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According to Ogg Traffic from April 2003 they are still working on it...

Quoted from the above URL: "... The bottom line is that Version 1.0 files don't peel very well due to how the packets are organized."

"... He is convinced that this can be done [peeling], but that takes time, which is something he doesn't have in excess. Of course, if somebody offered him a contract to implement bitrate peeling for money, the process could be accelerated a lot. Oh, and did I mention that donations to Xiph.org are now tax-deductible?"

Not that everyone cares, but a major selling point for the OGG/Vorbis format is that it is an open standard (MP3 is not). Want to learn more (or about the other projects by the same people/groups) check out their website.

Especially given that the Vorbis format supports bitrate peeling.

The page linked from the /. page you linked states that bitrate peeling isn't implemented yet... Are you is or is you aint?

Anyone have an update? The info is dated Nov. 7th 2002.

I should say one very big reason to run Linux: Eric S. Raymond said it best with his arguement against OS X's core, Darwin, when it first came out.

License problems don't seem like a big deal for an operating system someone else is working on but it will always bother me that they took FreeBSD and made it not-exactly-free. I just can't see the strategy behind that, especially now with OS X's popularity.

Also, "closed-source so those that know better" just doesn't fly with me and most people here at slashdot. Open Source projects are generally quite good at removing excess code. You mentioned Quicktime? I just can't see Apple's music format of choice, AAC, as going anywhere outside of apple with IT'S moronic license. Ogg Vorbis does very well completely open source.

Xiph.org's (org. responsible for Ogg Vorbis) explanation of why you shouldn't transfer from one lossy codec to another.

"You can convert any audio format to Ogg Vorbis. However, converting from one lossy format, like MP3, to another lossy format, like Vorbis, is generally a bad idea. Both MP3 and Vorbis encoders achieve high compression ratios by throwing away parts of the audio waveform that you probably won't hear. However, the MP3 and Vorbis codecs are very different, so they each will throw away different parts of the audio, although there certainly is some overlap. Converting a MP3 to Vorbis involves decoding the MP3 file back to an uncompressed format, like WAV, and recompressing it using the Ogg Vorbis encoder. The decoded MP3 will be missing the parts of the original audio that the MP3 encoder chose to discard. The Ogg Vorbis encoder will then discard other audio components when it compresses the data. At best, the result will be an Ogg file that sounds the same as your original MP3, but it is most likely that the resulting file will sound worse than your original MP3. In no case will you get a file that sounds better than the original MP3." - Xiph Website

The audio codec is called Ogg Vorbis, not OGG.

Here's how I see it, apple basically made a really successful proof of concept, but just wait until BMG or Virgin or whoever comes along with a 35 cent version of a similar service using another format and a better bitrate?

I'm happy to see apple made this concept successful, maybe now the value of MP3's won't be based on their album but at the lowest net price available. I do think like the record we may be seeing the demise of the archaic CD media. CD's were supposed to last forever, so long as you don't scratch them or scuff them, what next standard flash media?

BeOS is a POSIX compliant system, so yeah you could compile the ogg tools all along. In fact, look here for the Ogg encoder, decoder and Cl-amp plugin.

Ah, quite right, Linux support is important.

Of course, I do understand that Neuros *officially* supports Linux, in beta, while Apple hasn't; it's all be community stuff for the iPod.

Oh, and aac is a standard, though arguably not open, while ogg is open, but not a standard. Semantics are a bitch, aren't they?

It's Ogg, not OGG! "...pronounced like Dog without the letter D". Gotta love Ogg Traffic.

It's not license-free, but rather patent-free and does not have any licensing fees or royalty requirements. The utilities to create Ogg Vorbis files are under the GNU GPL and the libraries and SDKs are under a BSD-like license. You can find more in the Ogg Vorbis FAQ.

For the love of $Deity, it's Ogg !! Not OGG, Ogg! Capital O, small g, small g!

