Slashdot Mirror
Ogg Vorbis And Xiphophorus
mental666 writes: "Ogg Vorbis is a fully open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free general purpose compressed audio format for high
quality (44.1-48.0kHz, 16+ bit, polyphonic) audio and music at fixed and variable bitrates from 16 to 128 kbps/channel. This
places Vorbis in the same class as audio representations including MPEG-1 audio layer 3, MPEG-4 audio (AAC and
TwinVQ), and PAC. It sounds great; I've tried it and while the file size is slightly larger than mp3, the quality is there. There's also an xmms plugin in the cvs module. For details check out The Xiph Web site."
Can we do it? I like the new default threshold of 1.
I think he/she mean't can he/she listen to Oggs while giving/receving a pearl necklace.
Then you could actually get a working version, and an official announcement.
I don't think the CVS code is the latest and greatest.
As for:
"And while the file size is slightly larger than mp3, the quality is there.",
I don't quite know what that means. 128kbs the same size as 128kbs,
except for header.
> if it is the same, then it would seem to me that mp3 still comes out on top, supporting variable
> bitrates of up to at least 256kbps vs. this format's 128kbps limit
The format does not have a 128kbps limit. They are initially trying to get good output at that data rate so that's what they're mostly testing.
> can anyone give some insight as to the advantage of this format?
You won't get sued for using the encoder.
But most (all?) of them were closed, and therefore dead ends. If Product X is the only program that will ever use Codec X, then Codec X is useless. Openness matters. That why I don't have any way to playback Windows Media format, QuickTime, or RealAudio on my computer. I have treated MP3 as open and have many tools for making/playing MP3s, but all along, I have lied to myself and known that I was living in denial: some day, Fraunhofer could, conceivably, take MP3 away.
Actually, that requires a little bit of a correction... a 128k MP3 stream is NOT 2 64k channels as there is a differential signal generated from the (relatively small) difference between L and R, which is then separately compressed from the mono signal.
Monty - Fantastic work. So many said that developing fancy encoders required years of research and millions of funding. You have proved them wrong. Thank you. But as a bit of insurance, how about asking that the code be mirrored widely, just in case the RIAA causes trouble...
I hope you do not get discouraged by all the weenies on slashdot who complain about the name, its lack of market share and things they don't comprehend. As if GNU or YACC or bash are normal names. Unencumbered multimedia stuff is vitally important.
Sigh - slashdot seems to be deteriorating by the day. The real Linux crowd seems to have disappeared long ago and has been replaced by BSD weenies with personality disorders (I am soo l33t@freebsd.org), BeOS wannabees on LSD (who do not know the difference between latency and bandwidth even if an aircraft carrier would mug them), rag mag journalists (that means you ZDNET), industry analysists (spit) and microsoft PR staff. Time to leave.
There is a link at the bottom of the vorbis faq page titled "the Thor-and-the-snake logo" - so I would presume the logo is actually of Thor, not Jesus - and it would be a hammer - not a sparkler. I still love the logo! Slothmonster
Yeah, "Motion Picture Experts Group 1 Layer 3" is a much better name.
The c't magazine recently conducted two studies with blind tests and found that the vast majority of testers could not even hear the difference between CD audio and MP3 audio.
A format that produces larger files than MP3 doesn't really sound attractive to me.
Yes, we have RA, .mp3, and a few others that I can't think off of the top of my head, but even a free/openly lisensed implememtation won't fly at this point unless it sounds better than mp3. As others have pointed out, mp3 is the high card, the player to beat, and free alone won't cut it here.
Will it be used? Probably. Will it be the big thing mp3 is? Odds are not.
David
bash: ispell: command not found
This sig left intentionally blank.
So standards that incorporate privately-held IP can function to get a big system (as cellular needs) accepted. Maybe they are not appropriate in all situations, but they can be useful.
The mechanism that you described has a name -- corruption.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Would you have the government act alone to devise a cellular standard? Or perhaps there should be a popular vote? Or perhaps government should stay out of it completely, and we should allow Microsoft to "invent" it?
Goverment should support an independent standards body that oversees the standardization process and ensures that no secret and patent-encumbered standards are acceped.
It worked just fine for the Internet.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Oh phoo, just give me Ogg ;)
Only a bit- disk space issues. I have only two 2.1g IBM SCSI hard drives, each of which is partitioned in thirds. I've managed to fit a Linux install into one of the thirds. I wasn't aware I could even _get_ a BeOS for PowerMac anymore, short of going out and buying it. To make matters worse I'm running a G3 upgrade on it :)
Then, reading the inventor's interview, I was blown away by how good his attitude was. He GPLs: I GPL. He _specifically_ and eloquently objects to the notion of 'security features'. He's clearly coming from an audiophile sort of place- I'd given up hope of finding that in compressed digital music at _all_- I currently like mp3s because they distort pretty smoothly and unaggressively, the attempt to deliver 'bright clear spectacular highs' will inevitably produce horrid distortions and breakup, just as it does in hardware and analog audio, only much worse. Now here's somebody with an actual clue concerning himself with issues that mean a great deal to me! Wow. I kinda like that.
My take on the matter as an active and increasingly prolific net musician is this: I'm happily using mp3 128bit from BladeEnc, partly because I dislike the notion that I have to shell out big bucks to Xing or somebody (no laughing in the back there! I hear Xing is actually pretty unmusical, 'flashy' sonically) just in order to produce my work- also I know mp3 is well established, and again it degrades kind of euphonically compared to some stuff I've heard.
CD audio is _already_ severely severely compromised. It is. I can't get over how people get into these arguments over what sounds better or worse and miss how degraded CD sound already is... I would say with my recent work, it is about the same degradation in quality going to 44.1/16 as it is going to 128k BladeEnc. I'm not fooling- this is due to my use of a customised 48/20 ADAT with custom coupling caps throughout the analog board, combined with the removing of all the (wave soldered!) anal hiss control caps which are only there to change the op-amp noise levels from -104db to -73252346 db for crazed silence freaks ;) oh, and it feeds a custom analog board through custom cabling into the computer's A/D converters through more custom cabling. (To hear all this working, listen to songs off "anima", which uses the whole setup- expect the beginnings of a techno album soon. The album "Hard Vacuum", which is pure Noise, is actually even harder on an encoder, recorded direct to 44.1/16 and I kept the masters...)
