Thoughts on the New Crop of Ogg Aware Players? 312
Steve Andre' asks: " Given the approaching season, I'm wondering if many have used and have opinions about the new Ogg Vorbis capable portable players out there. What I'd like to find is at least a CD/MP3/Ogg capable player which sounds good and doesn't do 'odd' things. What's it like out there? Can I finally roast my Ogg files and take them with me for a walk?"
Car Audio (Score:4, Interesting)
How about a head unit for my truck's sound system that plays Ogg? I have yet to find one, anyone have a link?
Re:Car Audio (Score:5, Informative)
It's no longer in production, although it's still well supported and you can find them for sale quite often on the empeg forum.
-- Gary F.
Re:Car Audio (Score:3, Informative)
-- Gary F.
Re:Car Audio (Score:3, Informative)
You can skip directly to the Software [empeg.com]
I recommend using the latest releaes of JEmplode [inzyme.com] with it. There's an updated Emplode in the alpha firmware package, but it's rather flakey and JEmplode seems to be quite a bit stabler (and runs on Linux).
-- Gary F.
Re:Car Audio (Score:3, Informative)
this product is sold directly at audi and vw dealers [vw.com] so you can bet it's a pretty solid product. it's also the same as the kenwood music keg [kenwoodusa.com], but works with non-kenwood stereos.
i have one and i love it. i can't imagine having to deal with sw
parent is NOT INFORMATIVE (Score:2)
Oh wait, you're trolling.
Oog Vorbis, a user's account (Score:5, Informative)
First, the sample encoder is MUCH easier to use than what I've already been using (GRip). I don't know if that's because my current method is so terrible or because the new one is so great.
Second, the resulting files were about 10% smaller. Others may say "so what, hard drives are cheap", but:
1) I only have 4.5 GB and don't have the extra cash to buy larger.
2) Larger hard drives make a 10% savings even MORE worthwhile. Consider: If I saved 10% of a 4 GB drive, that's 40 MB--room for maybe 10 additional songs or about one CD. But if I saved 10% of a 400 GB drive, that's an extra 4 GB--enough for 100 CD's.
Third, the sound quality was "equivalent". That is, I couldn't tell the difference, BUT I'm not an expert and my sound equipment is FAR from top of the line (just some computer speakers plugged into an AWE32).
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account (Score:2, Informative)
10% of 4GB is 400MB
10% of 400GB is 40GB
Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account (Score:3, Interesting)
1KB = 2^10bytes namely 1024...
1MB=2^20 and so on....
Nope. Not since 1998 [nist.gov].
Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account (Score:5, Insightful)
That made me think of something. I wonder if the reason why there are so few hardware Ogg players because Ogg is mostly used by Linux users. And to some extent, Linux is often run on old hardware. More so than Windows and certainly more so than Mac. Linux is also free as in beer. Like you, maybe many Ogg users don't have the cash to pay for new hardware. So they don't have the cash/won't spend it on Ogg players either. So they don't sell, so companies don't make them.
not so complex, really. (Score:2, Interesting)
Taking the time to put ogg into a player costs money in terms of labor and development, and for that .0001% (or less) of people actually interested in it makes it something of a questionable business decision to spend the time and money on.
Re:not so complex, really. (Score:3, Insightful)
Taking the time to put ogg into a player costs money in terms of labor and development, and for that .0001% (or less) of people actually interested in it makes it something of a questionable business decision to spend the time and money on.
Businesses exist to make money. By using OGG, they do not pay patent royalties or fees. If they charge the same amount per device as they do for MP3, they could make $5 or $10 more. Even selling 100,000 devices, they could make between half and a full million dollars
Uh, no. (Score:3, Interesting)
Licensing for the decoder runs $0.75 per unit or a one time fee of $50,000. Nowhere close to your $0.5 - $1 million figure. Plus in order to save this money they would have to completely drop MP3 playback from the player, rather than supporting both it and Ogg Vorbis. Despite the fact that I use Vorbis when I rip my CDs, I still have many MP3s I've downloaded from emusic.com that I'd like to be able to play
they pay their employees... (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt they would sell 100,000 devices on OGG alone. OGG just isn't that popular. As a CS major at a major public university where CS is the 2nd largest major, I don't know of a single soul who uses OGG, even among those who use linux. And thats among college students who are by far the largest music file gatherering population.
