Ogg Vorbis Portables On The Way

Emmettfish writes "According to this release on Xiph.org, it looks like the Neuros player will support Linux users, and also give them the ability to play back Vorbis files on the move, starting in late May. Go Ogg! Remember, donating a few bucks to Xiph may not make the world a better place, but it'll definitely help it sound a lot better." For those of us craving a portable that plays from cheap CD-Rs rather than flash media or a hard drive, Emmett says by email that an agreement for development of firmware for a CD-based Ogg player is in the works, too.

Re:It's about time

[GigsVT]

$250 for the 128 meg, $400 for the 20GB.

In other words, more than my main desktop computer cost.

Nice, but I already have one...

[tjansen]

Nice, but I already have a portable Ogg Vorbis player: tkcPlayer [thekompany.com]

Re:It's about time

[radja]

actually.. on the site, I found the price of $249 for the 128MB, $399 for the 20GB HD one.

Low bitrates - vast improvement!

[Frodo420024]

Recently, I've experimented with Ogg vs. MP3 for streaming voice (lectures, not music), and I find that at the low end of the bandwidth spectrum, Ogg is much better than MP3.

An MP3 file at 32 kbit/second sounds muffled - high frequencies largely removed - while an Ogg at 23 kbit/second (16 kbit nominal) has a much better tonal balance. The Ogg stream is not pristine quality, but much better than the MP3.

If you're interested in packing many hours of low bitrate material, Ogg is the way to go.

$250 for 128MB, $400 for 20GB

[raygundan]

You can confirm this cost by hitting the CompUSA preorder site (ship date of tomorrow, feb. 25th).

http://www.compusa.com/promos/neuros/default.asp [compusa.com]

Fairly expensive. But I do like the built-in FM transmitter. Also, I would recommend buying the 128MB unit, as the 20GB HDD will be available as a "backpack" that makes the 128 exactly the same (size, shape, capacity) as the 20GB unit. However, the 20GB unit can't be "downgraded" to a smaller, more pocketable 128.

One of the benedits of ogg...

[WPIDalamar]

There's one benefit of Ogg that many people miss... compaines can use it in their products, whithout paying a royalty, and without worrying about the libraries changing (since they can distribute the libraries). For applications other than music players (such as games) that play sound, it's perfect. Who wants to use a system supplied mp3 library that may or may not work with your application 5 revisions down the road?

For speech, use Speex

[Compact Dick]

If you're using Ogg Vorbis for recording lectures, I suggest you switch to Speex [speex.org]. From the website:

The Speex project aims to build a patent-free, Open Source/Free Software voice codec. Unlike other codecs like MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, Speex is designed to compress voice at bitrates in the 2-45kbps range. Possible applications include VoIP, internet audio streaming, archiving of speech data (e.g. voice mail), and audio books. In some sense, it is meant to be complementary to the Ogg Vorbis codec.

Don't go with the 20GB drive! Well, sorta...

[raygundan]

The 128MB Neuros player can be upgraded via a backpack to be exactly the same as the 20GB unit. Total price for the 128MB player and the 20GB backpack is only $430, just $30 more than the 20GB unit. The 20GB version is much larger and heavier, and cannot be "downgraded" to be the same as the 128MB unit. By going with the 128MB unit and a backpack, you can have a small, light, solid-state player for the gym (or whatever) and a 20GB backpack to hold all of your music, too. With the 20GB backpack on, it is *identical* to the 20GB unit. The 128MB piece is not available as a backpack, though.

If you jog with it, this is definitely the route to go. Tiny player for jogging, plug in the backpack for huge capacity.

Nex II player

[N8w8]

FYI, Frontier Labs expects to have ogg support ready for their Nex II [frontierlabs.com] player in Q2 2003.

FCC

[crow]

The FCC allows unlicensed low-power FM broadcasts without a license. This is how drive-in movie theaters usually work--you listen using your car's sound system. I'm sure someone here can post the exact limits the FCC imposes on such broadcasts, but they're certainly much more generous than this device would require.