Which is to say, I _know_ mp3 is quite flawed. I can mix and master to make this as unintrusive as possible, but it's still on a level with very good cassette tape (say, Nakamichi Dragon decks) at its best. That can be quite listenable. It can also be useful- when you start dealing with very high transparency equipment like I use, the performances have to be at a higher level, and it's easy to fake yourself out by mixing so that the slightest mistakes become obvious. If you record pretty dry it can be very unforgiving, though real punchy and involving- there's no room for error at all. I do this and then mix to 44.1/16 and then mp3 and by the time that's done, it's much harder to find flaws because the transparency just isn't there anymore :)
However, I will still be among the first to go with Nanny Ogg (gotta love the pterry references! Didn't even clue to this right away) and will even do special high-resolution mixes tailored to stress the new format to the limit- given two things.
- tools that run on a PowerMac, or which can be easily built in MPW, which I'd be willing to struggle with for the cause- I'm _no_ C programmer. I'm a drummer
;) (well, and bassist and guitar player etc etc etc) - somewhere to PUT the damned music. I have 177.1 megs of _compressed_ music on the Web at mp3.com, _all_ freely downloadable. That is orders of magnitude beyond what I can get for my own website, which I'm quite happy with for what it is, but it charges $1 a meg, roughly, and I'm paying $45 a month all things considered.
I like to think I am the poster child for audiophile geeknessI _like_ hearing about this stuff. I hope this works out. I hope this sees Slashdot again and somebody comes up with a Mac version of the programs, no matter how klugey, so I can work with the format and see what I can get out of it.
Count me in- just so happens that the contract with mp3.com is NONEXCLUSIVE rights to my recordings. If anyone sets up an Ogg Music site, I can right now throw five albums of original material on it, producing custom mixes (which I needed to do anyway for a private 'audiophile CD' project I was working on) and at least some material (Extended Play, Hard Vacuum, and anima) of very demanding audiophile quality to show off the format. All I need is the web space and the software...
(*g* dare I say it, wouldn't it be cool if I was some kinda bigshot on mp3.com by the time this happens? I'd _loooove_ to be on some sort of Successful MP3.com Musician soapbox when I start saying these things like 'use GPLed codecs' and 'no secure format bullshit' and 'there's this format called Ogg' ;) Therefore, I would be thrilled if people went and downloaded music from http://www.mp3.com/ChrisJ which is all free as in beer and speech (meaning, if you want a sample from it I'll actually let you sample individual instruments off my master tapes with my total blessing and cooperation, instead of being a dick and forbidding it), and which is fine music and great for showing off stereos and much of it makes for a nifty Bass Test, especially "Koala" which has huge warm fretless bass and a nearly subsonic string pedal tone to freak people out with... end parenthesis)
Sounds good. I wonder how long it'll take for the RIAA to file a lawsuit and get an injunction banning its distribution?
Yes, this is news. And here's the story:
mental666 writes: "Ogg Vorbis is a fully open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free general purpose compressed
audio format for high quality (44.1-48.0kHz, 16+ bit, polyphonic) audio and music at fixed and variable bitrates from 16
to 128 kbps/channel. This places Vorbis in the same class as audio representations including MPEG-1 audio layer 3,
MPEG-4 audio (AAC and TwinVQ), and PAC. It sounds great; I've tried it and while the file size is slightly larger than
mp3, the quality is there. There's also an xmms plugin in the cvs module. For details check out The Xiph Web site."
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Goddamn, the Slashdot people are stupid. They forgot to ask you what they should post again!
Oh wait...come to think of it, this was the first time I'd ever read about it...and I'm interested. Suppose it wasn't that irrelevant or redundant after all.
Slashdot compiles info and links that folks submit and puts them in the news section. Heh, what's CNN supposed to do--fabricate news, due to the fear that YOU already saw a similar story on some other network that might be similar? No. They go ahead and report it, knowing that a vast majority of folks will see/read it and say "Ooh, really? I hadn't heard that yet."
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Looser? As in looser clothes? Looser woman? Looser briefs? Looser T-Shirts? Looser wing-nuts? What, man, WHAT?
Oh, and to reply in kind, in the same sort of language you used:
I am going to bed.
That is what I am going to do.
I am going to work at 4:30 in the morning.
4:30 is between 4:00 and 5:00.
My daddy told me so.
It is dark at 4:30.
I get real scared.
I wet myself.
But I am at work at 4:30 for a reason.
I have a life.
I have to work.
I just read Slashdot when I am not at work.
My boss does not like Slashdot.
I do not get work done when I read Slashdot.
I do not have fun at work.
But I get laid when I go home.
I am married.
I have fun at home.
I have sex!
Sex is fun.
Sex makes babies.
Daddy told me so.
My wife takes little pills so we don't make babies.
She does this because we have sex!
Sex is fun.
Changing diapers is not fun.
Mommy and daddy told me so.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
My God, why did we invent a way to make fire? Why clubs? Why do we no longer live in caves and dig with our fingernails in the dirt for tasty grubs? Why do we speak? So certain boring people can become early adopters?
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Why do we need the Internet? We have telephones!
Why do we need telephnes? We have telegraphs!
Why do we need telegraphs? We have trains!
Why do we need trains? We have buggies!
Why do we need buggies? We have saddles for horses?
Why do we need saddles? We have horses' backs!
Why do we need horses' backs? We have our legs to walk!
Why do we need to walk? We can crawl!
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Shame on you, Tounge-Twister and the Slashdot crew.
At least five, possibly six, avid Slashdot readers already knew about Ogg Vorbis. Who cares that there were countless other readers who actually saw this as new news--I being among the countless others--those five, possibly six, were far more important.
Also, at least four readers found this story to be completely irrelevant. I mean, Good Lord, you're writing about open technology and technological innovation! How dare you put stories about open-source technolog innovation on a technology news site! I for one found it very informative and relevant, but, my God, you so inconsiderately posted something that four or five folks found totally irrelevant.
Don't think that my optimism or enthusiasm for the content of this post fool you--I'm shocked, appalled, and dismayed that you failed to realize that the whole of the universe revolves around five, possibly six, individuals with nothing better to do than sit at their computer, surfing the Web instead of innovating.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
I know it's a lot to ask of a slashdot editor, but I think that they ought to be reading competing tech sites, and avoiding "me too" postings-- or at least crediting other sites with the scoop.
The Advogato interview was brilliant, representing hours of effort, while the slashdot post was just a link to the project homepage.
Again, I know it's a lot to ask, but remember-- the slashdot editors are getting paid now, so I think it's reasonable to ask them to behave professionally-- and a professional news editor is expected to keep a very close eye on the competition (not just to give credit where credit is due, but to stay on top of the breaking stories that his or her reporters inevitably miss).
