rob, another good article about MP3.
eetimes.com
Back in March 1998 Fiennes chose an off-the-shelf industrial embedded-PC board from Advantech Co. Ltd. (Taipei, Taiwan) and set out to build what he then called his "mp3mobile." The board was rugged and contained all that was needed, including flash memory and audio D/A converter outputs, he said. It originally held a 150-MHz Cyrix processor, now upgraded to a 166-MHz Pentium.
Using a standard microprocessor to run the Linux operating system and a software decoder is not the most power-efficient solution. But it was quick to develop, and changes can be made easily.
That's important in a fast-moving sector like Internet audio. Indeed, Fiennes recognizes that technical, commercial or legal developments could quickly make MP3 obsolete. In that case a Linux dashboard-mounted computer would be just as able to run MPEG-2 Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) or almost any other emerging standard, he said.
"The main advantages of MP3 are that it's good enough in terms of music quality, it's out there and it's popular," said Fiennes.
Empeg is also discussing selling or licensing the empeg-car design to established manufacturers. "It's a great calling card. With something out there it shows we know what we're doing," Fiennes said. "We have already spoken to several major electronics companies from Japan and the United States."
License the damn thing,and mass produce it DIMD.Linux and MP3 all the way, can't fight free.
Hiram
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