There is already a Zaurus media player plugin

[Anonymous Coward]

I have built the plugin for the Qtopia media player on the Sharp Zaurus SL5500 myself a few weeks ago. You can also find someone else's build as an IPKG on http://www.killefiz.de/.
And the Zaurus could accomodate a CF harddisk (1gig)... I'm not saying that it would run off the battery for long tho.
Also, I heard that the integer only decoder (Tremor) used less power than the built-in MP3 one, so battery life as affected by that is supposed to be longer (10 percent I read someplace).

Bah, this isn't that big of a deal...

[ActiveSX]

Now Xiph.org merchandise [cafeshops.com], however, is something I've been waiting a long time for. Go buy some, kids. The Xiph dudes get some cash out of it, and you get to pimp your fly audio compression.

Re:Low bitrates - vast improvement!

[jmv]

Actually, if you're interested in compressing voice, try Speex [speex.org], another Xiph.org codec. At 16 kHz sampling rate, you can get almost transparent quality around 20-24 kbps and still decent quality in the 12 kbps range. (disclaimer: I'm the Speex author)

Re:Indeed.

[cjpez]

Wonder why no one ever thought of it before...

Um, they have. Drop by your local Radio Shack. For fifteen bucks you can buy a little device that plugs into the headphones jack on any portable device and broadcasts it on a channel of your choice (well, usually there's a choice of maybe four channels to try). This is how we listen to cassette tapes in my girlfriend's car, which only has a CD player. That said, it is pretty cool that it's built right into the device.

Re:MP3 players

[Anonymous Coward]

Hash Bang Slash User Slash Bin Slash Perl

/usr does not mean "User". It stands for "Unix System Resource".

the transmitter

[raygundan]

It has a *very* limited range. Like you, and maybe the car next to you, if you both have your windows open and the other driver has a good antenna. Hell of a lot cleaner than a tape adapter, and easier than pulling your stereo out to add an RF modulator so that you can plug the thing directly in.

Re:It's about time

[arkanes]

I got the 128MB Nomad MuVo(stupid name, I know) for 131 from newegg, including shipping. Still a bit pricey, I know, but considering the advantages over a CD player (no skipping, much smaller, 12 hour battery life) I think it's worth it.

Re:About time

[Skuto]

>Speaking of which - one of Ogg Vorbis' strongest
>selling points is bitrate peeling - you
>can "peel" a 192 kbps file to 128 kbps and the
>resulting file will sound just as good as if it
>were encoded directly off the original CD/wave
>file.

Almost. Peeling will not give *exactly* the same quality, but much better than decode/reencode, and it will be faster too.

>But there is no tool yet. When can we expect to
>see one?

There is a proof-of-concept tool available right now, but it does not get good quality yet. There hasn't been much demand for it yet so developers have focussed elsewhere - maybe with the portables out this will change.

--
GCP

Can anyone say ...

[mrfiddlehead]

Zaurus? Sharp's zaurus has supported several ogg players for ages. And it's more than just a digital music recorder/player. I've been drooling over the damn thing for months, but cannot bring myself to spend the $800CAN for one of these things yet. Perhaps next week when I go consultant full time and can write off the PDA as a business expense.

finally

[doodzed]

It is great that they added in an fm transmitter, but this may be the mp3 player for me for another reason. They added in mp3 recording with a line in. That means I can go, but a couple good mikes and record every show I go to. Hopefully the quality will be great.

Other ogg hardware

[RiffRafff]

According to this site: http://www.mixstix.com/ they already have ogg playback.

Re:Other ogg hardware

[Lin_Matt]

Actually, the software they ship with the MixStix will play ogg, not the hardware (http://www.mixstix.com/onlinehelp.htm). Besides, would you really want a 256MB ogg player??? ;)

Buy the parts yourself

[Chris Canfield]

YAMPP MP3 players [myplace.nu] can be made for the parts for about 80 dollars... perhaps less if you can find things on clearance. It is nowhere near $12, however.

Likewise, many MP3 players are significantly lower than 150 dollars. Poking around on Shopping.yahoo.com, you can find the the Ampigo3 for 50, the Samsung YEPP for 50, the JamP3 for 40, the Audiovox MP-1000 for 40, and the D-Link DMP-100 for 35 dollars. Rio PMP 300's are still available on ebay for $50 or less. They're all about the same quality as the "latest" MP3 players from sonicblue, and will compare favorably to that $20 CD walkman for high-impact activities like treadmill jogging, cycling, etc.