Re:they pay their employees... (Score:3, Informative)
Also a CS major at a major public university where CS is the 2nd largest major, I would like to inform you that I use Ogg, and I know several people who also use Ogg, and I reccomend Ogg to all of my tech-savvy friends.
Maybe it's a different major public university...
I do agree with you, but it's not hard for companies to simply add Ogg support to players that already support mp3 and/or WMA; iRiver, for example announced some time ago (it may have been recently, I have no idea) that they are adding Ogg [iriver.com]
Re:they pay their employees... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:they pay their employees... (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not sure why printing new chips should come into it -- I got ogg support on my Neuros by upgrading the firmware.
Daniel
Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account (Score:2)
Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account (Score:2)
I disagree, and here's why (Score:2)
I have an enormous MP3 collection.... and I reencoded everything as high-bitrate OGGs using GRIP (easy... set it up to autorip any CD you load, with the desired settings, and just change CDs while you surf... took me weeks to work my way through my CD collection).
Adding OGG support can only help... and will be sure to
Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account (Score:2, Interesting)
There aren't many ogg players quite simply because technologically mp3 is adequate for the marketplace (that is the majority of people). As mp3 got the first mover advantage both from a tool
Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account (Score:2)
1. flash costs money. the amount of sales generated from adding ogg support are not sufficient to justify adding the additional 128kb of flash or so that would be required to throw in an ogg decoder on every single device shipped. you'll notice that most harddrive based devices (such as the phatbox [phatnoise.com] or audiotron [turtlebeach.com]) have quickly added ogg support, since it essentially costs them nothing.
2. integer-math ogg decoders have not been around for
A rose by any other name... (Score:3, Funny)
Electronics company exec: "Hey boss, we want to make our new MP3 player also play "Gog Vorkas" files... I mean, Vorg Korbis... I, um, never mind, lets just stick with MP3s...
Boss: Good idea. Here's more stock options.
Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account (Score:3, Informative)
First, the sample encoder is MUCH easier to use than what I've already been using (GRip). I don't know if that's because my current method is so terrible or because the new one is so great.
I like to use crip to make backups of my CDs to Ogg Vorbis. (Backup isn't really the term, it's just so much easier to play my CDs when I don't have to physically put them into the drive!)
crip has minimal dependencies, and runs quite happily on a machine without X.
Second, the resulting files were about 10% smaller.
Fo
Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account (Score:2)
To get close to Vorbis (and I prefer Vorbis even if it does emphasize the high frequencies) you'll need to add several flags. I've just wiped my Debian install clean to make way for a Gentoo LiveCD
Big Math? (Score:5, Interesting)
However (and maybe this is because the Vorbis files emphasize the high frequencies; I'm not sure) the MP3s sound "flat", somehow.
My understanding of the sound quality difference between MP3 and Ogg Vorbis is that MP3 uses a full Fourier transform (sine, cosine and constant) on the audio, while Ogg Vorbis uses wavelets and does a cosine transform only.
Discontinuities between blocks sent to the sine transform would cause the Gibbs effect; these would be heard as a garbled low-amplitude reverberation of the high frequency components and transients in the audio. This is consistent with the effects of low bitrate compression; at higher bitrates, there would presumably be more terms used in both the sine and cosine transforms, so the amplitude of the compression artifacts would become smaller and therefore inaudible.
Cosine transforms, on the other hand, don't have problems with discontinuities, so there'd be an immediate increase in sound quality, at a given bitrate. Transients (attack on cymbals or the rattle of the chain across the membrane of a snare drum, for example) would be handled by wavelet functions - there's probably some sort of mechanism in the code which sees the sharp attack or decay as fast risetimes or falltimes, ignores processing it by cosine transform, and uses wavelets instead.
But I don't know for sure. For one thing, I am *not* a programmer. I can make "Hello, World" and compile my own kernel, but you really don't want me poring over the source for libvorbis.
Re:Big Math? (Score:3, Informative)
MP3, Ogg, and ACC are all use the DCT (discrete cosine transform) The only major codec that differs from these is MPC, which is a subband codec. There are no wavelet codecs in common use, but may offer some advantages in removing the "time smear" produced by transform codecs.
Virtually all of the differences between codecs is in the tuning of the psych model, the filters that decide which frequencies to retain and which ones to remove. (it is also the reason there is a HUGE difference between encode
Re:Big Math? (Score:3, Informative)
That depends on what you mean by "Vorbis". IIRC, the Vorbis spec (and thus, all compliant decoders) supports wavelet encoding. However, oggenc doesn't encode using wavelets yet, so users won't see the benefits of wavelet encoding quite yet.
