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Support and General Use => Hardware => Topic started by: may1937 on June 14, 2007, 11:16:06 PM

Title: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: may1937 on June 14, 2007, 11:16:06 PM
Hi, I'm from the Neuros community and thought you all might be interested in a project we have brewing to build a portable audio player as a community. Neuros has schematics for their current device available, and I don't think it would take too much work to turn it into a sweet open source, community designed, portable audio player.

You can check out my overall plan: http://open.neurosaudio.com/node/884

We are going to have a meeting on the 30th to discuss Phase I of this plan. If anyone here is interested, I'd love to get a discussion started here, and bring some of the ideas to the meeting.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: linuxstb on June 15, 2007, 03:22:40 AM
My view is that we already have about 20 open source portable audio players - i.e. everything Rockbox currently runs on.  The fact that all these devices were sold as closed-source proprietory products doesn't matter to me - the end result is a product running an open source firmware.

It does sound like an interesting and fun project, but in order to attract developers and users, but IMO it must compete favourably with the existing Rockbox targets.

I'm sure everyone is going to list their own feature requests for the "perfect" DAP and my personal one is storage size.  My wish would be for a player that can accept SATA 2.5" drives - a Rockbox-capable DAP with a 250GB drive would be very tempting...

I don't know if this is economically viable but something that would make this project stand out from all the other DAPs in the world would be to make the hardware modular - allowing users to pick and choose between various components (motherboard, LCD, case, storage, battery) to assemble their ideal player - it will be impossible to agree a single design (or even two or three designs) that please everyone.

This assembly could either be done by the end-user or the resellers/distributors.

The iaudio X5/M5 and X5L/M5L are a nice example - the X5/M5 can take dual-platter 1.8" drives, and a smaller battery, and the X5L/M5L take single-platter drives and a larger battery - allowing the user to decide on the compromise between capacity and battery life.  

I also agree with Bagder's comment on your mailing list - these kinds of discussions would seem better suited (at least initially) to a mailing list/forum, rather than the chaos of an IRC meeting.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: Llorean on June 15, 2007, 03:40:45 AM
Just as a note, I don't know who the target audience of this player is, but I feel that with the strength of the iPod, and the amount of money Microsoft is probably willing to lose on their Zune, an audience of interest would probably be those beyond just the basic DAP users.

Having the ability to use a 2.5" drive is a start. Yes it makes it a bit bigger, but if it offers expandability that's very valuable to the kind of people who are interested in open source. If modular hardware isn't an option, then having recording features at least on par with the H100 series would seem quite valuable to me. There isn't (to my knowledge) a particularly good DAP/Recorder combo that I've seen around recently, and that combined with open source firmware for codec flexibility and extensible recording options, and the ability to put very large storage in, is probably going to be of interest to the taper community who seem quite fond of what Rockbox has done for the iRiver players as it is.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: Bagder on June 15, 2007, 04:27:39 AM
Yes, the primary goal must be to create an attractive player hardware-wise and it must also be able to reach an audience that doesn't care about it being open source or Rockbox.

The question is then of course how you make a new player today to compete in a market flooded with existing players, be it with open source or not...
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: markun on June 15, 2007, 09:53:17 AM
Perhaps it could use a Blackfin CPU (SoC) ? Analog Devices (ADI) provide all the documentation and are very friendly to the open source community. I was told by Marc Hoffman from ADI that they are releasing a 525c which is designed to be used in DAPs and to be very cheap.

http://www.analog.com/en/epProd/0,,ADSP-BF525C,00.html
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: may1937 on June 16, 2007, 12:18:07 PM
My view is that we already have about 20 open source portable audio players - i.e. everything Rockbox currently runs on.  The fact that all these devices were sold as closed-source proprietory products doesn't matter to me - the end result is a product running an open source firmware.

It does sound like an interesting and fun project, but in order to attract developers and users, but IMO it must compete favourably with the existing Rockbox targets.

I'm sure everyone is going to list their own feature requests for the "perfect" DAP and my personal one is storage size.  My wish would be for a player that can accept SATA 2.5" drives - a Rockbox-capable DAP with a 250GB drive would be very tempting...

