[New Product] Craft 2, iFP-700 & 800 Series

http://www.iriver.com/company/news_view.asp?idx=372

USB 2.0, 1 AA battery, FM, clock, 18mW, support for MP3, WMA, ASF, OGG (only up to 225kbps)

WOW!!

Perhaps it is the good one... when the price drops a little for the 1 GB model, and if it's possible to use like an external HD with no necessity of specific software (like in UMS firmware for other models).

Could be that I'm going to buy one of these baby's

Does the 225kbps notation just refer to Vorbis, or are they all limited?

That could be trouble for VBR Lame. And what of Q6 Vorbis? Some frames are over 225 are they not?

It refers to just Vorbis.

I'm not sure, but I think they just check the nominal bitrate.

There is also a minimum bitrate restriction of 96kbps on vorbis. Check the specs at the bottom of page




EDIT: I don't think it's nominal bitrate either. I have a IFP-390T and with the beta firmware they have the player just skips parts of the song that fall outsite these restrictions. I haven't heard of iRiver having plans to correct this either. It's got to do with how vorbis files are formatted when the bitrate falls outside of the restrictions.

I've sent one day a mix of two completely different musical parts encoded with vorbis (CVS and QK). Both were encoded in the accepted nominal bitrate, but on both files there were short moments with extreme bitrate (<80 kbps and >300 kbps). The file was played on a CD player with a new firwmare (with the same limitation). The guy who tested it didn't noticed any skip or bug.

The two files are still available:
http://www.foobar2000.net/divers/Bachopaly...%20CVS%20q4.ogg
http://www.foobar2000.net/divers/Bachopaly...20QK32%20q2.ogg

EDIT: cuan, would you test with your iFP390 please ? The files are not too big (500 and 600 kb). Thanks

Ok, I tried both files and had problems with both. I get an indiscernible noise between 15sec & 22sec on both files. There was no music during this time, just noise. The rest plays fine.

OK, thank you
Obviously, the flash player iHP390 is less stronger than the old cd player iMP350, though the limitations for the last one are more annoying (96-160 kbps). Both firware are sharing similar limitations, but they react differently.
This is confusing...

Is the IMP350 running beta firmware too? Cause if it isn't that probably the difference.

I can't be sure. Apparently no, the firware tested was related to this new:
http://www.iriver.com/company/news_view.asp?idx=368

I can't see any mention about "beta" firmware for the iMP350 (but it's the opposite for the iMP550).

OK, I can understand why there's an upper bitrate limet, but why is there one low bitrate limit? What problems could a too low bitrate file cause that makes it impossible to play on some hardware?

If I understood correctly some explanations, low bitrate encoding with vorbis need too much memory for the decoding process.

And high bitrate needs too much CPU.

That's why, on some players, there's a "window" of usable bitrates.

I wish they came up with a player with no built in memory but is expandable through an xD card or some other small memory module. They're quite reasonably priced and guarantees future expandibility of the device.

BTW What is the difference between 7xx and 8xx series? I liked the looks of 7xx more.

Hi, guruboolez,

I suppose your 2 files are corrupt: when I play them im foobar 0.8.1 I also get weird sounds (bird's twitter) from 15 to 20secs.

Can anyone reproduce this?

johnb

As I said previously, I mixed two different compositions. One is the well-known organ piece of J.S. Bach, and the pinball sound is a part of a Pierre Henry composition.

The strange sound is hard to encode, and vorbis VBR model bring the encoder to put a lot of bits to reproduce it with a good quality. With this mix, it's possible to create a vorbis file with a moderate bitrate (on average) but including a short moment (5 or 6 seconds) with a very large one (bitrate is clearly superior to the maximum supported by some iRiver players).

I can confirm the corruption of the files. Tested with Winamp 5.03a/Nullsoft Vorbis decoder 1.35.

Confirmed with both Winamp5 and foobar2000 0.7.5.

