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Stripping the filename from the link to the tarball results in a link to this directory, which contains the libogg tarball that you wanted (as well as zips).
Slightly modifying the link points to this directory, which contains the vorbis stuff.

libvorbis-1.1.0.tar.gz
libogg-1.1.2.tar.gz

I don't think floating-point is neccesary for Vorbis encoding. There is an integer-only decoder:
The "Tremor" decoder library, an integer-only, fully Ogg Vorbis compliant software decoder library is now available under a totally free BSD-like free software license. You can check out module 'Tremor' from Xiph.Org Subversion.

Also, music is at a higher quality - 160kbps VBR

no, bitrate in not equal to quality. iTMS has the far superior AAC, while Microsoft uses WMA wich comes last (or close) in most tests (except the ones Microsoft pays for ;))
two tests here:
1
2

Does it offer FLAC support?

The Vorbis format really is a godsend for gamers, because in the game programming world, the roadblocks which otherwise hinder it are gone. For one, the no license fee argument becomes applicable - Vorbis doesn't help portable player makers much, because they have to support MP3 and WMA anyway. But since the consumer doesn't care what format game audio is in, programmers can go for a cheap (BSD licensed), easy (good APIs), and very good (high quality) solution without worrying about making the game less useful. Many games already use Ogg Vorbis, like UT2003/4 - here's a complete list. (Well, it would be there, if the Wiki was up.)

In practice, even Mr. Stallman can recognize when a more permissive license, such as 3-clause BSD, LGPL, or GPL with exceptions, will further freedom more than a standard copyleft license. For instance, he blessed the Ogg project's switch to a 3-clause BSD license.

Even better (because we're talking more of these "popular open source things" and stuff):

Ogg (either hackily or properly) or Matroska.

At this point, all the tools needed to create an Open Source cross-platform VoIP system are easily available. The Speex codec is specifically designed for low-bit-rate voice, is BSD licensed, and is implemented in both C and Java. It would not be hard to take this codec, throw in some good sound libraries and some crypto libraries (OpenSSL perhaps) and roll up a VoIP client. In fact there is a Speex implementation for Java, so you could write one in Java, and yes, Java really is "write once run anywhere" these days. Someday when I have more time I might do this. As a Java applet it would be great because there would be nothing to install.

I saw a copy of [Nievy Ynivtar]'s new album "[Haqre Zl Fxva]" with a big copy-protection warning splattered all over it in H.M.V. a couple of weeks ago, and I just had to buy it for the "hacking challenge" factor.

Cdparanoia read the audio without a hitch -- all spaces, not even so much as a single minus sign, and cdrdao made a .toc and .dat pair that burned OK.

I still felt an overwhelming sense of disappointment ..... this was not so much shooting fish in a barrel, as standing by a barrel of fish and waiting for them to jump out.

Of course I made sure to check I could get a refund "if it wouldn't play on my DVD recorder". The warning said it might not work in anything other than a home audio CD player ..... though actually, my DVD recorder is built only to recognise the first session on a multisession CD {to paraphrase the manual: if you want to make an MP3 CD to play on this machine, you must burn all the songs to the disc in one go, otherwise it will only see whatever you recorded up to the point where you first ejected the disc} which sounds like they were anticipating some sort of copy-prevention attempts involving a bogus second session. And the machine even has a digital audio-out which I haven't investigated; I think it's electrical rather than optical. Anyone know of a good sound card with digital-in and full Linux support including open source drivers?


Disclaimer: by reading the ROT-13ed text above, you are agreeing not to laugh.

Who honestly cares about or uses Ogg?

I care. Some media activists care. All artists definitely should care. And, most importantly, some great hackers care as well.

Seriously, as much as I constantly feel insulted by the bloody ignorance of profanum vulgus, or unwashed masses, if you will--please don't mind if I take offence to you outrageously ignorant remark--I don't really care who cares about the software I use--be it Debian, OpenBSD, EROS, PostgreSQL, Perl 6 or Ogg Vorbis--as long as the developers care. We don't need large user base to break even, now do we?

