn't rip from CDs. EAC does. LAME, FLAC and Monkey's Audio are examples of encoders. They don't rip from CDs.
If your intent is to point out to the great unwashed here on Slashdot that their precious open source is usually deficient to closed source
Not usually. Just often. And I want people to be open-minded and not assume that Open Source is automatically the better choice.
1) Don't be a prick. At least, don't be the first to be a prick.
I'd give that award to the person who replied to my initial post by writing "That's pretty fucking stupid.
2) You'll need more street cred than "I'm a moderator on a Yahoo! group!" Sorry. See if you can convince Ken Pohlman to endorse your audio godhood.
That's more than enough to show that I'm a lot more informed about the subject than my foul-mouthed adversary.
3) Assertions of superiority are best supported with either unassailable facts ("Bill Gates sucks Satan's cock!") or legitimate, supportable testing performed by qualified persons.
Like the fact that modern drives which cache audio data get no error detection and correction under cdparanoia?
4) "If you knew a bit more about this subject, then you would know that..." convinces no one. It neither convinces anyone that you are right, or that you know more than they do.
So I should shoot for something more akin to "I would have assumed that you, being a moderator on the EAC Yahoo! forum, do know the difference between a ripper and an encoder. Was I mistaken, or are you simply in a mood to stir up shit?"
These are just some little helpful tidbits that might get you through your day with a bit less frustration and a bit more success. Cheers!
Have a good one!