I have looked everywhere on the Internet (I think). I looked on major search engines, forums and on trademark sites and couldn't find any car radio which supports ogg or flac. Well, I did, just one, Kenwood Music Keg based on Phatnoise box. It's based on cartridges but I am actually looking for a car radio supporting CD's with Ogg, or even better: supporting DVD with Ogg. Neither did I find car radios with integrated DVD supporting mp3. It should be much cheaper to produce than Phatnoise based ones.

It should be simple and cheap to implement since there are several portable players supporting ogg out there. Why still don't exist CD- or DVD-car radios supporting Ogg? Any ideas about why or upcoming models?

Please correct me if I missed existent models.

Thx in advance

Well if it does exist (haven't seen such a thing either) I would buy one. So there ya go Pioneer, Kenwood, Sony, Alpine, etc. you already have two customers lined up, although if you send me a free one I reckon I still got some more room for stickers on my car.

Guess the problem is that the average consumer wouldn't even know what to do with it.

My guess is because the average consumer doesn't even know what MP3 is, or just has a basic understanding. Ogg Vorbis is way out there to the average consumer. Most have never even heard of the format. I guess manufacturers don't feel dedicating resources to Ogg Vorbis development in their product is justified since the majority of their customers aren't even aware of the format.

I would like to see more formats implemented in players rather than just MP3 and WMA in the future. My hope is that AAC catches on as well.

Oh Please don't give up
Keep checking this topic

I still can remember there's a member here who owns a Ogg Vorbis Car radio which has HDD....

It can only support max bitrate at 192kbps??????

JUST WAIT FOR HIS/HER POST

Generally, car stereo and other hardware manufacturers will support whatever format the chipsets they're using support. They're buying a single chip for the decoder and sticking it in there. If it'll do MP3 and WMA, then their product will do MP3 and WMA. These aren't generic processor solutions, usually.

If you want hardware support for OGG, then get chip manufacturers to produce OGG capable decoders at low prices.

I'd be absolutely thrilled if there existed a hardware decoder that could decode MP3, WMA, AAC, M4A, OGG, MPC, FLAC, SHN, APE, etc, etc. A one chip solution that could decode anything would be the holy grail, IMO.

What about those portable players which suppport mp3 and ogg? It's very reasonable to suppose they work with one decode chip (for less power consumption). Anyone knows for sure?

Meh, that's the PhatBox.

And said member is probably ScorLibran.

The max bitrate is actually lower than 192kbps, IIRC. That's why it isn't really an usable solution - at least, one can't claim "vorbis compliancy".

I would much prefer upgradability/expandibility and some cost increase than be stuck with a chip that only supports a couple of codecs(decoding is built into chip, instead of processing some external algo from some flashable source or the chip itself could contain rewritable memory). Something along the lines of the I-river players. I admit I don't know alot about Hardware on this level, but another thing is you wouldn't have to worry much about power consumption.

Maybe the size has something to do with it, but that still gets back to the upgradability of the I-River players and their size.

Why nothing like this for mobil audio yet?

It may all be part of product cycles, but that is only a guess.

Be not troubled...

It is in the works, and I will be one of the first to buy one.

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2004/irivercar.html

It says MP3, but I expect it will support Vorbis too. My H140 does.

I would upgrade car radio immediately if I could find one that would play flac/ogg off a dvd, but I don't see that for years...

As far as expandability and such, that's why I purchased a car CD player with aux line in on the front. So I have mp3 on CD, plus if I want, I take my Karma and play Flac or Ogg on trips.

Admittedly, this isn't a perfect solution, or even all that convienient but it does allow me to be in control of my music. It also allows me to use laptop (all formats), and even my pocketpc. I just keep the cable in the visor so any device works. It will also support satellite radio if I can ever get beyond how it sounds.

If you like to build your own, then there is always www.cajun.nu

And just for info, I saw a lowend car radio at CircuitChity for only $70 with an aux line in. So it really isn't that expensive of a solution.