People use BladEnc because there are so many old, non-updated web pages (I wouldn't call them sites) out there that recommend it. Nevermind the fact that bladenc-encoded music sounds like it is being piped through a flatulent weasel-- if a brief web search says it's best, then by gum, it must be the best.
Ahh, this is entirely true, but what caused me to switch to alternate audio formats is the fact that most people don't know/care what is encoding their MP3s, and most people don't use fraunhofer or lame (which to me are the 2 best sounding MP3 encoders). Thus, most of the files floating around on the net sound like crap. (Or at the very least have very audible distortion that bugs me).
-MoOsEb0y
Players are one thing. There are plenty of GPL'd playerrs.
Encoders are another matter entirely. Thanks to one particularly gluttonous company by the name of Fraunhoefer (did I spell that right?) you cannot make any encoder without paying them truly obscene amounts of money.
LAME is NOT an encoder, and for a very good reason. It would have to pay these royalties to Fraunhoefer if it were. It gets by because it's a patch to the ISO reference code.
Frankly, this is a major problem with ISO. It shouldn't be accepting patent-encumbered stuff as standards. If it's to be an international standard, it shouldn't be something that can be controlled by any one entity, as MP3 is due to our scumbag racketeer friends. Something really ought to be done about that. The whole point of ISO is that these standards are supposed to be open, when corporations would love to make them anything but.
The bitrate is the quality of the audio, not the amount of compression.
Since this apparently dosen't compress the audio as much as mp3 does, it requires a larger filesize in order to maintain the same quality level of the audio.
Maybe I'm wrong.
Hm.
Thanks for the props.
/. days after it first breaks, whether on Advogato or one of the other free software news sites.
I sent an email to Roblimo immediately after posting the interview. I have no idea what's going on inside Slashdot these days, but from the outside, it looks pretty fucked. A typical story makes it to
Incidentally, I generally check Slashdot, Lwn, and Kuro5hin at least once a day, and post links when appropriate.
ObOnTopic: I tried the CVS Vorbis encoder two weeks ago on a set of files, including some music that MP3 did a relatively poor job on, and was very impressed by the overall quality at 128kbps (64kbps/channel). I'm looking forward to the release of the new psychoacoustic model, as that promises to make Vorbis dramatically better than MP3 for comparable bitrates.
That said, a great many people either can't hear the difference or don't care. How else can you explain the fact that so many people use BladeEnc or one of the barely-modified ISO coders when LAME is so much better?
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
["The Detroit String Quartet played Brahms last night. Brahms lost." -- Bennet Cerf]
:)
I'm surprised that you are so manaical about your analog equipment, but are basically satisfied with BladeEnc. To me, BladeEnc at 128k distorts the music enough to detract from my listening enjoyment, and I can even hear the artifacts at 256k.
If you're going to be doing MP3 encoding at 128kbps, use LAME. LAME is without a doubt the best free MP3 coder in existence. The differences between LAME and BladeEnc at 128kbps are striking, and it's pretty close to Fraunhofer's quality.
I can hear distortion in 128kbps MP3's generated by LAME (and Fraunhofer, too, for that matter), but only if I listen. It's perfectly adequate for everyday listening. So I usually encode at 160kbps, at which point I cannot hear the difference. 160kbps also gets past the >16kHz cutoff of 128kbps MP3. (and here you are bitching about the loss of sound quality from the CD's 44.1kHz sampling rate!)
Based on listening to the CVS version a couple of weeks ago, I fully expect that the production version of Vorbis at 128k will be indistinguishable from CD's, perhaps with a few minor exceptions of difficult-to-compress passages.
And to address the main point of your posting, by all means get out there and push for Vorbis to be supported in all the cool places where MP3 is now. There are no compelling reasons not to, except for inertia. And the reasons to are, to me anyway, compelling. It simply sounds better, and it's totally free. If people are going to go around buying gold-plated speaker cables, you'd think being given a significantly better codec would be even more effective
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
I did some listening tests with the CVS version about two weeks ago, and compared it carefully against LAME and Fraunhofer's coder, respectively the best free and proprietary MP3 coders out there.
I listened to some regular music, plus the samples at the LAME website designed to stress MP3 coders to the max.
Basically, Vorbis blew the pants off MP3, with one exception - there are occasional artifacts audible in only one channel (Vorbis, at present, simply encodes each channel separately). Since these artifacts are way off center in the stereo field, they are particularly annoying. Monty claims that these artifacts are fixed in the new psychoacoustic module, and you know what? I believe him.
Keep in mind also that today's MP3 coders have years of tuning and tweaking behind them (Fraunhofer's coder of a few years ago did not sound that great, actually pretty far behind where LAME is now).
I encourage people not to just accept information that's spoon-fed them. It only takes a few hours to set up a simple listening test. Check out the code from CVS, put on your 'phones, and put it through its paces.
Advogato carried the interview with Monty a full week ago. I sent mail to roblimo, with whom I had been in correspondence. What's happened to Slashdot's speed lately?
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
The problem is that there are soooo many people out there with money, but without the time or inclination or brains to understand what the rights are that they're giving away. By giving the companies their rights, they increase the power of the companies, who thus become more capable of making life really hard for those who did understand what they were giving up.
All that's really needed is for everyone to understand everything. In the meantime, we're pretty much screwed. Perhaps stupidity could be treated like drunkenness: lock people up for a day every time they do something dumb (as defined by, um, me!).
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Hi,
;)
Is there any allowance for metainfo in your bitstream specs? The webpage didn't indicate it to me but I might not have been looking hard enough.. IIRC Icecast/Shoutcast file metainfo (artist, titles, genre, etc) on streams is kludgey and unreliable, where it exists. Is this involved in the bitstream or is it meta/wrapping around the bitstream?
Easier to fix this and get it right while the standards are still in flux (then again, this is OSS, aren't the standards always flexible?
Your Working Boy,
Here is a summary of VQF vs. MP3 I gleaned from http://perun.elfak.ni.ac.yu/~milko/vqf/VQFvsMP3.h
1. MP3 psychoacoustic model excludes
completely some high frequencies when
it decides that they are irrelevant.
2. MP3 preserves power spectra peaks, and
VQF does not preserve the peaks at the
highest frequencies that good.
3. VQF has problems with the Pre-Echoes,
which is solved in MP3 by a technique
called "window switching".
**To know what's the "pre-echoes", go here:
http://perun.elfak.ni.ac.yu/~milko/vqf/more.htm
And from the conclusion of that page:
Conclusion?
It seems that MP3 has a better
psychoacoustic model. VQF sounds
(and looks) more natural.
Certainly, both formats need more
development...
So... come back to our topic at hand...
How will Ogg Vorbis fair against both VQF
and MP3 ?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
but MPEG, while being "open" isn't really free...check this out they won't even tell you what the licensing terms are...Though I suggest reading the Office Faq, There /is/ a need for a FREE standard..as opposed to a "OPEN" one...
> Could they truly get any sillier sounding?
Of course they're silly, they're from Terry Pratchett novels.
Ogg is the name of a witch and Vorbis a priest.
2 things needed: good cd rippers and a good extension. Please tell me these files a "musicfile".OGG
.vorbis works, so does .og ...
The same group has written a good ripper, it's called "cdparanoia" and is available from the same place as Vorbis.
I'm fairly sure that if they can come up with "Ogg Vorbis" and Xiphorous (sp?) that they'll have a sufficiently nifty extension also. Why three characters though?
..is it we need another format for audio? Is it so certain desperately boring people can claim "early adopter" status?
That wouldn't be worth the effort of switching over. The reason is that there are currently no completely open formats - bits of them always require some sort of licensing or other snags like that. These types of things contribute to the likelyhood of a format being unreadable in 70 years. MP3 is sufficiently open that I don't see a problem with playing those, but there are still some sort of licensing fees involved to do stuff commercially with it, and something else involved with encoding them. It presents legal hurdles at the very least.
This format seems to have aspirations of being better quality than MP3, perhaps placing it up with formats like VQF for which encoders/decoders tend to only exist in binary form. It's good to have this because if people go looking for an alternative, one would prefer that the alternative be at least as portable, right?
I think you left out MP3 from your list of successful formats...
'Stream control' is a red herring. If you can
listen to it, you can record it. There are sound
drivers for Windows and for Linux that let you
save the output stream to disk, so you can make
perfect digital recordings of anything coming
from RealPlayer and other 'secure' players.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
You forgot to quote the part after, where he says that he has new code that makes it better.
Better than MP3 is not everywhere already.
Yes, it sounds better.
...vs. this format's 128 kbps limit...
Sigh. Per channel. 128 kbps per channel.
--
Ian Peters
Anyone else find the title of that article alittle bit like vogon poetry?
Why is the file size larger than MPEG Audio Layer III when it's using the same constant bit rate of 128 kb/s? Am I missing something here?
"Words have meaning, and names have power." -- Lorien
I'm not either!
-David T. C.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
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!!
Then the least they could do is get to work on some of their own algorithms to distribute patent free, rather than request that other companies not charge them royalties for using their research...
Not true. AC3 (the sound format most DVDs use) is 384Kbps (IIRC). Now some dvds do contain uncompressed audio but they are rather rare. IMHO, it is a real shame that MP3 wasn't part of the standard, I'd love to write an xmms plugin to decode mp3s through my dxr2 dvd card.
-matt
In case you missed the 50 comments that say virtually the same thing,
let's restate the bitching:
1. Why do we need another CODEC? We have mp3!
2. Why do we need another CODEC? We have mp3!
3. Why do we need another CODEC? We have mp3!
4. Why do we need another CODEC? We have mp3!
5. Why do we need another CODEC? We have mp3!
--Kevin
=-=-=-=-=-=
"Just take another hit 'cause you don't give a f*ck-
You're a junkie and you're proud!"
According to a comment on Advogato from the author,
this can run from 16 to 128k PER CHANNEL -
in other words, 32 to 256k stereo.
Remember, a 128k MP3 stream is actually two 64k channels.
--Kevin
=-=-=-=-=-=
"Just take another hit 'cause you don't give a f*ck-
You're a junkie and you're proud!"
As I see it, the "free" (as beer) feature doesn't offer enough advantage to sell it in the marketplace of ideas, however, I don't read that they meant to go head-to-head against MP3. They simply felt proud of the job they'd done in that arena.
Regrettably, while Ogg Vorbis was specifically designed to do well at low bandwidth, they haven't implemented that code yet. The modem is going to be with us for a long time, and a streaming solution that let you listen as you surf could have fair appeal. It would also have some real commercial potential.
Overall, it's a testbed, and I applaud the notion, though I do not know if other similar initiatives exist. Years ago, I was grumbling that no one supported wavelet and freq/time domain components simultaneously in the same audio file, and last I checked, the major formats still don't. Vorbis at least supports this, though (again) they haven't implemented it.
Still... I can help but think their project name was just the first audible output from pre-alpha code (Who knows what the input was?)
__________
If you can go to bed, knowing you did a valuable thing today, you're very lucky. If you can't... it's not bedtime
The bulk of the responses seem to fall into three categories:
(A) "We have mp3 - why do we need Ogg?"
(B) "Mp3 is too entrenched for any competitor to
ever succeed."
(C) "Ogg is not as good as mp3, or requires
higher bandwidth."
Bah! Don't you people *think*?!?
The mp3 format is not going to get better. Vorbis is being actively developed. Just because it may not be better than mp3 at this moment (And I make no such claims here - check the advogato interview for more info, or better yet download the software and play with it.) does not mean that it will not become so in the forseeable future.
Beta never caught on because (A) it was very expensive and (B) Sony had the licensing locked up tight. If Sony had been *giving away* VCR's the home movie industry might have developed differently.
So what does Vorbis have going for it?
FREE
FREE and powerful
FREE and powerful and open source.
What attracted you to linux in the first place?
This is a major boon to anyone who wants to legally stream audio but can't afford to pay for an mp3 encoder. If all you want to do is listen to music on your computer, then maybe you don't care what format it is. Do consider this: A free encoder will allow a whole lot more people to provide content online. Heck, with this, any band that wanted to and could afford a bit of bandwidth could put up their own songs online w/o suffering through mp3.com or running the legal risk of using an mp3 encoder w/o paying for it.
I don't think mp3 is as entrenched as some of you seem to believe. How many of you have both a Realaudio player and a separate mp3 player on your computer? What would it take to get you to download another? How about if it were just an XMMS plugin?
Does anybody really sweat a free download?
zeke
But how much processor does to take to decode compared to MP3? It would have be at least as efficient...
Blar.
Slashdot is valuable in that it is a centralized repository for news. Unfortunately, this news is filtered through individuals, so we see what they want us to see. That is most likely why we haven't seen any news about how Linux stocks are sinking like the Titanic, because they don't want us to see it. Nor any news about hours-long server outages, for the same reason.
The solution is to not take Slashdot so seriously. It was not created as a serious endeavor and if you take it (or anything) too seriously you'll get all worked up and mad about nothing. So just calm down and I guess skip the retarded stories.
