News from iRiver America

[jeff]

This just in from iRiver America. The iRiver America Store now has in stock the entire line of the new 2004 iFP-700/800 Series. These units range in price from $129.99 - $399.99. Check them out here:

iFP Series

Also, MisticRiver has been informed that iRiver are working with a variety of major software developers to provide support/plugins for our favorite gadgets.

Rest assured MR Members, iRiver is listening and acting on your requests...

more to come.

Jeff

[Vic20]

Thats great to hear. Thanks jeff for the inside. Now they can worry less about firmware and more on they're great products.

(off topic)
Mp3,camera,phone...I am scared that it will give me radiation...heh...go ifp-1095 = no radiation!

[coreman]

Too many choices...feeling faint...getting dizzy......how to decide??


I hope they all share common firmware or we are in a "heap o' trouble"....

[Vic20]

Originally Posted by coreman

I hope they all share common firmware....

Probly you ment that as a joke.

They probly will...May even be just like the 300

"Firmware 3.21 For 300/700/800"

[Tang]

Am i lonely? I rather the iFP7xx form factor to the iFP8xx one...

[elwood]

Originally Posted by coreman

Too many choices...feeling faint...getting dizzy......how to decide??

I feel overwhelmed too.

You could almost say my expectations are oversatisfied...

I'm a bit worried by the size of the product range. Surely its less complicated (and therefore cheaper) to not have so much variety, and a lot easier to market. The H1xx range is easy enough to follow: 3 models (virtually) identical but just getting more storage as you go up. Choosing between them you just have to take into account your budget and how much music you own.

With the iFP range you can decide that 512Mb is right for you and have to choose between iFP395T ($280), iFP595T ($330), iFP795 ($250), iFP 895 ($280) and iFP195T ($280) that is just over-complicated for the consumer and the supply chain.

[vinnie97]

I guess they never perfected their Ogg implementation to the point that it can handle any bitrates below 96kbps as even the newest units are similarly restricted.

[jeff]

Originally Posted by vinnie97

I guess they never perfected their Ogg implementation to the point that it can handle any bitrates below 96kbps as even the newest units are similarly restricted.

I realize that folks like a wide range of choices but listening to any kind of music encoded in any format below 128kbps just seems nuts to me... The quality is just not good. Just my .02.

[seadzz]

music encoded in any format below 128kbps just seems nuts

jeff you are dead right about music encodes at these low bitrates, however I think the driver here is the desire to encode voice only at these lower rates.

i could of course be completely incorrect and people want to encode music at 64 kbps.....in which case you are 100% correct.....will sound like hammered dodo.

YAMMV

sdz

[jeff]

Voice recording is fine but I think they're speaking of OGG. You sure don't need to record voice in OGG, save it for your music!

[seadzz]

I know they are speaking of ogg and for some odd reason they want to encode at the low end of the bandwidth. I suspect that it is felt that 64k will sound like 128k mp3 lame which is nuts.

On the other side of the problem is the high end of the ogg support band. I do feel that ogg needs to be supported to the full end of the high side. This would be useful if someone wanted to get as close to lossless as possible. Archive music in their PC and play it in their ifp.

sdz

[vinnie97]

For mobile purposes, I have no problem sacrificing quality to the level that 64kbps oggs can provide. It may not be Lame128 but the fidelity is good enough for use on the road (where roadnoise is an issue), while in the gym and during jogging. These latest generations of AAC/ogg/mp3pro sound amazingly decent in these situations (to me)...just my 2 ears (as opposed to $0.02 )

[FlameGrilled]

Well, talking from a completely non-typical user's point of view :-

There will always be call to implement low-bit-rate support in any codec put in firmware - and that, dear friends, is a plain fact of DA/DV life.

After all, those people (not here at MR, thankfully) who totally condem low-rate encoding, forget about three distinct elements of compressed audio content that rely on low-rate encoding :-

1) 'Casts

Netcasts/net simulcasts rely on low-rates to enable max audience accessibility, due to the fact that many low-rate demand calls can be handled by one processor vs considerably less when you double or quad the bit-rate.

