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Here is a link to download a Lossless Predictive Audio Compression encoder for Linux (and the page I found it on).

PAC is very likely to be avalible for some other Unix, so it would (with a little work) probably work on Linux.

http://www.xiph.org/about.html

Good troll attempt, though.

Insightful?

People keep asking, so I'll just post it. From the name page:

The Ogg project began with a few-weekend-attempt at a simple audio compression package as part of a larger project in 1993. At the time, the software was called 'Squish'. The project and the general problem of music compression became a personal fascination, and Squish took on a life of its own far beyond the proportions of the original digital music studio project of which it was to be part.

A few months after the first Squish webpage, I received a polite but firm letter informing me that Squish is a registered trademark (for a mail transport system). Mike Whitson, a contributor to the cause in the early days, suggested the name 'OggSquish' as a replacement.

An 'Ogg' is a tactical maneuver from the network game 'Netrek' that has entered common usage in a wider sense. From the definition:

3. To do anything forcefully, possibly without consideration of the drain on future resources. "I guess I'd better go ogg the problem set that's due tomorrow." "Whoops! I looked down at the map for a sec and almost ogged that oncoming car."

(see the rest of the definition for the original Netrek usage.)

At the time Ogg was starting out, most personal computers were i386s and the i486 was new. I remember thinking about the algorithms I was considering, "Woah, that's heavyweight. People are going to need a 486 to run that..." While the software ogged the music, there wasn't much processor left for anything else.

These days, Ogg is a larger multimedia project that does not only concern compression; Squish became the name of one of the Ogg codecs. For that reason, we usually just refer to it as Ogg when there's no Netrek context nearby. The Ogg project has nothing to do with the common surname 'Ogg'. Nor is it named after 'Nanny Ogg' from the Terry Pratchett book _Wyrd Sisters_.

The 'Thor-and-the-Snake' logo is drawn somewhat from Norse mythology; the real symbolism is the sine-curve shape of the snake. Thor is hefting Mjollnir about to compress the periodic signal Jörmungandr... See, it all makes sense.

Vorbis, on the other hand is named after the Terry Pratchett character from the book _Small Gods_. The name holds some significance, but it's an indirect, uninteresting story.

The Ogg project has nothing to do with the common surname 'Ogg'. Nor is it named after 'Nanny Ogg' from the Terry Pratchett book _Wyrd Sisters_.
...
Vorbis, on the other hand is named after the Terry Pratchett character from the book _Small Gods_.

The Ogg project has nothing to do with the common surname 'Ogg'. Nor is it named after 'Nanny Ogg' from the Terry Pratchett book _Wyrd Sisters_.
...
Vorbis, on the other hand is named after the Terry Pratchett character from the book _Small Gods_.

The extention is .ogg

Monty

Well from the copyrights at the top of the code I've looked at, a chap by the name of Monty has done all the work.

I think Moffit is working on implementing OggVorbis into icecast, but I seriously doubt he's "overseeing the project", as in leading it.

-Jon

(Is the image of hugging a penguin as disturbing to you as it is to me? :-)

Monty

There's also a page here about Vorbis and one about Ogg in general.

There's also a page here about Vorbis and one about Ogg in general.

There's also a page here about Vorbis and one about Ogg in general.

Just download this file and compare the same file encoded with Vorbis to an MP3 and find out for yourself if you want numbers. Remember to test with a varity of files; every codec has strengths and weaknesses, though these should be basically similar.

and finally..

Coincidentally enough, I'm actually looking to do this with 2+ analog cell phones with modems attached, so I can transmit a live voice Ogg Vorbis stream in the field to a relay station at high quality. ;)

How about setting up Multilink PPP? That's what it's designed for. Have two or more modems at your new office dial into your current office using the MP patch to pppd, and poof, instant channel bonding type stuff.

The other suggestion someone had (on the linux-router mailing list, actually) was to use BGP to split up your data between two or more links (multi-homing). I don't know how that works, though.

