| Author |
 Topic  |
|
BigBoss
Just Posting
2 Posts |
 Posted - 01/03/2005 : 7:49:34 PM
|
Thanks, I've already been talking with Kate Born I think it was, we have a phone meeting on Wednesday to see if we can get some better details together in working together, having Ogg already is cool, but having Flac as well is obviously way cooler :).
Shawn Gordon |
Your quick response to this post: (2 total votes)
I agree (100%)
I disagree (0%) |
 |
|
|
doctorcilantro
Likes to Post
14 Posts |
Posted - 01/27/2005 : 07:47:13 AM
|
| Just another FLAC freak lending interest & support. |
Your quick response to this post: (1 total votes)
I agree (100%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
Supacon
Likes to Post
19 Posts |
Posted - 02/06/2005 : 06:21:14 AM
|
I'm not sure how in-demand this might be, but I tend to rip most of my CDs into a single lossless file (ape or flac), and a cuesheet. The cuesheet works great in foobar2000 on my PC - basically like a playlist that can split up each track.
Would it be possible to add support for cuesheets into the neuros in much the same way that foobar2000 does? That would be great for my purposes (and would facilitate gapless playback, which is one of the motivations, aside from perfect archival).
Is there anyone interested in such a feature other than me?
P.S., I honestly don't expect the neuros to support Monkey's Audio in the near future because it seems overly technically challenging and processor intensive to do so, but perhaps a more powerful subsequent Neuros player might... who knows? |
Your quick response to this post: (1 total votes)
I agree (100%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
chad(at)gambit.net
Posting is for Closers
98 Posts |
Posted - 02/06/2005 : 11:40:14 PM
|
| I mentioned this in another thread, but if there's any non-coding work I can help out with (I have a low-bandwith webserver that I'm using for a band website, some organizational skills, etc.) to get FLAC in sooner rather than later, just drop me an e-mail. I'll see what I can do. |
Edited by - chad(at)gambit.net on 02/06/2005 11:40:54 PM |
Your quick response to this post: (0 total votes)
I agree (0%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
IWANTFLACANDGAPLESSPLAYBACK
Just Posting
2 Posts |
Posted - 02/14/2005 : 11:48:40 AM
|
We have been on the Flac-Gapless subject for over a year now.
Please tell me that the Neuros III will suport Flac-gapless playback. |
Your quick response to this post: (0 total votes)
I agree (0%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
Chameleon
Posting Mania
1396 Posts |
Posted - 02/15/2005 : 3:56:03 PM
|
quote:
Originally posted by Supacon
Would it be possible to add support for cuesheets into the neuros ... ?
I added a BugZilla enhancement request for CUE sheet support almost 6 months ago. It has, so far, received 2 votes.
Want it? Vote for it.
-- 'I switched to Vorbis and saved a bunch on my hard-disk space!' |
Your quick response to this post: (1 total votes)
I agree (100%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
Supacon
Likes to Post
19 Posts |
Posted - 02/15/2005 : 4:04:35 PM
|
Yee haw...
Voted. Cuesheets would be very cool, not to mention handy.
Normally I see my cuesheets as being an archival detail, but they have become very useful for playback using software like foobar2000. Foobar is all open source, like the neuros, so it'd be very neat to see the same philosophy (and featureset) in both!
|
Your quick response to this post: (1 total votes)
I agree (100%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
The J
Posting Profoundly
184 Posts |
Posted - 02/15/2005 : 5:54:57 PM
|
I know the Neuros supports Windows Media Audio compressed, but there is also a *.wma lossless format that comes with the Windows Media 9 codec for dbPowerAMP. Would using the *.wma losses work or is there something I don't know (I'm fine with 192kbps *.wma files) about it? At the very least, could it be a temporary solution?
I like the idea of being able to support more formats (*.m4a, anyone?); I just thought I'd try to help and give ideas. |
Your quick response to this post: (1 total votes)
I agree (100%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
will(at)
Just Posting
1 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2005 : 3:48:38 PM
|
I'm quite new to this Neuros (only heard of it recently), but the feature list looks pretty good. The open source is very appealing as well.
I'm just another one of those people that encodes a lot to FLAC (and gets SHN bootlegs etc.) and is still looking for the right digital player (the Rio Karma has all the features I want except 20Gb is just too little). I do use a lossy format too (mp3, prefer it to ogg simply because it's more widely supported) but what I'm after is a fully featured high capacity solution (80Gb sounds a lot better). FLAC and gapless playback are very high priority for me. In the meantime I have gotten a portable mp3 player (Rio Carbon, 5Gb, mp3 only) to basically tide me over until I find what I want.