__________________________________________________ ___
rooooar
__________________________________________________ ___
rooooar
We've got to crack the nut of organizations who want to retain intimate and complete control over content delivery
Why? Why shouldn't companies have rights to control their content? If you were producting something of value, you probably wouldn't like it if I were to steal/hijack/pirate it.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
The average person doesn't care about his/her rights
Unsupportable statement. Just becuase the average person doesn't care about the lunatic fringle's holy war(s) against the MPAA and RIAA doesn't mean that they don't care about their rights.
And we either have to kiss our rights goodbye or have no content.
What rights are you talking about? The "rights" people are using to pirate music and videos?
Also, I have as much a right to break CSS (and not get sued for it) as they do to implement it, or even more.
Well, aparently the courts disagree with you, and its their opinion that counts, not yours.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Yeah, I think we should give them total control
Good, glad we see eye to eye
They should make you buy one DVD that can only be listened to during the day at home, one for at night at home, and one for in the car.
Companies should have the right to place whatever license they want on their product. No one is putting a gun to your head and focing you to buy the product.
So a company (or a bunch of companies) can spend their time and money developing a spec, such as DVD, but they don't have the right to place licenses on it in your world?
Basically we should let them require you to sell yourself into slavery to them in order to access their wonderful content
Like everything in the world, you have a choice. There is a cost to the content (both in money and rights you may give up). You perform a simple equation in your head... do I value the content enough to give up the required money and combination of rights? If so, you pay, otherwise, you don't use the content. How hard is that to understand?????
It works really well, and has its own built in negative feedback mechanism, as if the cost of the content is too high (in either rights or $$$$), no one will view the content.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
Maybe I missed it, but where is the document describing theory behind this technique? I learned about mp3 last year on a graduate course, I know about DCT and wavelets and acoustics so I'd really like to look what his model is like.
BZZZZT, wrong, but thank you for playing.
MPEG Audio layer 3 (MP3) is a format, not a codec. LAME is an encoder. mpg123 (and others) are decoders. Put an encoder and a decoder together, and you have a codec.
(This is not a flame. More like a gentle correction.)
Yes it does matter. The difference is that we finally have a truly free and open standard for digitally compressed audio. The difference is that we finally have a choice, should Fraunhofer come tumbling down on us with more of their patent hassles.
It's almost like Linux. At some point a few years ago, we thought the world would end, and everyone would be using Windows. Somewhere, an open-source kernel was maturing and emerging to be a tour de force. Microsoft thought it didn't matter, becaus e they had 90% of the market, and all the other Unices were dying in their own little corner. But Linux provided a choice for us. Ogg will be similar in many aspects. It will continue to improve, unlike mp3, and there will be no commercial entities withholding us with watermarks and encryption.
At 128kbps/channel this gives a maximum bitrate of 256kbps for stereo (although I'm not sure if bitrate reported for mp3 is per channel or combined). But one of the previous posters made a good point that mp3 has the foot right through the door, and with non-proprietary encoding algorithms out there, there's not much chance of this knocking mp3 off the it's spot.
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
- Dave
good cd rippers and a good extension. Please tell me these files a "musicfile".OGG
--
+&x
maybe that's because we're all different individuals.
well, I'm not, but the rest are.
--
+&x
This is simply not true.
There are very few codecs of a quality and compression ratio comparable to MP3, and all of them except MP3 are strictly non-proprietary.
Read the FAQ in the Xiph... site.
- BladeEnc: BladeEnc I have found produces the very worst audio, even worse than Xing. I can make out artifacts on every type of music, even at bitrates up to 256kbps. The highs get all slushy, and you can usually hear strange electronic noises when listening through a good pair of headphones. Avoid BladeEnc.
- Xing Encoder: Xing is very common, and yet it is horrible. I can tell if an mp3 was made with Xing right away upon hearing it. Generally Xing has the same sort of problems as BladeEnc, but not quite as pronounced. I must say it is 2 or 3 times faster than the other codecs, but it is definately 4 or 5 times worse. Stay away.
- LAME: When I first tried LAME under Linux, I thought it was just as good as the modern Fraunhofer codec found in products such as MP3 Producer. But, after using it for a while and ABing it against the same music made with the more modern Fraunhofer codecs, I have found that it is not quite perfect. But the quality is acceptable, and if the bitrate is reasonably high (192-256kbps), I have no problems listening to MP3s encoded with LAME. For pop music, it is even listenable at 128 kbps.
- Modern Fraunhofer (MP3 Producer, etc): This is definately the best encoding algorythms. Fraunhofer has perfected their psychoacoustic encoder over the years, taking advantage of their extended knowledge of the codec. 50% of all music sounds find at 128kbps, 95% at 192kbps, at 256kbps, it is impossible for me to hear the difference between the mp3 and cd, even with the most demanding recordings.
I have found that many open-source zealots will try out BladeEnc, being free, and after encoding a few songs make the blanket statement that all MP3s sound like crap. This is simply not true. Please try listening to some properly encoded mp3s before you make rash generalizations.Download a fast DirectX Tetris Clone [276 k]
Any cd to mp3 encoder charges money, the one I have CDex was downloaded before they take the lisense seriously. It's quite buggy, please don't bother to tell me a link for free mp3 encoder, I have way pass the limit of storing musics on hd. And I have decided to not rip off music artists.
/_____\. .......|
At least for normal distribution, on win platform a free encoder is hard to come by. This will make people storing music on harddrive easier. (Pogram utilized this format won't even mention the format, just like Sony only say "digital music " to you, and everybody believes that minidisc is supposed better than mp3.)
CY
vvvvvvv../|__/|
...I../O,O....|
...I./
..J|/^.^.^ \..|.._//|
...|^.^.^.^.|W|./oo.|
>I just can't wait until some 15 year old comes up with a 100:1 compression algorithm
;-)
Its been done - it's dynamically compressed to hell (total crap)... of course that doesn't affect a lot of music anymore
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
Some points to bring up:
(a) Ogg is free in the beer and speech senses. This is important for reasons that have long been discussed.
(b) Ogg is *better* than MP3; while Joe Blow may not care, audiophiles and musicians most certainly will, and it is they who count; musicians are the ones who MAKE music, after all. Just hack up a Winamp plugin and Joe will be happy enough.
(c) Ogg is a better name than MP3. em-pee-three is another damnable three-letter-acronym; Ogg sounds cool. Millions of Pratchett fans will give it instant name recognition, even if it has no relation in fact.
