#245052 - 08/01/2005 05:28
Re: Money
[Re: schofiel]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 08/06/1999
Posts: 7868
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- to get a job
- pay my bills
- do something I would enjoy
- provide something of use to the community
- remove the load on Hugo and the team
Number one there is a good idea as employment usually takes care of number two. Sadly as you saw, the financial prospects just aren't here to pony up enough money to support a person for 6 months. I think part of that reason is because version 2 of the empeg software is just a plain great release. It added a lot of noticible things over 1. With 3, it adds more, but for some reason just doesn't carry the same value to people here. Auto volume adjusting I think is one of the bigger features, but easially overshadowed by the fact we have had it since version 1 with kernel hacks. Crossfading is interesting, but for me is usually off on any device that supports it, unless it needs to be used for gapless playback. Pitch bend is a fun toy, but nothing that would see use daily (unless you were a non empeg owning friend of mine). Auto EQ is a very compelling feature, but one that works decently now and is usually a one time shot.
So to round that part up, basicially version 3 doesn't add a ton of value to a community measured here probably at under one hundred. (Sadly this new software lacks the statistics of the old one tracking user logins over the past month for an exact number).
So lets see, number 3. I think that once money enters the scene, the fun would decrease a noticible amount. The work turns from a labor of love, to something you start to depend on. It would after all be paying your bills. And due to the money as others hinted, you would probably see a sharp increase in your inbox of "whats the news today on the software?". Look back to the post years ago when 1.1 was being talked about. People were much worse then they were here in this thread, as there was a feeling that it added so much and the just paid $1000 or more should justify having 1.1 sooner. Version 2 eventually came once the community saw the product be killed from the active Rio product line. The response at that time quickly turned to one of thanks, as it came to a discontinued product.
Number 4, you already provide much use to this community. You have a rare gift in being able to rally people from all around the world to show up on your doorstep, then proceed to direct that crowd to many interesting and fun activities. The generous donations from this community still leave me speachless, and the memories I gained due to those donations helping me get to Europe will be with me for the rest of my life. Odds are, had you not put forth the effort to host the meet, I would have never seen some of the parts of Europe that I did. I would really hope that this thread did not somehow degrade the importance you feel you have in this community. And I haven't even touched on the fact that you also offer repair services to this day, 3 years past the discontinuation of the product. One that I hope to utilize here in the near future to keep at least one fully functional player active for years to come.
The last part, I definitely commend you for trying to do so.
As far as the whole off topic discussions, plus the nearly dead horse open source discussion, all I can really say is that it is very typical of the community here, and has been for a long time. Why some are suprised is beyond me about it. I think it is just natural anymore, as one simple sentance said from one person can spawn a full reply. My reply regarding the iPod and such came mostly from my frustration of the success of it. I at least was able to convince several friends to go for the empeg. Sadly that has not been the case on the Karma, and Rio has not helped much. Hugo hints at interesting possibilities, but sadly it is hard to say what the end results will be. I hope some good will come out of them, but I look at the littered path up to here, with discarded technology from Rio's failures. I sit here today with more of a mess of music then I did when I got my Mark 1, even with products like the Central and Receiver and Karma in existance. That also leads to a bit of irritation that is probably visible in my posts.
In any case, don't count the community down and out quite yet. True, many have left and moved on. But the impact it has had on people is still occuring, and I hope it will for many more years through friendships created due to a simple bit of code and a database.
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#245053 - 08/01/2005 13:25
Re: Money
[Re: JeffS]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 21/05/1999
Posts: 5335
Loc: Cambridge UK
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Quote:
More on topic, I thought the deal was kind of killed by a few things that the empeg guys said. They seemed to feel that bringing Rob up to speed would be a prohibitively difficult task.
I think it's probably more accurate to say that there would be a prohibitive lack of motivation to do so. Rio won't spend so much as ten minutes on something that has no clear benefit to them, which isn't entirely unreasonable in the context of corporate politics.
