[juneau-lug] Ogg friendly (mostly) MP3 player -- text version
- From: <e5z8652@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: juneau-lug@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:49:00 -0400
=0D
--------Let's try turning off the stupid webmail HTML------------=0D
=0D
Since I don't have the luxury of carrying my laptop around with me to play =
oggs=0D
(specially the 17" lugger) I've been looking for an ogg friendly music play=
er. I=0D
had a small one, but at only 512MB it is a bit dated, and my son has taken=
=0D
possession of it anyway.=0D
=0D
By looking at the back of the packages, all I ever see is mp3 and wma suppo=
rt=0D
listed. When I was overseas last it wasn't difficult to find one that had =
ogg=0D
supported listed on the package so I was sort of surprised to find that it =
was so=0D
difficult two years later.=0D
=0D
Turns out that the geographical change is one of the main reasons ogg playe=
rs are=0D
hard to find. The physical devices are the same across the world, but US=
=0D
firmware tends to not play oggs and be more friendly to MS DRM formats. La=
wyer=0D
imposed changes, I guess.=0D
=0D
So I picked up a Samsung T9 MP3 player, mainly because it was on sale. The=
=0D
included firmware did not recognise ogg vorbis files, and was an MTP format=
=0D
device instead of UMS (USB Mass Storage) so was not Linux friendly.=0D
=0D
The fix was to grab the latest firmware from www.samsung.com/sg -- their=0D
Singapore site and dump it into the /data directory on the device. You'll =
either=0D
need a newish distribution with MTP support, or use Windows to do this. On=
ce the=0D
firmware files are on the device, power cycle it and it updates itself. Th=
e=0D
international version of the firmware both activates the UMS interface so p=
lain=0D
jane Linux automatically sees the device, and activates ogg vorbis support.=
=0D
=0D
There are some caveats to the ogg support. The firmware does not recognise=
ogg=0D
vorbis tags, so the player shows all of the songs as unknown artist, unknow=
n=0D
album, and the title is simply the filename. To browse ogg files, the play=
er has=0D
a file browser function. Since all of my oggs are organized by artist and =
album,=0D
this is not a problem for me. However is you just dump all of your files i=
nto=0D
one directory unsorted, it could be an issue.=0D
=0D
Also not all bitrates are supported. I had some Joe Satriani oggs that I u=
sed=0D
very high bitrates on as an experiment. They sound great on a PC, but on t=
he=0D
Samsung they won't play. The T9 just displays a message stating the the fi=
le=0D
type is not supported. So if you update the firmware and it still won't pl=
ay=0D
oggs, check the bitrate. The default settings for something like kaudiocre=
ator=0D
work just fine, so I guess this would only be a problem if you were hand-ro=
lling=0D
oggs with oggenc set to a high bitrate. I guess this could also apply to M=
P3's=0D
with high bitrates, but I never encode them so don't have any to try out.=
=0D
=0D
If you prefer MP3 format, updating the firmware gives you the ability to tr=
ansfer=0D
files with your Linux machine using native UMS drivers.=0D
=0D
And please remember, only rip CD's you own. Don't go saying aargh! or aye,=
=0D
matey! unless it's talk like a pirate day (Sep 19). And make sure your MP3=
=0D
encoder, if you use one, has had it's patent fees paid somewhere along the =
line.=0D
Or just don't use the format since ogg is free. :)=0D
=0D
James =0D
------------------------------------
The Juneau Linux Users Group -- http://www.juneau-lug.org
This is the Juneau-LUG mailing list.
To unsubscribe, send an e-mail to juneau-lug-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the
word unsubscribe in the subject header.
Other related posts:
