Announcement is at http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/portables.html, manufacturers website at http://neurosaudio.com/

Player available 1st of March, Vorbis support follows later that month.

The 128M version costs 250$, the 20G version 400$

Good! Both are almost the same size, the 128MB one without movable parts (flash mem), and the 20GB one HD based, still one is 250$ (NiMH 8hr batt) and the other 400$ (LiION 10hr batt), considering the alternatives in the market, i say both are good choices (heh, the things come with fm radio too).

My personal choice would be the 20GB one, hmm nice amout of playing time. Now all we need is some mpc decoding in there . The 128MB one would be perfect indeed for mid sized Ogg Vorbis, those in the 64~128 range?

Now, considering Xiph involvement, and considering the devices can record, shall we expect Speex and Flac support as well? It would be quite nice, to record/play speex in the flash mem one and at least play FLACs. from the HD one.

Smooth! Hope it takes CF Type II cards... In that case it'll go nicely along with my 1 GB microdrive!

That's a very nice looking player 128mb is like 3 albums for me, and if a bigger card can be slapped into it, that's great

"Maximum operating altitude: 10,000 feet"

Good for us tall people.

Yey!

Now I have to settle on a quality level... I use 7 at the moment, obviously too big for 128 MB...

Read about the linux support that should be out on its release... any mention of Mac support tho?...

i like this player much more than the ipod, but i still plan on buying a mac. hopefully they'll implement mac support soon.

that's great news! Do you think these new players will be able to read replaygain info in vorbis tags?

> Read about the linux support that should be out on its release... any mention of Mac support tho

Shouldn't be too hard to do, since OS X is a Linux/Unix variant

Man, that player is cool. You can actually broadcast your music with it. Way...WAY too cool.

Looks like they'll have iRiver beat as far as ogg support goes. I love it!

Xenno

Not a chance.

Edit: Unless there's serious user pressure. Don't forget Xiph.org discourages the current ReplayGain format.

Yes indeed, some really cool functionality, and i rather like the looks too, at least from the pictures

from the Neuros FAQ:

250$ for a ridiculous 120 mb version...
And "only" 400$ for the 20 gb version.. ...
Too expensive in my opinion.

correction: *250$*

dang, that's too bad...hopefully they'll develop a replaygain implementation to their "standard". If you don't use replaygain for ogg vorbis, will the quality be seriously affected, or just very minor?

Edit: fixed spelling error B) "Quality" not qulaity

What do you mean by "quality" ? ReplayGain only affects the volume level...

Quality will not be affected but the albums will ahve different percieved volumes, one option would be to Wavgain the source files before encoding.


Another reason it may not be supported is that Replaygain lowers the volume of most albums in my experience anyway!
In a portable player size and battery life are of a premium and the audio amplifier section are nearly always driven to or close to clipping/distortion at high power levels, if the source's output was then reduced in volume in the digital domain, when it comes to the D to A conversion, the player (amplifier) wouldn't be able to reproduce high level sounds unless it had a higher powered amp in it!.

This is just a random thought that just occured to me but seems to make sense. Any other opinions??

Cheers,

Kristian

> Replaygain lowers the volume of most albums in my experience anyway

I sure agree there. Doing EAC rips and checking the on-screen log, most, if not all recently released (within last 10 years) are recorded very hot (like 98 to 99%+ of full scale). I leave them alone (no RG).

The most a portable could ever hope to achieve is so-called "line level" output (~ 2 volts RMS), which is pretty much what component pre-amps, cass decks, CD players, etc have been standardized on for a LONG time. My SlimX 350 can't hit this (even at max vol). A Sony portable CD player (only) had strong output though. But while the SlimX output isn't as strong, the all important dynamic range & SNR is right up there with component stereo equipment. Where am I going with this?...I'm not sure. If I were to design a portable I would target a specific dB level (preferably near line level), drop the max volume down a few points from this (for headroom), and then scale allow for the dynamic range of 2^16 bits (I'm not an EE and it sure shows).