Music is very important to me, almost as important as the freedom I have. And it's not about the price, mind you. I write it listening to another version of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23, I couldn't resist to buy today on a new and expensive CD with all the money I had. I don't care about the proce of free software. For me it's all about freedom. I do believe quite a few people think that way.

Really. I have yet to even contemplate it. Sure I have the codec on my machine, but I haven't used it. Nothing is out there in the format that I am interested in or have even ran across accidently. I like portability of my music so I use MP3. [..] I have no intention of recording anything into the format, so it would be a poor choice for me to use it. How many people is it a good choice for? Why?

Actually, the reason is quite simple.

FLAC is worth it for ripping. It's a well-supported lossless compression format that is free (as in speech), and encouraged by Xiph.org. With a 250GB hard drive for $180 at reputable stores, most people can rip their entire CD collection ~750CDs into a lossless format that will last. With FLAC, you only need to rip once.

Actually, this was announced two weeks ago.

This would be interesting to me if it supported Ogg/Vorbis/Theora. I just bought the fantastic Rio Karma digital music player, and I chose it over the other offerings, specifically because it supports Ogg Vorbis. I'm in the process of encoding my entire CD collection in this format, for both quality and philosophical reasons.
Besides the Rio, there are two other HD based players that support Ogg/Vorbis, the iRiver H120 and the Neuros but I went with the Karma mostly because it's the smallest of the three, the price was right, and the sound is excellent.

All these codecs work on audio data that has to come from somewhere, typically CDs. Xiph offers the standard CDDA->WAV converter that feeds LAME and the other codecs. Sure, CDParanoia III v9.8 works very well, but it's slow: typically the best error recovery cuts performance by at least 65%. The Paranoia news page says

"March 27, 2001

Things on hold for now: No, that doesn't mean the project is dead, just that active development is on hold while we throw all the time we have available to get OggVorbis to 1.0 in a reasonable amount of time. Once Vorbis hits 1.0, we'll get back to Paranoia."

Vorbis hit 1.0 22 months ago:

"README 1.14 22 months xiphmont That's it. Full 1.0 libVorbis code handoff to release engineering."

Of course, this is OSS, and free, to boot (pun(s) intended ;). So it's hard to demand a new version, even after 2 years. But a lot has happened, especially in performance opportunities, since that release. So where's Xiph's committment to the expectations they created with that announcement? Where's the community effort to advance this essential tech?

Hacking the paranoia lib for device performance tweaks isn't my bag, baby. I would help another, lead, developer, by testing, or higher level hacking, or project organization support, etc. This library is the bottleneck for media format freedom - everyone on unix/linux has to use it, in one form or another. That widespread use usually drives progress in OSS. Where's the love?

All these codecs work on audio data that has to come from somewhere, typically CDs. Xiph offers the standard CDDA->WAV converter that feeds LAME and the other codecs. Sure, CDParanoia III v9.8 works very well, but it's slow: typically the best error recovery cuts performance by at least 65%. The Paranoia news page says

"March 27, 2001

Things on hold for now: No, that doesn't mean the project is dead, just that active development is on hold while we throw all the time we have available to get OggVorbis to 1.0 in a reasonable amount of time. Once Vorbis hits 1.0, we'll get back to Paranoia."

Vorbis hit 1.0 22 months ago:

"README 1.14 22 months xiphmont That's it. Full 1.0 libVorbis code handoff to release engineering."

Of course, this is OSS, and free, to boot (pun(s) intended ;). So it's hard to demand a new version, even after 2 years. But a lot has happened, especially in performance opportunities, since that release. So where's Xiph's committment to the expectations they created with that announcement? Where's the community effort to advance this essential tech?

Hacking the paranoia lib for device performance tweaks isn't my bag, baby. I would help another, lead, developer, by testing, or higher level hacking, or project organization support, etc. This library is the bottleneck for media format freedom - everyone on unix/linux has to use it, in one form or another. That widespread use usually drives progress in OSS. Where's the love?

