Talk:PortablePlayers

There are many more portable players by TrekStor than the i.beat 500 supporting ogg vorbis.

Please add products to the main page.

I would like to know which Players can record in OGG?! -- 217.186.150.213 17:03, 26 Dec 2004 (PST)

Pretec Allegro may need firmware update

I recently purchased a Pretec Allegro, but was unable to play Oggs for three months, until the firmware update was made available on 14 or 15 March 2005. Now it works well! (So far, listening to -q3 Oggs). I'd hope that units purchased after this date already has the firmware update, but you never know. Installing the update is as simple as placing the .rom on the USB-storage-device media (eg flash disk), starting up the unit, and pressing the play button. -- Hugo van der Merwe

How much battery runtime do you get playing Oggs compared with playing mp3? Phr 02:05, 27 Aug 2005 (PDT)

Any player with SD-Cards

Every single ogg-capable portable player out there seems to come with built-in flash memory. Which is stupid, because I don't want to fire up my computer and plug in the player every time I get tired of the tracks on my player. Plus flash memory has a limited lifetime (write cycles) and so does your player with built-in memory. The same applies for built-in rechargable batteries.

Now when would you ever need to buy your second device without any moving parts if you could just change flash memory and batteries? Ok, that's the industrie's point of view but not mine. I want to go on vacation with music and batteries for one week of non-stop music - without a power source or computer nearby.

So, any hint to where I might find a portable audio player that can play back ogg vorbis files and uses SD flash cards (and preferably AAA-batteries) would be greatly appreciated.

Me too! If the Enox EMX-830 took SD cards it'd be perfect. --rgm 14:41, 7 Nov 2005 (PST)

The Pretec Allegro is not the slickest player out there, it's LCD backlight seems to give off a high-pitched whine, which not everyone can hear (it kind-of screams in my ears though, so I put the backlight timer on 1 second so it doesn't scream too long). It is, however, the only one I now know of that can play Oggs, and uses removable media. If you want a nicely portable device, you have to use Pretec's "iDisk tiny" usb flash disk, the only thing that will fit inside. You can also, however, connect some USB SD-card reader with it's cable, then listen to Oggs off of SD. A little unwieldy, but, it works, and is the only thing *I* know of. (I stopped following developments in December though, when I bought it...)

Samsung's Yepp Ogg Vorbis support

JoshuaRodman wrote regarding the yp-t7z:

I received such a unit. It plays oggs encodd at -q 4, 5 and 6 without error that I have noticed. However it seems underdocumented. It plays the files in an order which is neither alpha sorted nor numeric sorted, and it does not support ogg tags. -- JoshuaRodman (March 28, 2005)

I've investigated more. Some music encoded at even -q 5 will break up or cause difficulty. I suspect these pieces have bitrate spikes. As for the ordering, the YP-T7 plays files in 'readdir' order. That is it does not sort the files out of the filesystem at all. In practice, this means it will play the files in the order that you add them to the directory. If you are a windows user dragging and dropping the files onto the player, this problem will not affect you. A linux or possible Mac user may need to do minor scripting to alleviate this issue. --JoshuaRodman (April 13, 2005)

I thought I came back and clarified this, but don't have hte energy to review the edit history. In any event, there are no problems with OGG playback on my YP-T7z at this time. All symptoms have evaporated with firmware updates or magic. JoshuaRodman 01:27, 7 April 2006 (PDT)

Spaz added for the YP-T7Z:

After using the newest firmware I have had no issues playing OGG files. Any lockup or playback issues I had experienced went away. --Spaz (Dec 23, 2005)

Ulrich added for the YP-MT6Z:

I think my manual says the first 8 characters of a filename are considered for sorting. As my files have the "tracknumber" tag, I wrote some Perl script that prepends that number (two digits plus a space) to the track names when being copied onto the player. I'm not sure about decoding problems, but there may be some. I encoded my files at q6 or higher using "oggenc" from Linux. Tags for title and performer are displayed unless you follow the Vorbis specification to create one tag for each performer. However, be aware that default settings have tag display disabled!

The chip inside seems to be a Sigmatel STMP3400M, natively specified for MP3 with addon codecs.

It would be great of Samsung Europe would release firmware with release notes (the Korean site has newer firmware, but no English, really!). There's also some inoffical newer firmware around, but also without any release notes. Official firmware is 2.122 (on my player as delivered and on CD and website).

