[Advocate Play Ogg] ogg players & "nicknames"

[Bob Chandler]

Jon,

I appreciated your advice on the Cowon players.  Right now I only have
one portable audio player that will play oggs...a small 512 MB Samsung
Yepp.   And unfortunately I misplaced the USB cable that works with it
and the "end" that fits into the player has an oddball number of pins
and I've found it hard to replace!   So I'm temporarily "stuck" with a
player that has some old Linux podcasts on it that I've already heard.

My other players are just cheap "no name" audio players.  I had heard
that some of the "no name" players will sometimes play oggs...but so far
no luck!

If I'm going to spend some "serious" money on an audio player, I want
one that supports ogg "out of the box".

The other "barrier" I've run into with some of the newer players (not
directly ogg-related) is that they make use of the Microsoft
"MTP" (Media Transfer Protocol) which has only limited support at this
time on GNU/Linux using "libmtp".   I first ran into this a few months
ago trying to get a friend's "Creative Zen" player to "talk" to a
GNU/Linux machine.  

Apparently some of the newer Cowon players (D2 and newer) are using it
according to the Wikipedia entry on the MTP protocol.   Are you using
your "D2" with Windows or with GNU/Linux?   If with GNU/Linux I'd
appreciate learning about your experiences.

I personally don't have a problem with the "nicknames" for the large
monolithic corporations that for too long have dominated the software
industry ;)  

I can appreciate how they are born out of trying to inject a bit of
humour into an often incredibly frustrating situation where one is often
fighting a long uphill battle against some very powerful and entrenched
interests.

However I can also see that when trying to get new people to look at
alternatives, they might feel that one is "bashing" the decisions that
they have made in the past and they might be turned off by the "in
group" humour. 

Sometimes I have to bite my tongue (or bite my keyboard fingers ;) ) to
avoid using the "nicknames" for the big software conglomerates these
days.

