Re:It's not just a music player...
on
Empeg Shipping
·
· Score: 2
As a reference to all of the replies about 'telneting in' and 'no ethernet' and 'how open is it?'.
I sat down with Hugo, plugged a cable between the serial port on the Empeg and the serial port on my linux box, and we "dialed up" the Empeg unit via Minicom.
You get a nice login prompt and a password, and you log right in. Since minicom supports Zmodem transfers, I'm sure you could send any software you wanted to send via Zmodem at null modem speeds of 128k/etc.
The system is very definitely open, and logging in is just one of the things you can do with it, but I watched Hugo make modifications to the 3D visualization code in VI, restart the player program, and then start playing MP3s again. A quick kill -9, edit the visualization code, save, restart, place mp3s, and so on. He was playing with a beta copy of the 3D code at that time, so some modifications were needed to make it run. Suffice to say, the box is very much linux, and very much open. If you know linux well, you'll be able to do whatever you want.:)
Re:So do we really need this?
on
Empeg Shipping
·
· Score: 2
One thing to keep in mind - that most people overlook - is that you're listening to your 128k/168k bitrate MP3s through a cheesy PC sound card, maybe an SB64, a 128Live, or whatever. The DSPs on the PC sound cards are not of professional levels, hence - you can afford an entire sound card for 100$.
The empeg uses a much higher quality DSP. I have had the pleasure of listening to the Empeg decode and visualize MP3s in person on a Kenwood AC-3 Digital receiver with Bose surround sound and Klipsch subwoofer (we used the RCA outs that come on the Empeg - nice!!).
Rest assured, for all but the most anal audiophile, the sound that comes out on a 128k MP3 sounds great - I certainly couldn't tell the difference between mp3 and CD (although I am not a pro mind you...)
The main thing to consider is that you will be listening to this while you drive. There is already so much road noise in 99% of the cars out there that it negates any true audiophiles requirements for 'perfect audio'. The thing absolutely rules, I've got one of the first ones off the line coming my way and I couldn't be happier.:)
Actually, iDraw will have its own website at idraw.ice.org for reference. There isn't anything there yet, but keep an eye open.
Why would you use iDraw instead of TheDraw?
I don't even want to get into the list of feature differences that, if you were so inclined to draw a little ansi, makes iDraw superior, but I will post the partial feature list on idraw.ice.org right now.
Just FYI, while ADFU doesn't run in this manner since they sell advertising directly, most CPM banner models MIGHT give you $2.00/CPM which is actually just $0.002 USD.
I just wanted to point out that Rob and Co. aren't multi-millionaires (yet) from their hardwork at Slashdot. I wouldn't be surprised to see slashdot have a buyout attempt from IBM or Redhat for 15-50 million bucks though.
I've toured the above.net facility before (which is right above MAE-WEST in downtown San Jose (probably where HE.net is located)) and they house large, large players. Heard of RealNetworks? Heard of Hotmail?:-) There are large hosting companies in there too who simply resell their bandwidth.
We're about to put 3 machines at above.net and while its expensive, the company is top notch. Their San Jose and Washington, D.C. facilities are both ISO9002 certified, and I think they have enough backup/generator power to stay online for 6 days if power goes out.
Basically, if Armageddon hits, Above.net will be the last bastion of Internet connectivity.:)
Oh, and their 9.8Gb/s of bandwidth with 270+ peering relationships doesn't hurt their availability either.
Last thing, their network statistics are online 24/7 in realtime. If you've ever used MRTG, their CTO Dave Rand helped write it. No secrets, 100% honest and 100% awesome service.
Just for reference, the cases are going to cost 60-70$ and will be available in June according to the company.
Our company colors are orange, white and black - so the orange case would be just dandy for presentation machines/etc. Since we're designers, we take that whole identity thing pretty seriously. We even have an orange recliner in our office. *laugh*
It sounds like you're using Cold Fusion. Why not at least use Solaris/x86 or Sun hardware? That certainly beats the Redmond Devils. Anything developed on CF for NT will run on Solaris with minor tweaks (depending on what you're doing, but most apps do)
Actually, the mp3 format isn't necessarily to blame, you'll have far more problems with your Soundblaster making mp3s sound like crap.
Not to beat a dead horse, but I heard the Empeg unit play some songs through its Xaudio DSP, and 128k encoded MP3s sounded crystal clear! I was shocked at how loud we could turn it up without hearing any artifacts in the songs.
