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Handhelds Media Music Hardware

Neuros Audio Releases Its Hardware Schematics 286

Posted by timothy from the can't-hurt dept.
iswm writes "Neuros Audio has released the schematics to their Neuros Digital Audio Computer. Now with open source firmware, hardware schematics, ogg support, tons of other cool features, and an amazing price tag, The Neuros is looking like an awesome competitor in the audio player market."
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Neuros Audio Releases Its Hardware Schematics More

Neuros Audio Releases Its Hardware Schematics

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  • Official Product of the Slashdot Network (Score:4, Funny)

    by mordors9 ( 665662 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:07AM (#11092262)
    Maybe Slashdot can make some money by letting them license their name. Then all the Nerds could recognize each other in real life by observing their official Slashdot audio player.

  • Ogg Support (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nycsubway ( 79012 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:07AM (#11092263) Homepage
    Ogg support is very nice, but I hope this device can play other formats as well. One of the things that is making media-playing consumer devices so popular today is the support for all different formats of media. DVD players that can play every type of file format out there, and car cd players that can play mp3. The key to success is multi format support.

    • Re:Ogg Support (Score:5, Informative)

      by ALecs ( 118703 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:09AM (#11092278) Homepage
      It can currently play Ogg, mp3, wma (non-DRM), and wav.

      People are also working on other alternative codecs, including FLAC, musepac and a few others I've heard talk about in IRC.
    • For a device supposedly aimed at developers, and with as big as of a hard drive as this thing has, why doesn't it support FLAC?

      (What would be doubly-nice is if it supported real-time recording to FLAC from a line level input, but I'll bitch and whine about the absence of that feature when they get around to having it at least *play* FLAC...)
      • The problem, I believe, is space in the CPU's memory for the codecs. The thing has 64k (yes, k) of memory for running the firmware and decoding audio. Multiple codecs have to be loaded into the chip on a per-song basis.

        Also, I don't know what FLAC would do to the battery life. Since the data rate is so high (compared to a lossy format) you'll be running the disk A LOT more.

        • Re:Why not FLAC support??? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by parvenu74 ( 310712 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:19AM (#11092401)
          The disk would be running less than recording a line input at 44.1Khz WAV though. The reason I mention this is that a couple of my friends are audio engineer types and keeping an eye open for an iPod-like (loosely speaking) that has lots of storage, can record full quality audio at line level, and perhaps compress to lossy format as well, without shelling out thousands of dollars for "professional" solutions. On-site recording would be less of a need than a portable music library, but if they can kill two birds with one stone... why not?
          • I beleive that the Iriver players do all this.
          • your friends need to get a clue and ignore the "hard drive" recorders.

            portable DAT recorder works perfectly, and with the right computer DAT drive you can quickly extract the audio files off the tape and into uncompressed 44.1 or 48KHZ wav files.

            I do this all the time, the deck cost me less than $450.00 new and with the Sure pocket field mixer and a pair of high end electret microphones hidden on my lapels I can get extremely good live concert recordings without anyone knowing.

            it records better than any
            • My friend has something like five DAT recorders for just this purpose. He's also in the market for something iPod-like for hauling around his tunes (Grateful Dead, mainly). An added bonus would be something that can record full quality audio at line input, and a double bonus would be real-time compression to a lossless format like FLAC. He's not looking to retire the DAT's just yet, but is casually keeping an eye open for something that might be able to do the job just as well -- and copying the audio data
            • your friends need to get a clue and ignore the "hard drive" recorders.

              portable DAT recorder works perfectly, ... quickly extract the audio files off the tape and into uncompressed 44.1 or 48KHZ wav files.