--Vito

Vorbis uses every listed Algorithm in the top ten, from Monte Carlo for codebook train to Fast Multipole Method for LPC fitting.

Ha! Lets see mp3 beat that!

For those who are unaware, Vorbis is a nifte patent free alternitave to MP3, it offers native VBR and better quality.

Ok, saying "MP3 wacks out music's treble and bass" is pretty inaccurate.

The overall frequency response of MP3 is essentially flat. If you do the standard audio tests of sine waves at various frequencies, you'll get basically perfect fidelity. That's because sine tones are not very complex and thus compress very well.

MP3, like all lossy compression schemes, removes information complexity from the signal, so that it fits into a much smaller bitrate channel. The function of the magical "psycho-acoustic model" is to separate out the complexity that you can hear easily (for example, the attack on a snare drum) from complexity that you can't (ie small signals at frequencies that are close to frequency peaks, so are masked out). At any given bitrate, MP3 encodes as much as possible of the former signal and ditches the rest. The higher the bitrate, the more gets encoded.

Now, that said, at 128kbps, the better quality MP3 encoders suppress frequencies higher than 16kHz. The reasoning for this is very sound: most people (myself included) can't hear these frequencies at all. Nonetheless, because they're up there in the frequency spectrum, they can encode quite a bit of informational complexity - in fact, the 16kHz to 22.05 kHz band has almost exactly enough bandwidth to encode two telephone conversations. By ditching this band, the MP3 encoder gets rid of a lot of informational complexity that generally can't be heard anyway, leaving more for the actual music.

If you insist that you can hear near-ultrasonics, then simply encode at 160kbps, or use a better encoding format than MP3, such as Vorbis.

Speaking of which, my understanding is that MPEG-4 is absolutely riddled with patent problems. I'm surprised this wasn't mentioned in the article. If you rush to adopt MPEG-4, you've given up the right to whine about big evil corps and their patents - it's you who's adopted patented technology. Support a free video codec instead.

First, LAME was not developed in a "clean room" at all; it's based on the ISO reference code, which is horribly buggy and far from optimal. Blade is based on the same code, but doesn't have anywhere nearly the same level of work put into it.

Second, while cleanroom techniques are a fine defense against copyrights, they make no difference whatsoever for patents. So the idea of starting a new cleanroom MP3 encoder project wouldn't really help matters.

What would, though, is the creation of a new format that is free of intellectual property problems. While you're at it, wouldn't it be nice if it included amplitude shaping to make transients sound crisper, and used a few other techniques to achieve better quality compression with MP3? Oh, and why not lots of work integrating it into free software tools such as XMMS? Why doesn't somebody do this?

Ah yes, they have, they have.

Nobody forced you to adopt the standard. Now that Vorbis is out, there's an excellent alternative to MP3, both technically superior and free of intellectual property problems.

Ok, so there isn't a huge archive of illegal vorbis files available on Napster/Gnutella. Yet. Maybe you'll have to sacrifice a little convenience and have a little patience, just in order to stand up for what's right. It's your choice, though.

Like many of you, the Ogg Vorbis project was just brought to my attention this evening. The project aims to replace MP3 as a standard audio compression system. In light of the current MP3 patent issues I decided to download the CVS code and give it a whirl.

Building the Code
The Vorbis library and examples compiled without error. Included in the CVS code examples is an encoder and a decoder. An Xmms plugin is also included, but does not get built from the main Makefile. Simply cd xmms && make and it compiles just fine.

The Objective
My objective here was to test the encoder, so I popped my Weird Al "bad hair day" CD in and ripped track 10 to a 16 bit, stereo 44100 Hz WAV file. I then `cat`ed this file to the Vorbis encoder and sent the output to larry.ogg. For the sake of a decent comparison, I bladeenc'd the same WAV file to a 128k 44.1 MP3 file.

Findings
The .ogg file turned out to be about a meg larger, weighing in at 4720244 bytes. The sound quality was good. I couldn't tell the difference between the .ogg file and the MP3, using mediocre audio hardware and the Vorbis Xmms plugin.

