Ogg Vorbis Hardware?

GuNgA-DiN asks: "As more and more companies start moving towards proprietary codecs like Liquid Audio or Microsoft Media or other SDMI "approved" music formats, what are the alternatives? I've checked out the Ogg Vorbis site. I'm now using the Ogg format and checking out the little bit of content that is currently available. I would eventually like to switch to Ogg and convert all my music that is now in MP3 format. Does anyone know if a hardware project has been started that can play back .ogg files? I haven't heard of anything being developed... and just wondered if other /. readers had any info?"

Doesn't make sense to convert existing mp3s

[mlinksva]

Both are lossy formats, the quality of your mp3->vorbis files will necessarily be lower than the "original" mp3. Do however use vorbis for new encoding.

I don't know anything about sound hardware or any that may support vorbis.

I really replied to this so I could say "cool name Mr. Gunga-Din!" (Gunga Din seems to be the name of a Kipling poem and a film, though I first heard of it as the name of a band long time ago Sonic Youth drummer Jim Sclavunos).

Yes.

[jbridge21]

I don't have any links, but I remember several projects shown on here over the years that essentially had pluggable audio formats -- they had like a StrongARM 233 or whatnot, so that future codecs (which require more decode power) could be implemented fairly easily.

K. whores, feel free to find and post links.
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Let the companies know what you want....

[G Money]

Most of the portable mp3 players out there (I have a Creative NOMAD II) can be upgraded to newer sound formats through a simple flash update. If you let the companies know you'll only buy their product if it will support X format, and enough people say the same thing, they'll support X format. If they're already supporting mp3, they've got nothing to lose and everything to gain by supporting a format like ogg.

Re:Yes.

[mini me]

I believe you are probably refering to empeg [empeg.com]. An in-dash car MP3 player that runs Linux. It uses the StrongARM processor and because it is software controlled it could be updated to run Ogg.

Too bad the price on these things are way too high!

Ogg Vorbis?

[Dionysus]

Does anybody but /. readers know about Ogg Vorbis?

I know I haven't heard of it outside of this site, but I'm not that interested in compression format, so I don't go out of my way to search for this kind of information.

Only one that I know of...

[DeeKayWon]

This press release [iobjects.com] recently got trumpeted on the Vorbis mailing list. Scroll down to "New Encoding and Decoding Format Available" for the part relevant to Vorbis.

Not many (at least, around here)

[3.1415926535]

Sady, I seem to have to explain what Vorbis is and why it's important every time I mention it to somebody. They usually don't seem to understand the concept of "free". I tell them, "A hardware manufacturer can make a Vorbis player for only the cost of R&D and manufacturing. No royalties." "But... how do they stay in business?" Oh well.

Re:vorbis blows

[GuNgA-DiN]

I guess I'll feed the troll...

You seem to be missing the point. Sure MP3 is ubiquitous now, but what about in the future? What happens if the Fraunhofer Institute stops licensing it to hardware and software makers?

Or, what if the RIAA and others muscle the manufacturers to stop supporting the MP3 format? So, here you are in the future with 40 gig of MP3s on your HD and no one to share files with. All the software that is available has switched to SDMI formats like Liquid Audio or Micro$oft Media. Your Rio, Yepp, and Lyra stopped playing MP3s long ago.
So, there you are with a hoard of MP3s that were made obsolete in a coordinated maneuver by the record companies, ISPs and large corporations.

Vorbis is young -- sure it has limitations now and isn't quite at the level of MP3 yet. But, give them a few years and I bet you will see a much improved format that is truely FREE! That is what it is really about -- freedom, not format.

Ha! Wrong on all counts! Vorbis Rocks!

[xiphmont]

Stop using top to measure light duty application CPU usage; it's not very accurate (easily off by more than 15% due to undersampling problems).

The reference decoder (in beta 3, due tomorrow) is currently about half the speed of the fastest mp3 decoder we've benched against (and equal to a few), so we're not that far behind after only spending about two days on optimization.

As for hardware, *I* own a Vorbis handheld player (Iomega HipZip :-) ... and I can't wait until the firmware version with Vorbis support is finally marked off as 'ready for release to public'.

I have to get back to the beta 3 release. See y'all later...

Monty