Slashdot Mirror

How DO they differentiate between the music sharers and "the rest"? Are they looking for *.mp3? What about the people who rename all their shared music files to *.foo or something that's not obviously audio files? And what about other audio formats, like Ogg/Vorbis etc? And how about for instance a very productive person who is sharing 500 mp3's of his/her own creation?

OGG is an audio file format.

From the Vorbis FAQ:

Ogg is the name of Xiph.org's container format for audio, video, and metadata. Vorbis is the name of a specific audio compression scheme that's designed to be contained in Ogg. Note that other formats are capable of being embedded in Ogg such as FLAC and Speex.

In other words, Ogg is comparable to avi files. And you are capitalising Ogg when you shouldn't. It isn't an acronym.

I've seen Theora be streamed with Icecast (check out the last Ogg Traffic), I've seen decent quality Theora video at 80kbps (320x240@30 even), and I've seen how well it works in an Ogg container, vs Quicktime/AVI which (unlike Ogg) were not designed for streaming.

But don't take my word for it, try it out for yourself! That's one of the reasons the Alpha releases are available to the general public. See what it can do, and prehaps, drop us a donation through Paypal or Affero to help the Theora hackers spend more time hacking.

... will it play ogg/vorbis files?

Windows
You can rip to Ogg using CDex and play using Winamp.

Linux
You can rip to Ogg using Grip and playing using XMMS

The problem with converting mp3 to vorbis is that both are lossy formats and the have different encoding methods: when you convert an original piece to mp3 you lose one part of the sound, then when you convert from mp3 to ogg you lose another part. See the Ogg Vorbis FAQ for more on this.

Not enough people in the mainstream consumer market are going to adopt Ogg because nobody will support it and they don't know to ask for it.

That, and because Ogg Vorbis is the worst fucking name of all time.

As opposed to MP3, which is the best fucking name of all time? The name of the format is Vorbis. It is much easier to pronounce than MP3 and for anyone being even remotely literate, it sounds instantly familiar. I am sick of those trolls in every story about Vorbis, Ogg, Theora, Tarkin, or anything made by the Xiphophorus Helleri Foundation in general.

to switch to Vorbis/FLAC/et al

Your comment gives the mistaken impression that OSS is somehow destined to always be behind proprietary software, as far as innovation and technical superiority is concerned. Microsoft and SCO love that notion, but unfortunately for them, it's not true. OSS is overtaking proprietary software in many areas, and it's reasonable to expect this trend to continue.

Here are just some of many examples of innovative, open-source software:

Every modern codec requires licensing fees.

Like this?

Your argument is made moot by the fact that AAC is an open format. It's only the DRM portion that's "closed".

I already rip my CDs to AAC format instead of MP3 for the higher quality/smaller filesize. So why would I need OGG?

Ogg Vorbis and Speex can be used here quite nicely, but there is the problem with having listeners install the software codecs and/or new player app first.

I'm beginning to think Xiph may fade and disappear at this rate. The Theora mailing lists appear to be dead, there've been no 'Ogg Traffic' updates for a couple of months, and Theora's still at "Alpha 2" half-a-year after it was originally scheduled to be "finished"....

I'd played with the alphas and liked the video and sound quality. Seemed like a really promising format, so hopefully they won't let Theora languish and will use some of the grant money to get back to work on it, but I wouldn't hold my breath...

The complete album is available in these formats:

• 44k/16bit WAV : 622meg zip file of perfect quality WAV files.
• FLAC : 314meg zip file of perfect quality FLAC files. (about FLAC)
• OGG : 84meg zip file of high quality OGG files. (about OGG)
• 128kb MP3 : 56meg zip file of 128kb MP3 files.
• MP3 VBR : 74meg zip of high quality MP3 VBR files. (about VBR MP3)

Probably not a good idea for quality's sake.

AAC->CD->(MP3|OGG|*) loses quite some data. An explanation (OGG->MP3) here.

"OGG" is incorrect. The correct capitalization is "Ogg." More info at the official Vorbis news page and the associated Ogg Traffic:

With an ever-increasing adoption of Ogg Vorbis, I'm seeing an increasing number of new users refer to it as OGG. This is a trend that I would like to counter with this piece of authoritative information: It's not OGG, it is Ogg! You may think that this is an insignificant difference, but I don't think so...It is a word, not an acronym, and it's pronounced like Dog without the letter D.