The reason I mention this is that if you buy one of these Vorbis-capable devices now you should (theoretically) be able to reap the benefits of Vorbis files which use wavelet encoding, as soon as people start making them.
YOU MODDED YOUR SB16??? (Score:2)
That is a MUCH more interesting topic than the rest of this thread. (sorry, guys)
Re:Oog Vorbis, a user's account (Score:2)
In other words, I feel a 128 kbps OGG is larger in size than an equivalent 128 kbps MP3, but the sound quality is more akin to a 192 kbps MP3, yet it isn't as big as a 192 kbps MP3.
Just mah 2 cents. ^_^
hd based ogg (Score:5, Informative)
Re:hd based ogg (Score:5, Informative)
Rio just released the Karma [digitalnetworksna.com] with Ogg support. Done by the same team that did the empeg, from what I understand. I haven't tested out a karma yet but I definitely love my empeg and if it's half as good it's much better than anything else.
-- Gary F.
Re:hd based ogg (Score:2)
Re:hd based ogg (Score:3, Informative)
Re:hd based ogg (Score:3, Insightful)
My thoughts on Rio Karma... (Score:3, Insightful)
I bought the first 20GB Karma that appeared in the local Best Buy - I had promised myself a Neuros, but on hearing that there were problems with skipping on higher-bitrate oggs, I decided to wait until the firmware was improved. In the meantime, the Karma was announced, and I loved the size of it, and so it goes...
Anyway, same thing with the Karma, initially: skipping on high-bitr
Re:My thoughts on Rio Karma... (Score:3, Informative)
The Karma is a USB 2.0 hi-speed device. You should definitely drop in a USB 2.0 card for your machine, it will greatly improve your transfer times.
stay away from Neuros (Score:3, Informative)
That wouldn't be so bad, except the USB 2.0 hard drive promised to those that bought units before July 31 has been scrapped. And, no USB 2.0 drive at all is offered. Without one, it's difficult to recommend a
Re:hd based ogg (Score:4, Informative)
To me, an mp3/ogg player is a piece of consumer electronics; it should just work. I don't want to hack it. I don't want to wait half a year for the features I bought it for to stabilize.
Neuros is not that. Buying a Neuros is like paying hundreds of dollars for a piece of half-done open source software; it may be worth it in the future, but not today.
That said, the iRiver IHP-120 has everything the neuros has (except Song Identification - no linux support - and the radio transmitter, which hardly works anyway), except it's not perpetually beta, it's very thin (like the ipod) and it looks sexy. Plus, optical I/O.
The Rio Karma looks good too, if you don't need recording, FM radio, or a USB Storage interface (which is what kills it for me; I need to be able to transport files on my MP3 player), and want Ethernet.
CNet has in-depth reviews of various models of MP3 player. It's a good place to go for research.
Mini-review from Ross Vandegrift (Score:5, Informative)
here [xiph.org]. Check the thread/archives, there's more.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Here's a few (Score:5, Informative)
1. Neuros, though I'm wondering how commited they are to their player. Ogg support is still in beta.
2. iRiver iHP-120, which I personally think is the best. 20Gb hard drive, built-in mic, ogg playing, et cetera. Great player.
3. Rio Karma. It has a bit less features than the iRiver, but it seems pretty nice overall.
Re:Here's a few (Score:5, Informative)
There are some irritating problems... the menus aren't threaded so you have to stop playing a song to change settings or look for another song. It's only USB-1.1, so it's also kinda slow on the transfers. Both of these are slated to be fixed, but there's no word on when.
Don't forget the battery! (Score:4, Interesting)
Given the recent fuss over the iPod's $200 battery replacement charge, this should be worth checking out before purchase.
Re:Here's a few (Score:5, Informative)
Someone else has mentioned [slashdot.org] this before. The founder, Joe Born, responded. [slashdot.org]
This [neurosaudio.com] may also explain some more on the rumors.
