Enhancements:Neuros III
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[edit] Enhancements
- Add an accelerometer for orientation sensing (automatic screen rotation when device is rotated, or easily switch between left and right handed use by flipping it upside down - the image on the screen would flip too). Could also use the accelerometer for panning around a large image by tilting. Hard drive protection would be a really sweet feature that the accelerometer would enable also (like the Apple Sudden Motion Sensor).
- SATA port for *really* fast synchronization
- Make it hot-pluggable
- Firewire, because its more advanced than USB and still practical
- HD with a real (=HD level) partition and a file system in case one needs to mess with the HD
- CF slot for solid state recording
- add all types of connectivity:
- wifi (802.11g) - Bluetooth - ethernet
Slap a simple http and streaming server in there too. Only problems I see with this is authentication to prevent others from abusing the device.
All of the other improvements are irrelevant unless you do these things FIRST:
[edit] Fundamental Enhancements
Improve the synch manager software PLEASE. It's quirky, slow, and doesn't support huge libraries that can fill greater than 20 gigs of space.
Increase MAINSTREAM support for Musicmatch or other such software. Since IPOD is now a brand-name, it makes sense to be able to mesh with all the other gadgets and software that support IPODs. Turn your competition into your ally and leverage their products to work with yours... maybe you'll sell alot more of these things.
Make it smaller in size
[edit] Hype it up with cool accessories
Get a Minisync cable made
Make a wireless remote using Ncast (You know you want to :) );al
[edit] Audiophile Heaven
- Gapless playback for all codecs (not with a click but true seamless playback)
- Lossless codecs
- No-skip queueing
- When adding to the queue in the middle of playback, resume to previous 'playlist/shuffle/album...' after queued songs have played
- Abillity to change the names of EQ settings from 'rock/jazz/pop...' to user defined names
- High quality coaxial spdif digital output to make it a perfect digital audio source for DAC in audiophile systems.--
- highest quality internal DAC (digital to analog converter), to put this player on a completely different level than other players. (internal DAC only in use when the audiophile's external is not available)
- External DC power jack for easy audiophile mod on power to tweak the sound with better supply of power.
- Mini headphone amp???
- Place Saver: Allow for at least 3-5 bookmarks to be placed during playback (of live shows/albums/audio books/general shuffle/playlists...etc) to be accessed in a location at a later time to be played where one has left off. The bookmark would by default name itself or the name can be changed at will.---- is this feature akin to 'add to my mix'?
[edit] RDS already!
I realize it is listed on the catagory roadmap, but this is a serious enhancement, since it is clearly stated in open.neurosaudio.com/extra/MyFi_White_Paper_v1.doc that Neuros is the only MP3 player with that ability.
[edit] Recording for Idiots
I want to be able to walk into a concert, click the record button and have a decent sounding recording come out the other end. Currently, you have to fiddle with the dB and what not. Often the sound is either garbled or distorted. The Neuros simply sucks at recording.
Finding a microphone that works with it is also a giant PITA. I have gone through two mics and neither have worked well at all.
What I want is a recording kit (much like the car kit). Where you pay $XX extra and you get a setup that will produce passible audio recordings.
[edit] Recording for Experts/Field Recordists
high quality A/D converters, analogue line and mic level inputs (dont need phantom power - can use a powered mic), ability to monitor and change recording levels while recording, or just monitor without recording. Auto-set record levels via a 'peak set' mode, where you put the unit into this mode, the unit listens, storing the peak levels, until you hit a button, then it auto adjusts the record levels so that the peak level is 0db minus some (preferably user settable) headroom level. one touch recording, for those in-the-moment situations. ability to record without breaks until the HDD is full.