"OGG" is incorrect. The correct capitalization is "Ogg." More info at the official Vorbis news page and the associated Ogg Traffic:

With an ever-increasing adoption of Ogg Vorbis, I'm seeing an increasing number of new users refer to it as OGG. This is a trend that I would like to counter with this piece of authoritative information: It's not OGG, it is Ogg! You may think that this is an insignificant difference, but I don't think so...It is a word, not an acronym, and it's pronounced like Dog without the letter D.

Personaly I'd prefer something higher quality, like OGG, with better liscencing terms, like OGG, and maybe some easy third party support

Personaly I'd prefer something higher quality, like OGG, with better liscencing terms, like OGG, and maybe some easy third party support

Personaly I'd prefer something higher quality, like OGG, with better liscencing terms, like OGG, and maybe some easy third party support

For more information on Ogg, here's the Ogg Vorbis General FAQ

Also here is a page that describes the quality of Ogg Vorbis encoding with comparison samples to listen to. Sound quality is subjective so listen for yourself.

Have you used Ogg Vorbis?
The Good: Its Open Source
The Bad: Not many portable music players that support it
The Ugly: name, Ogg Vorbis

In Windows Media Player 9, go to:

"Tools" menu -> select "Options.." -> choose the "Copy Music" tab.

Uncheck the "Copy protect music" option (which is enabled by default). This is all about the jukebox feature that's designed to rip your CDs to the hard drive. Being Microsoft it defaults to making copy-protected files.

MP3 encoding is not included by default because of the same patent problems that have been plaguing Linux distributions, but there are plug-ins that you can buy.

Of course OGG Vorbis is the best option, but Apple's free iTunes for Windows will make MP3 files as will CDEx.

http://vorbis.com/musicsites.psp

Whats this ogg thing? Some elitest-i-hate-the-matinstream-so-i-use-linux music format or something?

Ogg Vorbis is a free and very high quality encoding tool set. It supports variable bit rate while being very easy to use. Ogg files are generally smaller than mp3 for the same level of quality.

Software freedom confers several key benefits. There are no patents or royalties on the tools so manufactures are free to use them and you don't have to pay for their licensing. You will also always be able to find software players for any platform and don't have to wory about DRM unless the plaform itself has been cripled by it. Copyright and patent problems made players like Lame and Not Lame difficult for an average computer user such as myself. Not being able to encode my own music colection to mp3 was a real bummer. Vorbis tools is a deb package that requires no compiling and just works. Between it, abcde, audacity and gnuphonograph, your sound needs are covered.

Let's go over that again, beter, cheaper, easier, less encumbered, that about covers it.

More music downloads (mostly MP3 though) can be found in my article Links to Tens of Thousands of Legal Music Downloads.

The article has a Creative Commons license. Please copy and distribute it.

Open Zaurus, Debian, Ogg-Vorbis and some CF cards are all you need. Here's a quick howto. If you can't master the Debian install, use Knoppix. Move your music to free formats and never mess with DRM BS again. If you can't read it and move it to a free format, don't buy it. The RIAA is going to lose this one. The harder they suck the easier it is to be free.

Yeah, you might have been joking. That's OK, I like the chance to sound off about free goodness.

There are some very cool Ogg Vorbis software players available for Windows and some less-cool ones for Linux and Mac.

I think Vorbis has shown that it is an efficient, royalty-free codec worthy of more mainstream attention (read: hardware players) and there are plenty of converters to change over your existing collection of MP3s to a smaller (file size) collection of Vorbis without a noticable loss of quality.

Blows my mind.

There are some very cool Ogg Vorbis software players available for Windows and some less-cool ones for Linux and Mac.

I think Vorbis has shown that it is an efficient, royalty-free codec worthy of more mainstream attention (read: hardware players) and there are plenty of converters to change over your existing collection of MP3s to a smaller (file size) collection of Vorbis without a noticable loss of quality.

Blows my mind.

http://www.vorbis.com/

was that sarcasm?