              I've got an iRiver [iriver.com] h120 with giant squid audio [giant-squi...io-lab.com] mics recording to 44.1 wav (or straight to mp3, if it doesn't matter) which I can drag and drop straight off to my linux box. I can record for 10 hours on the internal battery (though due to the disk being FAT, it'll only do about 2 hours max in one file!).
          • The reason I mention this is that a couple of my friends are audio engineer types and keeping an eye open for an iPod-like (loosely speaking) that has lots of storage, can record full quality audio at line level, and perhaps compress to lossy format as well

            Why bother? I can pretty much guarantee that the onboard ADC will be cheap and nasty. What's the point in making a lossless recording passed through headphone quality interconnects and audio-stages? Ever tried recoding line-level in your average soundca

          • The hard disk-based iRiver players do what you describe, including recording direct to uncompressed WAV or optionally to MP3 at configurable bit rates. The line in is both analog and optical -- they have optical in and out, both.

            The only problem is that they're buggy. Some people have reported recording glitches when the player goes to store the captured data to disk, i.e. periodic hiccups in the recording. I haven't really noticed it myself, but I normally record voice. A friend has recorded live music wi
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • If only, two years ago, I had had a viable Ogg option. I finally had the throwaway money to buy a harddisk mp3 player ( to replace my increasingly unreliable MD player ) and literally everything I examined was either a complete piece of crap ( in terms of build quality ) or a complete piece of crap ( in terms of usability ) or a complete piece of crap ( in terms of design ). The sole machine that was any good was the iPod, and it excelled in every way, except for its lack of Ogg support.

      So I bought an iPod

  • neuros audio (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ccozan ( 754085 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:09AM (#11092279) Homepage

    I have one of these ( practically smuggled from US), and it is impressive what they did. It works perfect, it's open, it works with Linux, you can hack it, you can broadcast radio, etc, etc.

    Kudos to the Neuros Audio! Keep it open!

    • I was about to bitch that the only reason this got a headline on slashdot was because it had Ogg support in it. I'm sick of people talking about how bad XING 128 bit encoded mp3's are, so obviously Ogg is so much better.

      LAME encoded mp3's are great. And until you can carry around your whole CD collection in lossless format in your pocket (portable device) then MP3 is here to stay.

      Anyway, after reading the article and what you can do with it, I take it all back. It's awesome.

      • Well, ogg support is a biggie. I surely won't sit down and rip/encode hundreds of CDs for days and days, and then have them in a format known to be patent-encumbered, support for which in free software can be yanked at any time
        • There's already no support for MP3 encoding in Free software. If you're about to mention LAME and bladeenc, don't bother: these are illegal to use. That's why they're not included in US Linux distributions. They don't have a licensing deal with the company that owns the MP3 patents, so they can only be distributed in source code form, and you have to compile them yourself. Of course, if you do this and then encode some MP3s without paying a license fee to Fraunhofer/Thompson, then you're a criminal...

          S
      • It's the first HD-based MP3 player to have completely open firmware and hardware schematics. Did you really think that wouldn't make the front page?!
    • By the time I got here the site was ./'ed
      My main question, which you seem to have answered, is how open is the platform. Since they published the schematics (did they pub gerbers?) I wonder if someone (say me) could start building the boards and shipping out just the PCBs for "roll your own" players?
      -nB

      • Re:neuros audio (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Grishnakh ( 216268 )
        These are just the schematics (in PDF form), not gerbers.

        If you're thinking of "rolling your own", forget it. It doesn't make economic sense. Even if you did have the gerbers, making the boards would probably cost a minimum of $100. Then you'd have to buy all the components and solder them on. I don't know what the component cost is, but after looking at the schematics, I noticed that they use several highly specialized chips. You probably would not be able to purchase these chips yourself in singular

  • Open firmware over open hardware.... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gopal.V ( 532678 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:09AM (#11092280) Homepage Journal

    So far all the hardware players had that "Ipod Killer" tag, which isn't the TFA :).

    Open firmware is cool - but hardware schematics are more iffy. All in all, I'd put open firmware over hardware schemas any day :)

    Have you seen Simputer General Public License [simputer.org] which Simputer uses for their hardware ?. I suppose Neuros has some kind of licensing model at least for defining copyright and that kind of stuff. This is kinda blind faith to re-use or work on.
    • So you think by releasing schematics they make it easy for competitors?