Good Listening,
Cal

Wouldn't be better if someone come with an in-dash adapter for IRivers H or Jetaudio M3 players ?.
Something that you can just plug in and detach?
That seems to be the perfect solution, since your songs library is always in one place and there is no wasted resources for other device.
That could also work for a others players like IPod, and Creative Video players, this could be accesories best seller, and would be cheap to manufacture.

This might be of interest:

Yakumo Car Radio

It's an in-dash cd player/sd card reader/usb reading radio that can play ogg (this is only specified in the pdf manual available from that page. No DVD capability, but it's a step in the right direction, and cheap too - Amazon (UK) is selling it for £70

In my old car I had an 80GB Kenwood Music Keg, and it would play WMA, MP3, WAV, Vorbis, AAC and my format of choice: FLAC.

At the time, it couldn't play Vorbis over about 192kbps because of buffer underrun issues, but they've since upgraded the decoder and firmware (with some of my help testing prototype code), and now it can decode up to 320 (is that -q 9?), according to my experience.

But the PhatNoise forum (the company that produces both the PhatBox and Music Keg) is defunct now. I think the company is still around, though.

It's the only option I know of that offers Vorbis playback in a car audio system. I agree that it'd be great to have one that's CD or DVD based, or even a HD in the head unit (as some companies do, like Sony, but with Vorbis decoding). The PhatBox/Keg was a Linux-based system with a removable cartridge that was usually installed in the trunk.

Consider, though, that there are three ways you can have a portable player work with your car's head unit, and therefore be limited only by what the portable player can decode. (1) Mini-jack to head unit, if the head has such a port. (2) Some setups allow wiring the portable's output into the AUX input of the head, but it involves pulling the head and doing some wiring by hand. Same result as (1), but with more installation work. (3) Use of an FM modulator. There are some available for the iPod, as well as for some other portables (and possibly one that is Vorbis-friendly).

Also worth mentioning is the Empeg/RioCar. The alpha versions of the player software support Vorbis and FLAC.

Of course it was discontinued 4 years ago today but still has an active user base (with a whole bunch of 3rd-party add-ons) and used units frequently show up on eBay.

You can buy VW Golf next year . Since next year every VW Golf is equiped with Ogg Vorbis playback capable car audio. You can check for this on www.vorbis.com.

For selfbuilding projects there's Cajun, as Calufraxis mentioned, which is Linux based. In addition you have various links from this page to projects using MPXPlay on (Free- or MS) DOS.

Ural ConceRt CDD plays Ogg Vorbis.

http://www.cdd.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=299
http://www.cdd.ru/repository/video/UralCDD.mpg

I found this one that supports mp3 from DVD.

Some companies are really strange.

In Germany a big discounter (Aldi) sold an Car Radio with MP3-Support for 70€.
The quality is quite ok. The strange thing is: in ads and in the manual you only could read about mp3 Support, none other codecs. But in fact, it supports Ogg Vorbis perfectly, with Tags, seeking, gapples play, all the stuff. But they didn't tell even one sinlge word. No idea why...

What is the manufacturer and the model number? I am interested finding this.

Triza

The brand name is most probably Tevion. You can find a picture of it here or here

The last review tells us it is mostly identical to the Micromaxx MM 80455.

Thanks Hanky

Yeah, you're right, that's it!

This is true! it's a very low price and you get a car radio that not only supports OGG VORBIS but also has a SD cardreader and USB slot.
In the Netherlands, these radio's (about 3 or 4 different brands, varies in no USB/SD or only SD etc) are also being sold by Kijkshop.
Please check kijkshop.nl to check if this company is also in your country.

This is interesting, it's something we don't see quite often car radio support for multiple audio codecs, etc. The last Car Radio system that I knew of that supported Vorbis and FLAC was Kenwood Music System or maybe it was just Vorbis.

The Tevion unit seems to be the same as the Yakumo Hypersound Car, which is getting a real mauling for basic firmware flaws and poor radio reception over at Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B...4307734-5733220

I have a Yakumo and I'm afraid that, even with Ogg support, I would not recommend it to anyone. (This may change if they produce a firmware update.)

It seems that manufacturers like to claim that their firmware is upgradable as a key selling feature, but when their users actually want to see an upgrade, they don't quickly go about getting around to it. I suppose they'd rather focus R&D on developing new products. Upgrading firmware probably doesn't sell a lot of units. Once you've bought it, you've bought it.