Thanks for the info, and thanks for supporting Ogg Vorbis. As an aside, in the words of Carsten "Purple" Haese, "it's Ogg, not OGG".

"We are shocked and awed these college kids would code something that steals from kabillionaire struggling artists and post them on the sickening little iPee's or iPods. Have you seen the name OGG. Wasn't there a ganster rap song called OGG or something. It's a disgrace." stated an RIAA Spokesdevil.

Officials at Vorbis could not be contacted, however, another company stated they will be filing a countersuit against the suit in response to the suit originally filed.

what the f&*^#$ is ogg? Some stupid linux invention?

From their site: "Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source." In other words, it has better compression than mp3, and since it's open source, you don't have to pay licensing fees on players that decode Ogg like you would with mp3.

Everything plays with open-source Freeamp/Zinf. If you care.

I think Magnatune's idea is a fine one, and I look foward to being able to preview their music. But right now I would have to violate US patent law to do it. I don't have a license for playing MP3s and I want to do so with my Free Software system but still be able to leverage the freedoms of Free Software. The MP3 decoders available to me (such as LAME) don't appear to be a legal option for US users without MP3 patent licenses (such as me).

It's an interesting conundrum:

• I want to hear good music and abide by the law.
• I want to preview music before purchasing it.
• The MP3 format is popular, but I'm guessing most United States GNU/Linux users are violating US patent law by distributing and using LAME.

So, Magnatune's offer is asking me to violate patent law to take advantage of Magnatune's generous copyright licensing. I asked Magnatune if they would consider Ogg Vorbis tracks for previewing (their plan page talks about "allow[ing] purchasers to download highest-quality VBRs as well as WAV files, and Ogg Vorbis files." with no word on Ogg Vorbis preview tracks).

Here in Canada the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) offers some of it's shows (Quirks and Quarks) in .ogg format. And at least their radio messages have no commercials! (net even "sponsorship acknowledgements.")

Too bad he changed his mind over the BSD licensed OGG code.

First, you should consider posting with an account (even one tied to a throwaway e-mail address, if you wish to preserve your anonymity in that way). Slashdot makes it very easy to skip over most anonymously posted articles, such as yours.

Second, I can find no source to substantiate your claim and you have not posted any. On the contrary, I can find information where RMS (which is who I'm guessing "he" refers to) supports the switch of some of the Ogg Vorbis code to a new BSD-like license (this also appears pertinant).

Justablip is an indie electronic music label started by Kris Weston from the Orb. we release music under an 'open source'-like license & encourage people to share the music via p2p (or however they wish)...we also use Ogg, FLAC, & bittorrent.

Here's a link to download their first release, WTF! The Madonna Remix comp in Ogg, MP3, or AAC...

also check out the ARTICLES on the site, I think people on here would be into it.

ant
--
))
((
c[_] bLiP

www.justablip.co.uk

The one button doesn't bother me, but the lack of wheel does. On the other hand, I now have a logitech (USB) keyboard on my PC which has Apple symbols on the keycaps so presumably works on the Mac. It has a scrollwheel to the left of the keys, which I prefer using since it can be used by any finger easily, which reduces finger strain from stroking the mouse.

2) I can't afford one because I'm too lame to have a good job

Yeah, that was a shame. I'd been trying to avoid having a real job, but then when I saw Apple's prices I finally bit the bullet. Now a fully paid up member of the establishment.

I don't care if Quicktime is open source, free software, or dictated to a trained monkey by God himself and compiled in secret. It should, however, support full screen video playback without upgrading to Pro for $30.

4) Ogg Vorbis? Hel-LO!!!

Hello

5) I can't run 12-year old software on it

Software lasts more than 18 months? Wow.

6) They should give it away for free

Well, I really can't disagree with this one. Of course they shouldn't give it away for free to everyone, just me.

7) No x86 (though this is actually a plus

More to the point, no x87. Now that is one brain-dead architecture...

MP3 encoding (with blocks of samples) makes it difficult, if not impossible, to encode tracks to separate MP3s and not have gaps in between. Granted, some gaps are bigger than others depending on the player, but you'll have to look to other formats if you want truly gapless playback.

