Amp3 Pro2 and the STUDIO - Page 3  

Nice, I hope the newer versions support other music formats. All my music is encoded in Apple Lossless and I would hate having to transcode it.

Apple lossless is a proprietary format designed to help Apple KEEP customers, for the exact reason you're stating (it's a pain to transcode everything). That's why initially iTunes settings are m4a when you import CDs, and you have to change it to mp3 (they want you to do your whole music and then only realise AFTER that it's in their format.

In order for AMP3 to play apple lossless, they would have to have to pay huge royalty to Apple, which would increase the cost of the player making its inclusion highly unlikely. It's why you don't see things like RockBox including apple lossless support. It wouldn't be that hard, it's just that it isn't free (which is why flac and mp3 are so preferred).

Basically they'll either use free formats, or make their own. They're not going to pay Microsoft or Apple for permission to include support for their formats.

I definitely will, when the Amp3 Pro 1 firmware is released, which is supposed to be the equivalent of the Pro 2 in terms of hiss reduction.

Craig, The Studio I or II sound very promising. Any idea what size the Studio will be?

I'm looking forward to the new AMP and the Studio.

Hello, i think there are some free pc players that do support apple lossless, someone hacked the format i think. I am of course not sure if including that in an mp3-player would be a good idea.
Greetings, Anouk,

Craig, do you have any idea when hisoundaudio will update its website to reflect its actual product line? My assumption is that the Rock, Golden Hall and Master items are no longer intended for production?

I would imagine that spending time on a webpage is not a priority for the company at this moment. Its sales will come from forums such as this and Jaben.

Nonetheless it would be helpful to clarify matters, or are things just moving too quickly atm?

Just to clarify, mp3 is not free as you suggest. Rather it is a patented codec and usage of which requires royalty payments.

It is easy to confuse ubiquitous, as in freely available, with free. Presumably, usage of mp3 impacts on manufacturers of DAP products by involving payment of a licence fee to the Fraunhofer Institute or to a patent royalty collection company acting on its behalf.

Actual free, as in open source royalty-free audio codecs, include ogg vorbis and, as you rightly point out, FLAC .

I would love to hear an explanation as to why these royalty free codecs are not more commonly supported by DAPs. Simply as a matter of course, one would expect to find them on the list but more often or not they are absent.

Hisoundaudio is not untypical in this, until just now FLAC was not supported and, so far as I can see, there is no mention of ogg anywhere.

My simplistic logic doesn’t understand why, if the codecs are free and arguably superior (especially in the case of ogg), then why are they not automatically supported by manufacturers such as Hisoundaudio and others?

As regards the Apple ALAC codec, I understand that there is an open source reverse engineered royalty free equivalent so it should be possible to use this to support ALAC files without royalty payment to Apple.
ALAC - Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase
Though whether manufacturers who use this run the risk of incurring the wrath of Apple’s legal enforcers is an interesting subject for conjecture.

My confusion stems from the fact that rockbox offers mp3 support, not that mp3's are widely available. I wouldn't think a freeware service would pay royalties, or some thing so popular not have been sued yet. Are you sure it hasn't become public domain somehow? I did understand that original mp3's were patented and people used to have to pay, but does RockBox pay? Or is there some limitation that you're only restricted if you make money off of your service?

The reason for proprietary formats is as I've stated... it helps them to keep customers.

Thank you Craig for the updated manual and all your other hard work! The manual is here.

From what I understand, Rockbox is not a corporate entity. Rather, Rockbox OEM replacement firmware is available to us as the result of individuals' efforts. This distinction is important to understand, for many reasons and not least that there is no one to sue.

Furthermore, the DAPs that Rockbox supports, in my case iRiver H140, are probably already licensed for MP3 playback so Rockbox is not contravening any MP3 patent agreement.

As regards file distribution, from what I have read, a royalty has to be paid if the .MP3 file is sold. If the .MP3 file is distributed for free then no royalty is charged.

Though quite what happens when the 'for sale' file has been encoded with LAME I don't know.

All of which is interesting but for the purposes of this Thread we are only concerned with playback support which is embedded in the DAP itself.

As Craig helpfully points out, much of this is dependent on the design of the chip used and so seems to be not just a firmware issue.

Absolutely so and which is why I suspect that the licensing costs for ALAC support would be totally untenable for a company such as Hisoundaudio to carry. Apple's motive here is get us to buy iPods not Amp3s and it's proprietary codecs are a means to that end.

Personally speaking I am always amazed that people allow themselves to be sucked into that trap. But that is another subject for another thread.

Craig, I guess at some point you will open a new thread of this purpose. Possibly when the initial run of the Studio is available for evaluation?