Cheers,

Bob





On Sun, 2008-04-13 at 18:18 -0600, Jon T wrote:
> Brian,
> 
> Thanks for your thoughts.
> 
> I have to admit that the names for Microsoft and Apple has become a habit 
> with me as an Information Technology advocate
> and wanting to return to times of creativity, initiative and a far market 
> place.
> 
> I also am a IT director for an International Non-Proft that has personally 
> been stung, as has my budget by what has occured in the past decade plus.
> 
> There have been times when I have been asked why I have done that, which 
> have been opportunities that I hoped for when I have lead some people to
> some web sites to understand how negative market control is and how it 
> really effects all of, as well as the fact that there ARE choices, but those 
> choices
> are not going to be without looking.  Then I like to let people decide 
> things on their own, satisfied that they were exposed to some other views 
> that
> the millions upon millions that come from marketing departments keeps away 
> from most.
> 
> But if I am a stranger to people, I definately can see how those nic-names 
> can be viewed as negative and childish, rather than with any humor
> 
> Your point is well taken Brian and I thank you for it.
> 
> Brian, any other comments you could make about my thoughts are very much 
> appreciated and I hope that more dialog and ideas can get started with each 
> other.
> I certainly am not afraid to learn from others and to get the type of 
> helpful criticism that you have sent me.
> 
> We're in this together.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Jon
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: <address@hidden>
> To: <address@hidden>
> Sent: Sunday, April 13, 2008 10:02 AM
> Subject: Advocate Digest, Vol 11, Issue 3
> 
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> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:33:19 -0400
> > From: Brian Kemp <address@hidden>
> > Subject: [Advocate Play Ogg] Re: Advocate Digest, Vol 11, Issue 2
> > To: address@hidden
> > Message-ID: <address@hidden>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
> >
> > Jon:
> >
> > This is good.  However I'm going to make one suggestion here:
> >
> > Don't call names.  Use "Microsoft" and "Apple"; if you don't your
> > argument comes off as much more childish and less well-thought out.
> >
> > c: what kind of free?
> >
> >> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> Message: 1
> >> Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:49:14 -0600
> >> From: "Jon T" <address@hidden>
> >> Subject: [Advocate Play Ogg] Follow up to Stevey[dot]eu
> >> To: <address@hidden>
> >> Message-ID: <address@hidden>
> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
> >>
> >> To Steve (Stevey[dot]eu),
> >>
> >> Thank you for your contribution.
> >>
> >> I would like to add a few items about Ogg.
> >>
> >>   a.. There are several objective tests that can show you that "byte" for 
> >> "byte" that Ogg outputs superior fidelity to MP3. The best test of course 
> >> is the listen test. When listening, understand the better the hardware is 
> >> (headphones, amp., speakers  etc), the more one can hear the superior 
> >> output of Ogg.
> >>
> >>   b.. I have noticed that there have been several PC games that my kids 
> >> have installed where I saw .Ogg files being installed. SMART company. 
> >> This relieves them of any licensing fees for the distribution of their 
> >> music. I know all of the Lego PC games are like that and a lot more.
> >>
> >>   c.. On the PC level, Ogg can be played on all audio players that I know 
> >> of. In my opinion, the best, latest of the he Ogg decoders and encoders 
> >> can be found on the Rarewares Site. http://rarewares.org/ogg.php . It is 
> >> all free.
> >>
> >>   d.. On Rarewares, there is this outrageously simple and "cute", Ogg 
> >> encoder/decoder front end program called oggdropXPd . 
> >> http://rarewares.org/ogg-oggdropxpd.php .
> >>   There are even versions of it that are customized for 64 bit 
> >> processing. Adding the support "dlls", adds decoding from other formats 
> >> which gives oggdropXPd to encode several different formats to Ogg.
> >>
> >>   e..  When shopping for a portable media player (PMP), MAKE SURE you 
> >> send the vendor a email or call to marketing asking them if the support 
> >> Ogg. Do it even if you know they don't and remind them that it is license 
> >> free. The pressure from Microshaft/Crapple (virtually the same company), 
> >> to attempt to kill of any open source software would be the reason that 
> >> they won't have decoders for Ogg and most likely the lossless open source 
> >> Flac and Ape.  ALWAYS ask when shopping on the web or in retail stores 
> >> and let it be known that you will not purchase a unit that DOES NOT 
> >> support the superior open source formats like Ogg, Flac, etc.
> >>
> >>   f.. There is enormous pressure put on companies to follow the "greedy 
> >> brick road", and do what Microshaft/Crapple want then to do. For example, 
> >> to support only the "W" formats and MP3 formats that are customized to 
> >> include the DRM virus. Fortunately DRM is  dying a slow but steady death. 
> >> For example, Amazon.com proudly displays that their audio downloads DO 
> >> NOT contain DRM. All DRM does is hassle the customer and limit exposure 
> >> of artists.  I have wrote to Amazon about including some superior open 
> >> source formats to give their customers a choice.
> >>
> >>   g.. I personally have two Portable Audio Players made by a South Korean 
> >> company, Cowon/IAudio. I have the IAudio U3 and the rather spectacular 
> >> Cowon D2.
> >>   Both of these players natively support Ogg and Flac as well as the 
> >> usual suspects.  Also they can be connect generically to Linux boxes to 
> >> upload and download their media.
> >>   While Cowon is not sold in retail stores, at lease not in the U.S., the 
> >> are available from the Cowon web site, Amazon.com, newegg.com (where I 
> >> have purchased both of my units) and loads of other large online stores. 
> >> The D2 is a few years news and blows out audio at 74watts and my little 
> >> U3's amp outputs at 64watts. My recommendations would be to look at their 
> >> D2 or their IAudio 7 line. I will plug in my D2 in my standalone, $58 
> >> Philips DVD player to play videos, audio and photos. IT can connect to 
> >> about anything and with its power, it works great on other systems and of 
> >> course at a personal player. I am sure that there are other Portable 
> >> Media Players that support open source formats, it is just that overall, 
> >> I like Cowon the best for audio quality and flexibility.
> >>
> >>   h.. We CAN create customer pressure to create changes with how we spend 
> >> out dollars. Make sure you let other vendors know that you want Ogg 
> >> support . That is on stand alone DVD players as well.
> >>
> >>   i.. Last little editorial . When encoding my files to Ogg, it is 
> >> important to understand that Ogg works with quality settings as opposed 
> >> to how MP3 works with bitrate settings. There are three Quality (or Q) 
> >> settings that I use. If the source audio is of low fidelity quality, like 
> >> a podcast and contains speech, OR size of the audio file is of 
> >> importance, I use Q2.
> >>   If I am posting some music on my web site or for general purpose use, 
> >> then Q4 is what I would use.
> >>   Most of my encoding is done using Q6. That is what I use the most for 
> >> music that I listen to on my Cowon portable media players and PC. To be 
> >> honest, I have not been able to hear the difference between the original 
> >> source or a lossless format like FLAC while using Q6 and the size of the 
> >> files come out at a very reasonable size.
> >> Jon
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
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