The Neuros looks very close to hitting the mark. |
Your quick response to this post: (1 total votes)
I agree (100%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
doctorcilantro
Likes to Post
14 Posts |
Posted - 03/07/2005 : 4:33:08 PM
|
Anyone have the lowdown on the FLAC arrival? Last we heard some work had been completed. Any general ETA we can get?
Thanks you!
Dr. C |
Your quick response to this post: (1 total votes)
I agree (100%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
Don
Posting Mania
435 Posts |
Posted - 03/08/2005 : 07:03:28 AM
|
quote:
Originally posted by BigBoss
Thanks, I've already been talking with Kate Born I think it was,
If he's not sure of Kate's name, then he isn't who you might think "Big Boss" is on this forum.
quote:
having Ogg already is cool, but having Flac as well is obviously way cooler :).
I can see Flac for record, where the file will be edited, coded, whatever downstream. On playback the only thing downstream is the users ears, which are pretty well served by a high quality lossy encoding. For playback Ogg is way more useful.
On a technical note, of course, a Flac encoded song can be Ogg, since Flac is a coding format and Ogg is a container format which can contain flac.
-Don |
Your quick response to this post: (3 total votes)
I agree (100%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
doctorcilantro
Likes to Post
14 Posts |
Posted - 03/08/2005 : 07:17:50 AM
|
| Have the OGG playback issues been resolved yet? |
Your quick response to this post: (0 total votes)
I agree (0%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
Chameleon
Posting Mania
1396 Posts |
Posted - 03/08/2005 : 2:05:45 PM
|
quote:
Originally posted by doctorcilantro
Have the OGG playback issues been resolved yet?
Very high quality Ogg Vorbis files still skip a bit.
All my Ogg Vorbis music is encoded at Q6 and I have no trouble, not even on MyFi/NeuroCast.
-- 'I switched to Vorbis and saved a bunch on my hard-disk space!' |
Your quick response to this post: (0 total votes)
I agree (0%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
slinkoff
Just Posting
6 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2005 : 08:33:51 AM
|
Sorry, can someone clear something up for me please? Why on earth would anyone want FLAC support on a portable media player? Or any lossless format for that matter?
Lossless is for archiving and for recreating CDs. Listening to music on a portable is what lossy formats where invented for. If you can hear the difference between a FLAC file and a 192kbps MP3 file then you're in about 1% of the population. If you can hear the difference between a FLAC file and a 256kbps MP3 file then you're probably a bit strange and have difficulty drowning out background noise. If you can hear the difference between a FLAC file and a 360kbps MP3 file then you're probably not entirely human, likely more bat or dolphin.
Audiophiles do make me chuckle. If you consider yourself an audiophile and connoisseur of sound perhaps you should take the test I did to my flatmate. Get a friend to blindfold you and prepare 4 or more identical sound clips encoded in different formats and at different bitrates from 128 up to 360 and chuck in a FLAC file for good measure. Then get them to play you each file in a random order twice while you write down what you think they were or how they compared to eachother. Do this on the thousands of pounds worth of professional studio grade audio equipment you have acquired. Then repeat the test on a standard hifi and finally through your Etymotic or Shure headphones on your favourite portable.
Then check the results.
After you've stopped crying at the thought of all the money you've wasted over the years and the fuss you've kicked up about bitrates and quality and purity and signal to noise ratios. After you've let all that sink in you can stop listening to equipment and start enjoying music again.
More lossy formats is good in a player.
Lossless formats are pointless.
Gapless playback in lossy formats with multiple format support is the goal of the DAP. Karma had/has it but Rio seem too dumb to capitalize and rumours of the Chroma seem to hint that it's just a revamped Karma (if it ever arrives), maybe just a 10GB size increase. Are marketing/research people stupid or what?
Come on Neuros, foget FLAC. OGG, MP3 plus whatever other lossles formats you can add with gapless playback and decent capacity are all we need.
|
Your quick response to this post: (3 total votes)
I agree (0%)
I disagree (100%) |
|
|
|
doctorcilantro
Likes to Post
14 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2005 : 08:59:46 AM
|
Good argument and I agree you have to draw the line somewhere. But, recording to a lossless format would be nice. Also, some people want to listen to their Neuros in the car or on a hi-fi system on their way to a friend's house to share some files; it's handy to have the originals on hand.