Conclusion
In conclusion I can honestly say that Ogg Vorbis impressed me. The project has yet to release a stable version, and the sound quality is already in place. Since the Vorbis team is still ironing out the code, little if any optimizations have been done. Once the code is optimized the .ogg output file should be much closer to the size of the MP3.

Implications
The Ogg Vorbis project has given us a royalty/restriction-free alternative to MP3. I believe that the one thing that this project lacks is exposure. Once people realize that a "libre" alternative is available, usage will increase. With usage comes bug reports, developers, third-party utilities and peer review.

Availability
The Vorbis website is housed at: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis

Ogg Vorbis is an unencumbered audio compression format with a reference library under Lesser GPL. The format is frozen; when 1.0 comes out, we can Burn All MP3s (the domain is available) like we burned all GIFs.

Vorbis !

Without any further ado, I refer you to my earlier comments, this, which references this.

Bug me for Vorbis Tools 0.5 binaries via email. I've been having trouble with the web-based server I've been trying to use.

Kenneth, Vorbize, Ogg123, and mp3tovorbis author

Everybody talks about MP3 when they talk about music on the Web. MP3 seems ubiquitous. Well, so does Windows. But as was discussed in earlier articles, MP3 has shaky legal standings as purely an audio format, without going into all this copyright junk. So might I refer you to the Linux / BSD of compressed music? It's called Vorbis, and we discussed it on Slashdot in an earlier article (here). I would rant on about how it is better, but I already have. To save you the read unless you want to, I refer you to my earlier comment here.

Vorbis Tools 0.5 is about to go out, as soon as my web server will accept my upload! In the mean time, bother me if you want tarballs. And of course you do ;)

Hmm.. I'm not sure how the Brandenburg article is about "troubles", but anyhow...

In an age when it is possible to become a multimillionaire on the strength of a half-baked idea, Brandenburg has done the unthinkable: He has failed to reap either wealth or publicity from his role in the creation of a staggeringly successful technology.

Although the Fraunhofer Institute has received millions of dollars in licensing fees from its patents on the MP3 algorithms, Brandenburg has seen only a tiny portion of the revenues.

I get the impression that this guy's motivation for innovating was rather unrelated to the promise of a temporary monopoly, thanks to the patent. So what useful purpose did the patent serve in this case?

ObPlug: Ogg Vorbis

Of course, the whole idea of International Standards that can't be used by anyone is patently (heh) ridiculous. How to deal with this, I have no idea, short of creating a new codec that rivals MPEG-4, which is no easy task. Perhaps we can find a way to make our voice heard to the various lawyers deciding licensing, but I'd rate that as a rather low chance of success.

If truly open standards are to persist much into the next century, it is critical that patented methodologies be explicitly excluded from consideration at the get-go. Furthermore, methodologies which become patented down the road (for which there is no prior art - e.g. there is a patent application pending which no one is aware of) would be immediately disqualified or marked as "tainted" and replaced with an unencumbered equivelent.

To achieve this we need to dump the ISO as a standards body. This wouldn't be as difficult or traumatic as one might think - they are not know for creating great technical standards (remember the virtually unimplimentable, horribly ineffecient, and none too soon defunct OSI "seven layers"?).

I would submit that we should use and expand the auspices of the Internet Engineering Task Force, with a specific addendum to the charter prohibiting proprietary and patent-encumbered technologies from being considered, much less defined into, any open standard whatsoever.

More to the immediate point, we do need to develope our own standards and codecs (see OggVorbis and the nascient Open Video Disc mailing list for examples.

We need to take back our standards on both the implementation (defacto) front and the institutional (IETF vs. ISO) front.

it's hard to vote with your pocketbook when there's no competition.

There is competition, and it's on two fronts.

First, the consumer can choose not to deal with the retailers. Just as an example, specialized places like Century Media sell for $11 per CD for things on their label, and $12 on other labels. And of course, CDs from mp3.com is even cheaper and carries a much wider variety of genres. These also have a secondary advantage in that they have a lot more selection that Best Buy. I recall browsing through Best Buy several times, and for all the CDs they had, they just didn't .. well .. have anything.