Recently I decided to remove some Ogg files from the player and add a few new ones. Unfortunately this resulted in some directories (usually structured as <artist>/<album>/<track-number> <track-title>) being unplayable. There's just a message saying "No Entry". Interestingly this happens with directories that did play before removing some files. Newer firmware didn't change anything about that. I suspect that this is caused by either 1) special characters in the file names (I use UTF-8 encoding), 2) special characters in the Vorbis comment, 3) length of file names, 4) number of files in the file system, or 5) amount of free space (my player has just 90kB free now). One symptom is that in Settings->System->About there are fewer files counted than actually exist in the filesystem. And yes, I've checked the filesystem several times. I have contacted German support, and they replied they'll investigate, but they did not ask back about any details (and support doesn't allow to reply).

With the new inofficial firmware 2.290 I had a few crashes: The player was playing a continuous tone, and the only way to stop it was to remove the battiery for a moment. However as the effect was not repeatable when playing the same file, I can believe that some mobile phone triggered that. The other thing is the fact that my player came without FM radio. The newer firmware has the radio item in firmware, but as soon as I select it, the player will hang until the battery is removed. OK, that's inofficial firmware...

--(Ulrich on 2006-02-02)

Two questions: 1) are ogg tags not being displayed even when the Tag option is toggle to On in the settings menu? 2) how does it handle -q 4 and -q 6 — is it just -q 5, or is it -q 5 and higher/lower? — Saxifrage 01:07, 14 Apr 2005 (PDT)

I have seen no evidence of vorbis tags being supported; they are not displayed. I have generally encoded at -q 5 as an attempt to stay inside the "supported" bitrate boundaries. I find that the bitrate and breakups are not directly correlated, but somewhat related. This is no surprise if the problem is CPU time exhaustion. I have not found any particular quality encoding to fail either reliably or often. In general, speeds above the stated maximum supported bitrates have seemed to work fine. No lockups of any kind have been encountered. Incidentally, over 90% of my ogg files have been processed by vorbisgain. --JoshuaRodman (July 5, 2005)

I just bought one of these and I'm baffled by its erratic Ogg support. Firmware version 1.541 seems to support tags just fine, though I haven't noticed the alpha-sorting issue (haven't looked). However, I find that it can't play all my Ogg files (freezes when it tries to load the file), and there's nothing systematic that I've found to account for this. It plays some files I encoded Jan 29-Jan 30, 2005, but there are files that don't work before and after that date. The files that work so far were encoded with nominal bitrates of 128 and 192, while others that don't work were at 160. All encodings have used the same program (Grip under Linux). Ogg files that I've encoded with oggenc directly for testing purposes at 160 nominal bitrate work just fine. There's just something about most of my existing files.

I've emailed a support request to Samsung Canada, so I'll report what I find out then. Meanwhile I'm doing a bunch of rips with Grip to test different nominal bitrates. Saxifrage 10:53, 12 Apr 2005 (PDT)

Results from my experiments with different nominal bitrates are summarised in this table:

YP-T6 Ogg Vorbis support
Bitrate (nominal)
	Tags	none	tag*	tag + replaygain	replaygain
128		works	works	works	?
160		works	works	freezes	works
192		works	works	works	?

* "tag" means just the regular complement of artist, album, title, year, and genre.

"?" indicates that the case was not tested

My conclusion is that the Samsung YP-T6 can't handle Ogg Vorbis files encoded at 160 nominal bitrate if ReplayGain tags are applied to the file. Note too that I tested a file without real RG tags, but with the normal tags plus tags with different names than the standard RG tags but with the same name-length and same length of arguments; this was to isolate whether it was a ReplayGain-specific bug or a general tag-handling bug. Thus, I suspect that the problem is a buffer overflow in tag code of the firmware. Note that I have only tested files encoded with nominal bitrates, not files encoded with oggenc's quality settings.

