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Sure mpeg1 is not very suited for modem streaming; but at least it can be saved with ease. Something like mpeg1 video at 160x120 23.976 fps (lowest available); with mpeg audio layer II at 32 kbps mono (toolame encoder to the rescue :) could do fine with 512 something kbps or less, maybe 256kbps.

I suggest you check out the Tsunami mpeg encoder for good quality mpeg1 encodes. Be sure to use a high soften block noise setting and other useful tweaks that improve quality. Oh, and Variable bit rate is there too :)

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Vorbis... Oh wait.. it's not finished yet.
It'll be pretty !#$@ cool when it is tho. Completely open. Need a codec for (insert bizarre coice of operating system here)? Here's the tools! Have fun!

Yes, because we all know that Ogg is easily played on any PC since most people already have support for it installed.

These Windows platform media players support Ogg Vorbis audio: FreeAMP (natively), Sonique (natively), and Winamp (with a plugin). Winamp, from AOL Nullsoft, is the most popular audio player on the Windows platform. A drag-and-drop Ogg Vorbis encoder is also available.

Yes, because we all know that Ogg is easily played on any PC since most people already have support for it installed.

These Windows platform media players support Ogg Vorbis audio: FreeAMP (natively), Sonique (natively), and Winamp (with a plugin). Winamp, from AOL Nullsoft, is the most popular audio player on the Windows platform. A drag-and-drop Ogg Vorbis encoder is also available.

Yes, because we all know that Ogg is easily played on any PC since most people already have support for it installed.

These Windows platform media players support Ogg Vorbis audio: FreeAMP (natively), Sonique (natively), and Winamp (with a plugin). Winamp, from AOL Nullsoft, is the most popular audio player on the Windows platform. A drag-and-drop Ogg Vorbis encoder is also available.

When are we going to see the first big adopter of Ogg Vorbis?

And yes, I know RMS' talks are in .ogg format. I'm hoping to see .ogg adoption by websites that non-geeks use, so that Vorbis can get on its way to mainstream acceptance...
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• $6.23 -- Retail Markup
• $0.85 -- Co-op advertising and discounts to retailers

The labels can do away with these by selling directly to the consumer. Mail-order music subscription services such as Bertelsmann's BMG and Columbia House already do something similar.

• $3.34 -- Company Overhead, Distribution, and Shipping

If they ever decided to get a Clue and sell their albums online as 192 Kbps Ogg Vorbis secure downloads, they could reduce this to the cost of Akamaized bandwidth.

To make this more informational lets do the math:

1 minute at 22.100 Hz, 16 bit, stereo = 10 (ten) megabytes.

after this this track is encoded and becomes an MP3 or ogg vorbis file the size shrinks to about 1 (one) megabyte.

this means an album that uses all the capacity of an audio CD (74 minutes) can be stored in 74 megabytes.

3 gigabytes = 3072 megabytes
3073 / 74 = 41.5

Yes. A 3 gb hard disk can store up to 41.5 albuns after processing the songs in an MP3 or Vorbis encoder.

BTW, if youre new to /. and dont know what the heck a Vorbis file is take a look at this site.

Through its Internet connection, the device's internal software can be upgraded to add new features, support next-generation audio formats, change its operation, fix bugs, etc.

How about current generation audio formats? Ogg Vorbis!

non-proprietry formats such as MP3

MP3 is NOT non-proprietary; it's patented. The token non-proprietary free audio standard isn't MP3; it's Ogg Vorbis.

This is a compelling argument and one which can partly be addressed by supporting open source gpl technologies like ogg vorbis, which effect both Windows and non windows users. It's interesting to me that now sonic foundry is supporting vorbis in their music creation suite acid 3.0. Probably because it dosen't cost them anything to do but it will aid in the proliferation of ogg vorbis as a viable replacement to proprietary patented file formats (mp3). CPRM scares me deeply at the hardware level, I can only do what's in my power to not advise the purchase of anything that comes close to CPRM in hard disks etc.

From the Sony website, they explicitly say that the Clie will *play* both MP3 and ATRAC, but the Memory Stick will only support ATRAC. However, later they say that the Memory Stick will allow users to pile on more games, applications, and data. This makes me wonder if OGG files (which ar technically just data) could be played on a Clie? could a OGG payer app be written which takes advantage of the player hardware (including the headphone-based remote) ? What are teh hacking opportunities here?

it would be irony indeed if we could play OGGs on a Sony product :)

...encouraging them to use proprietary software formats instead...