All these codecs work on audio data that has to come from somewhere, typically CDs. Xiph offers the standard CDDA->WAV converter that feeds LAME and the other codecs. Sure, CDParanoia III v9.8 works very well, but it's slow: typically the best error recovery cuts performance by at least 65%. The Paranoia news page says

"March 27, 2001

Things on hold for now: No, that doesn't mean the project is dead, just that active development is on hold while we throw all the time we have available to get OggVorbis to 1.0 in a reasonable amount of time. Once Vorbis hits 1.0, we'll get back to Paranoia."

Vorbis hit 1.0 22 months ago:

"README 1.14 22 months xiphmont That's it. Full 1.0 libVorbis code handoff to release engineering."

Of course, this is OSS, and free, to boot (pun(s) intended ;). So it's hard to demand a new version, even after 2 years. But a lot has happened, especially in performance opportunities, since that release. So where's Xiph's committment to the expectations they created with that announcement? Where's the community effort to advance this essential tech?

Hacking the paranoia lib for device performance tweaks isn't my bag, baby. I would help another, lead, developer, by testing, or higher level hacking, or project organization support, etc. This library is the bottleneck for media format freedom - everyone on unix/linux has to use it, in one form or another. That widespread use usually drives progress in OSS. Where's the love?

OK, you have a point. But check VorbisHardware for hardware with Ogg Vorbis support. Also, though Lame did well, MP3 is known to have some limitations. But if you have to use MP3, experiment --alt-preset standard in Lame. It was made to offer very good sound quality in bitrates that average below 200 kbps in most cases.

Regarding the results... It's a bit surprising that this third party tuning/tweak of Vorbis did so well. Which is great and I think Xiph should think about incorporating this work on their official encoder as soon as possible, in order to take advantage of its potential. You may be surprised about the relative low performance of AAC. This is partially due to the fact that the chosen AAC encoder was a CBR only encoder (because it was the best AAC encoder at this bitrate on a previous test - Nero encoder is also a good one and offers VBR encoder). With a good implementation of VBR AAC, it should be possible to get a better performance.

While most of the tested codecs/formats showed good performance at 128 kbps, this test alone shows that none can give transparency ( transparency == unability to distinct from the original source for most people and under good conditions) at this bitrate, contrary to what many think. People who think this is important should demand higher quality files from famous online music services (like iTunes Music Store).

People interested in lossy audio encoding should also try Musepack (file extension .mpc). It is considered by many of the hydrogenaudio enthusiasts as the best format at medium/high bitrates, offering transparency with bitrates normally lower (with standard preset ~170 kbps, typical 142 ... 184 kbps) than what is possible with other formats/codecs. It's now open source (LGPL, iirc). Its biggest disadvantage is the lack of support in portable players (though decoding musepack is faster than decoding the other formats in this test). There are plugins for almost every software player and foobar2000 (which I consider the best one) has native support for it

• Ogg Theora + SMIL 2.0 support. Sure, there are other players out there that support Ogg Theora, and support SMIL 2.0, but I'm not aware of any that support both.
• Highly modular architecture that scales down to fit on cell phones and other portable devices. We post numbers for the Symbian build, but the Linux numbers aren't far off.
• Array of industry partnerships. Why does this matter? Because we're getting more commerical licensees all of the time, and even for commercial licensees, we're making sure that the work that they do gets contributed back into the codebase, even if they are a commercial licensee (see section 2.2) and are otherwise terrified of this whole open source thang.
• Platform support - we support Win32, MacOS, Linux, Symbian very well, and a range of other operating systems to the point that those third parties can make it work on their platforms.
• A stable company with lots of money in the bank and growing revenues. Our last earnings announcement has more on this.

Rob Lanphier
Development Support Manager
RealNetworks

Vorbis-comments are ASCII only, right?

No. The field names are ACSII only (actually a printable subset minus '=') but the contents of the fields are specified as UTF-8.

The intention was you could put arbitrary binary data in there too, but there's no general mechanism for marking it as anything else. So any non-UTF-8 use would be application specific.

