New Firmwares For iMPs

[h0p3l355is4]

I'm seeing new firmwares for the entire iMP line including new models. Hmmm some progress is better than nothing. Now we wait again for the H series firmwares.

http://service.iriver.co.kr/pds/

[TedJ]

Any idea what's new with the iMP-550 v1.80 firmware? I would love to have stable Ogg Vorbis playback, although I still consider the 550 as the best MP3 CD player I've ever owned.

Ted (woot! First post!)

[FlameGrilled]

Hmm, whilst the 550 may be flashier, and slighty more hi-tech in it's guts, i still doubt the 550 will ever be the deck that leaves the classic 250 a bloodied victim of merciless alleyway beating when the MP3 mafia come to try to remove the opposition

Regardless of how flashy the later decks are, excepting early-mid build 350's, the rest just gave over to flashiness and never quite retained the bombproofness of the old decks (250 being the benchmark for this).

If a 250 couldn't read a disc, it was truely a junk disc (v.badly burnt, shoddy cheapo unworthy media, or simply damaged).

Nice to see new firmware, but the newer decks just canna sway the cat's paw from patting the memory of the 250 fondly :P

[TedJ]

Hi FG,

Yes, I'll admit that I bought the 550 partially for it's looks (ie: damn sexy) but then I only really had a choice between that and the 450. I've been lurking both here and at iriver.com for the last few weeks and have seen several of your posts regarding your experiences with the older players... and I doubt my player will be worked as hard as yours.

Ted

[vinnie97]

how irritating, IMP-350 playback of ogg's is still limited to q3-q6.

[FlameGrilled]

Well, Ted, i have to admit to being guilty of sentiment - like classic car & bike enthusiasts, i still tend to hand on to the old iMP decks fondly in memory..

The 550 would have been a contender for me, at one time, but it's shockingly poor tolerence of media (as noted from plenty of feedback posted over the last year or so here and at iRiver) definately made it a downgrade from my buying point of view.

Pity really, as the 350 (early/mid builds) had all the hyper level of disc tolerence the 250 had - but by comparision, the poor 550 is a relative prima donna when it comes to what it'll accept in the way of user's own recorded media.

So, as 550 owners realise, the days of cheapo media are a piece of history as far as modern iMP decks use is concerned

As it goes, reflecting on the 250, the old tolerence was simple.. if the disc was correctly burnt within it's real media tolerence and the disc hadn't got physically deep damaged by mishandling, it'd read fine on the old decks - pick any modern deck and try putting the same deep-damaged disc in.. and listen to the poor motors working overtime :P

Vinnie :-

Sure, without sounding like a broken record, the only bit of the whole Ogg adoption argument i do agree with is the fact that a proper range of support should have been added.. or nothing.

So, for iMP/iFP use people have two choices .. take a chance and stick to a narrow Q range for encoding, or literally ABR encode to the known supported rate limits.

Clearly, ABR encoding is slower than slow.. VBR is better but still snails pace stuff (relatively speaking).

Since iRiver are clearly in no hurry to fix the limited support bit, it's sane that anyone with no time to waste.. had better stick to ABR encoding with the specific player support limits punched in...

[vinnie97]

I haven't actually tried ABR encoding but may give it a go now. For the longest time, I've simply been interested in loading a cd-r with q0's and be done with it, but the technical limitations are leaving me in the dust.

[FlameGrilled]

Well, Vinnie, there is one good reason to use ABR, not VBR, currently.

You realise that full range Ogg support isn't there on pre-H/iHP series units.

So, what this means is if you want to make the max use of what you do have, you really need to bit-rate contrain the encodings to ensure you don't get out-of-range bit-rate encoded frames come into play.

The odd one or few here and there probably dont make a lot of odds on higher-rate encodings, but those same few are substantial parts of a lower-rate encoding and hence more likely to disrupt ('cause playback glitches').

So why not do unto Ogg what we (some of use still do) used to do with mp3, and set min/max rates to suit known support..??

It narrows the margin right down for the probability of 'bad' (as in unsupported) Ogg files being generated. You can still alter the avg setting to push the emphasis higher towards the max supported rate or lower towards the lower supported rate to help tailor the resulting files sizes to suit needs.

Some 'animals' respond well to you grabbing them by the scruff of the neck and showing 'em who's boss - and whilst iMP/iFP's lack full Ogg support, the Ogg encoders are really to be treated as such animals :P

You can, by all means, treat your Ogg encoder's like pampered pets when there's no support issues to justify direct action, but until then - be in charge, and let the Q obssessed ('dont use ABR or else') Ogg nuts do what suits them.

