With all respect to the cool Xiph guys, porting Tremor to an embedded platform was a complete bitch. Well, a semi bitch at least. It's clear that the format was not designed with small architectures in mind (some of the comments in the source seem to confirm this). A few questionable design choices have definitely set this format back in terms of CE adoption.
There's no problem that can't be overcome in time though.
Does this mean we *finally* have a portable mp3 player (non-cd based) that can play back gapless recordings?
It plays gapless anyway, unless your encoder has inserted masses of blank frames (which you can trim with various utilities).
The cross fader is for radio style mixes, which works particularly well if you're on random playback from your entire music collection. The last few seconds of the current track will cross fade into the first few seconds of the next track - I leave this switched on most of the time now. You would turn it off for continuous mixes though.
There was always going to be an auction. D&M will be going into it with a different status than if they had closed a deal now, but the auction would still have happened. Now anyone who wants any of the business units gets to bid on an even playing field, including D&M if they want. There's some very nice IP and infrastructure there for the taking.
The source also ships with the product on CD, and our stuff is passed back into the ARM Linux chain from time to time so most of it is in the standard distribution by now.
Hmm, well if you're a geek you probably already voided your warranty and could just swap out the disk yourself. It's a regular ATA IDE disk with ReiserFS (a builder for new disks comes with the product on CD).
With regard the ripping, you don't have to set any options to get a high quality rip. The ripping code was one of the big tasks in developing this product - it's all custom, designed by a ripping nutter (well his surname is Ripley so what do you expect), and it does an incredible job. It will rip stuff that causes CD Paranoia to quietly retire to the bathroom.
I'm not too sure what point you're making, but the HSX109 has been developed by the same team as the empeg. We even had some of our car player owners help with alpha testing.
Under the hood, the new product looks a lot like the car player as it shares a common codebase. Of course there's a lot of new stuff, but it's still Linux and you can still hack at it if you want. As someone(one of our beta testers I assume) pointed out, you can even get a shell up on the screen. As soon as the unit ships there's certain to be a BBS just like for the car player (empeg.comms.net) and Receiver (rioreceiver.comms.net) where developers and users can get together and work out details for the software updates and so forth.
For some reason everyone seems to be adding up the cost of the hardware (and getting it very wrong - there's rather more than just a hard disk in there) and overlooking the software development.
With a quick mental calculation, I believe there's around 10,000 man hours of work in the software of this product - not counting the hardware design and the ID, and not counting the significant code re-use from our common codebase. I guess some of you here will have a basic concept of the hourly rate of a good programmer..
It's necessary to make back that investment, along with the many hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in design, tooling, marketing and so forth.
..and is our software worth all that effort? I think so. Perhaps some of you will have the good grace to reserve judgement until you've actually used it.
I think you've snorted too much charlie over the years. If I worked in the environment you describe I would resign on the spot - and if I employed someone with your attitude they would be unlikely to get very far within the company.
You spend 2000 to 3000 hours a year (or more!) in the company if your work colleagues - that's more time than many people share with their partner. I'd hate to spend so much time with a group of people without getting close to at least some of them (apart from Mike, you can bugger off). (Just kidding).
Our UK team (9 developers) regularly socialise - perhaps because most of us were around when we were a startup, or perhaps because there's so much great beer around here.
Anyway, here's the evidence.
Rob
The price of the current empeg player will never be close to the Neo 35 - it costs much more just to build than the Neo retail price! For the money you get a lot more features and massively better software, but it's not for everyone.
Since empeg were bought by S3 (SONICblue) it has been announced that the empeg car player will be integrated into the Rio product line. This will fix distribution problems, and hopefully result in an expanded product line.
Has anyone considered getting this thing to work with airport/lucent wireless NICs yet
Yep, our chief tech has an Airport Bridge in his Miata, connected to his empeg, and can download music to it as if it were on the local net. There are lots of potential applications for this technology, which is backed up with a neat wakeup and task schedule facility (so you can do timed stuff without running your car battery flat).
Example - get your PC to drag down internet news or market reports before you wake up and transfer them to your car, for listening on the morning commute.
Slashdot Mirror
As the original designer of that "shitty" user interface on Karma I'd be interested to hear if there is anything specific you don't like about it?
Cheers
Rob
With all respect to the cool Xiph guys, porting Tremor to an embedded platform was a complete bitch. Well, a semi bitch at least. It's clear that the format was not designed with small architectures in mind (some of the comments in the source seem to confirm this). A few questionable design choices have definitely set this format back in terms of CE adoption.
There's no problem that can't be overcome in time though.
Rob
Now if only the battery would last longer than 2.5 minutes
15 hours in fact - c'mon, it's a very small gadget and hard disks suck current! A certain other well known player only manages 8 hours.
Rob
Does this mean we *finally* have a portable mp3 player (non-cd based) that can play back gapless recordings?