I don't know if this is economically viable but something that would make this project stand out from all the other DAPs in the world would be to make the hardware modular - allowing users to pick and choose between various components (motherboard, LCD, case, storage, battery) to assemble their ideal player - it will be impossible to agree a single design (or even two or three designs) that please everyone.

This assembly could either be done by the end-user or the resellers/distributors.

The iaudio X5/M5 and X5L/M5L are a nice example - the X5/M5 can take dual-platter 1.8" drives, and a smaller battery, and the X5L/M5L take single-platter drives and a larger battery - allowing the user to decide on the compromise between capacity and battery life.  

I also agree with Bagder's comment on your mailing list - these kinds of discussions would seem better suited (at least initially) to a mailing list/forum, rather than the chaos of an IRC meeting.

Your sentiment regarding Rockbox supported players is well taken. (Great work on all this by the way! I'm just now trying to load up Rockbox on an iAudio X5L to check it out.) I see releasing schematics as being a huge factor in terms of openness, but you guys probably don't care much about that as it seems you have some great reverse engineering skills. Audio quality is also a major goal of the project.

I'm not exactly sure of the hardware modifications needed to add a hard drive, but keeping cost down is very important for the project to succeed. We don't have a community member with hardware design experience, so we are probably going to have to hire someone. This may exclude a hard drive from the initial run, although I also would love to have one if it is a reasonable goal.

Neuros' previous player, the N2, had removable storage components, and that didn't end up working so well because of added cost/complexity. I think there is potential for some modularity within a given form factor, but again, we have to keep it reasonable, and we probably wouldn't see this on the initial run.

Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: may1937 on June 16, 2007, 12:26:10 PM
Just as a note, I don't know who the target audience of this player is, but I feel that with the strength of the iPod, and the amount of money Microsoft is probably willing to lose on their Zune, an audience of interest would probably be those beyond just the basic DAP users.

Having the ability to use a 2.5" drive is a start. Yes it makes it a bit bigger, but if it offers expandability that's very valuable to the kind of people who are interested in open source. If modular hardware isn't an option, then having recording features at least on par with the H100 series would seem quite valuable to me. There isn't (to my knowledge) a particularly good DAP/Recorder combo that I've seen around recently, and that combined with open source firmware for codec flexibility and extensible recording options, and the ability to put very large storage in, is probably going to be of interest to the taper community who seem quite fond of what Rockbox has done for the iRiver players as it is.

Yes, we were hoping that by supporting high quality audio input and output, it might appeal to a more "audiophile" type crowd. And maybe some tapers could replace more complex setups with a single device. Storage is important, of course, but due to cost we may have to settle for 4/8GB of flash, at least initially.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: may1937 on June 16, 2007, 12:30:46 PM
Yes, the primary goal must be to create an attractive player hardware-wise and it must also be able to reach an audience that doesn't care about it being open source or Rockbox.

The question is then of course how you make a new player today to compete in a market flooded with existing players, be it with open source or not...

Hopefully we can come up with some distinguishing features. But, being a community project, the more immediate goal is to settle on an initial feature set, and get some boards out to interested community members. If we can keep costs down, we might have a chance of breaking even on expenses.

If the community embraces the player, then maybe we can think about turning it into a consumer product.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: may1937 on June 16, 2007, 12:40:18 PM
Perhaps it could use a Blackfin CPU (SoC) ? Analog Devices (ADI) provide all the documentation and are very friendly to the open source community. I was told by Marc Hoffman from ADI that they are releasing a 525c which is designed to be used in DAPs and to be very cheap.

http://www.analog.com/en/epProd/0,,ADSP-BF525C,00.html

I am not a hardware engineer, but dropping a new CPU in sounds expensive. If we did go this route, wouldn't it make more sense to use something already supported by Rockbox? The neat thing about dm320, is most of the "hard" software work is done, at least for the Linux side. And since it's mostly an ARM, I wouldn't think getting Rockbox running would be too difficult.

