Latest Crop of MP3 Players

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."

the register has an article on the samsung too

[spiny]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/30315.html

it's about time the flash memory players got some extra storage, i'm not prepared to splash out on a neat mp3 player that can only hold one album at a decent bit rate. according to the article, they won't be getting to the UK for a while yet though ...

Next Gen

[Mattygfunk1]

It seems to me that the amount of storage has now developed into overkill for music files. I would love to see companies incorporate colour screens that could provide the ability for video to be displayed since the storage is already there.

Of course with colour screen cell phones taking off the prices should drop to the point that this will be a natural progression in the next generation of players. I'm backing that may be a showpiece at the next macworld.

__
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Re:in other news,

[RLiegh]

And, as a result, I'm curious as to wether or not we'll ever see said mp3 player [and if so, in what way will it be crippled?]

Btw -- How on earth can someone have 2 terabyte[s] of non-pirated music files? "Fair Use"? [at that point, why not get a cd player?] Concerts? Where, exactly, do these come from?

10 hours or bust.

[gabebear]

As far as using it just to play music 5 gigs would be enough(I use mine for other stuff so 5 gigs would be weak), but do I get to keep my 10hour battery? I am an 10gig iPod owner and the battery is the MOST important feature to me!!!

Roll your own...

[c_oflynn]

Its also possible to make your own if you want support for any format.

If you just want MP3, well thats easy. There are lots of sites on the web, here is one [myplace.nu].

For Ogg there is an entire decoder-on-a-chip thingy, see this project [sourceforge.net]. Or you could probably just use a software version if you got some sort of RISC chip or whatnot (need to be fairly fast)

Googie Go?

[nickos]

Check this out. [googiedrives.com] The small Danish company that's designed it needs your input on which product to make next, so if you like the look of it, make sure you vote for it on the site.

exclusive agreement?

[jchristopher]

The iPod is like 18 months old. I'm a little puzzled as to why we haven't seen more devices based on the 1.8" drive (which are now down to about $99 retail for the 5 gig model, so why does an iPod still cost $299?).

In short, there isn't any competition, and I'm wondering why. Did Apple have some exclusive agreement that says no one else can use the drives? If typical price/performance curve for the PC industry had followed, I should be able to buy an iPod 'clone' for $150 (half the price of the Mac version) by now. Unless something fishy is going on...

Re:Surround

[oscillateur]

There are in fact ways to have a sort of 3D perception of sound using only 2 speakers.

The room acoustics research team [ircam.fr]at the IRCAM [ircam.fr] works on this. Their spatialisateur [ircam.fr] application allows you to use many different speakers configurations to enhance the spatial perception of a given piece, and using 2 speakers is an option. This is based on lots of psycho-acoustic research etc., and it works.

It's more intended for concerts and things like that rather than mp3 players, but the technolgy exists.

Sound & sound perception are far more complicated and full of surprises than one may think first...

And btw, 16/24 and 24/92 refer to the bitrate and samplerate (in khz) of recorded audio, a completely different subject.

Re:What about Frontier Labs?

[tuffy]

I read on other slashdot stories that ogg vorbis is marginally better than MP3. But I cannot tell the difference.

The audio quality difference between Vorbis and MP3 is marginal, though not insignificant. The biggest differences are that Vorbis is an open specification, isn't patent encumbered, the reference encoder/decoder is open sourced so anyone can use them and it doesn't require hackish ID3 tags to store song metadata.

In short, vorbis is a little better quality-wise, but has plenty of other niceties to distinguish itself from the defacto-but-imperfect MP3 format.

FM Radio Recording and MP3 Legality

[pazu13]

The placement of an FM Radio recorder on an MP3 player must be giving the music industry some kind of headache. While it is one thing to call some bootlegged Avril (or artist of choice...) mp3 illegal, if you recorded it and placed it on the player then it most certainly is not. And while it's impossible to tell if an mp3 on a player was ripped from a CD or downloaded, it seems like this radio recorder makes the issue even more complicated. Imagine, for example, having one of those babies in your living room and just continuously downloading all the music you hear and burning it to CD. I would assume that's perfectly legal (seeing as how taping the radio is), and can't be stopped. Hmm... free distribution of recorded-from-radio CD-Rs, anyone?