I checked the FAQ but didn't see quite what I wanted. I saw some posts from Feb/March of this year talking about how there was a beta image that supported Ogg Vorbis. I don't see any beta's available from the main empeg site now. I'd be interested in trying out that Ogg Vorbis image if anyone still has it.

I also read that the product is going to be discontinued by Rio? Is that true (or did I mangle that)?

There hasn't been a release which supports anything other than mp3.
V2.0 will support mp3, wav, wma. I don't think ogg will be supported too soon, but you never know.

Murray
Go-Wit-Da-Fro

It would be nice to see, but since no one has written an ogg integer implementation for ARM (except the unavailable iobjects one), its not likely to happen anytime soon. There never was any beta image for ogg, unless it was a secret?? Hugo have you been holding out on us?

Sean

It's been on my wish list for some time. As I understand it there is an ARM implementation (integer instead of floating point) but it is a commercial thing. Either way it is a choice I would like to see in the future. The hype around MP3 and licensing just irks me thats all.

Cheers,
Hans


Mk2 - Blue & Red - 080000431

Well... The hype around Ogg Vorbis irks me more than the hype around MP3 and licensing... See, Fraunhofer-IIT isn't really knocking down anyone's doors saying "all your mp3 are belong to us." They are asking for royalties for software which implements the MP3 standards, but they're not being very aggressive about that either. I agree that Ogg, if sufficiently developed, is a good eventual replacement for MP3, but I am certainly not going to re-rip my entire CD collection just to get the newest geekiest format on the block. That despite my love for all things new and geeky.

Ogg doesn't really offer much over MP3 right now, and encoders and players are just starting to deliver Ogg input/output plugins. I don't see the format growing very quickly. What's the real reason for switching right now?

And.. wait a minute, the OGG implementation for ARM is COMMERCIAL?? That doesn't sound right to me.. Kind of defeats the purpose of switching to a "royalty free" format.

-Tony
MkII #554

First of all ...

In reply to:

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See, Fraunhofer-IIT isn't really knocking down anyone's doors saying "all your mp3 are belong to us."

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That's exactly what they are doing in true Microsoft style.

Taken from http://www.8hz.com/mp3/

We have received an email from Fraunhofer (as have more developers) to negotiate the licensing for the mp3 encoder. As we are poor students, paying the license is not really a viable option :/
Because of this, we have decided to shut down the 8hz-mp3 section and stop the development of the 8hz-mp3 encoder until further notice.
When we receive a reply from Fraunhofer we'll let you know what will happen further...

Sounds pretty darned agressive to me.

Call it what you want Fraunhofer-IIT waited for optimimum market penetration (what a dirty word) of their MP3 standard (and yes it is theirs, no arguing from me there) and then said : now it's time to milk the money cow. Same thing MS did with MS-Dos and Windows, same thing they did with Wordperfect (and now have done again it seems with wordperfect for linux), same thing that was tried with the GIF standard (and we all know what happend there). I personally think this kind of money making is unfair. If they had distributed it commercially from day one (evals and trial installs excluded) I would have not even blinked but you can be sure that MP3 wouldn't have been as big as it is now.

As for Ogg being better or worse, my desire for a choice is not moved by sound quality of MP3 or Ogg. It is moved only by my disapprovement of what is happening with MP3 and licensing (both the MP3 standard and the drive for Digital Rights Management).

In reply to:

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And.. wait a minute, the OGG implementation for ARM is COMMERCIAL?? That doesn't sound right to me.. Kind of defeats the purpose of switching to a "royalty free" format

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You take the words right out of my mouth there. I should point out we are just talking about the source code for the decoder/encoder here, not some form of DRM. The rewrite from floating point (the open source Ogg releases) to integer is not free. I too would have preferred it to be open source. After all, not just the Empeg would be using something like this but also a few dozen PDA's could for example in conjunction with a Linux distro for PDA's. The most popular example being the iPAQ which is being linuxified left and right.

Cheers,
Hans



Mk2 - Blue & Red - 080000431

Hmm It looks like they're getting more aggressive... But I've never heard of 8Hz. I agree what Fraunhofer has done with MP3 is very Bill Gates. But I don't think it's going to be enough to kill the MP3 format in any way. The negative backlash of which you are obviously a part of may be enough to push Ogg to the masses, but I haven't seen evidence of a strong enough groundswell for me to think about switching.

Digital Rights Management has nothing to do with MP3 because the format doesn't use it. DRM also isn't a bad idea. It won't stop "sharing" because as long as you can still get digital data off of the music industry's distribution medium, you can rip a track and share it an infinite number of times. Yeah I know, even that is in question with the copy-protected CD's that are showing up... But the backlash against those is very strong. DRM is nice because it will give people the OPTION of buying a track for a modest charge, and somewhat legitimize the idea of electronic music distribution. Those who still wish to pirate songs will still be able to do so.