"OGM" is a spin-off of Ogg from some time ago which hacks together Ogg (a great stream container format) and FourCC (the codec identity field from AVI) to easily add proprietary codecs (ie, DivX, XviD, other MPEG derivatives) to Ogg. Obviously, this is not endorsed by Xiph, the creators of Ogg and Vorbis, as they don't support patent-encumbered codecs.

Also, Ogg is not an acronym, so capitalizing every letter is incorrect. This is a common mistake. :-)

Thats exactly what makes me cautious about it. If it were Xiph I'd be ecstatic. Oh, wait, thats right... Zinf is a piece of crap.

I've been to the vorbis site and listened to the ogg samples (Scroll down to the bottom and listen to the 45k/sec samples) of low bit rate compression. It sounds really good at really low bit rates. Scroll up a little and listen to the mp3s at 64 and 128, and then listen to the OGG at 64. That's the quality of mp3 at 1/2 the space.

Couldn't these companies take better advantage of the ability to play OGG files and include the compressor to actually fit more music in less space? They could advertise a player that holds "more music" in a less expensive package. Instead of advertising the storage space, advertise the number of hours of music, and compare to competitors that cost 2x as much.

It's a pity one doesn't hear about Tarkin more often

It's probably better if we concentrate on finding an alternative to JPEG and not insist on believing that gimp (and open source) wouldn't be affected by such patent stuff.

So, what do we have until now:
- PNG (doesn't work)
- JPEG 2000, part-1, ok (what's this about, anyway ?)
- What else ? It seems that there's no other option !!!

(this could be another task to xiph. maybe we could begin with one frame ogg movies :-D )

Grip pretty much sucks in terms of speed. I dunno why since it's just a GUI wrapper over standard CLI tools, but it does.

Try something better. The combination of cdparanoia and lame is the classic. From cdparanoia you get good speed, error correction, digital ripping, and from lame you get quality encoding.

If you want a graphical ripper, I've discovered a little gem called oggre (not to be mistaken for the other OGGre which is an OGG reader written in Java.

The oggre I'm talking about is an XMMS output plugin which writes OGG to files:

1. Set your CD Audio input plugin to digital mode (analog won't work with oggre).
2. Load the playlist with tracks from the CD.
3. Select all tracks and use "get advanced info" (or whatever it's called) to load info from CDDB.
4. Set oggre as the output plugin, with quality 4.99 (recommended best quality/size ratio, read the oggre README to see why).
5. Make sure the play mode is not random or loop.
6. Press play, sit back and watch ripping work at a very nice speed.

About the only thing wrong with oggre is the fact that it uses a fixed output dir, so if you want dirs named after the CD you have to make them by hand. The files, however, do use song attributes in their names.

Oh, and the guy who wrote oggre also wrote out_lame, but that one has fewer features. I don't mind choosing OGG over MP3 so I don't care.

Seems like a lot of people bitching about Ogg support. Didn't see this link posted

http://wiki.xiph.org/VorbisHardware

You'd think that with the Xiph.Org Foundation being around, they could pick a better name than 'X.Org Foundation.' Sigh.

They are a public station, and they aren't even considering Ogg Vorbis, and/or Icecast?

If we can't get even the public stations on board with free and open standards, how will we ever get those standards to spread?

Anyone who lives in the area served by that public station, please write them a letter, and ask them to look into using Ogg/Icecast. Then, instead of providing a link to the Real player, they can provide a link to Winamp. Or even Zinf.

Or maybe even Real's player. I found a bunch of old news items (from 2002) saying that Real was on board with Ogg Vorbis, and the RealOne player would play Ogg Vorbis. And it looks like the new Helix player supports Vorbis. Does Real do a good job now of playing Ogg streams? (The icecast.org web site does not list the Real players as an option, but I suppose it's possible that the web site is out of date.)

And if Real is smart, they will make their player work to play Icecast streams. I'd say the same about Microsoft and Windows Media Player, but I'll bet they can't resist the urge to try to throw roadblocks in the way of the competition.

steveha

There's hope for real-time playback, not just 80%. See here, someone is working on it again, and others think the hardware is sufficient.