Now given that there are lots of emerging and current 'talk' stations out there who do have archive 'listen again' downloads cleared for distribution 'off-air' (it's just a matter of looking at the T&C for each source), it makes perfect sense to allow low-rate encodings to be carried and decoded on a portable deck.

After all, if you are into audiobooks, the 'walkman' refugeee part of the DAP market would probably never touch DAP's if the legally-obtained non-radio 'radio play' cast's made into a long series collection were unusable.

2) Travel/Away From Home

Equally, anyone who collects EMD promo's or non-pressed collections legally (as in rights-established and legal) for personal use - would find it annoying if they could no longer take 500+ hours of collected music and whack it onto a CD-ROM or transfer to a HDD.

Remember, the whole world aint obsessed by having files stored encoded on the basis that 'CD-Quality = greater than 128Kbps' is the beginning of worthiness. I've personally kept CD-ROM's (for the iMP-250) with a minimum of 550 hours of audio (mixed content) apiece - and when you are gonna be away from home, sometimes even two or three CD-ROM's is a pain to transport when you have more pressing needs for that valuable bit of luggage space (cables, in my case) and so you happily compromise some quality in favour of one CD-ROM having a good week+ of content in terms of continous play.

3) Batt Life

Remember, where stringing out the max out of your batt endurance is concerned, going lower rather than higher for bit-rate gives you a better chance of not being dependant on replacement cell availability (dry-cell/alkaline) or the sheer need for an external DC or mains-->DC charge point.

iMP users will appreciate that, as despite the ease of back-packing aux cells (alkaline or common-type ni-cad/ni-mh), having massive run-time on the main cells is as cool a feature as the overall qualities of the decks. Low-rates help eek out that running time potential considerably.

iHP and iFP-5xx owners, for whom the internal cell is the primary power source, should see the same line of sense as the iMP users.

Sure, the iHP can be back-packed, but back-packing is only really cool when it's a kind where the aux pack is of a considerably higher capacity than the main source, so it's a incremental charge/booster method - simply putting the equiv in AA's to the internal pack isn't worth the effort to the traveller usually, but they'll make room for a pack of 4x or greater capacity for the sake of not being dependent on a mains point.

For HDD users, the benefit of low-rates is less obvious - but the simple fact that (excluding the current Ogg codec implementation - battery monster par embarassment) the only way you'll ever really see the maximum endurance of a HDD unit come out is when you go for mean-n-lean encodings, it kinda speaks a valuable lesson in treating low-rates with a bit more respect.

When i used to permanently get people to dabble with lower-rates, it was done on the basis that the only way you'll ever get 'walkman' or better running time on any device.. is to work with low-rates, as DAP's are all battery-monsters vs their analogue counterparts.

[FlameGrilled]

Sdz, and Jeff :-

Music, if prepared correctly, can be encoded nicely to levels half to three-quarter of the rates people are led to believe by 'net experts'.

I know this well, but the reason most people dont know it... is often down to the 'rip-n-go' desire overridding any inclination to find out how to get the best compact results out of encoding.

It's an initially time-consuming effort, but once you get the knack of it .. prep and encoding i mean, it pays you back as it almost becomes a second-nature method.

I'm listening, at the moment, to some recordings that were properly (professionally) prepped for lower-rates MP2 broadcast - i have the raw (uncompressed) versions and sample MP2 versions that reflect how they'd come across when casted by narrow-band DAB, and you couldn't dare call them rubbish unless you were a total audio-snob/audiophile-wannabe.

It's all in the technique - the secret of making low-rates work

[seadzz]

FG,

You may very well be correct. My experience with freeware encoding at 64kbps using ogg and Lame MP3 gave me results similar to listening to the BBC via shortwave. I suspect the vast majority of DAP users also use off the shelf encoders and as a result will see marginally accecptable results.