All the talk about MP3's "mindshare" doesn't matter too much - the average end-luser will go along with whatever the nearest alpha geek says.
--
These are *MY* opinions.
These are *MY* opinions.
They will not be *YOUR* opinions until the Orbital Mind Control Lasers are operati
This is an excellent point. If the Internet had been encumbered by patents would it be what it is today? Probably not, it would more likely resemble a DIVX world and the RIAA would have already won, instead of a place where anyone can be a publisher.
In case you don't know, WTF stands for "what the fuck?". As in, what the fuck is this doing as a slashdot story? This isn't news for nerds. This isn't even news! This is old (I visited their site several months ago) and even if it was new, it probably doesn't merit a main article on slashdot. They didn't have a major release recently (which could possibly qualify as news) and their software is still pre-alpha. And what does "the file size is slightly larger than mp3" mean? Both formats use variable bitrates, so the file size can be whatever you want it to be! I ask again, what the fuck is this irrelevant and content-less story doing on the main page of slashdot?
Something else that occurred to me on this point is that those of us who are members of the IEEE and other standards-establishing organizations should be lobbying for all future official standards to be free of patents. That includes things like Firewire, etc. It might have a chilling effect on submissions for standards for awhile, but the current system of "submit it as a standard then ambush everyone with patent demands after the fact" would be defeated.
Right...
The fatalist attitude of so many on Slashdot amazes me sometimes. Here we are, a community numbering in the six figures (maybe even seven by now), and we sit here and go, "Too bad it won't make a difference." Hundreds of thousands of users could make a huge difference, if we just agreed to do something together! Heck, just going and looking at the web sites in most stories on Slashdot is enough to bring mortal servers to their knees!
We don't have to overwhelm MP3 to make Vorbis work - we just have to create a niche market. Especially if clever programmers write converters (tricky without compunding artifacts), Vorbis can stand on its own.
If we're serious about supporting Open Source, then we should support it right down the line - no patent-encumbered formats like MP3 and GIF. If we all live by that, then new standards like Vorbis and PNG will win in the end.
Right...
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
So when _IS_ a "modern" MPEG 4 audio codec ever going to come out? From what I read, MP3 is basically limited by a whole bunch of legacy cruft...that the technology for much better exists, but there is simply no implementation yet. So somebody write one already!
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I'm hoping that brain uploading becomes possible eventually. The benefits are numerous:
If humanity becomes anywhere near this dependant on computers, companies will jump all over themselves to try to control the software that people exist within.
If such a day comes when we can upload, I want open source to be around so I can live life without a company's restrictions and without the constant annoyance of advertising. I want to know the source code to the software that's keeping me alive and safe.
--
The issue isn't that the company doesn't have control over their own content, it's that they prevent other companies' content from being available because they have a monopoly on the interface.
Imagine this: some company (rhymes with "Noel") writes new networking software that's initially compatible with TCP/IP, but is so successful on its own that they later remove support for TCP from the product. They kill off all competitors by restrictive liscencing since they have 95% of the market. Since nearly everyone accesses the 'net through them, other companies pay tons of money to advertise on their network. They can also become market leader in any market they want by advertising their product and preventing others from advertising competing products on their network. If done subtley enough, they can also silence opposing opinions (let a few of the slightly-negative things through so people think you're "objective", but filter the really bad stuff out). Open source is no longer viable... in order to write applications for the new network, an organization has to sign a contract that prevents disclosure of source code.
The above scenario is a big stretch (and pretty cynical, especially for me), but I suspect that it's what the "dot com" and media CEOs secretly dream about at night. Fortunately, the government is wary of losing its control and would try to stop something like this at all costs.
--
One thing that everyone seems to be missing, is that Vorbis supports bitrates of 16kbps-128kbps per channel! Since it uses better algorithms than MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3), it has the potential to sound much better. It's not done yet, and the development team is still making changes to it that will affect the quality. I'm going to wait and see how it works, but it sounds like it will be excellent when it gets done.
> Well, aparently the courts disagree with you,
> and its their opinion that counts, not yours.
Nazi Germany, 1944: Imagine you are a jew. The opinion of the government is to kill you by CO2 poisoning.
The law, or the court, isn't always ethically correct (although it is in most cases).
Sony has already looked into this situation, and even improved on your analysis: every codec that can succeed must have a name ending with a "3".
This could be seen in action when Sony introduced their new Memory Stick Walkman. The ultracompact music player features the latest version of Sony's ATRAC music codec.
The previus version was called ATRAC 4.5, and is present in most reasonably new MiniDisc recorders. Can you guess what the new version is called? Of course, it's ATRAC3!
And in the upside-down world of the New Economy, that's not a downgrade.
Marko Karppinen
It's terrific to finally see an open, IP-free audio codec with (seemingly) great sound and compression efficiency.
One of the things most often complained about at Slashdot is the lack of Quicktime players for Linux, and more specifically, lack of a player capable of playing movies compressed with Quicktime 4's Sorenson codec. Many sites, especially those of the movie industry, have adopted Sorenson because it has genuine advantages over industry-standard MPEG video: Sorenson produces significantly better video quality at the bitrates preferred on the Internet today. While Sorenson and Microsoft's proprietary offerings are gaining ground, the use of free video standards like MPEG is becoming more and more scarce.
The only feasible way of reversing this trend is to come up with a superior video codec and distribute it freely. Until now, many people have argued that developing a good media codec involves such high-end mathematics that developing one under traditional Open Source development model is not possible.
It is high time that someone proved them wrong.
Marko Karppinen
...but as higher capacity drives become ever more affordable, and high speed connections more common, higher-bitrate codecs will become more popular. Most people can't tell much of a difference between MP3 audio and a CD on generally poor quality PC soundcards and speakers (it is there however). But as more and more PCs are becoming part of high-end audio/theater systems with DVD drives and nice home speaker systems, if you really want to use them as a music jukebox as I'm sure many here already do, it would be very nice to have a higher quality (higher bitrate) codec. So basically, it doesn't just depend on the sucess of DVD-Audio and SACD (Sony Audio CD) which has already been released, and sounds phenomenal, but also on the constant developments in storage technology and PC performance.
Spyky
Well the bitrate baffles me as it's only 128 and mp3's do higher bitrates, and Im asuming by polyphoic that they mean stereo, but will the compression distort 5.1 or surround encoding like mp3 does? All in all I have to agree it's a nice effort but unlikely to take off. After all I can already go out and buy a protable solid state mp3 player, and I know my APEX DVD isnt going to play ISO9660 burned cd's full of .OGG's. The thing I see here is it might be a possible alternative for streaming since it would be royalty free and you would only have to worry about your ASCAP royalties. Again only my opinions and thoughs, after all anything can happen.
