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Ogg Vorbis Changes (Just About) Everything
The good people of Ogg Vorbis have a new beta release out (number 4) for which they claim better compression, nicer sound, fewer bugs and more protein than the last. While that's nice enough, that's not the only news on the Vorbis front: probably more important in the long run is that the guys behind Vorbis have formed a non-profit called Xiph.org to replace the S-class corporation they've been developing as for a while, Xiphophorous. Emmett of BinaryFreedom had
a cool chat with Vorbis developers Christopher Montgomery
and Jack Moffit about the new release,foundation, encoding, and hardware capable of playing back the Vorbis format -- well worth reading. Plus, you can
download the new beta (and some sample tunes), too. Oh, yes, and there's the little matter of moving from the GPL [?] to BSD license [?] , with what they say is RMS' blessing. You will have to read to find out why, though;)
Is it just me or is that Jesus hitting a snake with an ax? What the heck does the logo mean?
Well at any rate, I have used the betas of the past from Ogg Vorbis and they work quite well. Keep up the good work guys.
"I am sorry, I switched to a new ISP becuase you guys dont offer Yahoo like AOL does!" - annonymous customer
Firstly, thats not even a very good troll.
Secondly, the reason you don't see many improvements in digital sound compression (you said yourself we've had the same mp3 format for years) is because of the absurd number and generality of patents issued in this area. This is precicely what ogg is trying to avoid and they have done a brilliant job.
Have you tried ogg? Have you compared the filesize and output quality with that of mp3? Try it - I dare you.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
This is actually not surprising, he had a similar reasoning for making the gzip compression code available on a BSD-like license.
It will probably be too much to hope for, that some of the "RMS will only accept GPL" people will take note.
I'm conflicted about this: on the one hand, I am concerned that companies will glom on to Vorbis, make proprietary extensions, and not release them back into the free software pool. Not good.
On the other hand, as a professional embedded software developer, I have a need that Vorbis would be just perfect for. Under a BSD license, I would have no problems with using it (due to constraints beyond my control, the code would have to be linked against some decidedly CLOSED SOURCE code, thus chucking the GPL out the window). However, I was perfectly willing to go to my managers and have them negotiate a license with Xiph to allow use to use the Vorbis code under a closed-source license and pay them money for the privilege (while maintaining the normal license as GPL). That will be a great deal harder to justify now....
www.eFax.com are spammers
Actually, this is probably one time where we might not have too much work to do. Companies generally try to be as efficient as they can be and reduce costs where possible. If they have a choice to make between paying for mp3 (licencing the patented tech) , or using ogg with no payment at all, its obvious which they will use. (some ppl call this "greed" but I'm sure they are completely bonkers)
The only rational thing to do is to use Ogg Vorbis exclusively
The rational thing to do is to let the markeyt decide. With ogg being BSD licenced, the choice they will make is clear in my mind.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
If you can get to the heavily slashdotted interview on binaryfreedom.com, you'll see RMS's comments on the license change.
Why do I get the feeling that if you asked RMS's opinion on slaughtering the innocent for the glory of Satan, and bathing in their warmly splashing blood, he'd reply I'm all for it, as long as you make it clear I support "Free Software" and not "Open Source", and don't imply I agree that there is such a thing as a "Linux operating system".
But seriously though.. the reason the Xiph folks gave for their license switch is that they want Ogg Vorbis to be "a basic building block of the internet for multimedia", and hence chose to go BSD: minimise the restrictions on the source, maximise the chance that it will be widely adopted. Fair call - you gotta look at what you're trying to achieve, and ask yourself if every man and his dog stick my code into a proprietary app, does that help my cause or hurt it? In this case, I think it's quite clear that it would help Ogg Vorbis if, to pick and example at random, Microsoft stuck a closed-source .OGG replay codec into Windows.
linux (lin - ix) ogg vorbis (ogg vo-rr-biss)
I'm glad that digital music is finally ready to buck the opression that has been mp3.
While Ogg Vorbis may have a slightly sillier name, it's free (as in pizza, beer, speech, and everything else!) Ogg is a small, but important, part of assuring that we never lose the right and ability to do as we please with the content we purchase.