The second front of competition is one that is still just emerging, thanks to technology and The Internet. The creators of music have the option of not dealing with the big media companies. Independent production is possible now without requiring too much capital, and The Internet is capable of competely obliterating the distribution problem. Musicians have a choice of whether to deal through the big labels and retailers, or going indy and selling other ways. Up to now, that choice has been quite lopsided. But that's changing fast, and it may soon be lopsided in the other direction.

I suppose one might argue (as many have) that the MP3 explosion did represent a popular response to the problem. But that too is outside the libertarian system which, if I recall, does respect IP.

Keep in mind that there's two sides to the MP3 explosion. It's not just about disrespecting IP (as mp3.com showed prior to their dumb idea of offering the my.mp3.com service). I don't see any reason why MP3s (or something like them, such as Ogg Vorbis files) cannot be sold, and they've already proven themselves for marketing and promotion outside of the megacorps' channels (MTV, radio, etc).

(BTW, although I consider myself pretty libertarian, I must admit that I'm sometimes stumped as to how the market can fix certain types of problems. I just think that the current music situation isn't one of those cases.)

A lot of the arguments in this discussion seem to center around the legality of MP3 encoders like LAME. Some people contend that all MP3 encoders are illegal. To avoid all this big mess, I propose that the open-* people among us adopt a different and superior, IMHO, format, which would be Vorbis. We discussed this format earlier on Slashdot, but I think it deserves being brought up again.

For a little background, Ogg Vorbis is a completely open format with no patent issues or other messiness. It was developed by Xiphophorus. Theoretically, Vorbis has a higher quality than MP3 at almost all bitrates. For more information, see the FAQ on the page I linked to above.

I have modified the example encoder in the CVS tree to make it much more user-friendly, added detection for the WAV header, put in a status display, etc. My modified encoder is called Vorbize. XMMS and WinAMP plugins are available.

I encourage everyone who believes in open formats to use Vorbis. It's Just Better (TM).

Remember, just because Everybody Else uses [Windows|Mac] doesn't mean we shouldn't use [Linux|BSD|whatever]. Apologies to Mac users.

A lot of the arguments in this discussion seem to center around the legality of MP3 encoders like LAME. Some people contend that all MP3 encoders are illegal. To avoid all this big mess, I propose that the open-* people among us adopt a different and superior, IMHO, format, which would be Vorbis. We discussed this format earlier on Slashdot, but I think it deserves being brought up again.

For a little background, Ogg Vorbis is a completely open format with no patent issues or other messiness. It was developed by Xiphophorus. Theoretically, Vorbis has a higher quality than MP3 at almost all bitrates. For more information, see the FAQ on the page I linked to above.

I have modified the example encoder in the CVS tree to make it much more user-friendly, added detection for the WAV header, put in a status display, etc. My modified encoder is called Vorbize. XMMS and WinAMP plugins are available.

I encourage everyone who believes in open formats to use Vorbis. It's Just Better (TM).

Remember, just because Everybody Else uses [Windows|Mac] doesn't mean we shouldn't use [Linux|BSD|whatever]. Apologies to Mac users.

Since DivX is based on the over-patented MPEG4 standard. What we really need is a fully free format to play highly compressed motion pictures something like Ogg/Vorbis, only for video instead. Actually the future goal of the ogg project, is a complete set of free, open multimedia formats, with corresponding free (like in (l?)gpl) libraries.

Btw, as I have understood it, Microsoft's implementation of MPEG4 is open, but only to developers who have paid a huge um, and that have signed a head-cutting nda.

In 10 years nobody will be impressed with perceptual audio coding (which is really only a variant of perceptual video coding [ie. jpeg]). And everybody will be pissed because it's patented.

Here is a nonpatented perceptual audio coding system from xiph.org.

what's to stop them from pulling a unisys and start charging fees for every use of mp3s? Nothing, AFAIK...

