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.

MP3 players

[mschoolbus]

Well this is obviously good for ogg, but even if this does gain some momentum a big name portable mp3 player manufacturer will simply put it in their player and way underprice these guys.

I am not saying it isn't a good idea at all, but don't you think they could get shut out of business really quick?

About time

[Compact Dick]

make sure the players support upgradeable firmware for future codec upgrades and I'm set - tho the specification does claim that all future Ogg Vorbis files will be decodable by the current decoder, it may miss out on improvements and enhancements.

The CD-based player is a good idea for those of us with massive disc collections but just cannot be bothered to transfer the songs - much easier with a change of disc.

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.

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

Thanks for all the great work.

Re:It's about time

[tsa]

I find the fact that Ogg Vorbis is an open format more important than the small gain in audio quality.

Re:FM broadcasting feature.

[$0 31337]

This kind of technology has been out for a long, long time. There are all kinds of devices that broadcast to a frequency on your radio... why would the RIAA care? The only people that are going to pick it up are the people 2 feet away from your current position.

Indeed.

[Compact Dick]

What this means for me is that I can play my oggs in my friend's car without the aid of any doohickey cable or any other crap like that. All he needs is an FM receiver. A truly useful [and I do not use the word lightly here] innovation. Wonder why no one ever thought of it before...

I really wouldn't worry about the RIAA here - more likely is the FCC who dictates frequency spectrum allocation, but the transmitting range should be short enough to satisfy their requirements.

Almost Perfect

[entrigant]

If it had usb2, firewire 800, and bluetooth support this thing would be damn near perfect. The ability to transmit music via FM radio is already hella neat. I like this thing.. although it is a wee bit expensive :(.

Nice but...

[arvindn]

This is a Good Thing for sure, but keep in mind that the important thing is to help the average Joe see the benefits of Ogg. Sending your mom the CD you ripped in ogg format is way more useful than preaching benefits of ogg on slashdot.

I want to upgrade, not go sideways

[yelims]

I love my Rio SP250. I have a fairly large CD collection, and I love being able to just switch CD's and have a different portion of my collection.

But my question is, why would I want to make a lateral move to something that plays .ogg files off of CD (vs. my RIO which plays mp3 off of CD)?

What I would really like to see is a DVD +/- R solution. Then I could have 4.7GB vs. 700MB of music ready to go.

Am I just dreaming, or is there a market for this besides me?

Re:FLAC?

[0x0d0a]

I thought FLAC was a lossless format so one could record and edit sound files, not for listening

Yup. You can certainly listen to it though.

Do audiophiles really notice the difference between a high quality ogg/mp3 and FLAC?

Not with a portable player and earbuds, they don't.

Is the FLAC file smaller?

No. It's much larger. At the bitrates I usually feel comfortable with, FLAC tends to be over five times as large as ogg. FLAC on this player would be more a gimmick than a useful feature.

Re:FM broadcasting feature.

[trezor]

Wow! A 2-feet piracy radius.

[sarcasm]

• According to Hillary Rosen
• "This would provide a very safe perimiter for pirates worldwide. Having this safety as a bonus would surely lead to an increase in piracy like nothing we have yet seen."

[/sarcasm]

No seriously, really, if their lawyers found out a way to suit these guys for money, they would care.

Law-suits probably has the record insdustries biggest income/outcome ratio as no real wokr is needed. Just free income(tm). It's their new business-model.

Re:It's about time

[Dukebytes]

No kidding. This is great and all - but good lord. All the MP3 players are big $$$$ IMHO.

They have about $12 worth of parts in them if that much and they are all over $150.00... I want one to work out with at the gym - but I'm not paying that much for one when I can have a CD walkman for $20 bucks....

only usb1.1

[alanak]

I was thinking - this is pretty cool. Then I saw it connects to your computer via usb 1.1. Who in their right mind would develop a new product with a 20GB harddrive and stick a measly USB 1.1 connection on it? There's no way that's going to work without frustrating every user

Re:It's about time

[EpsCylonB]

It should be pointed out that the notion that Ogg Vorbis is provides better quality audio is not universally accepted. Audio quality is incredibly difficult to quantify as it is subjective. Even if you ignore all the different variables (CBR vs VBR, quality of audio equipment, etc.) one person may make very different judgements from another (especially with Vorbis and Mp3 being so close).