It will be a difficult battle to gain hardware support for portable Ogg Vorbis players, but I companies such as Diamond have already expressed an interest. Suffice to say, I have faith in the community to produce a digital music format that can compete with mp3 on every level.
However, we must avoid depriving artists of their livelihood. Even though the format is free, we must be willing to pay for the content. I will not weep if the record executive becomes a thing of the past, but the artist must be recompensed for his work.
This is a concept we understand all too little in the open source community, and Ogg Vorbis has the very real potential to destroy pop music as we know it. It can only be with careful and grave consideration that we move forward.
- qpt
--
Domine Deus, creator coeli et terrae respice humilitatem nostram.
i've been using ogg vorbis since last year, and it just rocks. give it a try and see for yourself.
t.
However, reading this article pointed out one comment that I really wish I hadn't seen. They say it isn't necessary to convert existing MP3's into Vorbis files. I'd -really- like them to come out with a semi-official program to batch convert, and this remark makes me feel like it's less likely now. Is there such a thing available, something I could get and use to do an unattended conversion? I looked a while ago, but after a few days of not finding anything that didn't do it one-file-at-a-time, gave up. If someone comes out with a file like that, it'd be a great way for people to get others into using Vorbis instead of MP3. Force your friends to upgrade. :)
My own pointless vanity vintage computing page
The point of all of this is that Fraunhauffer (sp?) will begin charging licensing fees for ANYONE who has an MP3 encoder/decoder built in. By making a similar/equal open source, free, extensible standard, music will remain free.
Yes, you can still keep all your MP3s around. But expect to start paying more (you do pay for all the software on your machine, right?) for both encoders and decoders.
Also, because one person owns the MP3 standard, they can make changes to it at will and discontinue licensing older versions. If Fraunhauffer ever gets in bed with the recording industry, find a nice soft spot to hide and don't come out untill the lawyers' dust settles.
The openness of this standard is the differientiator, and it's the only one that should ever exist. All other qualities, file size, sound quality, compression rates, etc. should remain the same.
If you want near CD-quality on the MP3-codec, you need at least a bitrate of 192 kbits/sec... If you want CD-quality on the MP3-codec, you need at least a bitrate of 256 kbits/sec... Those rates are much smaller on Vorbis, 128 kbits/sec already gives near CD-quality, and 160 kbits/sec and up will give CD-quality in almost all cases... If you think MP3 @ 128 kbits/sec is CD-quality you're near deaf.
> Ogg Vorbis has the very real potential to destroy pop music as we know it.
One can always hope...
It can't destroy pop music, there has always been and will always be popular music, but the "as we know it" part with mega stars, huge ad campaigns, and bands invented by the marketing departments of record companies, might ultimately be in danger.
Using slightly different compression methods, how does OGG performance compare to MP3? Systems being as fast as they are, nowadays, this isn't that *big* of an issue, but it is nonetheless with older systems in mind and those with heavy load.
For those who say OGG is late, consider the factors in it not being so pushed for. There was never a huge consumer demand for an MP3 alternative. People own gigs and gigs of MP3s... telling them to convert because of a patent that will affect them when they purchase a commercial product by a few dollars doesn't mean much to them, as they commonly use only XMMS/Winamp and Napster/Gnapster. Companies looking to market commercial digital music players and/or software, on the other hand, plagued with the prospect of paying the MP3 patent owner money for each product they sell, must be more interested. But, again, it is very dependent on the consumer since they would have to convert the MP3 to OGG without help from any software supplied by the commercial company supplying the product -- but software supplied from a non-commercial entity, such as Ogg Vorbis creators, could be downloaded.... Packaged, though? I don't think it could be packaged with the product, regardless of it being "free" or not, because it would be included as part of a commercial product. The best a company could do would be an automatic download (of course with yes/no prompt and license agreement) of the extension from Vorbis to their uploading software.
mwtr / THIS SIG HAS BEEN PRAYED OVER AND MAY BE USED AS A POINT OF CONTACT (ACTS 19:12)
binary freedom is a trap ! What we really want is source freedom !