Wide acceptance of Xiph.org's Ogg Vorbis audio compression technology, that's what.

On a low quality CD-ROM drive (in other words, 99% of the drives out on the market), there is no way to control precisely from what point an audio packet is read. One consequence is that two different attempts at audio extraction will almost certainly start from different offsets, resulting in two audio extractions that differ by a shift of bits. If this shift is accounted for, the two extractions should be exactly the same.

Note that positioning inaccuracies in the middle of reading a track can be corrected, simply by comparing the result with the previous read and scanning for any overlap of data. This process is known as "jitter correction." However, there is no way to correct inaccuracies at the start of a read, since there is no previous data to compare against.

Different drives have different statistical distributions of offsets, which explains the differences that you report when comparing copies extracted with different drives. Again, up to shifting, the two copies should be the same. If they aren't, at least one of the drives is defective.

It's very true that two wildly different copies can sound exactly the same to human ears, but on any half-decent CD-ROM hardware every extracted copy of a track should be identical except for the offsets mentioned above.

On a low quality CD-ROM drive (in other words, 99% of the drives out on the market), there is no way to control precisely from what point an audio packet is read. One consequence is that two different attempts at audio extraction will almost certainly start from different offsets, resulting in two audio extractions that differ by a shift of bits. If this shift is accounted for, the two extractions should be exactly the same.

Note that positioning inaccuracies in the middle of reading a track can be corrected, simply by comparing the result with the previous read and scanning for any overlap of data. This process is known as "jitter correction." However, there is no way to correct inaccuracies at the start of a read, since there is no previous data to compare against.

Different drives have different statistical distributions of offsets, which explains the differences that you report when comparing copies extracted with different drives. Again, up to shifting, the two copies should be the same. If they aren't, at least one of the drives is defective.

It's very true that two wildly different copies can sound exactly the same to human ears, but on any half-decent CD-ROM hardware every extracted copy of a track should be identical except for the offsets mentioned above.

Actually, according to the site, "Ogg" is not related to any novels, though "Vorbis" is.

"The Ogg project has nothing to do with the common surname 'Ogg'. Nor is it named after 'Nanny Ogg' from the Terry Pratchett book _Wyrd Sisters_."
...
"Vorbis, on the other hand is named after the Terry Pratchett character from the book _Small Gods_. The name holds some significance, but it's an indirect, uninteresting story."

Also, for references, see the most recent mail archive article on that subject.

Monty

The name of the format is 'Ogg'. Just 'Ogg'. It has less unique characters than 'mp3' and can be pronounced in one syllable. Where I come from, that counts as pretty easy. Try it.

• "Fish"
• "Cat"
• "Ogg"

...and the file extention is *also* .ogg. In the future when you get an ogg file, you know an .ogg player will handle it. How could you get simpler?

But wait! There's More!

...well, no, actually, there isn't. Anything more would make this harder, and we're all about 'easy'!

Monty xiph.org

I'm taking time to answer a few questions as it seems a number of vocal folks have started posting without looking at the Vorbis web pages first. Practically every question and musing here is addressed there...

First off, I wasn't ready for this. Vorbis is not at release, although I hope that will be soon. I'm not releasing before it's ready.... and it isn't quite ready. Most of the fun stuff has been going on on a CVS branch; the mainline is only a functional, stable, dull, unimpressive version for starting application work. That way when Vorbis *is* released, all the Sonique, XMMS, Winamp, kmpg and Freeamp folks will have to do is recompile.

Second, the name 'Xiphophorus'; the organization is a democracy and I was outvoted. I personally like to emphasize 'xiph.org'. I rather Like 'Ogg' and 'Vorbis' though. Oh, and it's not Jesus spanking a snake. It's Thor, Mjollnir and Jörmungandr. I have a page about the names/logos; go read it.