If you look hard, you can find 20GB Archos Jukeboxes for $150.

If you want an MP3 player, now is a great time. Actually, last year was a great time. Now isn't that bad though. Do some legwork and start saving those batteries.

Palm TungstenT (Re:Flash-card MP3 Player??)

[sjonke]

The Palm Tungsten T [palm.com] works great as an MP3 and Ogg player with either of the shareware programs Aeroplayer [aerodromesoftware.com] or Pocket Tunes [pocket-tunes.com] installed. Aeroplayer is free for ogg use, but not free for MP3. Pocket Tunes is not free for either. In any case both are pretty cheap. The TT uses standard MMC and SD cards. Not to mention that the Tungsten T is an excellent Palm OS 5 PDA.

Ogg on SonicBlue's Pearl

[figa]

SonicBlue's Pearl [ign.com] plays Ogg. It was demoed at CES this year, so it should be on the streets by this fall. A SonicBlue employee reported [rioworld.org] on RioWorld that it supports Ogg. It also has an ethernet base, which is unusual and forward thinking.

Another OGG player

[dabadab]

There's also a german firm, Pontis, coming out with an ogg capable player [pontis.de]. (Note: .ogg support is in the works)
It works with CompactFlash, Secure Digital and Multimedia Card memcards (and acts also as an USB card reader/storage device). It lacks the ability to record and the radio, but I for me these are not necessary. Also, it can be used as a handheld game console, although so far it seems there are two games for it :)
I have seen it for 95 Euros, so it is not that expensive. The only thing keeping me back from buyin it is its size and weight (nearly 100g - though that's half what Neuros weighs) - I want to see an .ogg firmware for the Diva MP3 player (a sexy, 36 g device :)
(Yes, I love the idea of memcard based players: I have a digital camera with CF cards so I don't want to spend on built-in memory (that can not be expanded) and CDs are too big and require lots of power to operate so there will never be really small and low-powered CD-based players)

Re:Nice, but I already have one...

[evilviper]

You're not the only one. My WinCE-based (please stop throwing things at me) Cassiopeia E-100 can run PocketMVP [adelphia.net] which can play MP3/Ogg audio, and MPEG/DivX videos.

The only problem is (as I see it) that a 32MB CF card (which should hold a full CD at almost CD quality "-q0") currently costs $15. On the other hand, Minidiscs are about $1 per disc, hold more than a CD, can record live audio (analog or digital--no computer required) in realtime, can edit the tracks on the fly, has better sound quality than Ogg at even the highest quality settings, has a longer battery life, puts off less heat, never skips, can be rewritten more times than a CF card, are more physically durable than a CF card, etc.

Strangely enough, this same subject came up yesterday: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=54778&cid=5364 720 [slashdot.org]

Re:About time

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]
make sure the players support upgradeable firmware for future codec upgrades and I'm set
[/quote]

from their specs : ( http://www.neurosaudio.com/store/prod_20gbspec.asp )

"Upgradeable firmware enables support for future audio formats"

There you have it.... just read the articles.

Re:It's about time (OGG vs MP3)

[porky_pig_jr]

There are some experiments being done and some listening data available, mostly on hydrogenaudio.org site. Seems like the general consensus at this point is that OGG is somewhat better than MP3 at the average rate about 128Kbps, but at the rates 200Kbps+ MP3 is better (meaning 'less artifacts'). At the rates lower than 128Kbps (where MP3 simply doesn't cut), OGG does a good job and apparently is better than WMA. So seems like OGG at this time competes with alternative lossy compressors at the rates 128Kbps and lower. If you tend to record at 200Kbps average, like the latest LAME default settings, you may as well stick with MP3 unless of course you are against MP3 'in principle'.

Batteries galore

[LinuxGeek]

Check here [nimhbattery.com] for a good supplier for NiMH batteries and chargers. I don't work for them and I actually purchased my Ray-o-vac 1 hour charger and batteries from Walmart, but nimhbattery has a much better selection of batteries and chargers.

Some things I have learned about NiMH stuff:
- Buy a good charger. Cheap chargers ( probably first gen) generally work by timer not actual battery condition. The Radio Shack fast charger almost cooked a new set of batteries for me.