And most tech reviews I have read seem to indicate that the different compression formats (Vorbis, Mp3 and WMA) all have different strengths when it comes to particular types of music.

Re:only usb1.1

[10Ghz]

Ummmm.... How often would you be transferring files to that thing? I don't know about you, but it has enough space to hold my mp3-collection four times over! Just leave it transferring files while you sleep or something, problem solved. You would not be transferring 20 gigs of data every other day or something.

Re:Connections

[10Ghz]

Transfering a CD's worth of music onto the device would take well over a minute at any decent quality.

yes! I can't wait for that long! I must have it immediately!

Seriously, are you really yhat busy that you can't wait for that long?

Transferring a collection onto the drive would take hours.

I assume you would be filling the 20gigs entirely? How often would you do that? Not very often I would imagine. Propably only once. Why not leave it transferring files while you sleep for example? Or would you be constantly moving 20 gigs of files in to that thing? I don't think so. Once you move your files there, that's it. After that, you would only make incremental additions, and USB1.1 is good enough for that.

obligatory Simpsons quotation

[nomadic]

Transfering a CD's worth of music onto the device would take well over a minute at any decent quality.

Moe: Oh boy, the deep fryers here..I got it used from the Navy--you can flash-fry a buffalo in 40 seconds!

Homer: 40 seconds?! But I want it now!

Re:It's about time

[orbital3]

As a long time follower of the different audio encoding technologies, I have to agree with you on your point that the quality of the different formats seems to be quite subjective, but personally, I'm one of the many (few?) whose ears are overwhelmingly in favor of Ogg.

I can't STAND WMA at all... it has a high end ringing screech at pretty much any bitrate, while at the same time, some people swear by WMA. WMA also boosts the volume of the encoded material to give the listener the impression that it's better quality, which is bad form, IMO.

MP3 is pretty impressive nowadays, with all of the work that has gone into LAME... Even 128kbit VBR is passable. But as I said, to my ears at least, they all bow before Ogg. That same passable quality you get at 128kbit with LAME you get at 96kbit with Ogg. And the artifacts are also much less offensive to my ears, but again, that is a matter of opinion.

Anyway, I hear too much completely uninformed Ogg bashing, and I wish everyone would do some objective testing of their own. Go read up on blind ABX testing [pcabx.com], and do some yourself. If Ogg isn't the one you think sounds best, that's fine, but just don't say it's crap without giving it a shot!

Re:It's about time

[Emmettfish]

Thus Ogg doesn't have a "better audio", CD-quality Ogg just takes less space than CD-quality MP3. However with 20GB capacity in players, bitrate is quite irrelevant.

There is no such thing as 'CD-quality' when dealing with a lossy encoder like mp3 or Ogg Vorbis. True CD quality can only be attained with a lossless encoder, like FLAC [sf.net] or Shorten.

If you think Ogg Vorbis sounds better than mp3 at comparable bitrate or lower, then it's safe to say that you consider Ogg Vorbis representative of "better audio," or better reproduction of sound. If you do find this to be true, then you're in good company; Large amounts of double-blind testing agrees with you.

Bitrate is never irrelevant. Bitrate multiplied by time equals size, and anyone who has ever filled a hard drive could probably tell you about how some things can look very large indeed from far away, but hit their limit of usefulness in a curiously small amount of time.

Emmett Plant [vorbis.com]
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation [xiph.org]

Re:Neat and Nifty

[Have Blue]

1. There is no "Apple's design firm". Apple does the design themselves.

2. Probably because you can't fit that kind of functionality into a $5 chip in an embedded device. MP3 players use hardware decoders that cannot be easily reprogrammed.

What about equalizer?

[dfj225]

I have to say that on my linux box, mp3s sound much better than ogg files because i have the ability to use the equalizer with the mp3s. I guess ogg could sound better and it could be true that i'm not using the best driver. Either way, I'm sure that everyone would enjoy an eq in their portable players.