The few files in my collection that have worked were encoded at different bitrates (either 128 or 192), but unfortunately the vast majority are 160, and I need ReplayGain to be able to listen to my collection on the PC without constantly changing the volume. As a workaround I may write a script to strip the ReplayGain tags as they're moved to my player, but this rather sucks. — Saxifrage 12:36, 12 Apr 2005 (PDT)

Yepp YP-T7JZ/T7JX

Samsung appears to have model bumped the yp-t7 series with the yp-t7j series. The spec sheet does not mention OGG/Vorbis as a supported file format. This seems a real shame as the t7 worked well. Does anyone have anything more conclusive? JoshuaRodman 08:26, 6 January 2006 (PST)

Yepp MT-6X

I (Gav) own a Yepp MT-6X and I don't come to the same conclusions. I tried to remove the Gain tags and it didn't improve anything. Here are some tests I made :

YP-MT6X Ogg Vorbis support
Encoder version	Filename	Nominal bitrate	Playback test
Xiphophorus libVorbis I 20000508 (1.0 beta 1 or beta 2)	01 - In Tenebris.ogg	unset (160 kbps)	KO
Xiphophorus libVorbis I 20001031 (1.0 beta 3)	01 - A Day Without Rain.ogg	160 kbps	KO
Xiphophorus libVorbis I 20010225 (1.0 beta 4)	01 - Sunday Bloody Sunday.ogg	128 kbps	KO
Xiphophorus libVorbis I 20010615 (1.0 rc1)	01 - Remede.ogg	128 kbps	KO
Xiphophorus libVorbis I 20010813 (1.0 rc2)	01 - Devil's Haircut.ogg	192 kbps	OK
Xiphophorus libVorbis I 20011231 (1.0 rc3)	01 - Encore Une Chance.ogg	112 kbps	OK
Xiph.Org libVorbis I 20020717 (1.0)	01 - Inferno (Unleash The Fire).ogg	160 kbps	KO
Xiph.Org libVorbis I 20030909 (1.0.1)	01 - You Will Be a Hot Dancer.ogg	128 kbps	OK

Yes, a 1.0 file fails... I also tested a 8 second file encoded at q1,q2,...,q10 using 20020717 (1.0) and it worked for every quality ! So not every 1.0-encoded file fails. See YeppGavDetails for details about the files.

OK. I've done extensive tests and I can confirm what Saxifrage suggested : there is indeed a buffer overflow in the tag handling ! When the framing bit of the tag header is at offset >= 0x18C, it fails. If it is at exactly 0x18C, it reboots or freezes. If it is at offset > 0x18C, it always freezes. This was tested with firmware 1.101 and vorbis encoder 1.0.

The file encoded using libVorbis 1.0 in the table above has a too large tag and that's why it fails.

In summary, the Yepp can only play Vorbis when it is encoded with libVorbis version >= 1.0rc2 AND when the framing bit of the tag header is at offset < 0x18C.

Yepp YP-T6

I've got this model with 256MB of flash memory, and unlike above, I ran into problems when I tried to play very-low-bitrate files (< 64kbps, CD format). I encoded them using aoTuV-beta4 experiment version from aoyumi (which creates (or should create) perfectly standard and conforming files), using command-line oggenc under linux. The qualities I used for these problematic files are -q-1 (~45kbps) and -q-2 (~32kbps), and when the player tries to open the file it freezes, but for qualities from -q0 it works perfectly.

Apart from that, I've had no real problem before, using mostly -q6 files from RC3 and 1.0, without tags or with standard ones. Sometimes the sound is distorted a lot for a few tenths of seconds, it seems to be related to bitrate peaks (applauds, etc.).

Hope this will be useful, anyway thanks for the investigations on this player, I also realized the lack of information on this player's ogg support. Superdupont 16:49, 2 Aug 2005 (PDT)

Edit: firmware version: 1.543

The YP-T6 seems to be almost identical to the Trekstor i.Beat Cube.

The YP-T6s sold in the US sports an FM Radio with 16 saved settings and automatic station search. Recording from a radio program to MP3 is possible. At least the German version of the YP-T6 does not have an built-in tuner.

The German web site has moved it from from "MP3 players" to the Archived MP3 players section, while the US and UK site lists it as regular model. I don't know if this indicates that Samsung is about to stop production of the T6 or if there have been problems on the German market (like restrictive radio emission laws, see built-in tuner section above).

Yepp YP-53

I'am not sure what's inside this player. May be it's a STMP3505. With firmware 1.200 it plays Ogg Vorbis, but not at very low bitrates(-q-1 and -q-2).nostromo 4 Nov 2005.