There are already MPlayer, the ffmpeg library, mjpegtools, bbmpeg, Ogg Vorbis and Theora, Cinelerra... I for one don't feel that I need a bone thrown to me by Real, much less a proprietary, binary-only, NDA-encumbered (no, more like encrusted) one.

Others' mileage, of course, may vary. I admit, I may be just preaching to the choir here-- but I hope that what I just named off the top of my head can show potential moviemakers some of the options that are available.

Does it support Ogg Vorbis, like these other players do?

Yep. Tired of seeing inferior technology coming up as "news".

I wonder why this is mentioned on Slashdot. You can get cheaper players elsewhere. And if you're willing to pay more, go right ahead and get yourself a real player, which supports good codecs.

haven't these guys heard of ogg and theora?

This is probably a good idea economically for China, but it smacks a little of France's banning of the word "e-mail" to me for some reason. Are there any royalty-free video standards out there? I'm not a video guy, so I don't pay much attention to that part of the world, but I know there are plenty of open/royalty-free audio codecs...

If everyone started downloading legal music instead, we would make short work of the RIAA, because people would start buying CDs from indie bands, and seeing their shows, instead of enriching the major labels every time you buy a Britney or New Kids CD. The RIAA would also have no cause to complain - these music downloads are not copyright violations because the artists give you permission to download them.

Probably the best known site for downloading MP3s is of course MP3.com . See especially their genre index . Click the link. You will be quite astounded at how many genres there are.

Unfortunately the website usability of MP3.com is atrocious, and their streaming audio seems to be buggy - I can't get it to work in either Explorer or Mozilla. To get an MP3 file to download to your hard drive, you have to register, which I'm sure will result in merciless spamming. May I suggest registering with a throwaway email address from spamgourmet ?

The Open Directory Project has Bands and Artists and Styles indices. Not all the artists offer downloads, but the site says they list 48,000 artists and I imagine many of them offer downloads.

There are better sites for hosting MP3s than MP3.com. Some of them allow you to buy the band's CD from the same page as the MP3 download. Among them are The Internet Underground Music Archives, CDBaby, Epitonic.com, Lulu, SoundClick, Matador Records and insound .

Monotonik provides BitTorrents with zip files containing 60 to 100 MP3s apiece available here.

If you prefer the higher quality, patent-free Ogg Vorbis files you can find several download sites here . Ogg Vorbis players are available for many platforms - WinAmp will play them on Windows, and I understand iTunes on Mac OS X supports Ogg now. There are open source Linux ogg players and encoders, even an open source fixed-point decoders for embedded applications where the CPU doesn't have floating point hardware.

There are also peer-to-peer applications for distributing legal music. See Furthur Network and konspire[2b] .

Unfortunately, musicians are often not very good website designers, so poor usability is a significant obstacle to getting music directly from artists' websites. If you're a musician, and you'd like to know how you can improve your website so more people will download your music, please read my article If Indie Musicians Wanted Their Music Heard....

Finally, there is the problem of finding the music that's actually worth listening to. The labels do serve the (somewhat) legitimate purpose of picking out the good from the bad. But we can do that ourselves with legal downloads by using collaborative filtering, for example by downloading our music with iRATE, which you'll find at

If everyone started downloading legal music instead, we would make short work of the RIAA, because people would start buying CDs from indie bands, and seeing their shows, instead of enriching the major labels every time you buy a Britney or New Kids CD. The RIAA would also have no cause to complain - these music downloads are not copyright violations because the artists give you permission to download them.

Probably the best known site for downloading MP3s is of course MP3.com . See especially their genre index . Click the link. You will be quite astounded at how many genres there are.

Unfortunately the website usability of MP3.com is atrocious, and their streaming audio seems to be buggy - I can't get it to work in either Explorer or Mozilla. To get an MP3 file to download to your hard drive, you have to register, which I'm sure will result in merciless spamming. May I suggest registering with a throwaway email address from spamgourmet ?

The Open Directory Project has Bands and Artists and Styles indices. Not all the artists offer downloads, but the site says they list 48,000 artists and I imagine many of them offer downloads.