Bwhahhaa, another stupid fucking Windows XP kid on Slashdot.
Use google, asshole.
http://www.vorbis.com/ot/20021208.html#id2728978

This is a personal account, don't draw any conclusions from it.

My favourite artist (a Finnish one) published a new record. I knew the album was copy-protected, but I bought it anyway. Not being able to make ogg.'s of it, I haven't really listened to the CD after the initial first days, since the procedure (with the accompanied player), is just that much unwieldy.

As a non-direct result my fandom for her has cooled off, which is something I don't like. I'm now less inclined to buy her next album or attend her concerts. This isn't right. 8-(

What is OGG? Or are you referring to Ogg?

Unfortunately, it appears that Ogg Theora development is "mostly dead". The main developer has been stuck doing contract work (on the integer decoder for Vorbis, as far as I can tell) and can't get to it "for the foreseeable future". The mailing lists are almost completely dead, and, most tellingly, Xiph hasn't updated the theora.org page since January.

I doubt very much they'll have the 1.0 release next month as they have been saying since last June that they'd do...Alpha 1 was looking really promising, but Alpha 2 got pushed back twice (originally scheduled for early December 2002...then late December...then they stopped talking about it anywhere.) Last I'd heard was they were planning to skip Alpha 2 and go straight to Beta in March. Obviously that didn't happen. I do know Monty managed to get some (non-Theora-specific?) work done that will benefit Ogg Theora, but that was back in February, and nobody's talking about it since then.

There are hints that there are other people puttering with the code a little (and VP3 decoding support [the "video codec" part of Ogg Theora - I gather there are still a few "tweaks" to be worked out to turn VP3 into "Ogg Theora"] is slowly being worked on for ffmpeg, Xine, and MPlayer.) but I don't know if Xiph has enough attention on it to get anything out. (Support for VP3/Theora video codec going into Xine is mentioned - very briefly - in the latest "Ogg Traffic" newsletter which at least indicates SOMEBODY remembers that Theora exists. I think if they at least got out some documentation on the format (particularly the .ogg part - they say .ogm is 'horribly hacked' but until there's a "proper" standard available for people to work to, that's all we have for "video-in-ogg") it would help. (If encoding support for Theora in ffmpeg/mplayer isn't far behind, then adoption and work on it outside of Xiph will probably pick up pretty quickly.)

Kinda sad to see the project languish silently as it has for most of the year - some days I can't tell if Xiph will be abandoning Ogg Theora or ever getting back to it or what...

As a side note, back on the topic of "codec comparison", my playing with the one and only release of Ogg Theora way back when it was released (8 months ago!) gave me the impression that it can be a very nice format, especially for more compressed bitrate. Where most codecs seem to get "blockier" as they compress, VP3/Theora seems to get "blurrier" instead, which to my eye generally "looks nicer", despite the fact that it has lost as much actual information from the video as the "blockier" codecs (e.g. mpeg4). IF Xiph ever gets around to some file format documentation and VP3/Theora encoding support appears relatively soon, I can easily imagine Ogg Theora becoming a popular format for internet video and archiving home video.

I'm surprised no one has pointed out that it's Ogg, not OGG. Evidence can be found here [vorbis.com]. I think this is much more important than bickering over calling it Ogg versus Vorbis versus FLAC versus Theora versus Tarkin versus Speex versus Tremor.

It's Ogg, not OGG, dammit!

take a look at people who embed audio in other projects - in-game music, for example. free code and specs availability and patent-freeness is making ogg a de-facto standard in that scene pretty rapidly.

okay, so AAC has k-rad standards bodies bowing down in its direction five times a day. what's a license gonna cost me, and who guarantees some patent holder won't just decide to up and change that tomorrow? with ogg, you know what you're in for.

if you've encoded all your CDs as MP3 at 192kbps or better, then clearly you care about sound quality at least a little, or you'd've gone for 128k or less. in that case, you're not gonna reencode as anything - you're gonna re-rip from the CDs and encode the CDDA in whatever new format tickles your fancy. (which is, of course, what you were talking about. most people use "reencode" to mean translating from one lossy format to another, not to mean redoing all their work. semantic quibble.) and if you're considering that sort of effort, then you should definitely give a damn about ogg - its sound quality per file size is quite competitive.