On a side note, my current project for work involves an ADI part, and I have had an absolutely horrible experience with it. Their documentation is incomplete, my support contact won't return my phone calls, and their development tools are atrocious.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: petur on June 16, 2007, 01:32:32 PM
On a side note, my current project for work involves an ADI part, and I have had an absolutely horrible experience with it. Their documentation is incomplete, my support contact won't return my phone calls, and their development tools are atrocious.
I can only agree on this point, having worked on a project involving a blackfin, I agree that the AD tools were expensive junk (certainly the debugger and the buggy compiler). Of course this is not an issue if we're not using them ;)
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: Bagder on June 16, 2007, 04:01:39 PM
The neat thing about dm320, is most of the "hard" software work is done, at least for the Linux side. And since it's mostly an ARM, I wouldn't think getting Rockbox running would be too difficult.

Rockbox has no pieces of Linux in it and Rockbox currently doesn't run on any dm320 target...

For my views on the dm320 arch, I posted some on the Neuros-DM320 list:

http://groups.google.com/group/Neuros-DM320Hardware/browse_thread/thread/b64fa011bc2c22b5
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: ZincAlloy on June 17, 2007, 06:44:03 AM
Yes, we were hoping that by supporting high quality audio input and output, it might appeal to a more "audiophile" type crowd. And maybe some tapers could replace more complex setups with a single device. Storage is important, of course, but due to cost we may have to settle for 4/8GB of flash, at least initially.

I don't think 4/8 GB of storage would appeal to the "audiophile type crowd".
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: GodEater on June 17, 2007, 09:24:42 AM
I don't think 4/8 GB of storage would appeal to the "audiophile type crowd".

I agree - having such a tiny amount of storage would make this extremely un-interesting for me.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: Llorean on June 17, 2007, 11:35:14 AM
How would using a CompactFlash drive for storage compare? Still flash, they can offload the cost of large storage on the purchaser, and more flexible for the user?
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: may1937 on June 18, 2007, 02:35:02 AM
Rockbox has no pieces of Linux in it and Rockbox currently doesn't run on any dm320 target...

I realize Rockbox does not use Linux, my point was that we already have a bootstrapped software environment for the hardware, including source. Surely, that would help a Rockbox port?
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: linuxstb on June 18, 2007, 02:50:29 AM
I realize Rockbox does not use Linux, my point was that we already have a bootstrapped software environment for the hardware, including source. Surely, that would help a Rockbox port?

Of course.

It just seems odd to design an "open source portable audio player" around a CPU with no public documentation...  

As I think Bagder said elsewhere, whatever hardware you choose, someone, somewhere, sometime will port Rockbox to it.  However, experience has shown that Rockbox running on such targets never performs as well as ones where the documentation is freely available.

Having Linux source available will be helpful, but it's not the same as having datasheets.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: may1937 on June 18, 2007, 02:51:58 AM
How would using a CompactFlash drive for storage compare? Still flash, they can offload the cost of large storage on the purchaser, and more flexible for the user?

Yes, I was thinking along those lines, possibly include an internal 4GB CF, and have an SD/MS slot for user expansion. I certainly wouldn't call that kind of storage "tiny". Certainly not great, but in terms of development cost it may be a reasonable trade off.

I don't think 4/8 GB of storage would appeal to the "audiophile type crowd".

I agree - having such a tiny amount of storage would make this extremely un-interesting for me.

But seeing the reaction here (and there is some of the same in our community), it looks like we need to take a more serious look at including a hard drive from the start.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: may1937 on June 18, 2007, 02:56:00 AM

Of course.

It just seems odd to design an "open source portable audio player" around a CPU with no public documentation...  

As I think Bagder said elsewhere, whatever hardware you choose, someone, somewhere, sometime will port Rockbox to it.  However, experience has shown that Rockbox running on such targets never performs as well as ones where the documentation is freely available.

Having Linux source available will be helpful, but it's not the same as having datasheets.

My thought has been if we can do a good enough job commenting the code, the need for datasheets will be minimal. I know, it is not an ideal situation. We are trying to work with what we have.