I see your point that you could overdrive a portable with an RG'd tune....
Your portable volume control is set at the halfway point...you play an tune whose RG tags bump the volume up to the max of the player...then you turn up the volume some more with the player control...but the player amp is already maxed, so what would happen...clipping?.. distortion?..meltdown?

xen-uno

see also the second post here: http://www.neurosaudio.com/community/forum...earchTerms=flac

sounds like a sweet gadget.

Josh

arg, sorry, every time I try to edit a post in konqueror it duplicates the whole post unedited...

If the player is that bad that it can't drive it's output to a decent volume, apply a digital preamp of 6dB or so (a single shift instruction!). You'll get more clipping, but then you have gotten it anyway without ReplayGain.

Ars Technica just noticed

Novel and cool idea to be able to broadcast! Once the update is out and the price dips or I get funds it is mine!

Considering the amount of clipping I tend to get playing non-RG vorbis files in Winamp these days... this can't be good.

-Chez

Why does the Neuros only support USB 1.1? Is there some technical reason that makes it more difficult (or expensive) to include USB 2.0 support?

USB2 interfacing requires a different IC, than USB1 only but the price difference is not that great. The technical data to implement various standards that have to paid, i.e to the USB forum, can sometimes be to great for smaller companies to pay for the cost of their product. There may be another reason though!


Anyways, i'm curious about the Legalities of the radio transmission module, in particular in the UK.
I built several yeas ago an FM 1W transitter that was able to bradcast on the FM band in the region of 90-106 MHz. This was not legal here as far as i could tell, even though it only managed a few hundred meters. Will this option of a transmitter be avaliable to all countries? What distance will it transmit?
Imagine on a busy motorway stretch, one or two people are using the same frequency really messing the avaliable space up, and most probably interfereing regular drvers with "crosstalk" between neighboring bands!!


A few thoughts that popped into my head!

Cheers,

Kristian

Input and Output (from HD 20 spec)

Full speed USB 1.1
3.5mm stereo headphone jack
3.5mm stereo line-in jack
2.5mm stereo RF jack (for external antenna)

I had to see it (and post it here) to believe it....USB 2 spec has been out for 2 years at least. This puts somewhat of a damper on an otherwise groovy player. At least we can be thankful that it's not Half speed USB 1.1

xen-uno

edit: excerpt of post from Joe Born of Neuros

"Clearly, in retrospect not going with USB 2.0 off the bat was a mistake. We had plenty of valid technical reasons as articulated in the forums, but we didn't fully consider the impact with regards to marketing. We'll have to upgrade at least the HD unit at some point, and we'll have do it in a way that incents people to buy the USB1.1 unit now. We're still working on that one, but suffice it to say that we recognize that our earliest customers are our most important customers and we won't dare leave them hanging out to dry"

What, you want to use yours to capture video?
USB 1.1 = 12mbps, USB 2.0 = 140mbps.

I'll be more than happy to buy a discounted USB 1.1 version

USB 2.0 = 480mbps, indeed.

http://www.intel.com/technology/usb/spec.htm

> USB 2.0 = 140mbps

Try 480 mb/s

Well...it's true that your subjected to cruel & unusual punishment only on the first (bulk) file transfer...so I guess I could live with it. The other features make up for it.

xen-uno

Stupid question;

Will the player, with that neurosetta(sp?) firmware, support the finished version of Ogg Vorbis v.GT3, or just v.1? B)

Of course...in the same way that an MP3 player will play a LAME, Xing, etc.

Though not always true I suppose (like lossless WMA playback on a portable)

In GT3's case, Garf took the existing ogg code and tweaked it, but it still produces an ogg as defined by Xiph.

xen-uno

Lossless WMA isn't really WMA. It's a completely different codec.

For the same reason, an AAC player won't necessarily play the coming MPEG4 lossless audio. (Still on standardization phase)

A little addittion:

Vorbis 1.0 is a standard, which can be decoded by any Vorbis RC2 or later decoder (which of course includes Vorbis 1.0 decoders)

All encoders, including all GT's, follow that standard, and can hence be decoded by any decoder that can decode Vorbis 1.0.