Latest Crop of MP3 Players 172
Anonymous Coward writes "A couple of interesting new MP3 portables were announced this week. The first one is Bantam's BA1000 that has near-identical size and weight dimensions to the iPod, but offers a number of features the older Apple doesn't like the ability to record from an internal FM radio. Choosing to offer the player in only 2GB and 5GB capacities, it looks like it is shooting to be the first sub $200 portable utilizing Toshiba's petite 1.8" drives. The other player announced was Samsung's Yepp YP-55, which claims to be the first Surround Sound MP3 flash portable. Using SRS Labs' surround sound simulator, the unit comes in 128MB and 258MB units. MP3newswire.net also offers an older, but nicely explained article on how this technology works using only two headphones to replace six speakers."
blah (Score:4, Insightful)
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Surround (Score:1, Insightful)
RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, no. The article doesn't explain how to "replace six speakers" with two. It describes a WinAmp plugin for "virtual speaker placement", whatever that is.
Personally, I've found that all these "virtual" thingies are market-droid speak, snake oil at their very best. If your recording has two channels (assuming no multichannel encoding), a correctly configured stereo pair is the best option.
Real multichannel records may give you true 3D sound, if you have the decoder, amp, and speakers to do it. However, the linked article describes an "improvement" to a system that's ill-suited for high fidelity playback in the first place.
Why anybody would want to distort the sound even further from what it is after MP3/Ogg encoding, since you can get better results with a decent amp (budget models from NAD [nadelectronics.com] are very nice), and a pair of high quality speakers.
So how does 3D audio work? (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans (and other animals as well) use several different clues to localise spatial sound, let's have a look at them: Firstly, there's the time difference: signals that are off center arrive earlier at one ear and later at the other. We can't consciously perceive such minimal time intervals, but out brain is hardwired to perceive the difference between the two signals. Electronic circuits can fake this effect, as long as the listener doesn't move eir head. Secondly, the sound is filtered by the head and the auricles, again differently for each ear if the source is off center and differently for sounds that come from different directions in general. Electronic circuits (and also microphones mounted inside artificial heads) can approximate this effect, but each individual has a different head and different ears and would require a recording tailored to em specifically for this to work perfectly. There actually is equipment that tailors spatial sounds to one headphone wearing individual after having measured eir head's characteristics with little microphones places inside eir auditory canals, near the ear drums. This works rather well, but again can't compensate for movements of the head. If you want to use speakers instead of headphones, the situation is much, much worse. And thirdly, that head movement I mentioned twice above: humans actually do that on purpose and unconsciously twist and tilt their heads around a little when localising sounds, thus making use of the slight changes in the filtering that occurs because of the head and the auricles. So far, there's no technique that takes that into account.
As you can see, that expensive new hardware that Dolby is rolling out now, the Pro Logic II Virtual Speaker [dolby.com] encoder, absolutely cannot produce the same effect as any ordinary 4.1, 5.1 or 6.1 setup. It may spice up a movie you watch on your TV, but you wouldn't even rely on that when you're playing Quake and want to hear enemies coming from behind. And that's expensive, high end stuff. A 'surround sound simulator' in a lowly MP3 player delivers even less. I haven't tried the one mentioned above, but I guess there's no way it could make music sound 'more immersive' or '3d-like'.
What's even worse, we're talking about music here. The best way to play music back is, without the slightest doubt, exactly the way it is intended to sound, the way it was recorded onto the CD or whatever medium. All those fancy DSP functions you find in all kinds of (mediocre) stereo equipment are nothing but useless features that exist for the sole purpose to have more features than the competition; it's pure dupery. You can alter sound by adding reverb or applying weird equalisation or whatnot, but arguing this alteration would be an improvement to each and every track is very, very stupid; don't fall for that.
Re:2 Gig 2 Small (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, 2 GB really isn't that big. At a reasonably high quality bit rate, it stores music for, what, 50 hours? More than enough for a weekend trip, but for a vacation of two weeks, hmm... rather give me 5 GB.
Re:the best $500 dollar walkman still is... (Score:2, Insightful)
Cough cough *Newton*, cough...
Beware AAA battery players... (Score:2, Insightful)
a. The batteries last no time at all.
b. The bud earphones can't be driven with enough current to get the volume you might want.
c. Switching on anything marked "turbo" bass will eat those batteries even faster.
d. Leaving the device off for a few weeks may actually drain the battery anyway if the device uses some kind of static memory storage.
I recently purchased a cheap ordinary AM/FM stereo portable from Emerson with 10 station memory (model HR2001). The device uses 2 AAA batteries. The max volume is poor, and when it is turned off for more than 2 weeks at a time, the batteries are totally drained from storing the stations in memory.
When I read about that yepp device I cringed. Who in their "right mind" would buy such a thing. I loath any portable device that uses less than 2 AA size cells. There's just not enought juice to run the circuitry and audio amplifier.
The conspiracy is that now the battery companies are owned by the portable manufacturers, so like the Lexmark printers and printer cartridges, you are getting suckered into a recurring cost business model.
And yes, the 3D "surround sound" audio from "bud" earphones is a joke, a marketing gimmick, the wool is being pulled over your eyes. It's just like the tube amplifier mobos, if a company can market to just the right segment of the population that can be sold to, they will. You are being used! Don't fall for it. Take some engineering and physics classes! Think for yourself! Don't let someone else think for you!!!
Just my 2 cents.
Re:exclusive agreement? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Container Format... (Score:1, Insightful)