For all of you who are wondering what the Xiph.org people have been doing all last year:
Xiph released a first beta of their Vorbis firmware - named Neurosetta - for the Neuros audio players. Currently it only plays Vorbis audio (NO MP3 support!) and seems to have some problems at bitrates above 200kbps, but it is a major step forward towards Vorbis hardware support.

slashdot story
Neurosetta - Vorbis Firmware
Positron - Synchronization Manager for Linux

dev0

Cool! Vorbis hardware support is coming! (w00t)

But unfortunately, it seems as if the Neuros players are not available outside the US.

Personally, I don't like these players. The addition of the hard disk makes them really big. I would prefer to see Ogg Vorbis support for the iPod and the iRiver players. BTW, any news regarding support for iRiver ?

Part of the size issue is due to using laptop size drives instead of smaller ones make specially for
handheld devices, so that's not a big technical issue once they or a third party decide it is worth
offering a smaller HD backpack.

Another issue on size is using a standard battery (though it is lithium). A custom lithium polymer
battery lets you fit the battery where the space is, reducing the overall case dimensions, but
then you don't have a user-replaceable battery and get a bit less juice/weight ratio.

Some space goes to extra features: built in mic, line-in connector, circuitry for the FM transmitter.

The only thing Iriver has said in 6 months or so is they are being held up by "non-technical issues"
which in the end probably boils down to money and/or just that on one's working on it. As far as anyone knows, nothing has been done since Xiph got it running on a development board supplied by Iriver;
no one has said what, if any, model the hardware on the board corresponds to.

If you want small size and Vorbis, the Rio Pearl looks good. The prototypes have been playing Vorbis
for months. No record though.

Vorbis hardware.

This is a very good thing to happen to the Ogg Vorbis community! Even if the Neuros player is not attractive to everyone it sends out the signal to those other ignorant companies like IRiver and Apple, that Vorbis is not just a geek-thing.

But it is also a test whether Ogg Vorbis is good enough to make a selling feature -- only when it is successful we might see more players. So, all Vorbis fans go and get yourself a Neuros!!


Ogig

Hmmm.... putting Vorbis on the geekiest player/radio/recorder/transmitter/HD/flash/computerized-song-identifier
around shows that Vorbis isn't a geek thing?

Isn't that like putting a radio in a Ferrari to show it isn't just for car nuts?

Hmm, didn't look to close at the Neuros admittedly. Maybe it is like you say, but -- to keep your example -- at least somebody is putting a radio in a car at all! The important step here is that Vorbis has made it to the real world, even if that fact might be burried under other even more advanced features. From the Vorbis hardware list it looks though as if hardware support is increasing in the short run...

EDIT: rephrased

Ogg Vorbis isn't a geek thing. There's a lot of people downloading Ogg Vorbis files from p2p that aren't geeks. I would say (out of my ass and probably wrong) that Vorbis is the third most used lossy format (mp3 is still the most used followed by wma). And some of these people will buy a hardware player if it supports Ogg Vorbis. And that will send a sign to those companies that Ogg Vorbis isn't a geek thing.

AC3 and MP2 surely still outperform Vorbis (mp2 mostly in MPEG files and VCDs/SVCDs)

I meant in pure music, not in movies.

cya

I've noticed some of those CD sites where they get the albums before they come out only using Ogg files.

ie Easymp3s.com

That built in FM transmitter looks pretty awsome.

So does the HiSi Digital Fingerprint Technology. (I wonder if it works well)

Except for the "Transmission Strength: 250 microV/M-2 at 3m" part of it. The oscillator is PLL controlled, which is nice, but the power is pathetic. You'll have to steer clear of powerful stations. Capturing listeners won't be possible unless you really are 3 meters away from the receiver.

This news is making me consider cancelling the new iRiver I ordered.

Nice!

The latest I've read regarding iRiver is that they probably won't add support for Ogg Vorbis until early 2004.

I agree. Given how responsive the Neuros folks have been to customer input (and stilly questions and repeated questions...) I'm glad to see they will get
their share of whatever sales bump goes to the first vorbis player on the market.

so how about Zero-turn (?) interger decoder that Monty work for a while to replace the old decoder ? Is it ready yet ?

That's the point of this feature -- not to broadcast your music to the world, but to (for example) allow you to play the music using your car stereo system instead of having to listen to it via headphones when you're on the move.

(my first post on this board for *far* too long...)

wow, great news indeed! Does anybody here know if the Neuros Audio Computer will be able to read replaygain data in Vorbis tags? I know I read about this here http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=7289 quite some time ago, regarding the xiph developers not agreeing with the way vorbisgain currently writes the replaygain tags. Andyboy know for sure whether replaygain will be implemented on the neuros in the near future?