I thought .mp3 WAS a proprietary format? Ogg Vorbis may sound funny, but at least it's not closed source.

maybe this will be one push that open source developers need to finally produce a system that Joe Average would be willing/able to use.

And this brings us to Ogg Vorbis ! It's here today. Plugins are available for Winamp and Sonique, on Windows. On Linux, I use freeamp to play .ogg files. I don't rip my CDs to MP3 any more; I make oggs.

Ogg Vorbis, although it comes from the Gnu camp, is not under GPL; it's more like a BSD style license. (RMS even agreed with this decision!) Furthermore it's patent and royalty free. If Winamp wants to implement a super-high-performance encoder/decoder for Ogg, they don't have to pay any royalties to anyone.

any of you arrogant linux users out there who still feel the need to keep linux 'pure' ...

When you say a system that Joe Average would be willing/able to use, do you mean the whole O/S+software bundle? Ordinary users should not have to deal with installing operating systems. Joe Average should be able to buy a computer with everything already installed. And today we have a system that Joe Average can use (if not install). For example, Mandrake 7.2 with KDE2 is such a system.

The problem is not ease of use (or installation) any more; it's advertising and marketing. Joe Average needs to be told during the Super Bowl and Friends and Survivor and ... that Mandrake/KDE2 or whatever is a viable alternative for him. Slowly the word will percolate to vendors like Gateway2K or whoever Joe A. buys machines from. Vendors like Quicken will naturally release all their products for Linux also. It will be just another aspect of the whole computer thing: which kind of system do you run, Linux or Windows or Mac or... (And that's the day that monkeys will fly out of my butt, I guess.)

But who will pay for the ad/marketing campaigns?

I have never, ever, anywhere seen Ogg Vorbis content that I wanted to download. The only content so encoded that I even know about is Richard Stallman speaking, available at ftp.gnu.org.

There's some samples at the Vorbis website. But you could just rip some yourself. Help get the ball rolling. Upload them to Freenet or Gnutella.

Vorbis is up to Beta 4, but I'm not sure if there is any software that supports that standard yet.

Seriously, though, if you want a good sound & music compression software, chech out Ogg Vorbis, which is free software, cross platform, fast, and high quality. I recommend bitrates of 160 or higher.

Get Ogg Vorbis here. Ogg Vorbis the file format and algorithms are fully documented and GPL. Ogg Vorbis the reference implementation is opensource and BSD license. _FREE_ opensource Ogg Vorbis players and encoders are available on that site for Linux, Windows, BeOS and Macintosh.

Please also note that while the Ogg Vorbis format is published under a GPL licence the libraries are BSD. I was impressed to read that RMS agreed a BSD style licence was best suited for in this case (and, one would assume, file formats in general - but not software).

Uh...anyone heard of this little standard for audio?

I must say, I'm not surprised. Not at all. USB 2, MP3...what's next? Hard drives?

Mr. Gates: "Well, people will just have to learn to live without HD support in Windows 2010. Why don't they use .NET? All their data will be protected from loss, corruption and theft - Microsoft servers are very secure and reliable. Who doesn't have broadband access these days?"

*chill running down spine*

LTSS 1.0 could support WAV, MP3

s/MP3/Ogg Vorbis/

GIF

s/GIF/PNG/ because PNG is better documented and supports 24-bit color and alpha transparency. You partially address this with

TIFF

but s/TIFF/PNG/ because even without TIFF's LZW codec, TIFF is much larger than PNG and not as well standardized.

Text/ASCII

Non-European language advocates would complain.

Text/Unicode

Better. Thank you. This solves the script issue, but in what natural language would information be stored? How is it a valid assumption that future generations can read format specs written in US English of A.D. 2001 or in UK English of A.D. 2001?

HTML version whatever

Make sure it's run through W3C's HTML Validator if you want to archive it. MSHTML is a Bad Thing.

and perhaps even Java for interpretation of abirtrary [sic] file formats.

The Java(TM) langauge does not have the wealth of alternative implementations that the C language has. Both are nearly Turing complete (full Turing completeness requires unbounded storage) and equally fast when compiled to a native instruction set.

Yes, there is a difference between Coke (tm) and Pepsi (tm). Just like there's a difference between S-video and Composite, as between DVD and VHS. Similarly, any serious audiophile (and probably anyone else who listens for music quality) will be able to tell the difference between an MP3 and a CD. I can certainly tell the difference, even on my not-so-great PC speakers.