Firmware 1.200 is a bit difficult to find, googling by file name (YP-53_V1.200.zip) gets a single relevant result: Korean page with a link to the updater. If it disappears, contact me (inejge) via this site (E-mail this user on the linked page).

The new firmware is much nicer than the previous release (my player came with V1.024):

It plays OGGs, starting with -q0.
The main screen is better organized.
Menus are cleaned up (and with more eye candy).
Non-ASCII characters in tags are displayed properly (tested with OGG).

Note: if you are encoding OGGs at -q0, don't try to set the lower bitrate limit to 64 kb/s -- the player can choke on managed bitrate files. Nominal bitrate is all that counts.

--Inejge 06:32, 12 Dec 2005 (PST)

Yepp YP-U1

Firmware 2.242: Plays Vorbis OK with tag support. Tested with aoTuV beta 4.51 and Xiph.org Vorbis between -q2 and -q8 (mostly at -q5; manual claims support from -q0 to -q10), no lockups so far. Experienced unusual distortion at one point of a particular track (loud, percussive synthetic "thunderclap") at -q5, decreasing with increasing -q value; this appears to be caused by a spike in bitrate, solved by passing encoding options

--managed -b160 -M192

--Ettlz 07:35, 25 January 2006 (PST)

UniBrain iZak

Apologies if this is the wrong place for this; I'm new to wikis.

The UniBrain iZak was added, then removed recently, with the comment that it doesn't claim to play Ogg Vorbis.

The FAQ is available here: iZak FAQ and Question/Answer 22 says:

'22. Can iZak™ support OGG audio files?

Yes, iZak™ fully supports OGG playback using the latest firmware.'

I was the one that removed it. In their specs linked from the main page, I saw that they listed only MP3 and WMA support for music formats. Obviously they need to update their promotional material! I went ahead and added the iZak back in, making a point to mention that the most current version of the firmware now supports Ogg Vorbis and linking to their FAQ as evidence. Saxifrage 02:36, 5 May 2005 (PDT)

Splendid. I didn't want to just stick it back after it had been taken out.--Ipl 05:14, 5 May 2005 (PDT)

Entempo Spirit

This inexpensive player from Entempo had listed Ogg as a "Supported Audio Format", but the device will not index the Ogg files into it's menus -- let alone play the files. Tested with both the stock and most recent firmware, May 29, 2005. Vendor had been contacted and removed Ogg support claims from their website, but has not provided any resolution to customers which purchased the product expecting this support. The company's webpage has disappeared as of Feb 2006.

Lexar LDP-800 dropped

It seems that Lexar have abondoned the LDP-800. The following was posted by a user on dapreview.net " Unfortunately, lexar will not offer the LDP-800, but will focus instead on its existing LDP Players that already offer appealing features and benefits to meet a variety of consumer needs." Shame.--Ipl 06:15, 22 Jul 2005 (PDT)

There's more info on that dapreview thread that indicates some confusion within Lexar. Currently, it looks like the release is going to happen in early September.

Update 2005-11-11: after inquiries to Lexar's "new products" personnel, I received a telephone message that the LDP-800 will definitely "is not going to see the light of day." Ask me if you want details. I agree that it's a shame since this looked to be an outstanding product. --dfavro

Hong Kong Dream-tech Electronic DT-202, works? please confirm

http://hkdream-tech.com An ebay seller says that it can reproduce OGG. This is unconfirmed. In the manufacturer web it says: MP3, WMA, WAV, DMV and etc.

Some webpage also says that it works on Windows, Mac and Linux. Also unconfirmed. Further investigation required.

Trekstor i.Beat Cube

This player seems to be very similar to the Samsung Yepp YP-T6, possibly with the same problems regarding Ogg playback. Trekstor has moved info about this player from "MP3-Player" to the "Archive" section which propably means that it is not produced anymore.

The Muzio jm300 / jm-300 does NOT play ogg

NB this is the jm-300 (not 100 or 200)

I bought this a month ago. I've been unable to play ogg files on it. It simply shows these as 'etc' files and skips over them.

Pitty really, this was the main reason I chose this player.

I've seen lots of discussion about the muzio playing oggs, is there anybody there who owns a jm300 and is actually playing oggs ? I can't help think I've juts missed something basic.