Re:Here's a few (Score:2)
Re:Here's a few (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Here's a few (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Here's a few (Score:3, Informative)
don't forget Zaurus (Score:5, Informative)
Re:don't forget Zaurus (Score:2)
Mine gets at least 3 hours (up to somewhere around 6 max) if I am only playing ogg (oz 3.2 w/xmms-e)
Re:don't forget Zaurus (Score:2)
Re:don't forget Zaurus (Score:2)
People agreed with many early reviews that said the Zaurus lacked battery life, so people fixed it by rewriting the power support... isn't open source great?
my 3-6 hour estimate may be a bit low, given that I was thinking with the screen on, very low, and with it off someone timed it at 10 hours (on the original, not-too powerconcious rom w/xmms-e)
Re:don't forget Zaurus (Score:3, Interesting)
Amen. (Score:5, Informative)
Zaurus is a good quality player and much more flexible than "normal" players. I use Open Zaurus the ogg tools you can get for it and CF. A 64 meg CF is cheap and loads up an hour's worth of music and a shell script [hillnotes.org] or two for random play. Larger CF cards are getting cheaper all the time and a CF wifi card could eliminate the need for the clumsy transfer step. I'm sure people will make software that does all of this easier than my dinky shell script, but I like the speed of simple tools like sed and urandom. Don't forget to use the -q flag for ogg123 to silence the output and don't forget to change the power and light settings so the screen turns off but the power does not and you have a beautiful and very powerful jam box and rounds out an all free music system [hillnotes.org].
My next project for it is to get a car power adaptor and a little nicer mounting system than I already have.
Open Zaurus [zauruszone.com] is a little more flexible than the software that comes with it, but you might not want to do that if you need to sync with nasty old Lookout or something. Debian Zaurus with X11 will be massivly cool when it settles down to stable.
Re:Amen. (Score:2)
I also play music on my Zaurus. Might I suggest: get a big SD card. That way, you leave the CF slot open for peripherals like wifi cards.
I would purchase a new iPod (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, it is sort of a double edged sword with Apple. If they support a format that saves 30% more disk space than Apple then some people would buy the 20 gig model instead of the 30.
Re:I would purchase a new iPod (Score:2)
Re:I would purchase a new iPod (Score:2)
Re:I would purchase a new iPod (Score:3, Informative)
But don't also forget (Score:5, Informative)
More for less on lowest end model = new customers. Also the better a product is than your competition, the more mark-up you can add. As long as you're the only one, and you can deliver the same as a 30gb mp3 player in a 20gb ogg player, why not pocket the difference yourself?
I think it's more the low market share, and few percieved advantages among consumers that is the cause.
Patents? People typically don't pay anything at all for mp3 players, and if they rip their own they often use lame, also a free download. And as every hardware player they'd consider would have to have mp3 support anyway, the licence fee is already paid. Adding ogg support doesn't bring the cost down at all until you can live with ogg-only players.
Size/quality? Most people can't tell the difference anyway, and if they do they'd up the bitrate on mp3s. Compared to the big CD->mp3 revolution, mp3->ogg is well, a nice bonus, but not much more. In particularly if you have mp3 capable hardware players, it's a no-go.
Ogg just simply doesn't have any killer features. It's a very good product, but it's one in a pack. Same with Ogg theora. There is DivX, which everybody knows. Once Theora is done, I predict a good product, but that doesn't get mainstream interest because there's already divx (or maybe the new MPEG4 AVC by then).
Kjella
iRiver Has an OGG Blitz Planned for Christmas (Score:5, Informative)
The coolest by far appears to be the iFP-500 [iriver.com] series, which has been release internationally (a while ago) but not released in the US yet. So impatient me went out and asked Santa for a Squeezebox [slimdevices.com].
Re:MMmm.. (Score:3, Informative)
Damn.. nothing yet..
Mini flash drive ogg players? (Score:2, Insightful)
Best Buy is shunning mp3 boombox/mini-systems (Score:5, Informative)
Beware, some Best Buy CD systems that claim "mp3" can't play mp3 CDs. You have to use your computer to decode the mp3 and send it to the boom box via USB cable (i.e. the boombox is a glorified speaker system for your computer).
Of course a lot of DVD players can handle mp3 . . . I'm told that Best Buy has some kind of stake in the music industry and that they are trying to suppress mp3 hardware.
...Best Buy has some kind of stake in the music... (Score:2)
I'm sure WalMart has taken a similar position. Not much MP3 capable stuff there either.
Palm (Score:5, Informative)
The Tungsten T3 has been widely criticised for poor battery life. My experience has been that I get about 6-7 hours of MP3/Ogg playing time before I get the first low-battery warning. That's pretty equivalent to what you get on an iPod, which won't play Ogg files. Plus the Palm gives you hard buttons, where the iPod has that weird touch-sensitive spinny thing. I have a personal preference for hard buttons, so that was a real winner for me. Other models of Palms have better battery life, and one can increase battery life further by underclocking the CPU, so one can certainly do better than the numbers I've mentioned above. But this was good enough for me.
Also, the Palm is, of course, a PDA. Bonus, from my point of view, since I needed one.
Cons, of course, are that the Palm's music needs to be placed on a flash card, which means that you're limited to the size of flash cards (I've seen them with capacities up to 512meg, but nothing close to even the low-end iPod's 10gig), the file writing rate of flash cards (very slow).. and so on.
I tend to fit a bit over two hours of music into 128 meg of space, or more if encoded at a lower bitrate -- I have some old mono radio shows which weigh in at about 6 megabytes for a one hour show, for example. So your 512 meg flash card (or two 256 meg flash cards) will last you for well over a full charge of your battery. So when I recharge at night, I also queue up the music that I'll be listening to the next day.
Works for me!
Re:Palm (Score:2)
Re:Palm (Score:2)
The specs on that aren't too different than my Tungsten T...but more specifically, the Tungsten E is listed [aerodrome.us] as a supported device. With a 256MB card, I usually get about 4 hours' worth of music at a time (give or take, depending on the bitrates). Playing all of that will run a fully-charged battery down to about 50%. I recently sc
Rio Karma (Score:5, Informative)
20 GB
Ogg Vorbis
Multi Platform JAVA Interface
USB 2.0
I'm owner of the first iPod model. Had to replace the battery 1 1/2 year after ther purchase. The new iPod's get smaller, the battery capacity gets shorter and to be honest I like mechanical parts like the scroll wheel. Furthermore they made a stupid cradle, so I don't have a direct IEEE1394 connector anymore
To make it short I would not buy a new iPod model, I'd buy the Rio Karma. I actually did some research after my battery was gone, but replacing the battery was $80 - thats a lot cheaper - and I have not converted my songs to
Re:Rio Karma (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd never go for "Multi Platform JAVA Interface" unless it was something 'extra' you didn't have to use, and the device could be used as a normal USB Storage device also.
Re:Rio Karma (Score:2)
It is a shame nobody standardized such a file for MP3 CD disks.
There is no excuse for using a non-standard USB protocol.
Re:Rio Karma (Score:2)
I hope you don't mean convert them to ogg from mp3; that would be retarded.
Linux User - Have Rio Karma 20 (Score:4, Informative)
I'd been putting of buying one of these until one appeared that
- Played Ogg Vorbis
- Had non-trivial storage capacity in a form-factor what fits my pockets.
- Had non-trivial autonomy.
- Management App that ran on Linux, or USB storage device simulation.
I must say I'm delighted so far. The cradle is plugged in to my stereo and is banging out Mussorgski (New Zealand Symphony Orchestra) with excellent dynamics and clarity.
I left it on and playing when going to sleep, yesterday evening. When I woke up 6 hours later the battery indicated "half", which is about right for the predicted 15-hour playtime. Of course I don't know if the battery indicator is has been weighed for linearity.
I've played downloaded (from emusic.com) mp3's and self-ripped Oggs, so far, and they sound just great. I have them cross-faded, and ise nice classic VU-Meters for display.
After unpacking, connecting to the network (the Cradle has a 100BT connector - the device does DHCP or manual IP setting.) copying the jarball for the "Lite" versions (which is what the Java apps are called) to my laptop, and running it, nothing much worked,at first.
The app allowed me to delete the pre-stored tracks, and to copy new ones from my HD, but the player would not see them. Also, character translation didn't work very well in the app.
So In checked out software and firmware versions on the support site [digitalnetworksna.com], and the ones on the device and CD were hopelessly outdated already.
After updating both (I had to drive to work to find a Windoze Box.. the updater is an exe file and will not work with Wine) everything was suddenly okay, and I'm now a happy Karma User.
One downside so far: The included earphones hurt my ears and don't sound too great. Both cushions spontaneously fell off as I was removing the plugs from my ears, and were lost, already.
"My Karma is Great"
For what I know from 2 days ownership, I can certainly recommend it.
The Neuros is not bad. (Score:3, Informative)
It plays pretty much any quality ogg fine over headphones. With MyFi (the FM transmission) I hear it still has some problems with transmitting high quality some -q6 and higher oggs. I'm a regular MyFi user, so I've held off for a few more optimizations.