In some instances, I might be willing to actually pay a small fee for a firmware upgrade, but I don't think that it's really fair to sell "Lifetime upgradability" as a feature, then be expected to fork over more money when a new version comes out.

Seems Sony has one also: MEX-R1

From the page:

* Giga MP3, store up to 1000 songs on 1 DVD

where's Rockbox when I need it? I'm gonna start writing the companies that make car stereos and requesting support for Vorbis. I'm guessing that others have before, but it can't hurt to have one more potential customer asking for it.

I am happy to report that the JVC KD-G720 and KD-G820 (at the very least) support Ogg Vorbis playback.

I went into Best Buy today with my USB thumb-drive armed with one MP3 and one OGG (both VBR, relatively high-quality, but I forget the exact specs), and they both worked like a charm. Check the photo below; sorry for the crappy Treo camera-phone quality:



The song is Nebula - "So it Goes." Notice that the file name is truncated in the display - annoying, but probably not a show-stopper.

The -720 is going for $189.99 at Best Buy right now. The -820 (shown in the photo) is pretty much the same but has a high-res animated display. The JVC literature, as you might expect, says absolutely nothing about Ogg Vorbis support.

Alpine and Kenwood also make units with USB ports, but theirs are both accessible through cables on the back, and the Best Buy drones had wired an iPod and a Creative Zen respectively into their display - and as we know, neither of these support Ogg Vorbis because they suck. I couldn't find anyone knowledgeable to ask about trying them out (no surprise there). Maybe I'll try again later when I have more time to haggle, or see if I can find some of those units at a local stereo place.

If anyone has a chance to try any of the other USB units in a store I suggest it, and we'd all like to hear the results...

Great find! I wish Alpine would support Vorbis...I've an old head unit whose volume rotary knob is failing and makes volume adjustment a hassle. However, I have an Alpine 10-disc CD changer in the trunk, which still works like a charm so I don't want to chunk it. I have to wonder if JVC makes any mention of said format support on their website. It's ridiculous that they couldn't add 3 measly letters to the spec to reveal all that it plays. It makes you wonder how many other hidden features exist in the wild...

I also wonder if this will read files and dirs from the Nano with a Rockbox installation. It behaves slightly differently than your average USB storage memory device.

Interesting that the JVC player supports Vorbis. However, does it playback .ogg songs from the CD, and not only from the USB device? Also, the model you mention does only support CDs and not DVDs. JVC has serveral players with Giga-MP3, i.e. DVD support, e.g. JVC KD-DV5101 and JVC KD-DV6101 (no USB input). Would be very interesting if they played both .ogg and .mp3's from the DVD!

Edit: Well I think I found the answer (and it's not good news):
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-935j336oifE/c...DG820&id=review

QUOTE

USB support is not all it's made out to be.
Written by Tommyj, Minneapolis, MN on April 19, 2006

I've had this deck for about two weeks and it is going back as soon as my new deck shows up. I bought it almost exclusively for the front USB input, which I had planned to use to connect my 20GB iRiver and 60GB portable hard drive. A couple things that you should aware of before purchasing this deck for the USB are that it only supports a 4GB partition, which eliminates most hard drive players. The deck will also only read 2500 tracks and a smaller number of directories. The deck also appears to have corrupted the filesystem on my iRiver when I tried plugging it in.

The deck does have undocumented support for vorbis .ogg files, but this is limited to usb connected devices, not CDs. The vorbis support also seems to be poor, I experienced a lot of skipping on normally perfect files.

Another issue I encountered was the clock display freezing. During the first 20 minutes of a drive, my clock read 8:16. I turned the deck off and back on and it displayed (and promptly froze again) 8:34.

IMHO, this deck has some serious issues and any one who is remotely picky about their electronics will be ultimately disappointed.

Dear All,

Try this:

Yakumo Hypersound:-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B...6188554-3035023

You can get it form Dabs.com too.

cheers

LJ

That's unfortunate, Tycho. Since I only have flash players up to 4GB, those limitations wouldn't harm me but the crippled Vorbis support has me worried. I'm thinking of bringing my Nano and/or I5 with cable into the local Best Buy and attempting playback of some of my q1 Vorbis files. I read in another review where the unit is incapable of resuming after turnoff and the shuffle feature is only half-baked. It very well might be too good to be true.