CLI based encoding can be an education, a nightmare, and real handy all rolled into one - the nightmare tends to fade after you learn to get clever with scripts and batch files :P

[TedJ]

Originally Posted by FlameGrilled

... CLI based encoding can be an education, a nightmare, and real handy all rolled into one - the nightmare tends to fade after you learn to get clever with scripts and batch files

Batches? We don't need no steenkin' batches! *runs for cover*

[vinnie97]

aye, I'm aware of the purpose of ABR. The 'qx' zealotry stems from hours upon hours of tuning, as evidenced by devs/listeners in the Hydrogenaudio forums, which is why it's my preferred method of encoding. Ogg was designed to perform best as a VBR codec from the ground up, from what I understand. However, I realize that my purpose necessitates the temporary ditching of VBR. Batch and script files? fun!

[FlameGrilled]

Well, cleary, I can understand that Q based VBR works, and simplifies matters too.

But at the end of the day, where being in control is often a good thing, disengage-brain Q based encoding isn't always a good thing for multi-destination files.

For example, say you listen to Ogg indoors... wow, no hassles as Q10... or whatever is bear-crap easy to get to play on damn near anything... and few storage hassles either.

But if you have a storage-limited deck, and the CDP decks are the very top-end/borderline inclusions here (not that i consider 700mb to be anything like small), it's often to good to be in control of the encoding so you can reliabily hedge your bets as to how big a file a track ripped/encoded will generate.

This sometimes, like we did in the old days, means falling back onto ABR type or bit-constrained encoding. After all, if you figure out you gotta limit the top-end file size to be in the region of 2Mb per minute as a necessary evil for technical tracks, with say .25 Mb per minute being on target for most of the test, this allows for 700Mb to hold a fair old selection still.

But at least if you constrain the encoding - you can sep the tracks into priority groups (i.e. ones that are gonna have to be HQ encoded to be usable, ones that are not important, ones that can easily be crapped out with no-brainer low rate encoding), you can encode and start making adjustments (re-do) whatever needs redoing to meet the targets.

Q based give you far less control, and can sometimes give you lots of frustration when that last minute 'dump to player'/burn to cd' effort twenty mins before going out the door... fails as your lovely playlist wont fit due to unexpected too-big files having been made.

But to put the perspective right back on topic, it's pretty much the way to go if you want a quiet life when the decks in question have crippled support.

I'm objective over iFP & iMP's and the crippled support (still a life long fan of the old iMP-250, even if i dont own any of the series now) and say 'crippled' to reflect reality not to insult the decks themselves.

Interesting how, having mentioned that, how some flash decks are managing full support mind....

Ok, the one in question i was thinking of has a ARM940T processor... just a bit more 'meaty' than the Phillips unit in the iFP... and probably more so than the old Cirrus Logic in the old iMP's (i'll look up the data sheet for the 940T, since it reminds me a bit of the ARM chips used in hi-spec POCKET PC type PDA's).

[FlameGrilled]

As for the Q3-Q6 limit - yes, that did kinda stuff up Ogg use for me, as i frequently keep audiobook type content on CD-ROM (a legacy from iMP days).

So instead, since the overhead legacy loss is minimal, mp3pro gives me a better solution.. at least the low-rates are supported... and a Q based encoder is there for no-brainer purposes. I realise that mp3 might seem a better sane choice, but the legacy loss of 'pro is pretty irrelevent for audiobooks type content.

Otherwise, supported codec-wise, it's WMA that gets used for stuff that's gonna be distributed to people who are entitled to receive it.

Again, WMA can offer the supported rates suitable for really compact audiobook grade content.

At the end of the day, you go with what works.. on the here-n-now basis, and let the nitpickers and perfectionists waste their own time fuming.

That's not a knock at you, Vinnie, as i recall (from old) that you are just as interested in being practical as having your own rational bent to perfection..

[vinnie97]

Ok, the one in question i was thinking of has a ARM940T processor

Which flash player is that, may I ask?

It appears the newest Ifp's from Iriver (which I've been considering purchasing) also have these same bitrate limitations, which is a shame. In the meantime, ABR encoding is probably a fair trade off, but I'm not sure how substantial the quality difference is over WMA at the same bitrate (96 kbps). The real benefit is near 64kbps in my experience.

[FlameGrilled]

It was an IOPS, vinnie, as i vaguely recall.. the MFP-350.

I recall it's bitrate support, as the only ogg's i had to hand to test it with at the time, were very low-rate ones (no chance of them playing on an iFP/iMP) and some Q10's...

I'd agree with vs WMA at 64K bit. 64K is a good tradeoff size, given a good codec and decent encoding (remember, it isn't always rip-n-go to get the best results) for flash decks.

Anything complexly musical encoded raw and untouched, at 64k is a bit of challenge for any codec, if you don't pre-process the audio first. It's the spatial bit that suffers, if you don't get nasties come in from artifacts.

That said, all fairness to those who encode to that kinda level (i did a lot, so i count myself in that lot) - they have their reasons (usually due to compactness of file size) and that's good reasoning enough for me.

Ironically, lots of Pink Floyd stuff sounds ok at 64k in WMA, so technically (judging by Ogg fanatic BS) should sound a million time better in Ogg at the same level. But since we exist in the real world, not the world of bible-bashing indoctrination, i'd say tentatively that there may be some improvement to the same content at 64k Ogg.