That and, of course, the Linux sync situation is rather good with positron or the Java NDBM.
I'm really liking the player -- they want to release the source to their Windows sync program in about a week, and they are (according to their forum posts) working on getting in some nice new features.
Re:The Neuros is not bad. (Score:3, Interesting)
Honestly, I'm surprised the Linux geeks don't hail this more than they do. A lot of the Neuros stuff is open, such that a completely independent project like the NDBM [sourceforge.net] is possible. So if I, the loyal Slashdot geek, don't like a particular feature of the sync manager, or wish there was a particular super-cool option like playlist rating - do it!
No need to whine to the company and hope, blessed hope, that they hear
Look at Neuros (Score:5, Interesting)
That being said, I'm a little concerned about their solvency, and their technology is getting old.
BUT, the good news is they're having a clearance sale right now. I just ordered a 128 MB Neuros for $99, and I'm really looking forward to getting it.
From what I can tell, their Ogg support is perfectly usable, and there are two open source programs on Sourceforge for managing its songs. You can even flash its BIOS using a Linux host - you don't need to boot up into Windows to do it.
So my basic take: For $99, it was worth taking a slightly less polished product, so that I could support an OSS / Linux-friendly company.
Here's where to get some Oggs for your new player (Score:4, Informative)
More music downloads (mostly MP3 though) can be found in my article Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads [goingware.com].
The article has a Creative Commons license. Please copy and distribute it.
I want a portable DVD mp3 player (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I want a portable DVD mp3 player (Score:3, Informative)
But beware, the player is not without it's "quirks":
"Nice Idea; Poor Execution; Not Ready. Sub-1.0 release. 1 example: Plays MP3-DVDs containing upwards of 1200 songs (files). But device has only a single-line lcd readout & NO FILE BROWSE MODE. What does this mean? Say you want to listen to song #1172... 1. obtain carpal tunnel wrist brace. 2. hit up/forward on remote's jog-diall >> TIMES! (of course if you are a gambling man you could always just put it on random and take side
Rio Karma vs. Neuros (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a Rio Karma now. I love it. The form factor is excellent, the sound quality is amazing, the boot up is quick, the interface is incredibly responsive, I'm running out of adjectives, so I'll just leave it at "overall very impressive."
A huge factor for me though is the Ethernet capability of the Karma. Not only does it provide cross platform capabilities (the Neuros linux usb drivers were very immature back when I had mine), but it allows me to use my Karma as an AudioTron equivalent. I have the dock in by my stereo with a wireless bridge. A very elegant setup.
Re:Rio Karma vs. Neuros (Score:2)
How do you transfer files to the device over cat5? Does the Karma show up as an SMB share or something? Or is it necessary to use the java app? How fast is it? How's the interface?
Does it properly support ogg metadata?
Does it save your place in a playlist or directory while shut off (so I can listen to audiobooks on my commute)?
Anything else I'm forgetting to ask?
Re:Rio Karma vs. Neuros (Score:2, Informative)
You can see screenshots of Rio Music Manager Lite here [sun.com]
Re:Rio Karma vs. Neuros (Score:3, Informative)
The karma organizes music accord
Re:Rio Karma vs. Neuros (Score:2)
I've got a Neuros...it takes all of about three or four seconds to boot. I paid $200 for mine, cheaper than anything comperable. It's definitely bigger than a lot of others. The USB 1.1 is kind of a downer, but the upgradability (firmware and capacity)
iRiver Players Will Support OGG by Christmas... (Score:3, Informative)
Rio Karma (Score:4, Informative)
Now just when you thought this thing was cool with the FLAC and OGG support just wait. It's got a (drum roll please)
ethernet port.
WOW!!! A++++
So far the ethernet port allows you to transfer files to and from the karma with the java client, but they claim to be working on streaming and kicking off tracks. It's got RCA jacks on the dock so you can hook it to your stereo. I'm really not sure if I could have asked for a better device. Maybe if it had a line in for recording it would get the highest score. I give it a 9.9
Not may to choose from (Score:3, Informative)
iGP-100
Capacity: 1.5GB
Features: USB 2.0, FM tuner
Formats: Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WMA, ASF
Manufacturer: iRiver (www.iriveramerica.com)
MSRP: $249.99
iHP-120
Capacity: 20GB
Features: USB 2.0, FM tuner, built-in microphone
Formats: Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WMA, ASF, WAV
Manufacturer: iRiver (www.iriveramerica.com)
MSRP: $399.99
Rio Karma
Capacity: 20GB
Features: USB 2.0, docking station with RCA line out and Ethernet port
Formats: Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, MP3, WMA
Manufacturer: Digital Networks (www.rioaudio.com)
MSRP: $349.99
There may be others (I missed the Neuros, apparently) but those were all I found.