-Tony
MkII #554

8hz was one of the early mp3 encoders, it used the patented algorthym, and that's why they cracked down on it.. since then, things such as bladenc, and lame have come out, able to encode mp3's without the patents...

12gig red mk2 -- 080000125

Ah... Well then it sounds like they're kinda powerless. None of the respectable and widely-used encoders use the Fraunhofer reference implementation anyway. So if anything, Fraunhofer is doing us a favor by getting rid of inferior encoders. I've been "plugged in" to the mp3 scene for many years now and had never heard of 8Hz so something tells me this isn't a huge blow to the mp3 format.

-Tony
MkII #554

In reply to:

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But I don't think it's going to be enough to kill the MP3 format in any way.

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Of course not, and as far as I am concerned it shouldn't even. But that doesn't mean I don't want to have a choice if at all possible. Only if you have a choice can you (as a consumer) exert some degree of influence over the makers. It's like what we have here in Belgium with the telephones. Everybody agrees that Belgacom does a lousy job (compared to others) in terms of pricing, service etc. But they are the only people that can hook you up with a phone so for years they didn't give a rats ass about what people thought of them. This is why consumers need to have a choice.

In reply to:

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Digital Rights Management has nothing to do with MP3 because the format doesn't use it.

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You mean : 'Doesn't use it YET'. I agree it will be extremely difficult to force it upon the users at this stage but that will imho not stop them from trying. One can not deny that the music (and other likewise) industry is trying to force such mechanisms onto the people.

As for DRM I give it a defenite NO. In all forms and shapes. Why because I don't trust the people who have the control over it one bit. It's that simple. Let's not forget that these people care about profits and about little else. The worst case scenario I can think of (though it prolly is only the beginning) is what Microsoft has done with it's licenses. If you don't know what I mean then look around at how many online PC resellers offer you computers WITHOUT the Microsoft OS included in the price. Why because Microsoft wants to sell you more and more licenses of the same product you have purchased time and time again. Now with XP they have even gone further.

Accepting any form of DRM means opening the door to such moneymaking schemes. There are already examples where you can buy ebooks and audio that only play for a limited amount of time ...

So what is the solution you ask ? I really do not know. But the solutions that are suggested at present are unacceptable to me.

Yes, I agree, there will always be people that find loopholes through either the laws or the security on the files themselves. But then that is illegal. All I want to do is put my tracks on my EMPEG or similar device (perhaps on my laptop for when I spend some time at say a hotel) at will.

Cheers,
Hans


Mk2 - Blue & Red - 080000431

You mean : 'Doesn't use it YET'. I agree it will be extremely difficult to force it upon the users at this stage but that will imho not stop them from trying. One can not deny that the music (and other likewise) industry is trying to force such mechanisms onto the people.

Er, no, I mean the MPEG1 layer 3 format itself has no provisions for DRM and as long as current MP3 encoding tools exist, there will be no way to force people to use DRM with any sort of "new mp3" standard. That is exactly why the industry is taking bold and risky moves in the effort to copy-protect CD's. Consumer reaction has been harsh because the CD's then don't even PLAY in your computer's CD-ROM drive.

As for DRM I give it a defenite NO. In all forms and shapes.

Well... I agree with everything you say in that all they care about is maximizing profit, and early DRM experiemnts with limited uses, etc. have been horrible. But they've also blown up in the faces of those who've tried. Nobody will buy E-books that you can only "read" a limited number of times. Nobody will buy digital music with similar restrictions.

However, I don't believe in interfering with a company's right to make money on their intellectual property. If I could download my favorite tracks from a music publisher for a REASONABLE price (say $1 a track or less depending on how much I like it) I would do so. I would then expect to be free to copy that track onto CD, onto my Empeg, or whatever. That is what I would consider legitimate use of DRM. Right now for a CD I like two songs from, I would need to spend $6 per song ($12 for the entire CD) and get a bunch of tunes I just skip over. In reality, what most people are doing is going to MusicCity or Gnutella and leeching the song illegitimately. Of course I've done this too. But for a buck a song or less, I'd just pay for it and be ensured I'm getting a high quality "rip" direct from the source. Anything wrong with that? I'm NEVER one to side with the record companies, but I'd like to see artists make a buck every once in awhile. I'd actually like the artists to circumvent record companies entirely and just offer their digital tracks online by themselves, but that will never happen with contracts written the way they are.

Fun stuff to think about, though.

-Tony
MkII #554