'Oh, nothing'll topple MP3 - it's got too much mindshare!' 'I don't see the point - wasn't MPEG open?"
... places where it's really important to minimize bandwidth usage without the inconvenience or licensing fees for proprietary CODECs/APIs.
A good, free CODEC really IS vital for free/open online multimedia. Remember that the uses for compressed/streaming audio go beyond Shoutcast stations or packing a million songs on your harddrive. Vorbis will end up in free versions of online music collaboration software, I'm sure, as well as conferencing, telephony perhaps
Look at something like Rocket Network's online studios. Sounds cool, huh? But who would pay for the technology license to develop and deploy a free (in both senses) Rocket Network server? Nobody, I'm guessing. You can get a 'free' online studio now - as in beer - but what if you wanted to make that your business? Lotsa money, no control of the technology.
For these systems to develop in the free/open software community, we need control of all segments of the technology. Think of this in terms of GIF vs. PNG, with a lower practical barrier since the entire world of online mutlimedia is still emerging and CODECs are inherently pluggable in multimedia apps.
Or maybe my head's up my butt.
Actually I read the patent. It doesn't cover MDCT nor DCT at all. However, it pretty much covers the Huffman codes.
Can we say 'bogus'?
--
I refuse to use
If this is indeed the case, I just don't see what's so unethical about it. (Other than the possible threats of Rob pushing VA over other Linux companies.) Granted, I didn't know about it until I read this comment.
Ya' know, that's always bothered me... DVD-Video uses a very destructive method of compressing the video to get super-human compression, but the audio is 100% uncompressed "CD quality" audio (and often, there's more than one stream of it) most of the time. If that doesn't make the "stupid" light flash double time, I don't know what will.
[There are the "hacks" out there to blend MPEG4 video with MP3 audio, but no hardware supports it. (DivX)]
You mean Perl not pearl ? right...
Worry not friend, I know this is in good fun :-)
Monty
This was posted by an outside source. Xiph.org has not yet announced anything.
Monty
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
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"
Vorbis is the name of a CODEC that Ogg uses. Just like 'Sorensen' is one of 'Quicktime's' video codecs. 'Ogg' is much easier than 'Quicktime' too.But wait! There's More!
Monty xiph.org
This weekend I'm merging a month's worth of new work that substantially improves it.
Again, I don't know that I'd be able to understand his explanation of what improves it, but saying you've got code to make your product better than your competitor's product doesn't exactly qualify as having a better product than your competitor's product.
I think that the current CVS mainline is as good as MP3.
(emphasis his)...Now I don't know enough about audio encryption (or rather, I don't know anything at all), but it sounds to me like the author himself thinks that the format is currently only on even ground with MP3. With the disadvantage that MP3 is everywhere already.
Also, if you're a business (Rock band, whatever) and use MP3 files on your web site, you'd damn well better have a legal MP3 encoder when Frauhauf comes knocking. You wouldn't have to worry about THAT kind of legal exposure either, using this file format.
Now all we need is a high quality highly compressable unencumbered video format...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Unfortunately, with names like "Ogg Vorbis And Xiphophorus", this isn't going anywhere. Sad, isn't it? Not only that, but there's been other very valid arguments of the stronghold of mp3 as well.
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net) - AOL IM: MicroBerto
Berto
I think just as important is the stipulation that you can't get over 128 kilobits. (Did I read that wrong?) 128 is good enough for some, but not for me. I dislike all the "artifacts" you get from a 128-kilobit stream. 160 is bare minimum.
I posted this question to email at your website, but I think it also needs to be asked here: What about an Open Source watermarking and digital rights management system? As a musician myself (and one who has made a living as a musician), I realize that artists need to get paid... not necessarily to get filthy rich (not that that's a Bad Thing), but at least to get paid enough to be able to afford to make music instead of flipping hamburgers (or coding in VB). OTOH, as a techie, I understand the Open Source philosophy and am tickled pink by Vorbis, Gnutella, and all the other technical advances that are taking down the Music Industrial Complex (MIC). Kinda contradictory, eh? Here's the challenge -- the Open Source community has successfully unleashed forces that are dissolving the MIC walls. What is the communtiy going to do to PAY artists for making the music they want to listen to? Does the community care? Songs don't need technical support, docs, or consulting... so the pure Linux-like model won't work. Something else is needed. Here's the risk -- if no Open Source alternative to paying artists develops, then the only alternative may end up being SDMI. How would you like a world where the major labels control the celestial jukebox and extract a 95% tribute and lifetime servitude from artists for the privilege of getting a tune on the jukebox menu? If an Open Source tracking and payment system for paying artists can be developed, then the artists and the listeners can work out their own fair arrangements. Otherwise, well, I leave that visualization to the reader. :-) RS
I don't mean to go against the grain here, but 128 kb encoding at 44Hz sounds fine for me, just as good as any CD out there, minus maybe Ultradisc. So I would prefer to see those DVD discs filled will 40000 128/44 songs instead of 10000 512/44 songs.......my ear is very picky, but past 128, unless you have monster speakers, its hard to see the difference on properly encoded mp3s.
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."
This is as pointless an argmuent as, "why develop linux. Windows already has 90% of the market share, it's reasonably good(it's useable), so why bother with Linux?" Some would say, "it's better!" But that's not the real point. The point is that Linux is FREE and OPEN. This is the true power and purpose behind Vorbis as well.
-----
"I will be as a fly on the wall... I shall slip amongst them like a great
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
scheme to add to the piles and piles of "to be discarded". So it sounds good and compresses nearly as well as MPEG. Wasn't the whole point of MPEG that it too is an open standard? And frankly, looking at the current state of affairs it would seem that MPEG has already won the necessary mindshare to BE the defacto standard. Looks like a steep uphill battle..
There is an encoder available in the CVS checkout from the xiph.org site. However, it is extremely simplistic. I have already added to this encoder the ability to accept command line options via getopt(). My modifications seem reasonably stable and I will be releasing the modified encoder to Freshmeat probably within the day. Really this makes it much easier to encode things (the supplied encoder is stdin -> stdout). I plan on doing the same thing with the decoder so that it can play to the sound card, etc., like mpg123. I will link to my modified source as soon as I get it online.
The xmms plugin: in the cvs directory xmms, just type 'make' (after configuring and making the rest of the package from the main directory). Then copy the resulting lib*.so file to your XMMS Input plugins directory (/usr/lib/xmms/Input/ for global, ~/.xmms/plugins/Input ??? for local.)