None of the post 2.0 (and even many pre-2.0) releases were worked on with the permission or knowledge of the company. We simply stayed late and got them done. As Hugo has pointed out, the motivation of individuals to do that sort of thing has dwindled away for a variety of reasons (families, social lives, having your creative spirit gradually sucked out of you etc). Almost all 3.0 functionality happened by chance (i.e. it was developed for Karma) and for most of the rest of it we can thank Peter and John G, within whom the empeg flame is not yet fully extinguished.
Rob
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#245055 - 09/01/2005 15:06
Re: Money
[Re: rob]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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Or, to summarise, everything that wasn't done for the Karma was done for the karma...
Peter
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#245056 - 09/01/2005 16:28
Re: Money
[Re: schofiel]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 06/10/1999
Posts: 2591
Loc: Seattle, WA, U.S.A.
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Quote:
For myself, I have now started off with something new to keep me interested.
Rob,
Well, I hope "something new" is good, but not so good that you are scarce on this BBS. I'm sorry that this proposal/discussion didn't result in something interesting for you and I appreciate your making the effort. I never did chime in that I would kick in $100-$200 (which I probably would) perhaps in part for the reason that I saw the bug-fix project as high-risk -- all money aside, might not be doable with reasonable level of effort even if The Guys could help with a leg up.
My only earlier comment about "planned obsolescence" was just a wisecrack. The Empeg has been very good to me. I don't nurse any hurt feelings about the fate of the product and I have been impressed with the variety of efforts, not all of them successful, to make the Empeg better.
I will say that I would be thrilled to have a stable version 3 software so as to enjoy crossfade, Ogg, AutoEQ, but I have gone back to enoding in VBR MP3 and may go to FLAC and transcoding to hedge my bets now that I have some new big hard drives.
I agree it's too bad the discussion went off track. That must have been very frustrating for you.
Given the huge amount of work already in the existing player, and the absolutely tantalizing alpha features, it would seem a bit bonkers to imagine writing a new player from the ground up. On the other hand, having an unencumbered "Dreamland" player could be the focus of some renewed interest (any reason it would only have to run on the existing base of Empegs?) I can't program C in any real sense, so I can say that I would be thrilled to have a debugged version 3 type player, but am not in the position to contribute in any meaningful way.
If a miracle occurred and the gents in Cambridge stumbled on a forgotten cache of benzedrine and popped out v3RC1 one weekend, well that'd be swell. Truly. But I don't have any reason to expect that of them and I would be content just knowing their realistic estimate of the situation. If the benzedrine solution is a no-hoper, so be it.
If the v3RC1 concept is deemed DOA, then anyone qualified to do more than dream about a replacement player would need to swing into action. Sadly, I expect most of those folks have jobs and families, too, but you never know! One fairly low-risk step would be to form a task force, committee, working group (whatever bureaucratic term fits!) to kick around a scope of work, discuss design, make block diagrams, etc, just so that interested parties would know what would be involved. As a less techno Empeg lover, I don't always use all the features and can have a hard time remembering what is in kernel, what's in Hijack and what's in the player. Would it be possible to contruct a player in stepwise fashion (basic features first) that is feasible, or does the very mention of the word "basic" simply demonstrate my ignorance?
Greg Combs worked on a replacement player, did he not? I didn't follow that story all the way. Did/does his experience tell us anything? Was he farsighted with respect to seeing this day coming?
The community? Sure, I see (and contrtribute to) the growing Off-Topic/General tilt and, as others have said, as more Empegs die or get stolen, the base will get smaller. And if no replacement player miracle occurs, then I would say there will be less technical interest to keep people posting. Sure, there are familiar BBS handles that don't seem so familiar anymore.
If this BBS blew up and vanished, I am not sure where I could go to exchange text conversations with such a varied, odd collection of people from many countries (who I might never encounter otherwise). OK, I admit the BBS fills some deep-seated weird need to blabber endlessly (like now!). And people on the BBS have generally been very tolerant of said blabbering and related excesses. I appreciate that. But things always change. We'll see!