the one thing people still need to worry about is portable players. too often they just play the crummy (encumbered, non-free) formats; me, i'm not wasting my money on a toy that won't play the format i've settled on for my music collection, and i'm not re-ripping all my discs now that i've finally got the quality settings down pat the way i like them. if your iWhatever won't play my ogg, i won't buy it, i'll just have to dig the CD out of storage and play it on my discman. as for that "neuros" thingy, now - that looks like it might become something.

take a look at people who embed audio in other projects - in-game music, for example. free code and specs availability and patent-freeness is making ogg a de-facto standard in that scene pretty rapidly.

okay, so AAC has k-rad standards bodies bowing down in its direction five times a day. what's a license gonna cost me, and who guarantees some patent holder won't just decide to up and change that tomorrow? with ogg, you know what you're in for.

if you've encoded all your CDs as MP3 at 192kbps or better, then clearly you care about sound quality at least a little, or you'd've gone for 128k or less. in that case, you're not gonna reencode as anything - you're gonna re-rip from the CDs and encode the CDDA in whatever new format tickles your fancy. (which is, of course, what you were talking about. most people use "reencode" to mean translating from one lossy format to another, not to mean redoing all their work. semantic quibble.) and if you're considering that sort of effort, then you should definitely give a damn about ogg - its sound quality per file size is quite competitive.

the one thing people still need to worry about is portable players. too often they just play the crummy (encumbered, non-free) formats; me, i'm not wasting my money on a toy that won't play the format i've settled on for my music collection, and i'm not re-ripping all my discs now that i've finally got the quality settings down pat the way i like them. if your iWhatever won't play my ogg, i won't buy it, i'll just have to dig the CD out of storage and play it on my discman. as for that "neuros" thingy, now - that looks like it might become something.

It's Ogg, not OGG!

They're already planning to switch from RealAudio to Vorbis.

We're hoping to see Derek introduce 30,000 musicians and 200,000 customers at CD Baby to the advantages of Ogg Vorbis. When CD Baby moves to Ogg Vorbis, or at least offers it as an alternative to RealAudio, you'll certainly read about it in another Ogg Traffic!

The president of CDBaby visited my journal at one point and chimed in with tips when we were chatting over how to get the best MP3 encodes out of lame & CDEx.

It would be more insightful if that person were advocating not using codecs that are not freely available. Perhaps the president of CDBaby could spend some time helping to popularize Ogg Vorbis and give portable digital music players more reason to pursue a market not based on patent encumberance (that many people claim sounds better than MP3 anyhow).

If it's going to be good for Linux users?
Yes

The question is: "Will it be good for the open-source movement and the technologies it develops?"

If you think a little about it, this could be a way for MS to kill a player (Xiph.org) that is doing it's way in the multimedia business.

In the open-source (and at the same time with Linux... cause it's where it gets the most used), we've got Ogg Vorbis, the best patent-free lossy audio format. To get the Unix market, MS has to kill it first. We can see that they've found a good way to do it. They're just forcing the market to adopt their codec as a standart so that unix users will be forced to used it too.

Then, there are theses projects, named Theora and XviD, which could become other good formats for the open-source community, but this time in the domain of video.
We can apply the same theory to this one... MS is just trying to kill them too, to gain the market that will be, again, forced to do a jump its propriatery technology...

So yes, it'll be good for *NIX users, but could kill the projects the open-source community is trying to create...

No offense intended to anyone ... I just see these Ogg letters all the time and I think they're hilarious. ;-)

Dear TiVo -

I would gladly offer to buy your service if you included Ogg Vorbis support. (As you know, Ogg Vorbis is currently used by upwards of several people, many of whom are doing so on an operating system you don't support with your software right now. So I think you can see your economic imperative here.)

