the rojisan ipod killer
ever afraid to approach a problem from a different perspective, and with the consumer electronics show behind us, it’s time to announce the latest vaporware from the people that love you at rojisan.com (me).
if you’ve been paying especially close attention to this space, you may recall that i’m a big fan of the pitracer, and that’s the approach that i’m taking with my ipod killer. i also grew up in the 80’s music saturation, with a keen interest in the coolest audio widgets, which often came from b&o. i couldn’t afford the really good stuff, but i still had a pretty swanky walkman with neat-o features (cassette form-factor radio module).
so, without further ado, it’s time to reveal the specifications for the podtracer. or rojpod. or zentracer. erm. i’ll get back to you on that once marketing has done some focus groups. anyway, whatever i’m gonna call it, i know what it’s going to include.
the rojpod is about music. keep that in mind.
first, mp3 is out. ogg is out. wma is out. compressing music is bad for music. so the rojpod only plays uncompressed music. not just uncompressed music, but up-converted uncompressed music. using a completely original d/a path, the rojpod won’t play anything that doesn’t have enough bits. i think 512KHz should do (11.6 times cd quality), and nothing less than 128 bits per sample (8 times cd quality). i’ll go ahead and do that math for you – it’s a 65536Kbps and nearly 100 times better than a cd. of course, that also means that your standard cd will only hold about .74 minutes of music.
second, convergence is out. sure, you can get your mp3 player in a phone, or in a video camera, or bolt on a photo display or video player or all of the above and then some, but that’s not about music, and, as you’ll recall, the rojpod is about music. it only plays music.
third, moving parts are out. solid-state redundant storage is the way of the rojpod. with the new format, the typical 4 minute song is going to take about 3.5 gigabytes of storage. double that to catch any errors (redundant), and the 20 gig rojpod holds 2.9 songs.
fourth, it’s going to come with a bone-conduction sub transducer and real headphones (no earbud for the rojpod, please). it’ll be a big headband arrangement that has great earpieces with a thumper on the back that sits at the base of your skull.
so, there you have it. the rojpod ipod killer. shouldn’t cost much more than $10 grand or so – retail. but for you…. $9500.
and don’t give me any trouble about the limited playing time. pick a couple songs you really like and listen to them until you don’t like them anymore. radio’s been doing that to you for years now.