_________________________
Jim
'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.
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#245057 - 09/01/2005 17:42
Re: Money
[Re: jimhogan]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 24/01/2002
Posts: 3937
Loc: Providence, RI
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Quote:
Greg Combs worked on a replacement player, did he not? I didn't follow that story all the way. Did/does his experience tell us anything? Was he farsighted with respect to seeing this day coming?
squash and rioplay both exist as open source players today; For some reason everyone has forgotten rioplay, which predated squash. There is code which is the server side of the emplode protocol which could be reused. Is this anywhere close to the current player? No. If someone decided to make an open source player, could be be reused? Almost certainly.
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#245058 - 09/01/2005 17:46
Re: Money
[Re: rob]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 17/01/2002
Posts: 3996
Loc: Manchester UK
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As Hugo has pointed out, the motivation of individuals to do that sort of thing has dwindled away for a variety of reasons (families, social lives, having your creative spirit gradually sucked out of you etc).
It's quite sad to hear that even in empeg towers issues like this still occur. I'd always assumed it was the coolest job to have (if you're into computers and audio and stuff). I thought I was one of the only people on this board that was less than pleased with my job. I've reached the point with my job where the work just isn't interesting anymore. We seem to be just doing the same old crap day in day out. I always used to be keen to work on things outside of work but now I just feel jaded.
_________________________
Cheers,
Andy M
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#245059 - 09/01/2005 18:05
Re: Money
[Re: jimhogan]
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pooh-bah
Registered: 19/09/2002
Posts: 2494
Loc: East Coast, USA
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And if no replacement player miracle occurs, then I would say there will be less technical interest to keep people posting.
I don't mean to swing off track again, but this thread is sounding like we're reading the eulogy at the funeral of all things empeg. All of our players still work and give us unrivaled control over our mp3 collections. All of our players still have plenty of cool 3rd party software options, and there is still room to make more; especially with more memory.
But from the current deviation of this thread, it sounds like what we’ve got isn’t good enough. Yes, I understand RobS’s original intent to finalize the software, which is a great effort on his part; but I’m talking about this “without open source player / new software, or our empegs die” feeling that I’m getting from later in the thread.
Are we sharks, who die if they stop moving? Is this Microsoft mentality where we need new new new all the time? Or can we focus working with what we’ve got, like all our 3rd party software contributors do? We’ve got 2.0final for stability and 3a8 for cutting edge fun, and they aren’t facing obsolescence anytime soon, right? If MP4s (AAC?) were suddenly overrunning MP3, then maybe we’d need an open source player that could adapt, but that’s not the case.
I can’t see how lack of an open source player will be the end of the player and the end of the community. We still have 3rd party software and hardware, we still need to discuss troubleshooting, and, like Jim says, we still like to talk to each other in Off Topic. Long live the empeg; we’re still better than anything else out there!
_________________________
- FireFox31 110gig MKIIa (30+80), Eutronix lights, 32 meg stacked RAM, Filener orange gel lens, Greenlights Lit Buttons green set
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#245060 - 09/01/2005 18:12
Re: Money
[Re: FireFox31]
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veteran
Registered: 01/10/2001
Posts: 1307
Loc: Amsterdam, The Netherlands
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Quote:
I can’t see how lack of an open source player will be the end of the player and the end of the community. We still have 3rd party software and hardware, we still need to discuss troubleshooting, and, like Jim says, we still like to talk to each other in Off Topic. Long live the empeg; we’re still better than anything else out there!
Hear, hear!
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#245061 - 09/01/2005 23:43
Re: Money
[Re: FireFox31]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 05/01/2001
Posts: 4903
Loc: Detroit, MI USA
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But from the current deviation of this thread, it sounds like what we’ve got isn’t good enough
Good point. I don't see the point of creating a new player when all I really want is bug fixes for V3. I love my player and all of its software. It was only after seeing how cool Crossfade and AutoEQ were that I wanted "more".