As an avid WNYC listener and member, I applaud the choice to move away from Windows Media format. However, MP3 is a patented format that is not Free (as in Freedom). I am sure that I am in the minority here, but I can't help but feel that in some way I am being slighted. In my opinion, the principles involved in my choice to use Free Software on my computer are much akin to the reasons I choose to listen to Public Radio.

mp3licensing.com states:

"A license is needed for commercial (i.e., revenue-generating) use of mp3/mp3PRO in broadcast systems (terrestrial, satellite, cable and/or other distribution channels), streaming applications (via Internet, intranets and/or other networks), other content distribution systems (pay-audio or audio-on-demand applications and the like) or for use of mp3/mp3PRO on physical media (compact discs, digital versatile discs, semiconductor chips, hard drives, memory cards and the like)."

"However, no license is needed for private, non-commercial activities (e.g., home-entertainment, receiving broadcasts and creating a personal music library), not generating revenue or other consideration of any kind or for entities with an annual gross revenue less than US$ 100 000.00."

How does this apply to WNYC? I for one prefer not to have my contributions to be used to pay support this kind of thing, when it is against my social and political ideals. Especially when there are free (as in beer and speech) alternatives such as the Xiph project.

It is my hope to not second guess the current decision to standardize on MP3, but to perhaps begin a dialogue for openness in media formats in the future of public radio. For now I can live with MP3. I will have to compromise and add non-free software to my computer, for now.

The question is, with superior free codecs out there, would you really want to go back to mp3?

Vorbis is a general purpose perceptual audio CODEC intended to allow maximum encoder flexibility, thus allowing it to scale competitively over an exceptionally wide range of bitrates. At the high quality/bitrate end of the scale (CD or DAT rate stereo, 16/24 bits) it is in the same league as MPEG-2 and MPC. Similarly, the 1.0 encoder can encode high-quality CD and DAT rate stereo at below 48kbps without resampling to a lower rate. Vorbis is also intended for lower and higher sample rates (from 8kHz telephony to 192kHz digital masters) and a range of channel representations (monaural, polyphonic, stereo, quadraphonic, 5.1, ambisonic, or up to 255 discrete channels).

The list of players that support Vorbis is fairly extensive and growing all the time. The iRiver iHP series all support .ogg off the shelf and IMHO are better (and cheaper) than iPods.

The Neursos of course supports it too. It is only slightly bulkier than the iRivers and iPods but has one awesome feature: it can transmit to any FM radio. It also has software to identify a song being played.

Here is a constantly updated list of supported players.

...there is only one or two hardware ogg vorbis players out there.

Actually, depending on what you include/exclude, there are at least 20 such players

See this

Please would a moderator kindly up-moderate this comment about FLAC configuration problems which has been wrongly moderated to -1:Off-Topic. FLAC is on-topic in an article about Theora because Theora is meant be able to work with FLAC . FLAC is actually an important part of the Xiph.org project. If you haven't heard much about them, have a look at Ogg and FLAC and please re-moderate the -1 comment so it might get some replies.

I'm sorry but FLAC is not "off-topic" in an article about Theora. Theora is meant to be able to work with FLAC. FLAC is actually an important part of the Xiph.org project. If you haven't heard much about them, have a look at Ogg and FLAC

Not very surprising. Considering that both AAC and Ogg Vorbis (and possibly flac, but I can not find the page) support 5.1.(search for 'surround')

Heck, I would not be surprised if apple will push some kind of 5.1 headphones, and thus claim superiority over mp3 for portable music format.

But then again, why do I care? I do not even listen to music, and video is already AC3 (aka dolby digital surround?) encoded.

Vorbis is also intended for lower and higher sample rates (from 8kHz telephony to 192kHz digital masters) and a range of channel representations (monaural, polyphonic, stereo, quadraphonic, 5.1, ambisonic, or up to 255 discrete channels)

http://xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/doc/vorbis-spec-intro.h tml

[...] and MP3/OGG player.