Others have commented on the difference between MP3, OGG, and CD. I don't know yet, because until Icecast streams Ogg Vorbis format, I won't bother re-ripping my CDs.

Dude ... music is enormously expensive to record

Bull. All you need to record techno are a computer, a tracker, a sample set (start with GM.dls that comes with recent Windows), a player that writes wav (Winamp), and a Vorbis encoder.

modify the last few bars of Beethoven's Ninth to include the Coca-Cola jingle

This is already happening. Witness "Summer Girls" by LFO (the "Abercrombie and Fitch" song). But jingles don't even have to mention the product name anymore; witness licensing of popular songs in commercials such as "Da Da Da" by Trio (used in a VW commercial) and various golden oldies used in Burger King commercials.

Why don't you just pay the artists so it doesn't have to come to this?

Because the labels don't provide an efficient way to buy the two good songs on the album without buying the ten filler songs.

I'm conflicted about this: on the one hand, I am concerned that companies will glom on to Vorbis, make proprietary extensions, and not release them back into the free software pool. Not good.

They can embrace and extend all they want, but the free stuff will still be there.

I'm conflicted about this: on the one hand, I am concerned that companies will glom on to Vorbis, make proprietary extensions, and not release them back into the free software pool. Not good.

They can embrace and extend all they want, but the free stuff will still be there.

The free Vorbis will always be there. The availability of free encoders plus the standard plugin architecture of music players these days would make embracing and extending a real tough thing to do.

i've been using ogg vorbis since last year, and it just rocks. give it a try and see for yourself.

t.

Go to the artist's web site and get the MP3s

MP3s are so late-1990s. Ogg Vorbis is the future. Vorbis already slightly better than MP3 at the same bitrate, and it still has room to grow.

You must be doing them wrong. CDex (with the Blade encoder), using VBR with 80-320kb/s, and the results are good for anything but audiophile reference purposes IMHO.

And Ogg Vorbis should turn out to be better in the end.

I'm only up to this comment so I don't know if it's been mentioned but Ogg Vorbis will be a cross platform open standard for video and audio.

Right now they're only done the audio part - an mp3 replacement - though.

-- Eat your greens or I'll hit you!

The company acknowledged that the primary driver behind the upgrade was competition from other codecs, including Windows Media Audio, that purport to offer equivalent or better sound quality at half the MP3 data rate.

1st off. Windows Media Audio (what a crappy name), does NOT offer 128kbit MP3 quality at 64kbit. it's not even close, and you don't need a kick ass pair of speakers from here to tell the difference. Secoundly this is FUD in response to FUD. There lieing about Microsoft's success and saying "we can do the same thing". it's all a lie.

Now what IS true is that Windows Audio Whatever does offer much better quality at lower bitrate, WAAAYYY better quality. MP3 is really geared for >128kbit, while Windows Audio is really for OggVorbis Monty does talk about how OGG should scale very well to lower bitrates, so don't really expect and new compitition.

The new format is going to be fantastic news for sites like Nullsoft's shoutcast.com , live365.com (which only has 56 and lower streams). Where lower bitrates are very common, and well.. sounds like crap.

Finally this is a good marketing move, For microsoft to say, "We have something better" doesn't mean much, for the guys who made the big #1 success to say "We can a new version, that's better". means a lot. It's like "MP3 II, the return of the codec". that and making it backwards compatible is going to mean instance acceptance.

Also FgH is going to be able to protect it's IP better this time around, maybe not even release a "dist10" (demo source) like they did last time, which spawned LAME, BladeEnc, and every other codec outthere.

Hopefully we all give this the big middle one, and use OggVorbis, unfortantly it's not done, and currently performes like crap.. at least for now. hopefully in the future this will change.

-Jon

It's depressing that Slashdot would rather plug LAME, which in the end promotes a closed standard, over Vorbis, a fully independent and open one.

Great, but what does this mean for projects like L.A.M.E., which has just recently freed itself from Fraunhofer ["regular"] mp3 code/patents? Back into the fray?"

Why Vorbis? MP3 is open.

No, it isn't. Fraunhofer (and other MPEG consortium members) claim that it is impossible to create an mp3 encoder without infringing on their patents. To create/use an encoder, the law says one must pay royalties to Fraunhofer and other MPEG Consortium members. In other words, you can play what you like, but you're not allowed to contribute without paying the ante.

