A lot of people use these forum to vent frustrations or talk about problems they’re having with their Clips.
I’m gonna do something somewhat different…
Is it just me or is the new 4 GB Clip totally badass?! Can I get an amen?!
you have one from me 
what about the radio recording? flac/ogg addition?
Grahm from anythingbutipod.com was trying to convince Sandisk to add FLAC/OGG to the 4 GB so we’ll have to see! 
Ok, so this is a little off-topic, but …
You folks who use formats like OGG and FLAC, why do you use them? Do you convert audio files from some other format, like MP3, and if so, is it mostly to save disk space? Or do you actually have sources of audio files (on the Internet or via recordings) in OGG/FLAC?
I consider myself a technophile, but I’ve never seen a reason for using anything other than MP3 … but I’m open to suggestions.
Message Edited by PromisedPlanet on 01-12-2008 11:03 AM
Well, an Ogg q8 file has the same bitrate as the best mp3 (320kbps), but has better sound quality. I think about 99% of the society won’t hear any difference, but there’s the 1% who will hear it. Moreover an ogg file with bitrate ~200kbps sounds like the best mp3’s but (ofc) takes less place.
There si one fault of ogg files: they need more power. It’s sure that if the Clip will get Ogg support, it won’t run 15 hours on one charge, playing music in ogg.
Whatever additional features, fixes, and support the 4GB model has/gets should also be applicable to the 1GB and 2GB models; I’m pretty sure the only difference is the flash memory density. Same signal chain, SOC, etc. = same firmware - just more storage.
Which is also good as the firmware improvements made, and in progress, to the 1&2GB models will make the 4GB Clip a really SWEET device out of the box.
Wish I had one!
Message Edited by Click on 01-12-2008 05:34 PM
Ogg is as good or better than mp3 and is not impaired by patents. So all things else equal, ogg is free and mp3 is not (and I will bet that a part of my purchase price of the clip went towards royaltys for mp3). Fraunhofer _says_ they will not go after free software encoders, such as lame, and free software decoders, such as xmms, but that isn’t legally binding in any way and they could change their mind at any minute.
The legal team at Redhat has concluded that mp3 software can not be distributed with a free OS and they are probably right by the letter of the law and so they don’t. This obviously includes Fedora. You have to add it in yourself later (not hard to do, but you have to now how to do it). Other distros like Ubuntu have decided to ignore the problem and are in fact potentially putting themselves in a legal bind if Franhofer decides to change it’s mind.
So the ideal answer is to completely ditch mp3 and everyone switch to ogg, but that ain’t gonna happen.
I do have hundreds of files encoded in ogg that I cannot play on my clip and it’s already been a pita. The clip is the first non-Cowan player purchased in this household because they DO support ogg (I was given my ipod shuffle).
Robert
theres no way that you can NOT hear the difference… but to encode from mp3 to ogg is wrong in so many ways…
sansafix said future clip will probly have time remaining countdown in playing songs, but for 1g and 2g – no way…
makes ya wonder
Message Edited by amkoas on 01-12-2008 07:57 PM
I don’t know why they couldn’t do the countdown feature through firmware. Seems easy enough. Just assign it to a button or combo of buttons and off we go. I hope Sansafix wasn’t right 
I know that OGG is a better audio encoding format, that it’s free, etc. … I’m just curious as to why you guys use it. I can see three reasons:
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Better sounding audio. In which case you’d have to (a) have an original source of OGG songs, or (b) rip your songs from CD directly to OGG).
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Save disk space. Disk space is so cheap these days, (a) you’d have to have a HUGE number of songs, or (b) your goal is to get more songs onto a portable device).
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Philosophical devotion to a free format (kind of like the “Linux versus Windows” religious wars).
Personally I could see going with 1b and 2b. Maybe not so much 1b, if it really is the case that 99% of the public can’t tell the sonic difference.
I certainly wouldn’t put Windows vs Linux in the “religious war” category (unless you want to compare Windows to the spanish conquistadors coming to the “new world”, not an unreasonable analogy). There are a few Linux fanboys out there (and Windows fanboys) that try to make it a religious war, but they are the vast minority. I’ve run Linux for about 14 years now and I run it simply because it works better for me. Linux is more stable, more secure and I can do lots more with it. Those are hard facts. Those of you new to computers may never have known just how awful Windows was for a long long time. No networking then networking clumsily added on like an afterthought. Crashing daily, sometimes hourly. Lack of basic tools. Windows it’s better now, but I still find it bad enough to avoid every time I have to use it. If you don’t find it so, that’s fine, you and I are a different class of user and I won’t ever convince you that free software is better for you and me.
There are some guys attempting to port Rockbox to the clip. I hope they succeed. I’m sure they will, and when they do, I will switch. The clip is a closed system, like windows. For example: I want to be able to read out the contents of my Go List. I can’t. The reason I can’t isn’t because of some technical limitation of the clip or a lack of skill on my part, but because the firmare designers simply didn’t make it available, whatever their reason. If I had the source, I could probably fix that. Now I have no choice but to hope they make it available or just live without it (here’s you a religious analogy: I could pray they add it, but I think I have as much chance of that working as praying that my cold goes away). This is just one of a million reasons why free software is now and will always be better than closed, proprietary software, on the PC and on the clip.
Mp3s are just part of the closed proprietary landscape and we would all be better off to get away from it.
BTW, why did Microsoft invent wma? That answer tells a lot.
Robert
Good post. I do support the idea of free software, and have been evaluating Ubuntu lately.
OK, so say I decide to go with OGG over MP3. I hear a song on the radio that I want to have on my Clip. In the MP3 world, I’d buy it from amazon.com or some other source. What do I do in the OGG world … just find the CD at as cheap a price as possible, and use an OGG ripper?
I’m not trying to be argumentative, I’m really curious about this.
rwuest wrote:
BTW, why did Microsoft invent wma? That answer tells a lot.
Because if they had their way everything would be proprietary microsoft. They wish they could control any and all computer OSs and file formats…
-Will
Actually, AAC is not Apple’s format, it is some industry consortium, but it does have patent issues surrounding it so it is not a free solution.
Robert
Miikerman wrote:
Right, but the point being Apple likewise choosing and using a closed format for its players, thereby resulting in captive customers and competitive advantage …
And then there was Rockbox …
Agreed on 1b, 2b, 3, but also 2a (can’t waste my time replace disks every year because they’re full). BTW, I’m not sure it’s always true, but I’ve read on some forums that playing ogg does eat more CPU power (on a powerful laptop it doesn’t matter, but that’s another topic). Maybe that’s because the ogg songs are often encoded in higher quality, This would worth doing some comparisons.
DANG! 4GB *and* OGG support?! Now I wish I’d have waited before getting my clip!
Everything on Linux supports OGG.
OGG was proposed but its not implemented, dont get your hopes up .
SansaFix
Now, when the Sandisk.com says that this version of the Clip will be available on the 15th is that more a way of saying it will be available February-ish or will this device actually be coming out on the 15th of February 2008?
Too bad ogg won’t be implemented, I guess it’s a pretty hard thing to do, but it would have been a killer feature. The SOC seems to support it well, at least it’s mentionned here.
I still hopeful…