      Tellyawhat: any other established company that wanted schematics could pay a single engineer a month's contract and would get the compete schematic. It's less likely this would be so easily obtainable in the oss crowd, since that would depend on someone with the skills and equipment needed to perform the operation volunteering their time.

      You think you could just take those schematics and go into competition with them? Or better still j

  • Cool idea. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by nativespeaker ( 797751 )
    I actually like this idea -- in order to "kill" the iPod (or somesuch nonsense) you'd actually need a simultaneous music store/sync software/player package that was so much better than the iPod that it would be worth the switch. I think it makes more sense to add features and hack-friendliness to get the appeal of niche markets. Smaller groups, perhaps, but just as loyal -- hmm...sounds like a popular fruit-flavored computer brand.
    • simple... no firewire, but high speed bluetooth.

      if you only have to get the ipod near the computer to sync and upload that would rule.

      a friend of mine had a HD mp3 player from germany that had no connections other than a power plug for charging, it had 802.11g in it and as long as you were in the house it would wake up, allow you to send or retrieve files from it and then go back to sleep.

      it was great, he had some rare TMBG tracks on it, and offered to let me upload them, I mentioned, "go get your player

      • Re:Cool idea. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Darren Winsper ( 136155 )
        Bluetooth is 100 times slower than USB 1.1, which in of itself is considered too slow for HD-based players. Bluetooth would need a hell of a speed bump to be useful for HD-based players.
    • "in order to "kill" the iPod (or somesuch nonsense) you'd actually need a simultaneous music store/sync software/player package that was so much better than the iPod that it would be worth the switch."

      Functionality isn't really why the iPod is so popular. I've used it and it isn't any more functional (less so IMO) than some other players. The iSheep like it because they are convinced by a well organized and orchestrated marketing blitz that it is best and that they will be "with it" if they are seen wear
  • The Neuros is looking like an awesome competitor in the audio player market.

    Why exactly ?

  • It's about time for these things to support lossless formats (FLAC/SHN/MKW or even WAV). While OGG is better than MP3 and roughly equivalent to Windows Media format (ASF/WMA), there is still a noticable and irritating artifact in the sound stream from the type of compression employed -- on quality headphones this is especially noticable.

    Does anybody know if such a project is being undertaken for the Neuros? I might even pick one up and hack on it myself for my own edification.

  • I have one. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tankrshr77 ( 170422 ) <tankrshr77.yahoo@com> on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:14AM (#11092327)
    I actually have a Neuros. I bought one about 2 years ago. Honestly, they're a lot larger than ipods, so I doubt that they will catch on with the portable audio market. It's not really 'pocket-size.'

    However, it is perfect for carrying in a backpack. The built in mic is sensitive enough for recording interviews, and the harddrive can hold alot more than other portable recorders you can buy.

    FM transmitting- I love it, but it's not really powerful enough here in the Washington, DC area with all the background noise to be picked up more than 3 or so feet away.

    The sound quality is decent, but the included headphones broke within two months. I did go jogging with them, so that might be the reason.
    • How was your experience jogging with the HD? In my experience HD based players tend to skip when I run, due to the jolt when my feet hit the ground. Thats why I picked up an MPIO FL300 (matchbox size, literally, it fits inside a matchbox), which is flash based and at 1GB enough songs for running and exercise. I've figured that I should use two, one for exercise and one for "sitting still" like on a train and in the car. Will this thing work well that way or will I still have problems on bumpy roads? Al

      • How was your experience jogging with the HD? In my experience HD based players tend to skip when I run, due to the jolt when my feet hit the ground.

        That's what the Neuros flash backpack [neurosaudio.com] is used for. The design totally rocks, you have a single player that can have a hard drive backpack for normal use, then switch to the flash backpack for doing high impact activities.

    • The key to making the FM transmitter work in DC/Baltimore is to make sure the Neuros is plugged into your ciggarrette light adaptor. Or just take off your external attenna.

      I took off my attenna because I was tired of people changing the radio station on me (I listen to European metal for the most part and the radio sucks) and my Camaro looks better without an attenna :)

      You could also resolder the RF port to the internal attenna and try that.