I know this is both nitpicking and off topic, but "Ogg" isn't an acronym; thus shouldn't be spelled in capital letters.

see this page for more information on Xiph.org's projects' names and logos.

Actually, we made copies of our video in Ogg Theora format available, but Creative Commons chose not to link directly to the Mix Tape page.

Ogg Theora is actually very close to beta release. It's still VP3.2 with no improvements beyond adding flexibility for future improvements. The goal of this is that files made with Beta-1 will be viewable by any future player, making it suitable for archival use, but as beta's progress more optimisations will be made making it both faster and higher quality.

Once again, the URL to download the Ogg Theora versions of these videos, for those using Free Software media players, is http://xiph.org/~arc/CreativeCommons-OggTheora.tor rent

This one .torrent will download all three videos and a README explaining how to view them.

Got one better for you. The second place video, "Mixtape", is available in Ogg Theora format here courtesy her brother (who's involved with Xiph). If anyone can get the first video to play please publish how. I've been unable to get it to play with either MPlayer or Xine.

1. Click Start, go to Control Panel
2. Click Add / Remove Programs
3. Find the program entitled RealPlayer, and uninstall it
4. Run Adaware to make sure any spyware they might have installed is no longer on your machine
5. Convince people to Use better alternatives

I still hate RealPlyaer. Any sort of file format that requires me to install the company's software to use I will eternally hate, regardless of who it is. I hate Real, and I hate Quicktime. I'd ask that they both die a slow miserable death, but I honestly want them both out of the way so that more open standards will take their place faster.

...perhaps we should ask Bernard Blackham or Trent Lloyd about it.

Try going to thier site and reading What the Fuck "Ogg Vorbis" means.

Jesus, calm down! You're fiestier than Howard Dean on speed!

Just read the FAQ and all will be made clear to you.

AC.

Not to start any trouble here but... Have you ever used Ogg or looked at the codec and/or source? It is superior and compresses better while retaining the same quality as mp3. The developers are extremely intelligent and ogg is being used in many places because of its benefits. EA Games used ogg in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, ogg was used in Soul Rever 2, and in Unreal Tournament 2003. Many developers are starting to realize that it is superior. Linux is arguably superior to windows (and please no comments on GUIs) and Microsoft hired thousands of people to develop that. Just because its free doesnt mean its bad, that is a common misconception. Microsoft can hire whoever they want but they can't compete with brilliant minds across the globe collaborating to produce something better for free. Microsoft uses a ton of free source code for various things and government agencies, like the NSA, have shown that Linux and BSD are more secure and reliable. It's fairly simple to prove that Ogg is of superior quality when you put the codecs side by side.Its one thing to argue about someone's opinion on whether or not something sounds better, but you can't argue anything when comparing codecs. Its clear which is the best, and it just also happens to be free.
Regards,
Steve

Listen for yourself
Or heres the documentation proving it.

Not to start any trouble here but... Have you ever used Ogg or looked at the codec and/or source? It is superior and compresses better while retaining the same quality as mp3. The developers are extremely intelligent and ogg is being used in many places because of its benefits. EA Games used ogg in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, ogg was used in Soul Rever 2, and in Unreal Tournament 2003. Many developers are starting to realize that it is superior. Linux is arguably superior to windows (and please no comments on GUIs) and Microsoft hired thousands of people to develop that. Just because its free doesnt mean its bad, that is a common misconception. Microsoft can hire whoever they want but they can't compete with brilliant minds across the globe collaborating to produce something better for free. Microsoft uses a ton of free source code for various things and government agencies, like the NSA, have shown that Linux and BSD are more secure and reliable. It's fairly simple to prove that Ogg is of superior quality when you put the codecs side by side.Its one thing to argue about someone's opinion on whether or not something sounds better, but you can't argue anything when comparing codecs. Its clear which is the best, and it just also happens to be free.
Regards,
Steve

Listen for yourself
Or heres the documentation proving it.