Datasheets are available, by the way. Myself and several other community members have signed an NDA with Neuros to get them, with the explicit provision we will be writing open source code based on them.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: Bagder on June 18, 2007, 03:11:53 AM
Quote
Datasheets are available, by the way. Myself and several other community members have signed an NDA with Neuros to get them, with the explicit provision we will be writing open source code based on them.

NDAs limit the number of developers quite drasticly. Some developers won't be able to sign them and some won't want to. It is just so non open source'ish.

Let me also remind you about the situation we have with this dm320 series: no open source codec and in fact hardly any open source at all is written to take advantage of a CPU/DSP architecture. Not even any of the video codecs. So, to take advantage of that combo you have to resort to the style almost every Linux-using commercial portable player do (including Neuros): use binary drivers and modules that aren't open source, so that you can include proprietary codecs that use the DSP accordingly.

Rockbox does not allow such binary-driver work-arounds and my guess is that none or just very little DSP code will ever be written open source for this target. That leaves us with a CPU+DSP combo where the DSP part is mostly annoying and the CPU parts is far less powerful than say a Toshiba Gigabeat... Possibly it will also not reach the best possible run-time either.

But then, I believe the ARM9 parts of a dm320 is powerful enough to drive Rockbox and all its audio codecs perfectly fine, and I think it is enough to also do a fair job at video playback so if dm320 is the final choice I expect Rockbox to run fine on it. The fact that we have other pending dm320 targets that can take advantage of such work is also interesting to me.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: GodEater on June 18, 2007, 03:35:31 AM
I don't think 4/8 GB of storage would appeal to the "audiophile type crowd".
I agree - having such a tiny amount of storage would make this extremely un-interesting for me.
But seeing the reaction here (and there is some of the same in our community), it looks like we need to take a more serious look at including a hard drive from the start.

I think you have to bear in mind that most "audiophile" types prefer their lossless codecs - 8GB isn't going to give you a lot of storage space for your music if you mostly use FLAC. Now I personally don't call myself an audiophile - I have tin ears. I just happen to have an enormous music collection - 8GB is less than a sixth of the space I need to carry it round with me - and I'm not interested enough in swapping my music between the DAP and my PC to keep only a subset of it on me at any one time. Just my personal opinion though.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: AlexP on June 18, 2007, 06:58:57 AM
I too would require way more than 8 Gb - I currently have two targets - a gigabeat F40 (40 Gb) and a H140 with a 60 Gb disk in it and neither are big enough for my music collection which is just in MP3 and OGG.  If I were to go lossless...

I would love a decent modern player with a 2.5 disk - I know it is bigger, but I could carry all my music around with me.

Similarly to GodEater, I can't be bothered swapping music on and off a DAP - until we start getting 60+ Gb of flash, flash storage is a non-starter.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: may1937 on June 18, 2007, 09:58:25 PM

NDAs limit the number of developers quite drasticly. Some developers won't be able to sign them and some won't want to. It is just so non open source'ish.

Let me also remind you about the situation we have with this dm320 series: no open source codec and in fact hardly any open source at all is written to take advantage of a CPU/DSP architecture. Not even any of the video codecs. So, to take advantage of that combo you have to resort to the style almost every Linux-using commercial portable player do (including Neuros): use binary drivers and modules that aren't open source, so that you can include proprietary codecs that use the DSP accordingly.

Rockbox does not allow such binary-driver work-arounds and my guess is that none or just very little DSP code will ever be written open source for this target. That leaves us with a CPU+DSP combo where the DSP part is mostly annoying and the CPU parts is far less powerful than say a Toshiba Gigabeat... Possibly it will also not reach the best possible run-time either.

But then, I believe the ARM9 parts of a dm320 is powerful enough to drive Rockbox and all its audio codecs perfectly fine, and I think it is enough to also do a fair job at video playback so if dm320 is the final choice I expect Rockbox to run fine on it. The fact that we have other pending dm320 targets that can take advantage of such work is also interesting to me.

