should be possible from reading the threads. How about probable?

Both possible and probable. But not right this instant. They now have a couple of options on their plate, but no time to implement them.

I hope they do it soon, I just heard the samples and the difference is amazing. Death to MP3 and vive l' ogg!

So who will actually do this? Is this something that a thrid party can do or does it have to be done by the empeg/Rio team in an official release?

Its possible somehow for a 3rd party to do this with difficulty, but it really has to be done in the official software.

Sean

Not to mention, last I heard, that the required decoder (that is, one that runs well on a machine without a floating point processor, like the Arm in the empeg), was being specially licensed to the empeg team at no cost. I doubt any third-party person could get his hands on this deal, so for logistical as well as technical reasons, it'll have to be the empeg guys.

True, but I have seen an email from Rob Leslie (mad and empeg.mars.org) who said he might do an integer based version now the 1.0 spec is out. Maybe not directly for the empeg and it won't be useable with the current player software, but it might be open source.