</joke>
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
I've tried to do it on my parent's old win95 computer, but since the encoder wants (wanted at least) stereo 44kHz files and since the disk is rather small, it's not feasible to play them and make WAV files (I've tried). It would be preferable to encode it directly into Vorbis.
Any ideas?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Iomega has a $50 rebate going on right now. Outpost.com has the Hipzip for a (pretty darn low price) $259. With Ogg Vorbis support coming soon and full official linux support right now, it's a pretty brainless purchase as far as I'm concerned.
BTW, $209 might sound like a lot, but the media for the HipZip is CHEAP. A 40 meg disk for it is $8; a 32 meg card for a Rio is like $80.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
Eh, I might misunderstand you, but the algorithm itself is in the public domain (where it belongs). It's the software the developers write that are BSD licensed. If commercial entities don't like the license, they can write their own software from scratch.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Last time OV was mentioned on /. (the last beta, presumably) I download the same encoder and xmms plugin for playback. I encoded a couple of CDs and tried it out. Here's what I found:
First, the sample encoder is MUCH easier to use than what I've already been using (GRip). I don't know if that's because my current method is so terrible or because the new one is so great.
Second, the resulting files were about 10% smaller. Others may say "so what, hard drives are cheap", but:
1) I only have 4.5 GB and don't have the extra cash to buy larger.
2) Larger hard drives make a 10% savings even MORE worthwhile. Consider: If I saved 10% of a 4 GB drive, that's 40 MB--room for maybe 10 additional songs or about one CD. But if I saved 10% of a 400 GB drive, that's an extra 4 GB--enough for 100 CD's.
Third, the sound quality was "equivalent". That is, I couldn't tell the difference, BUT I'm not an expert and my sound equipment is FAR from top of the line (just some computer speakers plugged into an AWE32).
--
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Perhaps, but until something like the Diamond Rio can play them then it won't be as mainstream as MP3. Give it time though. Linux wasn't built in a day.
Remember we're only talking about the sample implementation here. MS were always able to write their own incompatible version anyway. The file format is still, and always will be owned by the Xiphophorous project. Presumably, they control use of the name Ogg Vorbis, too.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Sorry to sound bitter and cynical. I just cant see it taking off with MP3 already established, and with people already having forked out their cash for portable mp3 players.
The portable player market is pretty big, but the home player market isn't. I just bought an Apex 703 DVD/CD/MP3 player this weekend, and my choices for MP3 players were pretty small -- it was either Apex or none at all, at least in a sane price range.
The licensing costs of the Fraunhoffer patents are pretty high for a free software group that doesn't have a revenue stream, but at the same time I'm left wondering if the "computer media" world doesn't stay behind MP3 and instead splinters into a half-dozen other formats if we might not have that preference vacuum filled with a CSS-style protected media format. The advantage that MP3 seems to have is that it's an "open" format -- you can copy it, edit it, change it and so on without a lot of RIAA nonsense.
Other systems may encompass this openness as well, but without the "average user" market acceptance that MP3 has they really go nowhere. I'd like to see MP3 get even wider acceptance by hardware makers, which can only happen through market acceptance.
Allow me to go off on a wierd story that, yes, does in fact relate to this:
Durring the cold war, the USSR had way better rockets then their western couterparts. They were more expensive, but better built and able to carry more. This is why the US laged way behind the USSR early on.
Then something strange happend. The USSR started slowing down their space program and pretty much came to a halt (more or less) after the American moon landing. They still had a few succsesses, like Mir, but their space program was taking up too much money, and certianly didn't help with their final collapse.
On the other hand, America still had rockets that couldn't take as much, but they were cheeper. More importantly, it forced NASA to miniturize components. This ment they had problems keeping up in the short term, but were better off in the long term.
So how does this relate? KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID. Even if you have the capablity to do it, that doesn't mean you should waste it. It's that sort of philosphy that drove the Solviet/Russian space program to have so many problems in the long run, and thus were beaten by their western counterparts.