Thanks for the link, LongJohn, but reviews are pretty mixed on that unit, too. Additionally, Amazon only ships that unit within the UK and I didn't find the product on Dabs' page...

For what it's worth, I did try popping off the faceplate, and it resumed correctly when I put it back on. It might be different if you shut the unit off with the actual power button. I guess I (or someone) need to do a more thorough test, such as bringing in a CD as well as a USB drive, etc.

I did read some of the reviews on that Yakumo unit, and "mixed" is pretty generous... unless you mean a mixture of bad and horrendous. It's a shame, too; it seems like a great opportunity for a smallish manufacturer to really do this right and open up a new market. Best Buy is also selling a USB model by Insignia, which seems to be getting similar reviews (it might even be a clone of the same unit).

Grrrrreat idea. Where do you write to? I mean, it's pointless to write to the Sales Dept.

Anyway, when you write letter, mention also the growing support for Vorbis. Amongst others:

• Windows players that support Vorbis: foobar2000, winamp, mediamonkey, etc.
• Portable players that support Vorbis (with or without Rockbox. Don't tell): iAudio, iPod, etc.
• Gamemakers that support Vorbis: Microsoft, RAD Tools, etc.
• The quality of Vorbis
• HydrogenAudio.org

It also helps to say that since many portable players now support Vorbis, you plan to use a cheaper system from their competitor linked to your portable player, but you decide to give their company a second chance...

Can you consider using a mobile DAP in the car (Lucem wrote about this idea already)?

I do it this way and have plugged my iRiver H140 to my car radio.

It's a pity that car radios usually don't have an adequate connector for this purposes.
But if you are able to solder a little bit it's not a problem if you buy a car radio with the possibility to attach a cd changer. This is the case with my car radio.
I bought a cheap adapter that plugs to the cd changer adapter of the car radio, and soldered a 3.5mm cable (attached to the player's earphone output) to the cd changer connector. Moreover a pin of the cd changer connector called 'cd bus' has to be connected to ground on the cd changer connector to tell the radio it is to use the changer (I do it via a switch so that I can still use my car radio cd drive, but I actually never did it after having connected my DAP).

That's all. I love the idea of a universal music machine I can use on its own and plug to whatever I like.

halb27: Actually I personally prefer using my iPaq2210 for all my playing needs. Saves from synchronizing necessities.

Unfortunately, my iPaq2210 also goes with me into my office, and it's a bit quiet there, so I have to use -q 1. At least.

On the road, it's not that quiet, and I pay more attention to the strange sounds coming under the hood than to any artefacts. So -q 0 is acceptable. Fits more songs into the CD/FlashDrive/CF/whathaveyou.

Of course I don't (yet) have an Vorbis-supporting head unit so it's kind of a moot point now. Who knows in the (hopefully near) future.

Hey, i live in the Netherlands, so i'm very interested in such a radio. I've checked their site, but couldn't find anything in the descriptions. Could you confirm the MARQUANT MCR-720 one of the kijkshop models supporting vorbis? Marquant themselves don't seem to have any web presence and google is inconclusive. It's currently the only non-brand radio they offer with SD and USB slots, it seems.

As a followup on this thread, I visited Best Buy yesterday with both my Iaudio I5 and Rockboxed Nano (both containing files at q1; aotuv-b4.51 encapsulated in a recent Lancer build). I tested them on 2 JVC units, the KD-G820 and KD-G720 (Best Buy didn't have either of JVC's DVD units on display). On both units, the "drives" loaded in about 5 to 10 seconds and played back without issue. Playback was not gapless (I wasn't expecting it to be) and resuming is not possible after shutting off the unit (no placeholder is set). However, it is possible when switching between sources (radio, aux, USB, etc.). Navigation was decent and I could cycle up and down through the folders alphabetically using a couple of scrolling buttons. The first 8 directories under root can be activated directly with 8 numbered keys below the panel. The display truncated the folder names (not the files interestingly), making navigation slightly annoying but nothing I couldn't work around.