Those cheapie DSPs on your soundblaster/gus/etc cards are more of the problem than the codec or the bitrate. Just something to keep in mind, everyones mileage probably varies!:)
I had the opportunity when Hugo was in the states for Linuxworld last week to have him over to my apartment. He brought along a completed prototype (what the production models will be built on) and we plugged it into our home stereo (nice bose system with a big klipsch subwoofer and lots of power) via its RCAs. The Empeg rules. We brought out a linux workstation and minicom'd into it via the serial port, he logged into the Empeg and proceeded to change a few options, show us the beta 3D visualization code and more. (You can _login_ to your car stereo!)
THIS THING KICKS ASS.
The visualization is _very_ cool and the possibilities for expansion are amazing as well. If you have the cash, this is the toy of the decade. Hugo even went so far as to stand on it - it's that sturdy. This isn't a toy folks, this is a regular pull-out car stereo deck; it just happens to run linux and play mp3s.;-)
Like someone else said, you better watch out for trees, this thing is mesmerizing.:)
I sound like a PR employee, but when you actually see it, you can't help but be a little giddy.
Apache would scale since it launches multiple incarnations of its process, seems to be the consensus, makes sense.
I'm confused by what highly parallelizable (sp) means exactly for a server like Sybase or Oracle on Linux? I would assume that Sybase and Oracle db servers take advantage of SMP under Linux (2.0.36/2.2.x), but how exactly?
We're looking at buying one of those nice VA Research 2U rack mount dual p2 350mhz processor servers, loading it up with 512mb of ram, and running something like Sybase and RealServer on it as the backend to a couple of Sun Ultra 5's being used as webservers.
What kind of performance can we expect? While "performance" is of course really relative, will Sybase or Oracle co-exist with something like RealServer nicely? Where are the performance bottlenecks going to be? We've considered a quad-port ethernet card so we can wire it directly to each of the two Ultra 5's for high machine-to-machine connectivity (keeps us from buying a switch as well).
Slashdot Mirror
As a reference to all of the replies about 'telneting in' and 'no ethernet' and 'how open is it?'.
:)
I sat down with Hugo, plugged a cable between the serial port on the Empeg and the serial port on my linux box, and we "dialed up" the Empeg unit via Minicom.
You get a nice login prompt and a password, and you log right in. Since minicom supports Zmodem transfers, I'm sure you could send any software you wanted to send via Zmodem at null modem speeds of 128k/etc.
The system is very definitely open, and logging in is just one of the things you can do with it, but I watched Hugo make modifications to the 3D visualization code in VI, restart the player program, and then start playing MP3s again. A quick kill -9, edit the visualization code, save, restart, place mp3s, and so on. He was playing with a beta copy of the 3D code at that time, so some modifications were needed to make it run.
Suffice to say, the box is very much linux, and very much open. If you know linux well, you'll be able to do whatever you want.
One thing to keep in mind - that most people overlook - is that you're listening to your 128k/168k bitrate MP3s through a cheesy PC sound card, maybe an SB64, a 128Live, or whatever. The DSPs on the PC sound cards are not of professional levels, hence - you can afford an entire sound card for 100$.
:)
The empeg uses a much higher quality DSP. I have had the pleasure of listening to the Empeg decode and visualize MP3s in person on a Kenwood AC-3 Digital receiver with Bose surround sound and Klipsch subwoofer (we used the RCA outs that come on the Empeg - nice!!).
Rest assured, for all but the most anal audiophile, the sound that comes out on a 128k MP3 sounds great - I certainly couldn't tell the difference between mp3 and CD (although I am not a pro mind you...)
The main thing to consider is that you will be listening to this while you drive. There is already so much road noise in 99% of the cars out there that it negates any true audiophiles requirements for 'perfect audio'. The thing absolutely rules, I've got one of the first ones off the line coming my way and I couldn't be happier.
-Brian
Actually, iDraw will have its own website at idraw.ice.org for reference. There isn't anything there yet, but keep an eye open.
Why would you use iDraw instead of TheDraw?
I don't even want to get into the list of feature differences that, if you were so inclined to draw a little ansi, makes iDraw superior, but I will post the partial feature list on idraw.ice.org right now.
http://idraw.ice.org.