------
Not a typewriter
The Binary Freedom database seem to have trouble handling yours truly load, so here's the complimentary mirror, brought to you by Waglo Labs.
there would be no Eminem, no N-Sync and no Limp Biskit.*
;)
;)
And this is a bad thing?
We are seeing more and more the danger that MP3s present to musicians' livelihoods
Just so people understand: Digital Music Distribution only threaten the lively hood of the RIAA. Music (and the Arts) thrived before IP law. The Arts will thrive long after people stop trying to impose artificial constraints on culture/thought/speech (IP law). Please read this article by Courtney Love. Members of the band Garbage are caught up in a legal fight with RIAA thugs. What was the name of that black singer who went bankrupt a couple years ago - she had sold millions and millions of records - and was penniless? The RIAA is messing with public perception - digital music distribution threatens them (and they are obsolete but are _BUYING_ laws to protect their pocket book schemes) and not artists.*
*These people are essentially *not* artists - they are products. This is what the RIAA is interested in; not Art. _BUT_ unfortunately i cannot tell *other* people what to listen too - just as I cannot convince 95% of the worlds sheeple how to vote, or why it is they think they like these 'artists' (because the public is horribly connected to The Media Machine(TM) which purpose is to end individual thought and replace it with a 'shared' group experience which centers on the Consumer Values(TM) - I believe 95% of people are incapable of making decisions based on objective opinions because they are caught up in a massive experiment in Population Control (no I don't mean there is a dark force controlling it all - but the 'marketing' machine evolves to serve those who intend to serve themselves - which is why the system is becoming effective - its goals are to homogenize thought to match product offerings.. and its working.) Hows that for paranoid?
Actually, that sentence was out of a longer letter that was an RMS reply to Jack. There was some cut-and-thrust debate going on, and RMS's quote was a sensible reply to an earlier assertion made by Jack. The whole "Linux operating system" thing didn't just come out of the blue, the interview just ended up with it edited in a somewhat unfortunate sounding way for RMS ;-)
Monty
xiph.org
The logo is sort of obscure, but the snake/sine wave thing is fairly obvious, and everybody likes to see powerful mythic figures hitting things with hammers.
But what in the WORLD were they thinking with the name? Ogg Vorbis? Nowhere near the "catchiness"
of saying mp3. Not to mention that any format must have a great three-letter acronym to catch on. I think "xiph" is a great name for the format, and XPH would make a catchy TLA.
Please guys, change the name, or adopt such a TLA. The name "Ogg Vorbis" just sounds way too plan-9-from-outer-space geeky.
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
> Indeed it will,
Yep, sticking to facts has never bothered the fanatical anti-RMS club. They invent them as they go. You give some examples below:
> when he started trying to deprecate LGPL.
The LGPL is exactly as "deprecated" as it always have been. From the start, it was intended for libraries that competed directly with proprietary solutions.
> For Stallman, any other form of licence is just a tactical compromise
*All* licenses for *all* intelligent people are tectical compromises for reaching specific goals. For RMS, the ultimate goal is to make alle software free, and GPL, LGPL, and the zlib licenses are merely instruments toward that goal. Only morons thinks trhe licenses are goals in themselves.
> He wants to try to promote Ogg to become the de acto standard,
> and then start including features in it with GPL code,
That would be impressive, given that it isn't a FSF project.
> Of course when Microsoft do this, it's called "embrace and extend",
> but Open Source's favourite sweaty hippie would never do anything so bad, would he?
Unlike Microsoft, RMS never has changed a license for a piece of software he has released to something more restrictive. However, that is a mere fact, not something as important as your speculation and name calling.
For Stallman, any other form of licence is just a tactical compromise on the way to finagling everyone into using his beloved GPL. He wants to try to promote Ogg to become the de facto standard, and then start including features in it with GPL code, so that anyone who wants to stay up with the development path has to join his merry band of intellectual property guerrillas. Of course, when Microsoft do this, it's called "embrace and extend", but Open Source's favourite sweaty hippie would never do anything so bad, wold he?