Notice that I did not say that I would actually buy your service if you spent the time to include Ogg Vorbis support. Much like the letters I keep sending to Apple about the iPod, if you did support Ogg then send you a letter saying I would gladly buy your service if you made your software open-source. Assuming you somehow did that, my next letter would assure you that I would buy it if it used open hardware. This series of letters would continue until finally I offered to gladly buy your service if you gave it to me for free and sent a supermodel to my house to deliver it.

My fellow technologists who don't like to pay for anything are eagerly awaiting your efforts to satisfy our statistically insignificant needs. So please don't ignore this potentially incredibly unlucrative market and give us Ogg support today!

I would gladly buy your service if you included Ogg Vorbis support. Any hardware that is capable of decoding video can easily decode Vorbis as well. I am not about to re-encode my CD collection to an inferior proprietary format for this feature.

P.S. FLAC support would be great too, while you're at it.

MP3 results in very low quality audio. Vorbis yields much better results for lossy audio.

1. Release mp3s -> people want better quality
2. ???
3. Profit!!

They're using mp3s for promotion of their music... what the music industry should be treating low quality mp3s on kazaa as...

APE is a non-lossy format, like FLAC. Generally you're lucky to average better than 50% compression with any non-lossy format.

Ogg Vorbis at q=( -0.5 ) would record around the proposed 58~62kbps rate, not with audiophile quality. It would be adequate for the sort of listener that always recorded cassette tapes with Dolby NR turned off, but I'm betting that most consumers hold "digital" sound to a higher standard, and would lose interest in the product when it got out that the sound was audibly degraded.

(Thanks for the Obligatory Ogg Post opportunity.)

"Maybe if they put Ogg support in WinAmp,"
It's had OGG support since version 2

"and if some games start to use it (showing that it's a useful, sustainable format for professional developers)"
Unreal Tournament 2003 uses only OGG format music.

"and ... hmmm, maybe some hardware players, too,"
Portables!

"What is Ogg Vorbis?

Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source."

To me, any time we start developing a technology which can be freely used by all without worry of the letter in the mail, its cause for celebration.

They are testing it, and the better the tools we have in the box, the better we can do a job. And thats the end result isn't it? Getting from here to there with a minimum of effort.

I use the efforts of others daily, and it is my hope that before I leave this planet, I can leave something for others.

Why do you feel that I would be more qualified to answer this than, say, someone who works for the company that makes the Rio Volt? We're software developers; We don't know what's going on at companies all over the place.

I don't know if Rio's going to upgrade the firmware, 'cause I don't work for SonicBLUE. Also; I work for Xiph, so I can't afford the call to Miss Cleo.

Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation

Congratulations, you win the box of Q-Tips.

Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation

"It will never come out."

"It will never be as good as mp3."

"It will never be better than mp3."

"No one will use it but Linux folks."

"Now that you've lost funding, you'll never survive."

"You'll be shut down by Thomson/Fraunhofer."

"No hardware company will ever be interested in it."

Xiph.org Foundation - Proving assholes wrong since 1993.

Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation

Yes, this is all true. We've got special plans to have Ogg Vorbis files Shock-Enabled[tm]; If you're listening to an Ogg Vorbis file and you think about copying it for a friend, a special patented algorithm will combine the electrical synapses in your brain and route the power directly to your spinal column, killing you instantly.

It's certainly a cost-savings over the all-weather troops that we've been using for the past few years.

Remember to keep your tinfoil hat on tight. :)

Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation

Well, gosh. Here I thought that an XML-aware database that would allow you to sync your XMMS playlists and things in addition to using it as a removable drive would be a useful feature. Seems people agree with me on this one.

Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation

The Neuros has a port for an RF booster/antenna. Curious, no? :)

Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation

There is no such thing as 'CD-quality' when dealing with a lossy encoder like mp3 or Ogg Vorbis. True CD quality can only be attained with a lossless encoder, like FLAC or Shorten.