Great, but what does this mean for projects like L.A.M.E., which has just recently freed itself from Fraunhofer ["regular"] mp3 code/patents? Back into the fray?"

Why Vorbis? MP3 is open.

No, it isn't. Fraunhofer (and other MPEG consortium members) claim that it is impossible to create an mp3 encoder without infringing on their patents. To create/use an encoder, the law says one must pay royalties to Fraunhofer and other MPEG Consortium members. In other words, you can play what you like, but you're not allowed to contribute without paying the ante.

Vorbis is GPL/LGPL too, which is a definite plus to many geeks :)

I propose that if there is a solution to this. Abolish all forms of MPEG format.

This could be a good thing for free software. Two words: Ogg Vorbis. Even the early beta encoders beat MP3 in quality at the same bitrate, and it's only going to get better. Recent LAME builds support encoding to both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis formats.

The Ogg Vorbis team has "add in a compatible video codec" on their todo list. The 3IVX team should join forces with them, so as to make the Ogg meta-format invincible :-) (Provided of course it meets the Ogg "guaranteed no patents" design goal)

The Ogg Vorbis team has "add in a compatible video codec" on their todo list. The 3IVX team should join forces with them, so as to make the Ogg meta-format invincible :-) (Provided of course it meets the Ogg "guaranteed no patents" design goal)

According to the FAQ, "the file format has been finished for some time."

• Next time, link "OGG VORBIS encoder" to your OSDN SourceForge project page.
• The compiled C language encoder for OggVorbis doesn't even encode at 128 kbps in real time; how do you expect an interpreted Perl or Java language version to perform better?

I love the idea of this. I pine for the day that I can buy a cd (hear that RIAA), bring it home, sitck it in my multimedia console, encode the thing to vorbis, and have the tracks available to any other mulitmedia device in my house.
However, I'd also like to see the system be very, very OPEN. First of all, dump MP3 encoding. Support MP3 playback for my 2 gigs of already encoded stuff, but stop encoding this locked down codec. Move to Vorbis for all encoding. It's just better. Also, make it accessible to anything with an IP address. I want to be able to access this multimedia thing with my computer while I'm working or from my slimmed down multimedia module in my kitchen while I'm cooking. It sounds like Be has considered this, which is a good sign.

I think Be has a good product in their OS and I'm sad that it never really took off. Their filesystem kicks ass. They've got great multiprocessor support as well. I was really sad to see them drop support for the PowerPC, a move that I never really understood. I'd like to see this work, in a bit more open way though. If Linux had some of the technical capabilities that Be has, it'd be the winner.

While the strictly correct file format would require 1-second blocks (I wasn't aware of that, thanks), the basic principles of psychoacoustic audio compression should still work fine if the blocks are made shorter. Perhaps it might not be as efficient.

I sent email a couple of hours ago to the Ogg Vorbis folks about this, suggesting they look into it. I'm curious what they say; I'd be astounded if no one has considered it before.

Ogg Vorbis is a patent-free open specification and open source audio compression format meant to replace MP3.

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

What you get is transmitted as 8 bits, although since it's mu-law encoded it's approximately as good as 13 bits. But it has only three kilohertz bandwidth.

The audio quality of the modern telephone was decided decades ago as basically what was required to make speech easily intelligible, but not what would make it enjoyable.

It is not really within the telco's power to change that because all of the equipment from one end to the other, as well as all of the communications protocols and software are pretty hardwired for that limitation.

Many VOIP products observe this limitation and in fact are often not as clear sounding as a real phone, either because they need to work over a 28.8 modem, or because you're using a commercial carrier (even though it's over the internet) who doesn't want to pay a lot for a lot of bandwidth for high-quality calls.

This was my experience when I got an "Internet Calling Card" which worked just like a regular calling card, but the voice was streamed over the net in the middle. The audio quality was terrible, much worse than a telephone, and my then-girlfriend (now my wife) asked me to stop using it as it disrupted the closeness of our conversations.

I was investigating all the options a couple years ago, as I was in California and the woman who is now my wife was in Nova Scotia. I eventually settled on AT&T One Rate International because her 486 wasn't powerful enough to run VOIP.

But these days we have powerful processors and fast net connections. I believe that it is within our grasp to have two-way voice conversations with 128 kbps streaming MP3 with real-time compression.

Just voice over IP isn't going to win that many people over if all they're saving is some money, because most people don't make that many phone calls that the expense is worth the extra trouble. But imagine if they could get CD quality sound during their conversations!