Look, that makes no sense. Just sit back and think about it. Microsoft "embrace and extend" = create incompatable versions so that everybody is locked into using Microsoft products/standards, and so that Microsoft gets sole control over something which was once out there for all to use. GPL "embrace and extend" = forever make it impossible for any one self-interest to use something to their own ends without leaveing it out in the open for anybody else to use.
How is this comparable? One is inherently selfish. The other is inherently protective. They're opposite.
Sure, criticize the restrictiveness of the GPL. That's fine. But that restrictiveness is of a *very* different nature than the restrictiveness of proprietary licenses such as what comes out of Microsoft, and it's just a stupid troll to try to compare the two.
Regarding the "IP guerrilla" nature of RMS and the GPL: sure, weakening IP is their goal. On the other hand, their way of going about it is entirely fair, and calling them a guerrilla isn't. They aren't going in there and insisting that proprietary software be made illegal, or that proprietary software must be opened up. They are *suggesting* that you might want to choose not to use it. What the GPL does is insure that that which *starts* open, *stays* open. What's so awful about that? It sounds like a damn good idea to me. If you're going to defend propreitary software, bear in mind that almost nobody who produces such software would ever let anybody else use their code without all sorts of restrictive licensing terms dictated by *them*. These restrictive licensing terms will tend to be must less protective of "general use" than the GPL is.
-Rob
But also, there's a lot of people who haven't forked out cash for hardware MP3 players, because both the Fraunhofer patent problem and the Vorbis announcement were in the public eye before hardware MP3 players started shipping. If Fraunhofer had kept the sub underwater just another year or two, MP3 would have won decisively. Instead, concientious people held back and waited, and now there's going to be a battle.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
In beta 2, oggenc's default encoding mode was 160kbps. In beta 4, the default is 128kbps. There *is* an audible difference, even with the improvements to 128kbps since earlier betas.
Monty
xiph.org
Napster pledged support early on but doesn;t seem to have gotten around to it.
.ogg, and OpenNap servers will happily take them. And, yes, I've used it so it does work, not just heresay ;-)
OpenNap, however, does support Ogg. Just use a client (AudioGnome or a recent Gnapster) that supports
Monty
xiph.org
The free Vorbis will always be there. The availability of free encoders plus the standard plugin architecture of music players these days would make embracing and extending a real tough thing to do.
Has there truly been a patent search to make sure that Ogg Vorbis does not infringe on existing patents?
For example, I just did a quick patent search for "MDCT" and "audio" and came up with 175 hits. There are plenty of patents out there covering all kinds of audio encoding mechanisms including MDCT (or whatever transform you happen to be fond of). While the transforms themselves usually are not patented, mechanisms of their practical use are.
and anyone else is just a whiner."
/. discussion, so it must be true...]
[attributed to Linus Torvalds in an earlier
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Nanny Ogg
Deacon Vorbis
It's all Terry Pratchett.
Great. It's Terry Practchet geeky. A step up from Ed Wood, but still....
--
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
The format looks cool, but it's still rough. I've been offering both MP3 and Vorbis from my download page for a while, and the few people that do try out the Vorbis version have complaints like:
- Can't get it to work with winamp
- Can't download it on Macintosh due to screwey MIME types
- My own complaint: the file is signifigantly larger than the matching MP3, yet the sound quality is noticably worse.
I'll check out this new beta. I'd say don't throw out notlame or your mp3 players just yet, but hopefully it will be up to par with MP3s (and maybe better!) very soon.
Oh, a point in its favor: getting the plugin for playing the files running on xmms was a breeze.
The NHS is not a socialised health care, it's a socialised life expectancy reducer :o)
Universal, socialised health care is rare, except in France (and in Scandinavia, of course). It seems to work well, provided you're ready to fund it decently - and the UK government is not.
The worst thing is, the average Brit wouldn't mind so much about paying a little more taxes and getting a reasonable cancer survival rate in return - but you know, ideology...
Thomas Miconi
Nanny Ogg
Deacon Vorbis
It's all Terry Pratchett.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzztttt. Wrong!