Lastly, distributing hacked up encoders right now is fine, but keep in mind, that as soon as the new psychoacoustic engine is merged into the CVS main branch the bitstream format will change. The change is minor, but it will break existsing streams. That will happen this week, so you don't need to contain your enthusiasm too long :-)

Monty
xiph.org

I'm taking time to answer a few questions as it seems a number of vocal folks have started posting without looking at the Vorbis web pages first. Practically every question and musing here is addressed there...

First off, I wasn't ready for this. Vorbis is not at release, although I hope that will be soon. I'm not releasing before it's ready.... and it isn't quite ready. Most of the fun stuff has been going on on a CVS branch; the mainline is only a functional, stable, dull, unimpressive version for starting application work. That way when Vorbis *is* released, all the Sonique, XMMS, Winamp, kmpg and Freeamp folks will have to do is recompile.

Second, the name 'Xiphophorus'; the organization is a democracy and I was outvoted. I personally like to emphasize 'xiph.org'. I rather Like 'Ogg' and 'Vorbis' though. Oh, and it's not Jesus spanking a snake. It's Thor, Mjollnir and Jörmungandr. I have a page about the names/logos; go read it.

Lastly, distributing hacked up encoders right now is fine, but keep in mind, that as soon as the new psychoacoustic engine is merged into the CVS main branch the bitstream format will change. The change is minor, but it will break existsing streams. That will happen this week, so you don't need to contain your enthusiasm too long :-)

Monty
xiph.org

I'm taking time to answer a few questions as it seems a number of vocal folks have started posting without looking at the Vorbis web pages first. Practically every question and musing here is addressed there...

First off, I wasn't ready for this. Vorbis is not at release, although I hope that will be soon. I'm not releasing before it's ready.... and it isn't quite ready. Most of the fun stuff has been going on on a CVS branch; the mainline is only a functional, stable, dull, unimpressive version for starting application work. That way when Vorbis *is* released, all the Sonique, XMMS, Winamp, kmpg and Freeamp folks will have to do is recompile.

Second, the name 'Xiphophorus'; the organization is a democracy and I was outvoted. I personally like to emphasize 'xiph.org'. I rather Like 'Ogg' and 'Vorbis' though. Oh, and it's not Jesus spanking a snake. It's Thor, Mjollnir and Jörmungandr. I have a page about the names/logos; go read it.

Lastly, distributing hacked up encoders right now is fine, but keep in mind, that as soon as the new psychoacoustic engine is merged into the CVS main branch the bitstream format will change. The change is minor, but it will break existsing streams. That will happen this week, so you don't need to contain your enthusiasm too long :-)

Monty
xiph.org

I guess no one actually read the FAQ.

The current implementation is for the purpose of getting it all working. Optimization to follow.

Some apply logic and crawl before they attempt to run.

See the FAQ

-Peter

I just wanted to say that you guys have the coolest logo ever!

As near as I can tell, it's Jesus spanking a snake with a lit sparkler. Ogg, the symbolism!!

At least the folks at xiph.org are working on doing this for audio,
so we can have a free replacement for MP3/Real Audio.

Video, I'd guess, would be an even huger task.

At least the folks at xiph.org are working on doing this for audio,
so we can have a free replacement for MP3/Real Audio.

Video, I'd guess, would be an even huger task.

Do you mean "Ogg"? :)

The Ogg project is as much about research as it is about coding - it looks like they're combing through existing signal processing research to come up with something that's patent-free.

With the ultra-bare-bones example encoder, I've encoded some songs - it sounds quite nice, at least as good as MP3, maybe a little better to my ears. Currently it only seems to do VBR streams, but I assume that will change in the future - the goal is to allow specifying fixed or variable rates, with floors and ceilings for VBR.

It'll be interesting to see if they make a video codec...

--

There already is a project to create an open, patent-free audio format: Ogg, from the people who brought you CDParanoia. Check it out and contribute if you can.
---

There already is a project to create an open, patent-free audio format: Ogg, from the people who brought you CDParanoia. Check it out and contribute if you can.
---

If you want to see a patent free-audio codec that should end up getting twice the compression of MPEG 1-2.5 Layer 3, check out the OGG Vorbis codec at http://www.xiph.org.