And there would be nothing the telcos could do about it because they would be hamstrung by their legacy technology.

Probably it would be better to implement this using Ogg Vorbis so there would be no patent issues.

And I'd like to suggest that it be built with the ZooLib cross-platform application framework so clients could be built for Mac OS, Windows, Linux and other Unix variants and BeOS from the same codebase - note ZooLib includes networking.

Ah, but not UDP networking. Not yet...

Michael D. Crawford
GoingWare Inc

What if you re-encode it in a superior format, with links to the appropriate plugins and decoders, and help spread the defeat of a patent encumbered, technically inferior system of transferring audio recordings.

Oh, and I didn't see anything in their TOS about .ogg files, did you ;^)

Fist Prost

"We're talking about a planet of helpdesks."

The storage and distribution of MP3 format files via the Company network is prohibited.

It looks like the ISP has more of a beef with Fraunhofer and Thomson, the owners of the MP3 patents rather than with the RIAA. In this case, the workaround is to use the free(speech) OggVorbis format.

Too bad it doesn't have Vorbis support. I've started encoding my entire CD collection into Vorbis format (http://www.vorbis.com).

I encoded Vivaldi's Four Seasons into 128kbps Vorbis format, and with studio headphones and a soundblaster Live, you cannot hear ANY flaws in the music. It has full, rich bass and nice clean highs. MP3 sucks compared to Vorbis. Vorbis is also GPL'd, and the encoder (oggenc) works with grip just fine. In fact, Mandrake 7.2 comes with it already installed. There are winamp and xmms plugins for it too. Just make sure you have a .ogg extension on your music or the player will try to play it as an mp3 and it will give up.

I must have a Vorbis player for my car, I wonder how hard it would be to add support for it.

It's rare that one finds an item on Napster that they couldn't find from a friend they already have.

Unless you don't have a lot of friends that trade mp3s, or aren't fans of the same bands/artists that you are.

The only reason I finally fired up Gnapster was because it occurred to me that I could find a couple of oddball songs by one of my favorite bands, Moxy Fruvous -- specifically a song they did on their demo tape which used the words to Dr. Suess' "Green Eggs and Ham". Apparently the good doctor (or his estate) pointed out that he discourages use of his works in certain venues, so they haven't distributed any more copies of their demo tape (though they will perform it live on occasion).

But all it took was for one person to rip it to MP3 and voila! It lives forever.

And in the process, I found out that they have not one, but two new albums, because the songs were available on Napster! I've tracked down one of them and am looking for the other one (I guess I'd have to say that yes, Napster does not discourage me from buying CDs) if only so I can re-rip them at better quality (or even ogg-ify them...)

Jay (=

LAME and BladeEnc produce terrible sound quality (or you have to use ridiculously high bitrates; no wonder Napster's full of huge 160 kbps files) and Fraunhofer is the only one that I'd call even adequate at 128 kbps. It's the sound not some friggin' visual graph of the music that's ultimately important.

Ogg Vorbis, on the other hand is superb. It's not only free of patents and also GPLd!

File Format = Felony

More like File Format = Civil Liability when MP3 is licensed and Vorbis isn't.

Someone please slap these stupid reporters that think anything mp3 is illegal.

At least LAME is illegal. MP3 the format is encumbered by patents. Software encoder developers must pay USD$15,000 for the first 6,000 units shipped yearly and USD$2.50 for each additional unit. Per-unit royalties are incompatible with free software. Switch to Vorbis today; most peer-to-peer file-sharing services support it now anyway.

(Note: replace the references to Julie Andrews with your favorite artists if necessary.)

Suppose Julie Andrews is going to record a new album (she can sing a bit... just one second more...), and the record label is going to use SDMI to "secure" the music on CD. Suppose the only software that can read SDMI-secured CDs are for Windoze and Macs.

Suppose the online copies of the Julie Andrews album is released in Windows Media format rather than something useful like Vorbis.

Does that mean I'm shit out of luck if I'm using Linux and looking for "street legal" SDMI-compliant software (with the RIAA pulling the Intervideo defense to shut us up)?

Will the RIAA get MP5-armed agents to do a "shoot to kill" at the next Jon Johansen?

Will the SDMI ever be used in the first place to create "racism by reason of operating system?"

Trivia: Ms. Andrews' case against the doctor who wrecked her voice would have been handled by Lewis A. Kaplan if it weren't for the doctor's settlement.