There are better sites for hosting MP3s than MP3.com. Some of them allow you to buy the band's CD from the same page as the MP3 download. Among them are The Internet Underground Music Archives, CDBaby, Epitonic.com, Lulu, SoundClick, Matador Records and insound .

Monotonik provides BitTorrents with zip files containing 60 to 100 MP3s apiece available here.

If you prefer the higher quality, patent-free Ogg Vorbis files you can find several download sites here . Ogg Vorbis players are available for many platforms - WinAmp will play them on Windows, and I understand iTunes on Mac OS X supports Ogg now. There are open source Linux ogg players and encoders, even an open source fixed-point decoders for embedded applications where the CPU doesn't have floating point hardware.

There are also peer-to-peer applications for distributing legal music. See Furthur Network and konspire[2b] .

Unfortunately, musicians are often not very good website designers, so poor usability is a significant obstacle to getting music directly from artists' websites. If you're a musician, and you'd like to know how you can improve your website so more people will download your music, please read my article If Indie Musicians Wanted Their Music Heard....

Finally, there is the problem of finding the music that's actually worth listening to. The labels do serve the (somewhat) legitimate purpose of picking out the good from the bad. But we can do that ourselves with legal downloads by using collaborative filtering, for example by downloading our music with iRATE, which you'll find at

The Vorbis team is working with the makers of Neuros to update the player's firmware to decode Ogg Vorbis files.

It's nearly complete.

Probably the best known site for downloading MP3s is of course MP3.com. See especially their genre index. Click the link. You will be quite astounded at how many genres there are.

Unfortunately the website usability of MP3.com is atrocious, and their streaming audio seems to be buggy - I can't get it to work in either Explorer or Mozilla. To get an MP3 file to download to your hard drive, you have to register, which I'm sure will result in merciless spamming. May I suggest registering with a throwaway email address from spamgourmet?

The Open Directory Project has Bands and Artists and Styles indices. Not all the artists offer downloads, but the site says they list 48,000 artists and I imagine many of them offer downloads.

Better sites for hosting MP3's than MP3.com are Epitonic.com and insound.

If you prefer the higher quality, patent-free Ogg Vorbis files you can find several download sites here. Ogg Vorbis players are available for many platforms - WinAmp will play them on Windows, and I understand iTunes on Mac OS X supports Ogg now. There are open source Linux ogg players and encoders, even an open source fixed-point decoders for embedded applications where the CPU doesn't have floating point hardware.

There are also peer-to-peer applications for distributing legal music. See Furthur Network and konspire[2b].

I'm sure if more people availed themselves of the wide variety of music available for free download, we will make short work of both the RIAA and ClearChannel. Our lives would also be richer for it.

Probably the best known site for downloading MP3s is of course MP3.com. See especially their genre index. Click the link. You will be quite astounded at how many genres there are.

Unfortunately the website usability of MP3.com is atrocious, and their streaming audio seems to be buggy - I can't get it to work in either Explorer or Mozilla. To get an MP3 file to download to your hard drive, you have to register, which I'm sure will result in merciless spamming. May I suggest registering with a throwaway email address from spamgourmet?

The Open Directory Project has Bands and Artists and Styles indices. Not all the artists offer downloads, but the site says they list 48,000 artists and I imagine many of them offer downloads.

Better sites for hosting MP3's than MP3.com are Epitonic.com and insound.

If you prefer the higher quality, patent-free Ogg Vorbis files you can find several download sites here. Ogg Vorbis players are available for many platforms - WinAmp will play them on Windows, and I understand iTunes on Mac OS X supports Ogg now. There are open source Linux ogg players and encoders, even an open source fixed-point decoders for embedded applications where the CPU doesn't have floating point hardware.

There are also peer-to-peer applications for distributing legal music. See Furthur Network and konspire[2b].

I'm sure if more people availed themselves of the wide variety of music available for free download, we will make short work of both the RIAA and ClearChannel. Our lives would also be richer for it.

Ogg Vorbis would also save you some bandwidth cost as files with the same quality are smaller than MP3 files.

Ideally, you would want to encode at quality setting 5, which results in pretty-close-to-CD-quality. This is about 160kbps at the moment and the quality is, IMHO, a tick better than a 192kbps MP3.