and for a real pie-in-the-sky wish, how about 4 track recording? :)
there is currently very little choice for the (amateur) field recordist - its a market noone has tapped into, as its not seen as profitable as the mp3 player or video-player markets (and who wants to watch a movie on a teeny screen anyway! think movies on seat-back screens on international plane flights, and youll feel the pain!). The only choices for the amateur field recordists, or not-big-name musician is either minidisc, and dealing with sony, HiMD and Sonicstage nightmares. or an expensive pro quality CF ($$$) based unit like the M-Audio Microtrack or Edirol R-1, or mortgage the house for a pro HDD recorder (most of which are not really portable)
[edit] Make it a killer Podcast tool
- whether a file has been played
- be able to bookmark files
- instead of just 'stop/pause' have a 'bookmark' option
- instead of just play have a 'continue' option
- allow multiple genre tags on files
narrative to explain above:
I just woke up, loaded up all the podcasts on my computer and listened while I read email and checked my feeds. I plug in the neuros and sync it. The file I was listening to is bookmarked where I left off. When I get in my car and turn the neuros on, it automatically picks up where I stopped listening.
Once I get back home I plug the neuros in and sync it. All files that I have listened to are removed off the neuros and the 'archive' rule is run (delete the file, move it off to backup, whatever). The last file I was listening to is loaded up into my computer and continued from where I left off.
Basically, I want a seamless audio transition no matter where I am or where I am going. Preferably, I would like all this to happen without some retarded UI getting in the way.
One solution would be simple text files. Have one with the file URL (or database key or md5 or something similar) of the currently playing file and seek time, and another with the list of files that have been played. Those files would be trivial to parse with e.g. python scripts; with a little bit of coding one could have a cross-platform script to do the "'archive' rule" thingy and plugins for amaroK/winamp/whatever to play on the computer upon syncing. All you'd need to do is start your music app (or less appealingly have a helper service run in the background like iTunes).
WRT multiple genre tags, the ID3 standard doesn't support that. I'd recommend that a new metadata label, "Category", be created for this kind of filing, and the genre tag from the file pulled by default. This would make syncing and organization a little simpler.
[edit] Other Software Improvements
- Allow ways to quickly get to things in a category by selecting the first character (e.g. if I'm in an artist view, and don't want to scroll through the hundreds or thousands of artists to get to Oingo Boingo, give me a way to select "O", or at least a way to scoot to the next starting character. This is even more important when in a song view. Note that this should not restrict the selection of songs to those starting with O, it should be merely a "scoot to" type thing.
- An addendum to above: A simple but intuitive search feature, in addition to scrolling, would be to utilize the 'rewind/fast forward' button to advance or reverse one letter at a time while searching the database (eg- one press for 'A' the next press for 'B' and the next for 'C' and so on, in either direction; then you could scroll with the one entry at a time selector) without effecting the current song being played of course.
- Offer the ability to rate songs, optionally tweaking their play probability
- Let me see text files as text
- If we want to get really wild, and have the CPU for it, have the ability to run Festival on text files
- Have some kind of an optional spoken warning or chime when the battery is low.
- Allowing hooks into a trimmed down version of Perl would totally rock
- Winamp style customizable titles, e.g. [$if(%ishttp%,Internet Radio,%artist%) - ][$if2(%title%,$filepart(%filename%))
- Fully fledged and customizable database that doesn't limit tags or items in any way (it should store *all* tags)
- Database support for multiple PERFORMER/ARTIST(/...) tags in a file so that it shows under all tag values
- Foobar2000 compatible database
- If possible, this should be implemented so that you could just define a couple of things (such as path conversion, s///g) after which you could use your original FB2K database as a drop-in replacement and copy files manually (if replicating the file structure)
- Tags to be shown as default should include VERSION and DATE (maybe even COMMENT if it is small enough to fit on the screen)
- ReplayGain support
- I18N support (at least latin1) - this should be easy if you decide to go with a display that supports GFX
- For filesystem, database, synchronization manager as well as display
- How about NetBSD as an OS? It's *very* portable
- Allowing it to display (and read/do links within) a contained dump of wikipedia, having articles in menus, would be very cool -- almost like the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy
- Mac support is long over due
- Customizable fonts and overall control of GUI
- Better Shuffling Features, for instance: The ability to choose multiple artists and/or albums and shuffle only those
[edit] Bugs
See the Neuros Audio Bugzilla for the latest on past and current bugs.