Layout of the PortablePlayers list

Wouldn't this list be easier to read if there was a seperate heading for each product, sorted by manufacturer? --Blenda 09:13, 11 January 2006 (PST)

There'd be a lot of entries then, I like the idea of a table format as suggested by G Markham on the Vorbis list recently (cut and pasted below). Although I think providing links to suppliers for each device and trying to maintain up-to-date availability is going too far.

Imalone 09:19, 24 February 2006 (PST)

Make it a table - or rather, four tables, for each combination of flash/hard disk and current/historical, with historical data below current. Split it up by model, not just by manufacturer - one manufacturer can have many different models with widely differing feature sets. Provide a link to the manufacturer's product page for each model, and either a table-based or a freeform list of commonly-sought features (microphone, radio, capacity, other formats). Provide details of which countries a player can be purchased in and, if it's not commonly available, details of how to find it in major markets (US, Europe).

I want to be able to come to the page (as I tried to recently) and say "I need a flash-based player with a built-in USB connector and a mic, available in Europe", and find which models I should be googling for without difficulty.

Gervase Markham on vorbis mailing list, inserted by Imalone

Here's a quick attempt I put together:

**iAudio**
Model	Storage	Capacity	UMS Device	Vorbis w/ std firmware	Power	Line-in	Mic	Radio	Formats	Comments
G3	Flash (builtin)	256MB, 512MB, 1GB	yes	yes	AA	yes	yes	yes	MP3, MP2, Ogg, WMA, ASF and WAV	Very white, available from online retailers in UK
Pianist	Savant	Indefinite	no	yes	n/a	?	no	no	Manuscript	No, they don't really make this.

Obviously templates would be of some use here—someone more wiki-wise than me want to suggest something? Also those check boxes, I had a quick look but haven't got a way to do them that looks good (again, if you could come up with some convoluted solution, then it could be templated for convenience). Perhaps little icons might be easier for a few things like batteries, capacity, memory type where there tends to be a limited number of common choices.

Imalone 09:56, 24 February 2006 (PST)

On reflection, column 5 should be 'without firmware update' (or a less confusing text), because then support without firmware update would be green and green is good (or at least consistent). Left red above so you can see the contrast until someone does a less fully featured player. Imalone 17:23, 24 February 2006 (PST)

Changed this to an example template based table. XiphWiki is running on a version of mediawiki that doesn't support defaults so all fields need to be specified (even if empty). There is an 'NA' entry provided alongside 'Yes' and 'No' for the binary fields. All are case sensitive. Imalone 08:25, 23 March 2006 (PST)

I think the table gets too wide this way. It hardly fits on my 1400x1050 pixel screen and adding any other features that might be relevant is cumbersome. I propose the following layout:

**iAudio**
Model	Storage & cap.	Comm.	Formats	OggV support	Features	Comments
G3	flash 256M,512M,1G	ums(usb2)	mp3,mp2,ogg,wma,asf,wav	q0-q8	AA,LI,mic,fm,vc
5	flash 256M,512M,1G	ums(usb2)	mp3,mp2,ogg,wma,asf,wav	q0-q8	AAA,LI,mic,fm,vc
U2	flash 256M,512M,1G	ums(usb2)	mp3,mp2,ogg,wma,asf,wav	q0-q8	Lib,LI,mic,fm,vc
G2	flash 1G	ums(usb1.1)	mp3,mp2,ogg,wma,asf,wav	q0-q8	AA,LI,mic,vc?
X5	HD 20G,30G,60G	ums(usb2)	mp3,mp2,ogg,wma,asf,wav,flac,mpeg4	q0-q10	Lib,LI,mic,vc,col	Rockbox in alpha stage

Explanation:

Comm.unication: UMS=USB mass storage protocol (number indicates max. bit transfer rate)
Features:

Lib=lithium ion accu, built-in; Lipb=lithium polymer accu, built-in; AA=AA battery; AAA=AAA battery

LI=line in; mic=microphone; fm=FM radio; col=color display; rm=remote control; otg=USB on-the-go host; spk built-in speaker

db=ID3 database; gl=gapless playback;

Vorbis comment support: vc (only title, album, artist, ignores others); vcx (arbitrary fields)

Frm=Vorbis support only with firmware update