Ah, n/m.

cuan> what is the exact range supported by your player (according to iRiver)? On the second file there are many frames inferior to 80 kbps, and some of them are near 60 kbps. You said that this part was played without problems. But this is clearly inferior to the 96 kbps (-q2) floor of most limited iRiver player.

The full iRiver press release can be found here

Bear in mind that i installed the ogg firmware today specially to test those files. I can't say how well it performs generally with all ogg files. When I used it for the first time back in December I found it very buggy.

yes, I would LOVE to have a large capacity (1GB is fine) flash (or any other solid state memory) player, rather than hard-drive based.

BUT - look, they don't support MP4/AAC, and frankly, I just don't care about Vorbis (pretty much dead end street). I'm tempted to send them e-mail asking them to consider implementing MP4/AAC format. What I'm not sure: what exactly should I ask? There are constant arguing on how to call this format. Should I say 'Apple iTunes AAC compatible', or Nero compatible, or whatever? Any idea?

Call it MP4 AAC. Hopefully they will understand.

No point mentioning the other programs - specially iTunes, which is asociated with iPod, that stole the title of "cult player" from iRiver's line of products.

Do you believe it will be upgradeable to mp4 (or whatever it's called)?
It will probably be to expensive for me :-( but it have almost everything I wished for :-)

Ya Mp4 AAC would be nice alright. I heard somewhere that some of their cd based products support it but after taking a quick look through their site i can't see any mention of it. btw, rjamorim your probably the man to know this. If say they did release firmware that supported Mp4 AAC, would it drain more battery than say wma or mp3 at a similar bitrate?

Considering CPU consumption for real time decoding only (probably the biggest battery drain in portable players), AAC would drain more battery than MP3, and less than Vorbis.

Usually Vorbis and AAC consume more or less the same CPU for decoding, but there are highly optimized AAC decoding libraries for DSPs, while this is not the case with Vorbis. If Vorbis ever gets equally optimized libraries, CPU consumption should be on par with AAC.

I don't know about WMA consumption, but I guess it's on par with MP3.

BTW, AAC doesn't consume much more battery than MP3. A highly optimized MP3 stereo DSP decoder from Fraunhofer needs 20mHz, an AAC stereo decoder needs 25mHz.

With all this information, why don't we put together e-mail for iRiver, with multiple signatures - of all of those interested in having iRiver supporting MP4/AAC.

I was thinking of sending them e-mail on my own, but may be having the one with multiple signatures will impress them more.

>>I was thinking of sending them e-mail on my own, but may be having the one with multiple signatures will impress them more.
May be, but may be not.
Anyway, I like iRiver players from iFP series and the only thing that stop me from bying it is lack of aac support.
So, I gladly sign your mail, if you wish.

BTW: iRiver have one player supporting aac, but it use proprietary qdx (or whatever, can't remeber) container. Player is: iDP-100.

I always imagined Iriver's given bitrate window to be based on average bitrates instead of frame sizes. On the other hand, on the firmware update homepage for the iMP-350 it says:

... of which I have never heard elsewhere and which is bundled neither with the player nor with the firmware upgrade.

ah, and btw: Vorbis firmware for iMP-350 is still beta, but running stable in everyday use.

greets Thomas

Thanks, i was wondering about that for ages.

On a different note, orky_pig_jr if u get that email together, i'll sign it.

I think that program is only available in Korean so far. I downloaded it once to test it, but deleted soon after.

It's not a bitrate peeler as some people guessed, it's just a reencoder

How much more info do you guys have on iFP-1100/iFP-S10 music player? It seems to be a very cool design and Germany iRiver site says it's scheduled to arrive in July. Drawbacks: USB1.1 (what is the actual transfer speed of a USB2 iRiver player?), possibly neck strap could not be unmounted. What's good?: Slick unconventional design, Organic EL display, Very small (13.2 x 27 x 62.5 mm).

A few links:
Photo 1, Photo 2, Photo 3 (this also hints that it's probably not usable with other earbuds).