Does it really matter at this point?
There are plenty of codecs that are better than mp3, but mp3 has taken such a hold (mindshare) it'll probably take a whole shift in the digital-audio format to remove it.
If things like DVD-Audio ever take off, maybe higher-bitrate encoded audio will take off.
http://www.advogato.org/article/56.html
Arun
What about TIA, ETSI, & cellular standards?
Qualcomm invented (well, whipped in to shape) a novel encoding scheme for cellular telephones, patented lots of parts of the encoding scheme, and got it accepted as a standard. Now it makes lots of money for lots of people (including me, a SW engineer with barely a shred of ComTheory). Qualcomm had an enormous incentive to get the standard widely accepted and make it work. The US government, seeing that Qualcomm's standard would bring in tasty tax revenue, has repeatedly thrown their weight behind getting the standard accepted.
The IPR for GSM are jointly held by several gorillas of varying sizes (Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, and a number of smaller players). That "open" standard is in fact only open to the club. Certain companies don't get to play. But because of the club (and massive governmental buy-in) a wide range of manufacturers felt comfortable making phones, protocol stacks, & what-have-you; GSM is widespread and interoperability isn't much of a problem (at least in Europe).
So standards that incorporate privately-held IP can function to get a big system (as cellular needs) accepted. Maybe they are not appropriate in all situations, but they can be useful.
And is that really so different from what ISO has done?
The music piracy industry is getting almost as bad as the music publishing industry. What the heck happened to HTML formatting in posts?
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
How about going after the Digital DJ market? DJs need the ability to imitate 2 vinyl decks by playing back TWO reasonably sized files at decent quality, while mixing with a fader. MP3 and Ogg should manage this (although load balancing MP3 players isn't as foolproof as you might think), but what MP3 has problems with (and therefore ogg might have an advantage) is pitch shifting to allow the matching of different beats, like DJ oriented record players do, and beat independent time stretching to allow the matching of tunes that are out of key while keeping the beats - something you can't to with vinyl! This seems to present a lot of difficulties for MP3's way of coding, I wonder how ogg will fare at the task?
Building a working DJ player with just those features could be the killer app that makes people switch to .ogg, but add some things from the digial DJ's wishlist, like automatic beat/bpm detection so you always mix in 'on the beat' and accurate keying points and looping (so you can cut accurately into the 3rd chorus and then loop the middle 8 repeatedly etc.) and I guarantee you'll have a winner. Getting .ogg known as the 'format the professionals use' would be reason alone for lots of people to switch from MP3. Is there provision in the .ogg format for BPM and keying points?
If not, is it too late to add them? I'd be sorry to see such an opportunity missed...
- Andy R.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I believe the bitrate of an mp3 file is the 'final' bitrate, after compressing both channels. This new format seems to explicitly support 128kbps per channel, meaning both formats can deliver exactly the same format. It does make you wonder if this means the new format doesn't exploit inter-channel dependencies the way mp3 does, though, if they mention bitrates per channel...
With 256Kbps MP3 shines, but with a lower rates you may hear the compression artifacts, it doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen. it appears that at 256Kbps artifacts disappear. If you want to have a fairly high and consistent quality, even 192Kbps may not suffice, unless you use something better than MP3. AAC is better but some heavily patented that I don't see any AAC-based freeware coming in a near future. There is some interesting info on www.mp3-tech.org
and MP3 is currently under HEAVY attack from the RIIA, in various forms, the Napster attack being the latest.
Yes, you can always capture the audio output, but that isn't considered the threat that capturing the digital stream is.
And I'll agree that you can capture the digital stream, as well, by hook or by crook. But it's a bit harder, and at the moment isn't mainstream. Heck, at the worst grab the RealAudio ipchains proxy and hack it to put the stream capture code there.
If surreptitious stream capture techniques were to rise to the general consciousness, I'm sure the RIAA (and MPAA, where relevant) would be after them.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
AFAIK, the only "standards" to have taken off are Real Audio, Windows Media Player, and Quicktime, all of which have proprietary codecs. But isn't the real issue that they also are able to enforce end-to-end stream control?
This is what prevents one from capturing a stream and saving it. Use an open codec, and the codec can be replaced/subverted to capture the stream, and then everyone in the world will immediately pirate the precious content.
IMHO, a free codec won't help. We've got to crack the nut of organizations who want to retain intimate and complete control over content delivery.
It's not really a software problem, it's a greed and political problem.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
What does this actually cover? I would have expected it to be sufficiently abstract to cover all MDCT based lossy compression schemes.
Has anyone checked that this definitely doesn't infringe the patent?
Could they truly get any sillier sounding?
BlackNova Traders
QuickTime Streaming is based on the IETF standard RTSP and RTP protocols. Go here and here to download the specifications yourself.
AFAIK, you're right about RealSystem and Windows Media though.
having read the blurb about this audio format, it states, [paraphrased] that "the file size is slightly larger than mp3 but the quality is there". is the quality _better_ than that of an mp3? if it is the same, then it would seem to me that mp3 still comes out on top, supporting variable bitrates of up to at least 256kbps vs. this format's 128kbps limit, with a smaller file size. i don't know anything about the format as i have no experience with it, but i felt it was worth mentioning. can anyone give some insight as to the advantage of this format? thanx!
-rich henning -linux 2.2.x
and it can capture 100.0% of usual 44.1/16 audio as well as compressed lossy audio.
and I believe the enc/dec programs are free.
--
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
http://bladeenc.mp3.no
Don't they make a version for 'Doze?
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Encoded some wav files using vorbis that even mp3 producer 2.1 could not handle very well in lower bitrates as 128kbps. I was surprised how good the quality was when i played back the encoded vorbis file in XMMS. Some small glitches BUT vorbis quality was superior many mp3 codecs(bladeenc,lame,xing and even fraunhoffer on some music) out there IMHO. Some vorbis encoded files was smaller in size than equivalent MP3 file, its seems that vorbis has VBR on default as bitrates seems to be different on different files. GREAT quality, non patented codec, try vorbis yourself - be amazed!
It's got a catchy name.
Marketing departments wish they could come up with something that will catch and snag joe (or jane) sixpack's eyes. Joe/Jane only care that they can remember it when at the bbq trying to show off their computer wizz skills.
Try and get anyone to remember Ogg Vorbis, or whatever it was. This puppy is dead in the water already.
--www.mp3.com/kruhft--
...is it we need another format for audio? Is it so certain desperately boring people can claim "early adopter" status?
--- Submission is feudal.