Mp3's can sound okay, but when you take a 30mb file in turn it into a 3mb file you ARE losing something. You can point at people and accuse them of elitism but you can't blame them for wanting the original; like prints vs. paintings. I will probably use OGG myself once I make the leap to DAP's.
If storage and speeds were increased to 200TB and 1TB data transfer rates we wouldn't be having this discussion; people would prefer the original.
JC |
Your quick response to this post: (0 total votes)
I agree (0%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
Supacon
Likes to Post
19 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2005 : 09:20:54 AM
|
Lossless formats on the Neuros...
If the hardware is capable of handling it, and there actually are suffecient human resources that time could be devoted to it; why not? Since the firmware is open source, that doesn't necessarily need to come from within the company.
As technology improves, lossless codecs will become more and more useful. It's not that they always sound better than high-quality lossy codecs, but they are more flexible in terms of being re-encodable, and reused in many ways without generational quality loss. Because of the ever-increasing size of mass storage, and the increasing speed of computation, many more users will be using lossless formats on their computers in the near future.
Supporting lossless formats on a hardware digital audio player is a matter of convenience for such users. I suspect that players like the neuros will pave the way for the future of the DAP industry by supporting a very wide range of codecs and take it from being a rare specialty to an expected standard. FLAC support already does exist in a handful of players, so it is a useful competitive point in the marketing of this product.
A really cool ability would be encoding to flac from a recorder on the neuros. One could then transcode later on to a codec like speex, or whatever, if one wanted. For some, this might mean more than simply being able to play FLAC, but playing it is the first step.
I don't entirely disagree with your opinion, and I feel that supporting AAC, for example, would help the neuros to compete with the iPod, and give the users more options for very-low bitrate formats to use for large quantities of music. There are, however, users who can use the lossless formats. |
Your quick response to this post: (2 total votes)
I agree (100%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
chad(at)gambit.net
Posting is for Closers
98 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2005 : 09:54:17 AM
|
For me it's more a matter of convenience.
I've lost too many CD's, so I keep the originals in storage in the living room. I rip each one as I get them to FLAC so I can re-create them if they get lost or damaged. Since I have the FLAC files on the computer anyway, I just use those for playback. Why not use them for the Neuros too instead of cross-coding to Vorbis?
Especially since my 20GB backpack just died and I replaced it with a 40GB. (I'm gonna get the 20 repaired... it looks like just a bad power jack, though the HDD itself is a little glitchy, and having 2 backpacks around would be nice. 40 for my music, 20 for my music that my friends will listen to. (All Music - Jpop, Techno, and New Age) |
Your quick response to this post: (0 total votes)
I agree (0%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
slinkoff
Just Posting
6 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2005 : 10:21:19 AM
|
I agree that if you had the choice of lossless over lossy, if there were no space issues then most would obviously opt for lossless, myself included.
However, there are space issues. For the current crop of players, most are 20/40gb with a few 60 and 80gb players available. To my mind these high capacity players are not intended for audiophiles using FLAC, 80GB of FLAC is not all that much music. They are intended for people with large collections, using lossy formats. If players were meant for FLAC users they'd need to be upwards of 250GB. Until these capacities are commonplace, FLAC support is trivial.
I agree it would be a nice perk to have FLAC encoding on the fly but it's really only a perk. Surely it is assumed that everyone who has one of these players has a digital music collection already? Especially anyone who is aware of FLAC and therefore they have a computer, which is much more suited to the job of encoding and tagging.
At the moment I really don't think Neuros should be bothering with FLAC support as a priority. Users with small music collections may benefit by being able to carry the originals around in case they want to burn CDs at a friend's house (?!) but I don't think this is a particularly valid reason for pursuing FLAC support at this time. |
Your quick response to this post: (0 total votes)
I agree (0%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
Sean Starkey
Posting Mania
848 Posts |
|
|
slinkoff
Just Posting
6 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2005 : 11:01:55 AM
|
| yes, well as i said earlier: audiophiles make me chuckle. It would be a great shame if development time was taken away from something useful on a DAP like gapless playback in favour of something ludicrous (at this point in time) like FLAC playback. Encode to OGG or Lame MP3 at 192 and you can fit on 10 times more music on your player for no discernible audio difference. Anyone who says otherwise may do so, but I will chuckle at thee, too. |
Your quick response to this post: (0 total votes)
I agree (0%)
I disagree (0%) |
|
|
|
Topic |
|
Lossless Audio Format?
