Portable MP3 (and ogg) players and Linux
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 HI gang, I'm starting to investigate the purchase of a new toy - a portable music player. My preferences would be: - - flash, not hard drive, based - - standard batteries (AA,AAA, etc) - - works reasonably well with Linux - - plays ogg (nice but not necessary - aren't the files smaller than mp3) - - plays mp3 I currently have a perfectly functional RioVolt 250 and my only complaint is that it is quite bulky relative to what is available today. I was considering some of the offerings by iRiver, as there seems to be some support by the Linux community. Does anybody own an iRiver flash based player, and what is your experience with it? Does anybody have other recommendations in this area? Maybe we should make this the topic of a meeting??? Thanks, Andy - -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA, USA http://www.wlug.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFC6s8qHl0iXDssISsRAm6QAJ92gZGJWjLnEHGHJejWuZiAhTZh0QCfcQpz 3EJaVxol5W6btG6a+4sRk8Y= =NZnt -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
my only advise is to stay away from the iPod Shuffle....i got my for free, and it almost isn't worth that much. --- Andy Stewart <andystewart@comcast.net> wrote:
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HI gang,
I'm starting to investigate the purchase of a new toy - a portable music player. My preferences would be:
- - flash, not hard drive, based - - standard batteries (AA,AAA, etc) - - works reasonably well with Linux - - plays ogg (nice but not necessary - aren't the files smaller than mp3) - - plays mp3
I currently have a perfectly functional RioVolt 250 and my only complaint is that it is quite bulky relative to what is available today.
I was considering some of the offerings by iRiver, as there seems to be some support by the Linux community.
Does anybody own an iRiver flash based player, and what is your experience with it?
Does anybody have other recommendations in this area?
Maybe we should make this the topic of a meeting???
Thanks,
Andy
- -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA, USA http://www.wlug.org
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-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 HI all, While surfing, I've discovered the iAudio G3. It looks nice on paper - I wonder how it is in reality? Later, Andy - -- Andy Stewart, Founder Worcester Linux Users' Group Worcester, MA, USA http://www.wlug.org -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFC6t7CHl0iXDssISsRAqgjAJ9+1517RpmNNAOF3wgMah6Mc/T8vgCgh3LX FKt3VEQv3Yo1+4sGke2aNHk= =Orwm -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
I wouldn't know if there's a hardware Vorbis player in existence, though I haven't researched it. As I understand it, Ogg Vorbis was designed to be optimal for floating point hardware in PC processors. Anyway, I bought a 512MB flash MP3 player from juicekissdigital.com 6 months or so ago. (Their web site is now "under construction" but I assume their eBay store is active.) Plugged into USB it appears just like a flash media with a FAT16 filesystem, making it Linux compatible enough for me. It goes for 5 hours on a single AAA battery, which I happen to have NiMH rechargables, which is also great for me. Whenever I travel, I take it and 3 extra batteries, though I never used the first extra battery completely. Just poke "mp3 player" into eBay. Now the 1GB units are extremely reasonably priced. Most, like mine, are "Chinese brand," which is fine for my taste, and comes with a hilariously translated manual. Others are SanDisk or other known brands of flash media. I don't think you can go wrong with any of them. -Chuck
On Sat, Jul 30, 2005 at 05:27:54PM -0400, Chuck Homic wrote:
I wouldn't know if there's a hardware Vorbis player in existence, though I haven't researched it. As I understand it, Ogg Vorbis was designed to be optimal for floating point hardware in PC processors. <SNIP> -Chuck
There are a few hardware Ogg Vorbis players out there (like the iRiver I posted about). While the original software was developed on PCs and used floating point, the "Tremor" codec, which didn't require floating point support and was designed specifically for a portable/handheld, has been available since Sept 2002. Given that it was patent unencumbered and released under a BSD-like license, I'm somewhat surprised (though I suppose I shouldn't be) that the support hasn't been more widespread. (While the argument could be made that it requires more processing power than MP3, so do all the MP3 followon/replacement codecs.) Frank
--- Chuck Homic <homic@ml1.net> wrote:
I wouldn't know if there's a hardware Vorbis player in existence
There's a bunch of hardware which supports Ogg Vorbis, less which supports Ogg FLAC. For details see: http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/VorbisHardware --Andre __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com
I picked up an iRiver iFP-799T a small while back and have been quite happy with it so far. A quick rundown on the points you asked about and a couple additions: Company : iRiver Model : iFP-799T Specs : http://www.iriveramerica.com/prod/ultra/700/ifp_799.aspx Flash : Yes, 1GB Standard Batteries: Yes, a single AA Data Transfer : USB 2.0 Update/Upgradeable: Yes, via uploading the firmware and triggering the update. Support Linux : An open source app (http://ifp-driver.sourceforge.net/) is available as well as an alternate firmware that allows you to treat the device as USB Mass Storage (Haven't tried it). Ogg : Specs say yes but haven't tested it yet. MP3 : Yes WMA : Yes (but who cares...) FM Tuner : Yes Recording : Yes, Encodes to MP3 from Mic, Line in, and radio. I've been using it mostly to listen to podcasts (which I'm using bpconf and bashpodder to retrieve) and it has been working out well. Only one oddity discovered so far, at certain low and odd encodings, there are some audio artifacts. I've only run across that particular magic combo once and it was so silly/rare that I didn't even bother to note what it was (really low single digit bitrate, very odd sample rate, etc). The content was still audible, there were just some high pitched chirps overlaid on it. The battery seems to make up about half the weight of the device and it is small enough to fit in a pocket. Comes with a neck strap (which I use to attach it to a belt loop) and a sport arm band (that I found mostly useless). There is also a built in text viewer capability, but I have no earthly idea why... Frank
participants (5)
-
Andre Lehovich -
Andy Stewart -
Chuck Homic -
Frank Moody -
Mike Leo