Ogg performance?

[fengazer]

OK. So I gave the iriver forum a chance, but unsurprisingly, someone vandalized my post.

Have any of you fine folks at MisticRiver used one of the new ifp players for ogg vorbis? I'm looking at an ifp-700 or 800 series player and would like to use it primarily with ogg files, encoded at a nominal 128 or 192kpbs. If anyone has first-hand experience with this type of usage, I'd really like to know:

How does it sound? Any dropouts due to the 96kbps lower or 225kbps upper limit? How is the battery life?

In other words, can I use one of these as a real-life ogg vorbis player? As regards any upcoming firmware upgrades to improve the bitrate range, I'd feel better if I could use the player while I wait...

Thanks very much for any insight.

[seadzz]

Welecome to the forum fengazer!

Sorry to hear about your posting problems at the iZoo but that is normal there.

I had one of the earlier ifp offerings the ifp-395 and used it with ogg all the time. My encodes were in the -q4 (128 kbps vbr) range and I never had any problems. Under q4 you may see some drop out due to the 96 kbps limitation.

As for battery life I did see a decrease in life. When using the ifp-395 and LAME mp3 I was getting about 24 hours from a single AA battery. WIth ogg I only got 18-19 hours. Not that much of a big deal since AA are cheap. You can expect something similar I suspect.

IMHO ogg at these settings smoked the other codecs. Since we are talking limited space in a flash based player it made a great deal of sense for max playback quality and max number of files to use ogg.

enjoy the player when you do get it.

sdz

[fengazer]

Cheers, seadzz!

I have witnessed some of the behaviour at the izoo but thought I'd try, just in case the sheer numbers there would yield one useful reply. I didn't like being asked for a mailing address in order to register so posted anonymously. So much for that experiment.

Goes to show: quality over quantity! I can't believe an hour after my post I have an intelligent reply. So thanks again.

Chris