If there is a way to get 320kbps quality playback using 64kbps Im all ears (pardon the pun).


sdz

[FlameGrilled]

Well, Sdz, i'm not saying you'll get a perfect audio image... but the methods i use are pretty much the same as used by the producers of the professionally set-up netcasters, and also that used for producing professionally mastered 128K WMA and also where in-studio on-demand libraries are kept in compact form for transport for O/B's..

Sorry if my response sounded a little harsh... it's a reaction to the 'if it aint big, it sucks' mentality that plagues the net users concerning audio.

I'll make a proper topic of it, time permitting this week, so it needn't drive this thread off-topic any further..

[vinnie97]

Blame it on me, FG. I had to rear my ugly ~64kbps head.

Sdz, certainly you notice a perceptive quality difference in lame vs. ogg @ 64kbps. The most troublesome thing about ogg at that bitrate is the distorted stereo image but that is not bothersome to me if I don't have the original to compare nearby. In that case, what I don't know doesn't hurt me. I think that 64kbps of the future may very well be as pristine as 320 is today.

[saitoh]

As FlameGrilled has noted, its all in how the audio is prepared. I've got a massive audio collection (thanks to collection concerts), and its grown to such proportions that to listen to any specific section easily, its ill advised to use anything above 100kbps, as its just not feesable.

The trick is that since most bands use a mono images for their PA mix, there isnt too much gained in using stereo techniques to replicate that mono image (yes, some is gained, but thats a moot point right now). So I'm looking at half the bitrate normally used by others. So while I use q5, thats only a working *average* of ~85kb/ps, and to me with etymotic headphones, thats close enough to transparent that I'm content for the applications that I use it in. This also allows me to cram an obscene ammount of music onto my ihp120. ^_^

Speaking of which, I dont have any problems with my ihp120 and these oggs, which dip as far as an average of 65kbps, but thats a different story...

-- Page

[FlameGrilled]

Add in the fact that that much music can be ripped at 44Khz, and has room to be downsampled to say 32Khz, it means there is space saving potential on two accounts.

We have to remember that, given the audio has an frequency span that could comfortably fit 32Khz (a lot can), then all 44Khz is doing is making a smoother result (a form of resolution if you will). Pretty pointless to doggedly insist on 44Khz sampling, if a 32Khz downsample does the trick audibly.

Bit-rate and sample rates, in terms of audio resolution and how granular or smooth the result comes out, are really crossovers ... and hence it's a good idea to try to exploit both.

Think about it - when the mega-efficient codecs come along, by learning to appreciate the finesses of sympathetically tinkering with the initial rip, you'll be better equipped than most to take full advantage of the extra efficiency of later codecs.

Remember, encoders dont always do the job as well as they can when used in idiot/preset mode. Try encoding something to be recorded to an answering machine or voicemail system, and you'll be amazed what you can shove up to a mailbox answer system in terms of music and with a remarkable level of granularity.

Mind you, using the a-typical crappy phones that are supplied with most decks on the market, a lot of people dont recognise the errors and glitches of when an encoder kinda ferks up it's modelling, as the phones dont reproduce that well.

I said somewhere else, a whole measly 7.99 UKP is enough to escape from crappy OEM phone hell and also get a benefit -thanks to those old soldiers of the phones world, the Sony MDR-818's.

[FlameGrilled]

As someone pointed out, wisely, once - you dont tune an engine by tweaking one adjuster only, you gotta go back-n-forth making fine compensating adjustments.

Having been taught a bit about watch/clock-making (the mechs, not the casing), i soon appreciated that ethic about compensating as you go.. as it's necessary when restoring old mechs.

The audio production world is much the same, as is video production.

hell, even space launchs are a start-to-end matter of compensation and adjustment - if you dont, it's a satellite gone to trash.. or seven astronauts stranded or dead..

[Julius]

Originally Posted by jeff

Voice recording is fine but I think they're speaking of OGG. You sure don't need to record voice in OGG, save it for your music!

Of course you should have Ogg Vorbis for voice-recording!
You will get much higher quality recordings using ogg, at a lower bitrate, no matter what the source is!

Read this:
http://jult.net/dub/entry.php?id=55