If you think Ogg Vorbis sounds better than mp3 at comparable bitrate or lower, then it's safe to say that you consider Ogg Vorbis representative of "better audio," or better reproduction of sound. If you do find this to be true, then you're in good company; Large amounts of double-blind testing agrees with you.

Bitrate is never irrelevant. Bitrate multiplied by time equals size, and anyone who has ever filled a hard drive could probably tell you about how some things can look very large indeed from far away, but hit their limit of usefulness in a curiously small amount of time.

Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation

It would be a serious feat to integrate FLAC and OGG. They are totally different systems.

FLAC and Ogg are already integrated. Ogg is simply a container file format, it has nothing to do with audio compression. You are thinking of Vorbis.

See the FAQ.

It also supports ogg/vorbis files. Ogg Traffic

This is like saying you can embed a network-aware virus inside an image file. Even if such exploit is feasible (I really doubt it), the worm could easily be stripped on the fly by each p2p client or by the mp3 player. Also, I'd like to point out:

- If the worm exits, one could reverse engineer it and point it back towards the RIAA's machines and DOS their servers. It would give them a taste of their own medecine (DMCA).
- may be it's time to switch to OGG ?

0000!

Try

Vorbis Ogg

Don't convert MP3 to Ogg.

Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format. It is roughly comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music, such as MP3, VQF, AAC, and other digital audio formats. It is different from these other formats because it is completely free, open, and unpatented.

Ogg Vorbis has been designed to completely replace all proprietary, patented audio formats. That means that you can encode all your music or audio content in Vorbis and never look back.

click for more...

In response to the change of license, Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation says, "I agree. It is wise to make some of the Ogg Vorbis code available for use in proprietary software, so that commercial companies doing proprietary software will use it, and help Vorbis succeed in competition with other formats that would be restricted against our use." [ source]

In response to the change of license, Richard Stallman of the Free Software Foundation says, "I agree. It is wise to make some of the Ogg Vorbis code available for use in proprietary software, so that commercial companies doing proprietary software will use it, and help Vorbis succeed in competition with other formats that would be restricted against our use." [ source]

You guys are all supposed to be using Ogg anyways! That way you can act like you are a snooty audiophile anytime a MP3 story is posted...

The United States Postal Service is not a governmental or federal organization, and they haven't been since July 1st, 1971. Prior to this date they were a government agency (known as The Post Office Department), but now they're an independent agency.

Operational authority of the USPS rests with a Board of Governors and Postal Service management, instead of Congress. The US President is responsible to appoint nine of those Governors. So, there are still ties to the US Government, but they're independent.

No one's gonna read this, but them's the facts. More information is available at http://www.usps.com/history/his3.htm. Enjoy.

Emmett Plant
Use Vorbis to listen to my music!

The United States Postal Service is not a governmental or federal organization, and they haven't been since July 1st, 1971. Prior to this date they were a government agency (known as The Post Office Department), but now they're an independent agency.

Operational authority of the USPS rests with a Board of Governors and Postal Service management, instead of Congress. The US President is responsible to appoint nine of those Governors. So, there are still ties to the US Government, but they're independent.

No one's gonna read this, but them's the facts. More information is available at http://www.usps.com/history/his3.htm. Enjoy.

Emmett Plant
Use Vorbis to listen to my music!

Oops, my bad. I figured that since it was listed as "added 12-04-2002" on Vorbis.com that it was brand-new news.

One thing that hasn't been discussed here is that a lot of people feel that Vorbis is transparent at something like quality setting 4. Other people think it's transparent at quality setting 3. Others think it's great at 1. I release my stuff at 4, but bitrate peeling will let people peel those down to what sounds good to them. Maybe they want to monkey with it, and maybe they don't, but the option to do this without re-encoding is sexy.

It's not just a 'chop it down for modem folks' thing, it's also a letting people choose for themselves situation that I think is more important.

Features are cool, but features that give people options apart from 'use it or not' are even cooler.

That's it for me. Please donate to Xiph.org, and then go listen to some tunes. Enjoy!