Thanks for bringing this up. It has been discussed ad nauseum within the Neuros community, but it is certainly worth highlighting here to bring others up to speed.

Neuros' current dm320 product does use closed source codecs, as described above. Even those closed codecs do all audio processing on the ARM side. I have run both Tremor and MAD, using closed source pcm output, and was getting 30-40% CPU usage under Linux. We have some c54x code from the old N2 which could potentially run Tremor. I'm not sure if the MP3 code for N2 was open source or not. But certainly to get started, we would not need to worry about running codecs on the DSP.

However, it is the DSP portion of the chip which has the serial ports required to interface with the DACs. So, even getting straight pcm audio to play will require some code running on the DSP. The good news in all this is that I'm currently mentoring a Google Summer of Code project to provide a bridge enabling open source code to run on the DSP. Things are moving along well, we have code running on the DSP, and are currently evaluating what the protocol should look like between the two CPUs. As this project matures, I will be writing a DAC driver for the DSP. So the situation is grim now, but we do have a project in motion to solve this problem.

Supporting video on the N3 was not on my radar at all; I'm not sure how the rest of our community feels about it. The bridge project does not stand a chance of interfacing with the closed source codecs, so any video codecs would have to be written or ported from scratch, not a very likely situation considering the cost of TI's compiler.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: saratoga on June 18, 2007, 10:10:50 PM
If you're not interested in supporting video, and plan to run all the code on the ARM core, what use is the DSP?  Unless you have some justification for the DSP core being there, a more sensible option would be to pick a plain ARM core.

The Samsung cores in particular are attractive.  They're much faster then the TI ones, and are completely open (all parts are documented).
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: markun on June 19, 2007, 06:36:15 AM
However, it is the DSP portion of the chip which has the serial ports required to interface with the DACs. So, even getting straight pcm audio to play will require some code running on the DSP. The good news in all this is that I'm currently mentoring a Google Summer of Code project to provide a bridge enabling open source code to run on the DSP. Things are moving along well, we have code running on the DSP, and are currently evaluating what the protocol should look like between the two CPUs. As this project matures, I will be writing a DAC driver for the DSP. So the situation is grim now, but we do have a project in motion to solve this problem.

The archopen.org guys have audio playback as well, you might want to talk to them about it.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: Bagder on June 19, 2007, 07:13:43 AM
Quote
The archopen.org guys have audio playback as well, you might want to talk to them about it.

I've talked to (some of) them in the past.

They managed by doing reverse engineering of the DSP code in existing dm320-based firmwares, and they also rely heavily on the leaked dm320 docs... I assume we can get sound code working on an Neuros dm320-based device based on their code.

It doesn't make it a better arch in my eyes, it just shows that we can always overcome whatever obstacles they put in our way. It just seems a pity that someone one actively tries to make an open source player take this route  - again.

And may1937: Rockbox already plays mpeg2 movies perfectly fine so you have to make an effort to not support movie-playing on a new Rockboxable device...
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: may1937 on June 20, 2007, 10:29:08 PM
The Samsung cores in particular are attractive.  They're much faster then the TI ones, and are completely open (all parts are documented).


It doesn't make it a better arch in my eyes, it just shows that we can always overcome whatever obstacles they put in our way. It just seems a pity that someone one actively tries to make an open source player take this route  - again.

Maybe I am wrong about the amount of effort required to switch CPUs, but as I have tried to express before, we do not have a hardware engineer. This means we will likely end up contracting with one, and I have not even begun looking into that. I imagine the rates would be somewhere in the $100-200/hour range. Between adding the DACs, ADCs, whatever other audio circuitry is needed, an FM transmitter, now possibly a hard drive, SPDIF, shrinking the design, getting the thing powered from a battery (including a recharge circuit) and whatever else needs to be done, we already have a substantial amount of hardware work that needs doing. Even after the design is completed, we will also likely need their time for board bring-up. If they can complete this work in a man month at US$150/hour, we are looking at a bill of around US$24,000. This is for a community project, which, as of yet, does not have any funding. Unless they can integrate a new CPU in a man day or two, which I highly doubt, I am not seeing another option besides sticking with dm320. I acknowledge, even agree, that dm320 is not the ideal candidate for an open source player.