      Getting a Neuros II would fix it automatically because those

    • They REALLY improved the FM transmitting range in version two. I had a NeurosI that I had to send back right when the NeurosII came out. What they sent me back was a NeurosII. Talk about good customer service! And it works so much better.
      The size doesn't bother me because it works so well for what I need it for. If fits in my vest pocket without a problem. Another feature that makes it better IMO than an iPod is the 5 programmable buttons. They makes finding favorite lists or picking up where I left

  • Unfortunately... (Score:3, Informative)

    by ilithiiri ( 836229 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:14AM (#11092341) Journal
    Also on ThinkGeek, the product cannot be sold outside the US, unlike the iPod. Sigh.. I was looking very much forward to it!!
    • See www.cool4u2view.com - he sells outside the States.

      It's also sold in plenty of other places that will sell outside the US.
    • The reason why they can't ship it outside the US is because it can do FM transmitting and its illegal in some countries. :-/ I ordered mine to Denmark (Europe) two years ago from some shop that didn't knew about this (or didn't care :)). I can't remember the name of the company, I found it in the neuros forums.
  • ...but does it have breakout?
    • Somebody has put up a bounty for Tetris on the Neuros. Good luck, though. :)

      http://neuros-firmware.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/v ie w/Main/TetrisContest
      • Wow - being that this is an audio player story, I assumed he meant "does it have something other than a headphone jack", i.e. left/right RCA-style audio breakout. :P Will I never learn that people like stupid [snapnpost.com] extras [about.com].
        • Picture Caller Id.

          Yes, cameras in phones are usually not even reasonable quality.

          No, not all uses of cameras require great quality.

          Your "stupid extra" can easily be someone else's "I can't read or remember phone numbers, but I can recognize a picture of [Mommy/Daddy]!"

  • Fun hack (Score:3, Interesting)

    by pavon ( 30274 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:26AM (#11092451)
    This would be an awsome product to hack on. I've been thinking about putting together a car-based mp3 player, and with the firmware now open and most of the functionality there that I want, this might be a better platform to work off of. I was originally planning on going with Mini-ITX hardware (or nano-ITX when it came out), Linux BIOS + LFS system on CF, and entirely custom software (with heavy using existing libraries). This would be much simpler, and result in just as good of a system.

    On the I don't think it stands a chance at doing well in the marketplace though until it cuts it's size down some. The seperate player and hardrive backpack is fine (and infact prefered) for a car based system, but way to clunky for a handheld.

    Lastly, speaking of OGG has anyone had any real-life experiance with the MPIO HD-300? I saw it in Best Buy, and it looked like a really nice system - 20 GB, about the same size as the iPod, felt solid, played OGG MP3 and WMA, was 20 bucks less than the iPod, and supposedly has significantly better battery life. This claim is backed up by the fact that in the past thier flash models have had the best battery life in the industry. On the other hand thier website has horrible english, so I would expect support to be lacking, and I can't find any sites that have actually reviewed the device (just regurgitated the press release, let users post uninformed opinions, and then called it a review). Anyone have some real info to add to this? Especially about its reliability/quality and how well it works with Linux?

  • It realy comes down to UI, though... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by incognitox ( 123292 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @11:36AM (#11092543) Homepage
    I've got a Neuros...the USB1.1 version from about two years back. I gotta say -- it's a sweet device.

    -- I like the swappable backpack idea because it makes for cheaper upgrading and the ability for more than one person to use the same device with minimal difficulty.

    -- I absolutely LOVE the integrated FM broadcast. This hit the market before everyone and their mother was making add-ons for this functionality, and it's still a really handy feature. It means that _I_ always get to hear my music in other people's cars, because no one else has this ability!

    -- HiSi (the song-identifier) is a pretty nifty gimick, too, although of minimal use (more to the point is the built-in FM reciever...something that I think EVERY audio player should have -- it costs about 20 cents to include at this point, why not do it?!?!)

    (disclaimer at this point -- mine IS the old version)

    !!!HOWEVER!!!