-brian aka Mass Delusion, iCE Senior Staff
(massd@ice.org)
Oddly enough, Midnight Sorrow is still around and CCI is actually back and booming again (yes, a BBS message network, can you believe that??)
:)
Look him up on IRC.
-Brian AKA Mass Delusion, iCE Senior Staff
Just FYI, while ADFU doesn't run in this manner since they sell advertising directly, most CPM banner models MIGHT give you $2.00/CPM which is actually just $0.002 USD.
:)
I just wanted to point out that Rob and Co. aren't multi-millionaires (yet) from their hardwork at Slashdot. I wouldn't be surprised to see slashdot have a buyout attempt from IBM or Redhat for 15-50 million bucks though.
It's all about the eyeballs..
-Brian
I've toured the above.net facility before (which is right above MAE-WEST in downtown San Jose (probably where HE.net is located)) and they house large, large players. Heard of RealNetworks? Heard of Hotmail? :-) There are large hosting companies in there too who simply resell their bandwidth.
:)
// www.vfive.com
We're about to put 3 machines at above.net and while its expensive, the company is top notch. Their San Jose and Washington, D.C. facilities are both ISO9002 certified, and I think they have enough backup/generator power to stay online for 6 days if power goes out.
Basically, if Armageddon hits, Above.net will be the last bastion of Internet connectivity.
Oh, and their 9.8Gb/s of bandwidth with 270+ peering relationships doesn't hurt their availability either.
Last thing, their network statistics are online 24/7 in realtime. If you've ever used MRTG, their CTO Dave Rand helped write it. No secrets, 100% honest and 100% awesome service.
-brian
Our company colors are orange, white and black - so the orange case would be just dandy for presentation machines/etc. Since we're designers, we take that whole identity thing pretty seriously. We even have an orange recliner in our office. *laugh*
It sounds like you're using Cold Fusion. Why not at least use Solaris/x86 or Sun hardware? That certainly beats the Redmond Devils. Anything developed on CF for NT will run on Solaris with minor tweaks (depending on what you're doing, but most apps do)
Actually, the mp3 format isn't necessarily to blame, you'll have far more problems with your Soundblaster making mp3s sound like crap.
:)
Not to beat a dead horse, but I heard the Empeg unit play some songs through its Xaudio DSP, and 128k encoded MP3s sounded crystal clear! I was shocked at how loud we could turn it up without hearing any artifacts in the songs.
Those cheapie DSPs on your soundblaster/gus/etc cards are more of the problem than the codec or the bitrate. Just something to keep in mind, everyones mileage probably varies!
-brian
I had the opportunity when Hugo was in the states for Linuxworld last week to have him over to my apartment. He brought along a completed prototype (what the production models will be built on) and we plugged it into our home stereo (nice bose system with a big klipsch subwoofer and lots of power) via its RCAs. The Empeg rules. We brought out a linux workstation and minicom'd into it via the serial port, he logged into the Empeg and proceeded to change a few options, show us the beta 3D visualization code and more. (You can _login_ to your car stereo!)
;-)
:)
THIS THING KICKS ASS.
The visualization is _very_ cool and the possibilities for expansion are amazing as well. If you have the cash, this is the toy of the decade. Hugo even went so far as to stand on it - it's that sturdy. This isn't a toy folks, this is a regular pull-out car stereo deck; it just happens to run linux and play mp3s.
Like someone else said, you better watch out for trees, this thing is mesmerizing.
I sound like a PR employee, but when you actually see it, you can't help but be a little giddy.
-Brian
(I've been /.'d! my first post)
Apache would scale since it launches multiple incarnations of its process, seems to be the consensus, makes sense.
I'm confused by what highly parallelizable (sp) means exactly for a server like Sybase or Oracle on Linux? I would assume that Sybase and Oracle db servers take advantage of SMP under Linux (2.0.36/2.2.x), but how exactly?
We're looking at buying one of those nice VA Research 2U rack mount dual p2 350mhz processor servers, loading it up with 512mb of ram, and running something like Sybase and RealServer on it as the backend to a couple of Sun Ultra 5's being used as webservers.
What kind of performance can we expect? While "performance" is of course really relative, will Sybase or Oracle co-exist with something like RealServer nicely? Where are the performance bottlenecks going to be? We've considered a quad-port ethernet card so we can wire it directly to each of the two Ultra 5's for high machine-to-machine connectivity (keeps us from buying a switch as well).
Opinions? Anyone doing the same thing?