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They are using mp3. Surely this is an opening for vorbis, or better still Ogg Speex which is optimised for encoding speech -- there are plugins for Winamp, DirectShow filters, and a plugin for XMMS too.

I did some testing, and VBR provided the smallest file size at a given quality - YMMV. Having a high complexity also made the file slightly smaller.

I use windows to record, process, and the compress the files. From the Speex website I am using the Windows binaries.

I also wrote a little program in QuickBasic (stop laughing) that builds a batch file with all the switches so I can more easily compress the file (it is more for my benefit so I'm less likely to make a typo).

Sorry, http://www.speex.org is valid XHTML 1.0 Strict The Open Source community suggest that you get a better browser.

Actually, if you're interested in compressing voice, try Speex, another Xiph.org codec. At 16 kHz sampling rate, you can get almost transparent quality around 20-24 kbps and still decent quality in the 12 kbps range. (disclaimer: I'm the Speex author)

If you're using Ogg Vorbis for recording lectures, I suggest you switch to Speex. From the website:

The Speex project aims to build a patent-free, Open Source/Free Software voice codec. Unlike other codecs like MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, Speex is designed to compress voice at bitrates in the 2-45kbps range. Possible applications include VoIP, internet audio streaming, archiving of speech data (e.g. voice mail), and audio books. In some sense, it is meant to be complementary to the Ogg Vorbis codec.

How many people ACTUALLY make calls from their computer? Although I understand it is free, the quality still doesn't compare to a regular phone (not even a cell phone -- don't get me started on those).

All depends on the codec. Sure G.723.1 quality isn't that good but there are better options (with a bit more bandwidth). GnomeMeeting already supports Speex (blatant plug) which can give much better quality, and even wideband (16 kHz sampling), which is much better than normal phone (though not used by GnomeMeeting yet).

Here's a link to the new codec, speex. GnomeMeeting already includes support for it. Figuring out how to get the telco's to accept the codec would be nice ;]

There is Speex, but it's still in beta. Perhaps when it stablizes more people will start using it.

When I explain to people different audio codecs and file formats, I usually use an analogy to graphics:

• BMP -> Wave
• PNG -> FLAC
• JPEG -> Ogg Vorbis

Now I'll be able to also use progressive JPEG analogy, very cool! But seriously, I just love the idea that I'll be able to have one copy of everything at -q5 or -q6 (hell, even -q9!) and copy as many bits as I need from that. Extremely cool in my opinion.

I think people at Xiph.org are doing a great work. In fact, I'm starting to re-rip my CD collection to save them as lossless FLAC files (in Ogg format, of course!) to be able to encode them as Ogg Vorbis 2.0+ in the future. Almost all of my music (i.e. everything I have on my own CDs) is encoded with older oggenc from something like a 6-12 months ago, and now with the bitrate peeling I know that sooner or later I'm going to encode it all once again, so I'm starting to rip it now.

By the way, some comments say about how this bitrate peeling in Ogg Vorbis would be cool for speech compression, VoIP, speech streaming, etc. Don't forget to check out Speex project, which is now part of the Xiph.Org Foundation. From Speex website: "The Speex project aims to build a patent-free, Open Source/Free Software voice codec. Unlike other codecs like MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, Speex is designed to compress voice at low bitrates in the 8-32 kbps/channel range. Possible applications include VoIP, internet audio streaming, archiving of speech data (e.g. voice mail), and audio books. In some sense, it is meant to be complementary to the Ogg Vorbis codec." Does anyone know if bitrate peeling will also be used in Speex?