- Get second generation batteries, they are properly vented for the fast chargers and have higher current capacity ( 1800-2000mAh for AA size).

- Get a charger that matches your needs, even if you have to pay more. My current charger allows home or mobile charging (12v cig lighter plug) which is great for digital camera use. I bought three other cheaper chargers and regret the purchases, features and quality will actually be important.

- Don't let other people borrow your charger or batteries, you may never see them again. If you do let someone borrow your batteries, then make sure you explain that they should not discard them after they are discharged. Don't ask!

You mean the Irock 300W Wireless Music Adapter?

[grandmofftarkin]

Google Search Results [google.com]

Re:Nex II player

[Anonymous Coward]

From the NEXII Yahoo group. [yahoo.com]

---------- Forwarded Message ----------

Subject: Re: OGG support...
Date: February 24, 2003 12:58 am
From: "frontier labs"
To: "Matthew Bevan"

-------------
Dear Sir,

It is coming along. We are aiming to release a new firmware with Ogg Vorbis
within the 1st half of 2003.

Thank you.

Customer Support
Frontier Labs.

Too late

[Cyno]

Already got my own. Remember that Sharp Zaurus that came out a year or two ago? It makes an excellent ogg player. And it only cost me around $100 to upgrade the ram enough to store several hours of music. The advantage to using the Zaurus to these other devices is you can have your network and computers manage your music collection for you through ssh and rsync over an 802.11 net. Show me a $100 ogg player that can do it right now and you might get yourself a customer, if I didn't already have one.

Re:Emmett?

[Emmettfish]

Wasn't he fired from Slashdot?

No, I wasn't. I was promoted to the position of Editor-in-Chief of Linux.com, then I resigned from there a few months later citing editorial differences. Then I started a web publishing project called Binary Freedom which lives on at System Toolbox [systemtoolbox.com], which I still occasionally write for.

I started a little comic/animation studio on the side, and went back to work as a UNIX Admin (which is what I was doing before I got involved in the whole web-journalism biz) at Digital Island/Exodus for about a year. I got cut in a massive acquisition layoff, chilled out for about a month and then started at Xiph [xiph.org] at the request of the team here.

Now I run Xiph full-time, and release free music [pajamacrisis.net] on the 'net in my spare time.

Wow, that was more than you really needed to know. But knowing is half the battle, etc.

Emmett

ogg player

[scottp]

I emailed frontierlabs [frontierlabs.com] and they said the firmware for ogg would be added to their website soon for the nexII (model). It'll take CF and IBM microdrives for about $115 USD.

Neuros Not quite Ready for Prime Time?

[dberger]

The Neuros HD was reviewed [siliconvalley.com] a few days ago in the Mercury News - and the author had some less than stellar things to say about it. The software issues he mentioned will, I'm sure, be eventually worked out - but apparently the unit uses USB 1 (gack!) rather than Firewire or USB2.

Anyone care to compute out how long it would take to actually fill that 20GB hard drive that USB 1 speed?

Re:Nice, but I already have one...

[evilviper]

You know, I've often wondered why they haven't developed the ability to digitally transfer files from computer to minidisc, and minidisc to computer

So did "they" (Sony).

If they could do that, I would buy a minidisc player in a second.

Considering that the NetMD recorders have had that ability for years, I think you missed it by more than a second.

A little extra info: "NetMD" recorders hook up to your computer via a USB connection. The software running on your computer converts your MP3s, OGGs, WMAs, WAVs (or whatever other format) to ATRAC3 (which is the MiniDisc's incridibly high quality format), and copies that to the minidisc at high speed. The speed depends on the quality.

In standard mode, you can transfer 80 minutes at 4X (which means a CD quality 80 min MiniDisc in 20 minutes).

You can check out mindisc.org, or sony.com for more info. Note the 100+ min playback time on a single AA battery!

Re:Nice, but I already have one...

[evilviper]

Now, if only I could get a NetMD player to work in Linux...

I hope you meant to say "NetMD RECORDER".

Anyhow, there is a GNOME project in the works. You can only rename tracks at the moment, but they are working on uploading/downloadintg of songs. I hope they have something working soon.

http://www.gnome.org/softwaremap/projects/gnetmd /
http://www.pdr.cx/projects/gnetmd/main/

Re:I want to upgrade, not go sideways

[OneFix]

Umh, it's iRiver [iriver.com] that makes the RioVolt...They also do firmware upgrades...