Even today I was marveling at how easy it is to manage my mp3s via emplode compared to Windows Explorer.
_________________________
Brad B.
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#245062 - 10/01/2005 07:22
Re: Money
[Re: SE_Sport_Driver]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
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Quote:
Even today I was marveling at how easy it is to manage my mp3s via emplode compared to Windows Explorer.
Rio Music Manager's pretty good, too, even if you don't have a Rio portable...
_________________________
-- roger
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#245063 - 10/01/2005 13:27
Re: Money
[Re: Roger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14491
Loc: Canada
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Yup, RMM rocks! Can it talk to empeg players yet?
Cheers
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#245064 - 10/01/2005 14:28
Re: Money
[Re: mlord]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 18/01/2000
Posts: 5683
Loc: London, UK
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Quote:
Yup, RMM rocks! Can it talk to empeg players yet?
No. We were kinda waiting for the car player to support protocol2 and the Karma database format. That hasn't happened. Making RMM talk protocol1 is an evolutionary dead-end, so that's not likely to happen either.
_________________________
-- roger
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#245065 - 10/01/2005 15:10
Re: Money
[Re: Roger]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/06/1999
Posts: 2993
Loc: Wareham, Dorset, UK
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I was under the impression that V3 went over to Karma dB, or am I wrong?
_________________________
One of the few remaining Mk1 owners...  #00015
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#245066 - 10/01/2005 15:25
Re: Money
[Re: schofiel]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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Quote:
I was under the impression that V3 went over to Karma dB, or am I wrong?
No. One build of it got done, but it was a long way from fully working. All the released alphas still have the old database. It's now no longer likely that there will ever be, as we once hoped, a protocol2/FTP/MSC, Karma database, UPnP version.
Peter
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#245067 - 10/01/2005 16:06
Re: Money
[Re: peter]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 25/06/1999
Posts: 2993
Loc: Wareham, Dorset, UK
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Could prot2 ever be released to public domain (in spec form)? How about prot1?
_________________________
One of the few remaining Mk1 owners... #00015
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#245068 - 10/01/2005 19:38
Re: Money
[Re: andym]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 19/05/1999
Posts: 3457
Loc: Palo Alto, CA
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Quote:
Quote:
As Hugo has pointed out, the motivation of individuals to do that sort of thing has dwindled away for a variety of reasons (families, social lives, having your creative spirit gradually sucked out of you etc).
It's quite sad to hear that even in empeg towers issues like this still occur. I'd always assumed it was the coolest job to have (if you're into computers and audio and stuff). I thought I was one of the only people on this board that was less than pleased with my job. I've reached the point with my job where the work just isn't interesting anymore. We seem to be just doing the same old crap day in day out. I always used to be keen to work on things outside of work but now I just feel jaded.
I'll admit there have been dark times, mostly due to the pain and suffering required to make a decent product with inadequate hardware (a DSP). To say there was no creativity or spirit going into developing for this DSP would be a long way from the mark though - it was a huge technical challenge to make these products as good as they are when given so little to work with. Challenges inspire people to a point, but after a while it can just feel like beating your head against a wall.
Still, this is on its way out. The future holds a damn sight less running like mad just to stand still and a lot more productive effort - partially this is down to new chips being available, partially it's due to using a new common architecture and partially it's a shift in the attitude of the company and more of a focus on quality
Jut my 2c (I am in the US at the moment, otherwise it'd be about 0.9 of a pence)
Hugo
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#245069 - 11/01/2005 11:15
Re: Money
[Re: schofiel]
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carpal tunnel
Registered: 13/07/2000
Posts: 4180
Loc: Cambridge, England
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Quote:
Could prot2 ever be released to public domain (in spec form)? How about prot1?
Protocol2 was comprehensively reverse-engineered on the Karma and an open-source client implementation is available, called libkarma. Here's their documentation.
There isn't a protocol1 spec document as such, but our own GPL emptool sources contain a complete implementation of it.
Peter
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