It plays gapless anyway, unless your encoder has inserted masses of blank frames (which you can trim with various utilities).
The cross fader is for radio style mixes, which works particularly well if you're on random playback from your entire music collection. The last few seconds of the current track will cross fade into the first few seconds of the next track - I leave this switched on most of the time now. You would turn it off for continuous mixes though.
Rob
You bet - Karma builds from the same codebase as the car player (although it runs eCos not Linux due to code size and lack of an MMU).
3.0 already plays Ogg, and will get released when we're done with our seven (count em) new products. It's been a bit hectic around here lately!
Rob
(formerly of empeg, now Rio)
There was always going to be an auction. D&M will be going into it with a different status than if they had closed a deal now, but the auction would still have happened.
Now anyone who wants any of the business units gets to bid on an even playing field, including D&M if they want. There's some very nice IP and infrastructure there for the taking.
*DOH* I've asked the web guys to fix this ASAP.
The source also ships with the product on CD, and our stuff is passed back into the ARM Linux chain from time to time so most of it is in the standard distribution by now.
We can type very fast, thanks to the Espresso maker, Red Bull chiller and Penguin Caffeinated Peppermints.
Also, there are a few more of us than there were when the car player was developed in Hugo's spare room and my job title was "Head Chef".
Rob
Yes I can provide examples of CD's that our ripper copes with better than CD paranoia. Do you expect me to FedEx them to you or something?
I'll meet up with you at CES, though, if you want. Can't say fairer than that!
Rob
Hmm, well if you're a geek you probably already voided your warranty and could just swap out the disk yourself. It's a regular ATA IDE disk with ReiserFS (a builder for new disks comes with the product on CD).
Rob
With regard the ripping, you don't have to set any options to get a high quality rip. The ripping code was one of the big tasks in developing this product - it's all custom, designed by a ripping nutter (well his surname is Ripley so what do you expect), and it does an incredible job. It will rip stuff that causes CD Paranoia to quietly retire to the bathroom.
Rob
I'm not too sure what point you're making, but the HSX109 has been developed by the same team as the empeg. We even had some of our car player owners help with alpha testing.
Under the hood, the new product looks a lot like the car player as it shares a common codebase. Of course there's a lot of new stuff, but it's still Linux and you can still hack at it if you want. As someone(one of our beta testers I assume) pointed out, you can even get a shell up on the screen. As soon as the unit ships there's certain to be a BBS just like for the car player (empeg.comms.net) and Receiver (rioreceiver.comms.net) where developers and users can get together and work out details for the software updates and so forth.
Rob
For some reason everyone seems to be adding up the cost of the hardware (and getting it very wrong - there's rather more than just a hard disk in there) and overlooking the software development.
With a quick mental calculation, I believe there's around 10,000 man hours of work in the software of this product - not counting the hardware design and the ID, and not counting the significant code re-use from our common codebase. I guess some of you here will have a basic concept of the hourly rate of a good programmer..
It's necessary to make back that investment, along with the many hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in design, tooling, marketing and so forth.
..and is our software worth all that effort? I think so. Perhaps some of you will have the good grace to reserve judgement until you've actually used it.
Rob
Some people prefer a TV output, others demand that their hi-fi components run quite independently of their TV. Having both is also a possibility.
With this particular product we went the route of a local screen. It went down pretty well in consumer testing and beta testing.
It costs more to put a nice LCD screen on than it would to provide TV output so your pricing comment doesn't really make sense.
Rob
No, the software was developed in-house by the team-formerly-known-as-empeg.
Rob
If you have one, it uses your broadband connection (HPNA or Ethernet via a USB->Ethernet adapter) to pick up tags and software updates.
The modem is for people without a net connection of their own.
In any case 450,000 CD's are on a local CDDB database so it doesn't have to go out to the net too often.
Rob
I think you've snorted too much charlie over the years. If I worked in the environment you describe I would resign on the spot - and if I employed someone with your attitude they would be unlikely to get very far within the company.
You spend 2000 to 3000 hours a year (or more!) in the company if your work colleagues - that's more time than many people share with their partner. I'd hate to spend so much time with a group of people without getting close to at least some of them (apart from Mike, you can bugger off). (Just kidding).
Rob
Our UK team (9 developers) regularly socialise - perhaps because most of us were around when we were a startup, or perhaps because there's so much great beer around here. Anyway, here's the evidence. Rob
Since empeg were bought by S3 (SONICblue) it has been announced that the empeg car player will be integrated into the Rio product line. This will fix distribution problems, and hopefully result in an expanded product line.
Rob
Yep, our chief tech has an Airport Bridge in his Miata, connected to his empeg, and can download music to it as if it were on the local net. There are lots of potential applications for this technology, which is backed up with a neat wakeup and task schedule facility (so you can do timed stuff without running your car battery flat).
Example - get your PC to drag down internet news or market reports before you wake up and transfer them to your car, for listening on the morning commute.
rob@empeg.com