Well everyone, I'm currently listening to a FLAC file being decoded by my Rio. So the good news is that the Rio does indeed have the horsepower to decode .flac files, and libFLAC works quite nicely.

Wow, impressive.

Sure you don't want to write a player app for the Rio Car?

Woohoo!

Big congrats there, Dave. Hopefully Reza is having success as well.

Though this may appear to be merely an incremental mark in the evolution of console players, I would instead consider that it is in fact a MAJOR step forward in the evolution of home audio equipment.

Consider that since the first console player was released (was it Kerbango?) we've always made compromises on audio quality. Not big compromises, but nevertheless ones that cause us to retreat to the CD player for optimal sound.

This is why the audiophiles have always considered console players to be mere toys and not worthy of their attention.

Well, no more folks. If the DAC on the Rio is made of good stuff -- and I have good reason to believe that it is -- then we've arrived.

A few more pieces have to fall in place -- some work I have to do to parse the flac metadata for jrec -- but soon we can start spreading the word of how we turned a focus-group-inspired mp3 player into sophisticated high-fidelity audio equipment.

And no small thanks go to the guys who designed the Rio hardware to be much more than it could be.

--Reed

A few more pieces have to fall in place -- some work I have to do to parse the flac metadata for jrec -- but soon we can start spreading the word of how we turned a focus-group-inspired mp3 player into sophisticated high-fidelity audio equipment.

I have a decent amount of work to do on the player yet before it's ready for release also, but it's really nice to at least know that it will work. As well as cleaning up my player and stabilizing it, I have to wait for the next release of FLAC before I can "officially" include it in mine. Apparently I discovered a bug that was causing FLAC to allocate almost 2 megs for one struct! Obviously that wouldn't work on the Rio. The author of FLAC sent me a quick fix to try and it worked great, but he asked me not to release that anywhere as I guess it's a bit of a hack. It's cool to see all these projects coming together so nicely and working together (MAD, FLAC, RRR, Rioplay, JRec, and hopefully OGG at some point).

And no small thanks go to the guys who designed the Rio hardware to be much more than it could be.

I couldn't agree with this more. The Rio is an awesome little piece of hardware. Of course they also deserve a big thanks for basing it on open-source technologies and releasing all kinds of information about it that they didn't have to.

> It's cool to see all these projects coming together so
> nicely and working together (MAD, FLAC, RRR, Rioplay,
> JRec, and hopefully OGG at some point).

Agreed. I'm sure there'll be a decent integer-based decoder for OGG at some point that you can bundle. Until then, we can transcode at the server.

BTW, note that with native FLAC support we no longer have to transcode into a lossy format. All transcodes will ideally use flac as the target (as in ogg->flac, aac->flac, etc.) so there is no further deterioration of quality.

>The Rio is an awesome little piece of hardware.

I had my doubts for a long time which drove me to generalize much of jrec's functionality to support devices beyond the Rio. The display was tiny. The menuing was pathetic. Installation was a hassle. All of this to support mp3 on a product going out of production.

It's fortunate that so many (Mock, FVG, etc.) figured out how to hack the client which ultimately led to you and Reza supplanting it.

As to the future of the Rio, I'm optmistic now. Once comprehensive FLAC support is in place, each user should assist in beating the drum, promoting this new development in console players whereever they can. Hopefully it'll put sufficient pressure on SonicBlue to get the Rios back in production, perhaps even with an improved display.

--Reed http://jreceiver.sourceforge.net