Re:Not may to choose from (Score:2)
There are a few others, but mostly only available in Asia.
Try your mobile phone... (Score:3, Interesting)
iRiver (Score:2, Interesting)
Both players are almost identical in features and capabilities and have received rave reviews from Cnet [cnet.com] (Granted, Cnet doesn't carry a lot of weight in these forums, but it was the only review I could find on short
All-in-one device (Score:3, Interesting)
- $1400 Dell laptop w/ NVidia 3D card, WiFi, bluetooth, IrDA, USB2.0, Firewire
- $150 Garmin GPS, plugs into serial port
- $80 tri-band GSM/GPRS phone w/ bluetooth & IrDA. Right now I just use dialup, but eventually I'll add $20 a month for unlimited GPRS service (~120kbps?) from T-Mobile. I figure I'll get much more use out of this than their WiFi access, since I don't spend all that much time in Starbucks & airports.
- $150 Quickcam Pro 4000 or whatever for laptops. Haven't bought this yet either, since I already have a normal digital camera ($200), as well as a firewire DV camcorder ($450).
So all this equipment fits in a bag together and pretty much lets me do whatever I need to do when I go somewhere, just about anywhere:- Check email / Slashdot from anywhere around the world with GSM/GPRS/WiFi coverage.
- Find out where the hell I am, tell me where I'm going, and how to get to a good restaurant when I'm there
- Take pictures & movies of what I'm doing. Haven't worked out video conferencing yet (no one to video conference to) but it's on the list.
- oh yeah, play music / movies, both from my entire personal collection, or streaming from the internet
- Have all of my Personal Organizer info with me, as well as work
- ...and if I'm not having enough fun where I am, I can play games.
I'd love it if someone made a small pocket device with all that functionality (PDA, GPS, GSM/GPRS, WiFi, good quality photo & movie camera, music player, & >20GB storage), but I just haven't seen it yet - only in bits and pieces. Until then, I'll likely just continue lugging my backpack aroundRe:how about ogg software for a wintel machine?? (Score:3, Interesting)
The decoder is included with winamp (at least the standard and full versions). They might have added it to the lite version too recently thereby making the "plugin" pointless? (Peter's plugin is out there, if you really want it)
Besides, everyone who was using the Winamp "classic" is using foobar2000 [foobar2000.org] now anyhow :-)
foobar? (Score:2)
Re:foobar? (Score:2)
I just downloaded foobar2000, and I've got to say, I'm let down. Not only is the footprint virtually identical (playing music in... foobar2000, normal install, with no optional components = 2,536 vs WinAmp2 in WindowShade mode = 2,660
Re:foobar? (Score:2)
Zinf has the best playlist interface I've seen in any MP3 player.
Disclaimer: I did contribute some code to zinf, but I'm not really a very active contributor anymore...
Re:foobar? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:foobar? (Score:2)
The player they're talking about isn't even available for Linux. It's Windows-only.
Ogg is better quality, easier to use, lower cost. (Score:4, Informative)
Whats this ogg thing? Some elitest-i-hate-the-matinstream-so-i-use-linux music format or something?
Ogg Vorbis [vorbis.com] is a free and very high quality encoding tool set. It supports variable bit rate while being very easy to use. Ogg files are generally smaller than mp3 for the same level of quality.
Software freedom confers several key benefits. There are no patents or royalties on the tools so manufactures are free to use them and you don't have to pay for their licensing. You will also always be able to find software players for any platform and don't have to wory about DRM unless the plaform itself has been cripled by it. Copyright and patent problems made players like Lame and Not Lame difficult for an average computer user such as myself. Not being able to encode my own music colection to mp3 was a real bummer. Vorbis tools is a deb package that requires no compiling and just works. Between it, abcde, audacity and gnuphonograph, your sound needs are covered.
Let's go over that again, beter, cheaper, easier, less encumbered, that about covers it.
Re:high quality (Score:2)
-h-