So, they are the one to pester...of course, the iMP-250 [iriverhk.com] is not available from iRiver America (exclusitivity agreements)...

But, the SlimX series (iMP-350 [iriverhk.com] and iMP-400 [iriverhk.com]) are more likely to get Ogg Vorbis support...

From what I hear the SlimX players are more powerful than previous players...

So, it's not likely that your 250 will get support...maybe the iMP-150 [iriverhk.com] (which seems to be the only early model still being produced)...of course, you should check out the FAQ [geocities.com] first...

Re:Neither one is a good reason

[Jucius Maximus]

According to your nick, you are a cat, but I suspect you are in fact part of some FUD spreading team, or at least woefully mislead. " I buy a few patented items every time I go to the grocery store. It doesn't bother me if there is a patent on that stand-up toothpaste dispenser and I don't see why it should, as long as it doesn't prevent me from getting the product and it only makes up a small fraction of its price. Why should it be different when paying $2 extra for that portable player or iTunes?"

If the patent owners on the toothpaste dispenser started charging at $50 royalty, obviously you would switch brands. If Thomson Conumer Electronics or MSFT started demanding outrageous royalties for MP3/WMA, you would switch to OGG, yes? Wait, your entire music collection is encoded in WMA ... you're out of luck until you re-encode. Maybe at the time this happens, you are running MSFT's super DRM operating system with palladium and you can't even transcode your WMA/MP3 to ogg because you don't want to pay to access them. We shouldn't just pay a small fee and settle for MP3/WMA because unlike the toothpaste, you entire history of useage of the product is what they use to force you to stay with it. Re-encoding an entire music selection is not easy work.

" There is a loose end of non-commercial encoders, decoders and streams. But so far, mp3 consortium is just letting them exist and going after commercial licenses (that's as far as I know, any corrections?). Another good solution would be for them to ask end users go to some website and pay $5 for the right to use any MP3 software of their choice."

Thompson shut down BladeENC which was an open source encoder with patent litigaton. Fraunhofer's original purpose for creating MP3 was clearly stated: They want to make money from patent royalties on streaming audio. That's why the original FHG encoder was so bad above 128 kbit/s. It was designed for low bitrate streaming -- most people did not have broadband back then and Napster did not exist. In the long run, they will not tolerate companies or individuals who make free products to compete with paid ones. They, like any commercial entity, are out to make money!

" Yes, mp3 consortium could start going after LAME and WinAmp, harassing P2P users and otherwise turn evil. And that's a good thing that OGG and WMA are around to keep them reasonable. But they didn't turn evil yet and in the worst case I'll lose a couple of hundred bucks then buying new devices."

Of course OGG is around to keep Thompson reasonable. Although Thompson has said that they think there's patent infringing code within OGG Vorbis. (You'd think they would know considering that it's open source.) As to losing a couple of hundred dollars on new devices, you're saying that you would PAY to get into a world where you use products where a company can just instantly decide that you have to pay additional fees to access your music collection, and you're happy with that?

" As for quality, interoperability is far more important. If you make an 128Khz, CBR MP3, you can give it to about anyone and be sure they'll be able to play it. With OGG or WMA, a Mac user will be at least forced to do some painful things to hear the sound. And with portable players all bets are off. Even Linux-based Zaurus doesn't come with OGG support by default."

This is what the people who stand to make a lot of money from you on patented audio formats WANT you to say and think. Apathy in changing formats will just let them snare you that much more easily. It is just like with banks -- I work in the banking industry and I know that it is only apathy that keeps most people banking with their bank. If they woke up and looked at their situation, they would probably be able to find a better deal where they get the same services at much less cost with higher interest rates for their savings.

" Besides, mp3pro is not bad if you want quality at low bandwidth and still works with regular MP3 players in a pinch. Why not give it a try if you are not worried about interoperability?"

Once you start going with mp3pro, you run into the same problems with mp3. The cycle of exploitation by patents starts again.

If you were trying to write FUD, I hope you now realise that you need more practice because you are a poor FUD-spreader. If you honestly believed what you said, I hope you have learned something by reading this.