Am I missing something here? If anyone has a different take on this situation, I would be very interested to hear it.


And may1937: Rockbox already plays mpeg2 movies perfectly fine so you have to make an effort to not support movie-playing on a new Rockboxable device...

My comment about video was based on me and those I have talked to in our community not being interested in video on the N3. Its great that Rockbox supports it, and I didn't mean we should cut the feature, just that it was not a target feature for the project at this point.
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: johnson4 on June 25, 2007, 11:31:32 PM

Having the ability to use a 2.5" drive is a start. Yes it makes it a bit bigger, but if it offers expandability that's very valuable to the kind of people who are interested in open source.
As I see it, Rockbox is already on it's way to having a 2.5'' drive DAP. Once USBOTG is supported, all that you'll need is
-the HD obviously
-a $25 2.5" USB HD Enclosure,
-a little solder and a male USB connector
-some creative mods to the Enclosure housing.
 Im imagining a expansion sleeve (like it iPAQ PDAs have) for my Gigabeat now.
 
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: GodEater on June 26, 2007, 03:11:01 AM
Your plan sort of implies you're going to be carting your original DAP *and* an external hard drive around with you. No thanks :)
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: johnson4 on June 27, 2007, 03:34:11 PM
ya not very sexy, but size doesn't seem to be the main consern to those who wish to have 300GB in tow
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: GodEater on June 28, 2007, 02:37:06 AM
I'd *love* 300GB of DAP storage space - but just not like that!
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: scorche on July 02, 2007, 05:05:21 AM
As I see it, Rockbox is already on it's way to having a 2.5'' drive DAP.

A minor correction: The Archos hard drive units use 2.5" drives, so Rockbox already has 2.5'' drive DAPs.  ;)
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: Bagder on July 02, 2007, 04:53:16 PM
They had an IRC meeting about the N3:

http://open.neurostechnology.com/irclogs/neuros-2007-06-30.html#tsa129

(was announced here: http://open.neurosaudio.com/node/894)
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: talos321 on July 04, 2007, 12:32:31 AM
Just a reference point to the size 2.5 players would be since some probably haven't seen one in a long while.

 I'm like some of the others. I would prefer a large storage player. I would be perfectly happy for a compromise somewhat on physical size. Here's a size reference.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1428/712344616_3d47d9ffb1.jpg?v=0

The first is our beloved Gigabeat f40,
The second a CEC Hi-x6, x8 had the larger screen (which didn't make the port cut),
The third is the Vosonic vp6230 much  larger and thicker due to 3-4 card slots sticking out of it.


Side view:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1363/712344604_f557ce3858.jpg?v=0



Gigabeat on top of 2.5 player
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1249/713611040_0100fed363.jpg?v=0


Moderators don't consider this as a port request, this is a reference on the size that 2.5 drive players could be.  I'm more than willing to purchase a 2.5 drive player if this slightly bigger size could be obtained.  The CEC is not really much bigger than The Gigabeat. The Vosonic is what the 2.5 players of the past resembled.



Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: scharkalvin on October 12, 2007, 08:21:58 AM
The reason for (eventually) having to do an open sourced hw player is that all the currently available players which were reverse-engineered will soon be out of production and no longer available on the used market.
(Well, used 1g-5.5g ipods will probably be available for a LONG time because so many of the damn things were made.  Replacement parts are even still available.)
But other players of choice such as Gigabeats will eventually dry up.  Only the Sansa E200's and C200's are currently being made.  Hopefully the new Sansa view will not be a locked down, un-rockbox-able DRMed monster.
So if we want to have a platform for an open source player to run on, eventually some form of open hw player WILL be needed.  
Title: Re: N3: An open source portable audio player
Post by: GodEater on October 12, 2007, 10:20:07 AM
That's as maybe, but we still disagree with the choice of components in this one - because they're NOT all open.