[uzziah]

i wonder; if we at headfi, maybe headwize, and anyone else with massive stores of knowledge on electronics got together, if this would be possible. the hard drives are just standard toshiba and hitatchi unless i'm mistaken. the case probably wouldn't be terrribly difficult to machine. i wonder if the internal electronics would really be complicated beyond our cummulative understanding.

why? well, this is what i want: two models, or one with two capabilities:

1. high quality optical out (i.e. efficient, low-jitter transport)
2. high quality line out (i.e. higher quality internal dac = better source)

then: all i want is:
1. easy interface (probably hard to mimic something like apple's wheel, but we could probably get by with some simple buttons, and a lcd
2. reasonable battery life
3. gapless playback
4. potentially EQ

maybe it's just me, but this doesn't seem out of our (and other non-big-business related audiophile's ability, though it would certainly be a massive undertaking)

personally, all i want is a high quality optical out and gapless. don't say "iriver". it's pretty pour quality optical out. we need low jitter for using with something like an aos piccolo (aos would probably make a bundle if we did this

), or some other small diy nos dac.

talk to me y'all. it's ok to dream

 

[IstariAsuka]

I'm sure people around here must have sufficient knowledge to pull this off. More or less it could be a high-quality, HDD-based transport. Not so much a DAP, there are plenty of those around, but rather a incredibly convenient transport. It'd be a lot easier than hauling a computer w/ digital out around...

Any knowledgable person want to chime in if it is at all feasible?

 

[Jmmmmm]

I certainly would buy one, even though I have no money.

 

[plus_c]

Well, I have no technical expertise, but if this gets off the ground, I'd love to be involved with the business aspects - sourcing, manufacturing, marketing, etc.

 

[jefemeister]

the hardware's not a problem. In fact some major manufacturer (Rio?) has made their schematics freely available. It's the software that's the tricky part. But I suppose you could use Linux for the OS and just write some drivers and applications. Still not a small undertaking.

 

[IstariAsuka]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefemeister the hardware's not a problem. In fact some major manufacturer (Rio?) has made their schematics freely available. It's the software that's the tricky part. But I suppose you could use Linux for the OS and just write some drivers and applications. Still not a small undertaking.

Must steal Linus from Rockbox....

 

[mcfairy23]

Good luck. First off, it takes teams of engineers at these companies many months to come up with the design for these circuits. Then, some of these players have 1 million+ lines of code. It would take a ton of people volunteering a ton of time - would that really make it worth it? Another problem is that you would only be making a fairly small batch - so costs is going to be pretty high compared to mass production costs.

 

[fr4c]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefemeister the hardware's not a problem. In fact some major manufacturer (Rio?) has made their schematics freely available. It's the software that's the tricky part. But I suppose you could use Linux for the OS and just write some drivers and applications. Still not a small undertaking.

i see the software as a very challenging issue. we're talking here a complete GUI, drivers, OS environment, etc. which can take some serious thinking and time to make.

building the unit is not a hard thing, but its the software that the trouble, unless we jack it off some other player....

 

[titaniumx3]

While I believe their are some very intelligent and talented people on this forum I doubt very much anyone can even come close to pulling something off like this that matches the products on market. While we keep complaining about certain brands and how they can't get certain things right, we forget that for everything else they do a magnificent job. Building a DAP from scratch takes huge numbers of people, dedicated designers, programmers, technicians, sound engineers, etc etc etc. Obviously this aint exactly gonna be a mass market product, but even then theres still huge amounts of thought, time and dedication required; not something your gonna do part-time on the weekends!

anyways I would love to see it happen.

 

[Cyclone]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fr4c i see the software as a very challenging issue. we're talking here a complete GUI, drivers, OS environment, etc. which can take some serious thinking and time to make. building the unit is not a hard thing, but its the software that the trouble, unless we jack it off some other player....

I agree, if you've built a computer you should know that the hardware construction is the easy part. its the configuring and setup of software that takes most of the time.

 

[jnev]

as others have said, the hardware is not the problem, it's the software. sure anyone can slap together some parts, but since there's no standard in hardware (like there is with pc's, as long as you use pc parts winxp is garanteed to work on the comp) you'd have to write your own os/firmware to work with it.

 

[recstar24]

If i was like the smartest person in the world, and the most adept at electronics engineering, man i would build everything myself, id build components that sounded exactly like the way that it would sound. But even if that was possible, considering all the time and hours i would spend in building my perfect machine, it would probably cost me over a thousand dollars, based purely on labor alone; man, i couldn't even imagine developing source code and software that would do exactly what i wanted it to do, that's a lot of time and money.

That would be awesome though, DIY DAP's, the thing would be a $2000 beast and would sound like a meridian, sweet!

 

[austonia]

lol... it would take millions and a long development period to make anything equal to what's already on the market, much less something better. There's no way to play catch-up at this point without massive resources at your disposal. And while you're trying to do what's already been done, other companies will continue to advance thier own products....

Buuuuut, If I had the bankroll, here's what I'd do.

1. Hostile takeover of Rio DNNA in order to get control of thier dev team and rights to existing hardware/software designs. Fire Japanese management.

2. Restore funding to Chroma project, get it on the market. Still too many compromises on this product but the brand needs a fresh flagship model that will keep people interested.

3. Build on thier existing technology to design the player that we really want to see, a no-compromise, price-no-object audio player.

My thoughts on this would be a highly modular device. screen, storage, battery, processing, and control units should be independant and swappable with multiple options available. This could function as a portable in some configurations and a desktop unit in others.

 

[jsc3]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jefemeister the hardware's not a problem. In fact some major manufacturer (Rio?) has made their schematics freely available. It's the software that's the tricky part. But I suppose you could use Linux for the OS and just write some drivers and applications. Still not a small undertaking.

Not a small undertaking, to be sure, but many folks here are talking about the software like it's impossible. If you build a decent core product, with open source, others will add improvements over time.

Seriously, what are we talking about as far as basic product?

Embedded OS and generic utilities: Linux! Not necessarily because it is technically better, but because there is a lot of momentum behind it which means there are a fair number of Linux hackers out there - plus it is freely available, and has already been used in a number of similar commercial applications.

Open Source embedded Linux:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT4525882120.html

Open Source Real Time embedded Linux:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT8073314981.html

Audio/Video devices using embedded Linux:
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT5690634012.html

The interface part *is* the hard part, but the interface only needs to support a few limited functions (at least compared to a general purpose computer). Compared to a LOT of free (and good) software that is already out there, this one should not really be that hard. You just need to get some software guys interested in it. The first step is to come up with a hardware platform to run the software on.

 

[Cyclone]

oh linux you rear your free, slighly demented, not well accepted, but still cute head again.