Interestingly and more surprisingly, I tried my I5/Nano on a couple of Insignia (Best Buy in-house) units with marginal success. First, the IN-MP101 (which Best Buy actually lists on their website as supporting "OGG" ) would not even load my Nano after a minute, at which point I gave up. I neglected to test the Iaudio on this device. However, the NS-C5111 (which also has an SD card slot, which I did not test) detected the Nano and I5 in about as much time as the JVC devices did and even detected the sampling rate and bitrate of the files. Navigation and display was similar to the JVCs also. Also, no resume after switching the unit off and no gapless playback.

These Insignias are clearly not top of the line but at least the NS-C5111 gets the job done in relation to Vorbis playback on the go in a very affordable package.

I've heard the CD units in the JVC devices do not support Vorbis playback, though I don't know about the Insignias.

Alpine disappointed me the most with their Apple-like (accessorize!) approach in obtaining portable media device playback. It's too bad because I have an approximately 10-year-old Alpine head unit and CD changer (the latter still works perfectly) that have served me well but I may have to retire it/ebay it, as I'm seriously considering getting the JVC KD-G720 tomorrow....

Those JVC's were using the additional KS-PD100 right?

I only ask as I have just bought a similar item for my existing Pioneer Head Unit, and was never expecting it would actually work with rockbox!! If the possibility is theres, thats fantastic

Kristian

No, it's even simpler than that! The KS-PD100 is not needed. The USB ports are directly on the front of the JVC device. I don't know how your Pioneer will fare but a Rockboxed Nano behaves very similarly to a USB device, so connecting the device to the head unit is the equivalent of connecting it to a PC. All the files can be read by the head unit without any additional hardware.

Ah I see, and that unit has undocumented vorbis support.

With the unit i have on order, it has a completly different approach, it controls the ipod through teh dock, and uses the ports line out for sound. I guess this will only work with the apple firmware, which is what i initally thought, till i got confused by the way the JVC works.

Will report either way, when I get it though

Kristian

So blandoon,

can you recommend the radio? Does it freeze on Vorbis playback? Any other flaws?

I know that question wasn't directed at me but I can provide an answer, having purchased the JVC KD-G720 (assuming that's the unit you meant).

It does not freeze on Vorbis playback via the USB device. The 2 most significant caveats I've found are lack of resume (after a power cycle) and gapless playback. I haven't tried Vorbis playback via the CD deck yet (it's reported in another review elsewhere that it does not work) but I have noticed some occasional skipping on an MP3 CD that I've tested. It's only a single disc and occurs on a handful of files on the disc, which has also been subjected to some environmental extremes (inside my car in the summer sun plus all the humidity that can entail). I wouldn't really hold that against the JVC. It's the only disc I've tested in the unit so far. It's a decent unit...hopefully, they expand on the functionality in future models.

I just need a reliable vorbis car player. whaat about the 4 gigabyte border?
Does it spport vorbis via any smart card?

thanks again!

I've only connected my 4GB Nano and 1GB Iaudio I5 to it with success thus far...it only has a USB port, so I'm not sure about this "smart card" you speak of (if you're referring to SD, CF or otherwise, then those *might* connect via a card reader). It will take USB flash drives (perhaps even portable hard drives). It's all down to the USB spec, the power requirements, etc. I don't have any large-capacity USB drives to check the supposed limit but I read in another review where even a 60GB drive was successfully connected and accessed in full.

Another review? Could you post the link pls?

I didn't bookmark it. I found it through google....it may have been on Cnet.

As another followup, I should mention that the JVC unit *does* resume when playing back files through a USB flash drive after a power cycle (I got a 1GB cheapie at Microcenter recently) ONLY if you don't physically disconnect it (thereby being a possible thief magnet) between said power cycles. The JVC seems to create a placeholder (either in its own memory or on the drive itself) that vanishes once the device is physically disconnected from the head unit. For anyone on the fence, this plays back q1 and q2-encoded Vorbis files (the only quality levels I've tested thus far) back flawlessly (just no gapless).