    The one failing of the Neuros is in its interface. Navigation is painfully slow. You cannot queue up songs while it's playing. Organizing songs into playlists inexplicably takes about 3 or 4 seconds once you've decided upon a song and selected "Add to my playlist". There is no way to play a series of albums, so you are stuck playing alphabetically by song title, by artist (and then within the artist by song title) or album-by-album. See previous statment about creating custom playlists. Oh yeah, and for some reason, it takes about 3 seconds to boot each time you start it. My PC starts faster!!

    So, to put it lightly, the interface plain SUCKS! And ultimately, that's what matters. I love the tech aspect of this device. The open-standards are awesome (ogg support used to require a separate version of the firmware -- dunno if that's still true); there's a thriving developer's community which is fully supported by the company. Their customer service is phenominal (a broken mini-audio jack took 5 days to fix -- shipping time to Chicago included!). But the interface needs a lot of work.

    And the interface of an audio player is the make-it or break-it point, IMHO. It's what you see every day. How quickly can you play your music? Good interfaces are invisible. You don't notice that they are there. You just notice that you can get the job done and do it quickly. I think this is more important in the portable-audio market than anywhere else. If I have to make the decision whether or not to turn on my device because there is a 10-second lead-in before music starts and a 5-second end sequence, then they've lost me...

    I haven't had a chance to get my hands on a generation 2 device yet, so perhaps there has been a massive improvement. However, as of now, my next audio player purchase will be an iPod -- unless someone can point me to a better interface!
    • You need to run the latest Open-Source firmware.

      Garbage as immensely improved the UI, as has DI (the guys who make the Neuros).

      The latest firmware has the 'Play Queue' - you can add songs to this on the fly, without interrupting playback. It is lost when you shut down the player, though.

      And yes, this works on the Gen-1 devices (I have one, too)

  • eh? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @12:40PM (#11093296)
    The Neuros is looking like an awesome competitor in the audio player market.

    It is? With a market-share of less than 1.5% [itfacts.biz] can someone please tell me how on earth they can remotely be a "competitor"?

    Hell, HP became number 2 overnight simply by playing nice with Apple. Which just goes to show the sad state of affairs with the quality of competition that Apple is up against.

  • I took a quick looks at the site, so I apologize if I'm off-base here.. Does the new Neuros (or the old one..) have gapless playback? Can I play an album liks it's supposed to be heard, or will I hear infuriating little gaps between the songs?

    For all the Rio Karma bashing I've read on here, I see very little discussion of this (IMO) essential feature. The Karma's got it in spades. I playback albums that I ripped years ago before I even though about gapless playback and they play flawlessly. Try listening t
  • Mine arrived last night. Used it in the car today and it worked great. My drive goes from Frederick, MD to Columbia,MD. Kept it on 107.1 the whole time.

    Then I found this this [sourceforge.net]. I'm going to try it when I get home.
  • from the product detail page [neurosaudio.com]:

    System Requirements

    OS: Microsoft® Windows 98SE/Me/2000/XP

    HUH?!?

    Open source, open firmware, schematics... but Windows-only software support?

    I'm just going to assume that's misleading/incorrect somehow, it probably works like any USB storage class device, but... how odd that they list only Windows OS support...

  • On 'iPod killers' (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mattgreen ( 701203 ) on Wednesday December 15, 2004 @01:49PM (#11094150)
    A few people are posting about what would be needed to create so-called 'iPod killers.' Now folks, I don't know what exactly happens, but it seems like once a product becomes mainstream, people like to:

    1. proudly declare they don't use it (optionally including reasons that only make sense to them)
    2. start an open source clone of it
    3. and then evangelize it based on moral goodness

    Regardless of the open source version's merit, you turn people off at step one. Now, I don't know what Apple has done to you, but a killer audio player is not formed out of spite for large corporations or the mainstream. It is made based on realizing where current players falter (battery life, size, UI) and improving on those. Nobody cares if the firmware is open source except the esoteric readers of Slash.

    Seriously, how many projects do you start with the intent to 'kill' another product? And here is a player with Ogg support, now the hivemind complains that it doesn't support FLAC!

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