Pedant alert: The Ogg in Ogg Vorbis is taken from the move in Netrek - to Ogg an opponent. The full definition is here but to summarize the Netrek definition: "to execute kamikaze attacks against enemy ships which are carrying armies or occupying strategic positions". Quite appropriate really.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
This is a perfect example of someone choosing a license based on what their goals are for the code, rather than religious beliefs or whatever. IMO all of the BSDL vs. GPL debates are pretty pointless, since most of the time the participants are arguing that one or the other license is ideal for all open source software. I say, it all comes down to what your goals are for the code you're writing; pick whichever license is most appropriate, rather than mindlessly advocating using one over the other for everything. This goes for proprietary software too.
All it would take though is for WinAmp to not support it, to crush its chances.
Rader
Interesting thing: sometimes, we who make the technology, make the rules.
Yeah, it's not "marketing-friendly", but sometimes that just means we drive a little change in the world a little more to our view of things. People come around eventually to whatever level is required to participate in the next "big thing". Influx into common american usage patterns by outside linguistic groups isn't exactly something new...
isn't that cool?
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
Has anyone else had trouble with seeking with the new vorbis xmms plugin? I've only tried the rpm so far, but when I drag the position cursor xmms locks up. This doesn't happen with mp3s, so it must be a problem with the vorbis plugin. Has anyone else found this?
Does anybody know about support for multichannel (specifically 5.1) audio streams? I've got a surround setup and some surround recordings on DVDs, and it would be just swell if I could encode those...
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I've got a large ogg library (about 2.5K songs) but playing it with xmms is painful- many times, I can't get all the way through one album without crashing. And as one friend put it "sure, they are accepting patches... or they would be, if they didn't think that their code was already perfect."
Are there decent GUI-driven alternatives out there for ogg + mp3?
IAAL,BIANLY
Treating the "market" as a ding an sich is up there with saying that "evolution will decide who lives and dies," another persistant tautology. Not to mention the fact that using Ogg Vorbis or the mp3 algorithm are both, for all practical purposes if not legal ones, free, and so the metaphor of the market isn't even completely apt.
Would reverse-engineering the key to make free music play be illegal under the DMCA? It does contain an exception that one can circumvent with the permission of the copyright holder. So if I release music legally, and Windows won't play it because I can't sign it, and I find a way to circumvent the system to access MY content, which I as the copyright holder authorize, is that illegal according to the law or likely to be illegal in Judge Kaplan's opinion?
Here is an interesting thing for the DVD crowd to do. Write a CSS ENcoder. (Yes I know DVD players play unencrypted discs...). Release content encoded with CSS and with an Open Content license. Have people use DeCSS to decrypt it. As the copyright holder, authorize them to do so. Then if anyone sues saying DeCSS is a cirumvention device, say that it is with the authorization of the copyright holder, and blow a hole in the DMCA'a reasoning with its own exemption.
That could make a great test case.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Minor quibble about the download page - I found the order of things screwy: libraries should come first, then players and tools, front-ends and whatnot, then player plugins, then language bindings. No doubt there's a good reason for the current order of things but I found it confusing.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
I'm not sure I follow you here. Are you suggesting that an opensourced algorithm would somehow change the licence of the data?
That's like claiming that gcc can only produce binaries that are GPLed, because gcc is GPLed. This is patently false.
It seems to me the licence of the codec is completely immaterial.
First a disclaimer... I have a fairly critical ear and I'm listening using a pair of studio grade Sony MDR-V6 headphones.
I just did a quick compare using "Where it's At" from Beck's Odelay album using MP3, OGG and WMA at 128kbps. To be honest I like using music which contains large amounts of purposeful distortion on the part of the artist because it really screws with these encoders...
OGG is slightly improved over MP3. Although there was considerable distortion in the first couple of passages of the song which really drove me nuts, the distortion throughout the rest of the song was more tolerable.
MP3 as always has this really nasty distortion throughout the song, enough to give me a headache after extended listening(i.e. more than 2 minutes).
WMA still just overall has the best quality of reproduction. It's still a lossy format and there are times of distortion, but overall it just does a much better job of reproducing the music.
Also to mention speed. MP3 encoded the fastest, in around 30 seconds. WMA took 50 seconds. Yet it took nearly 3 minutes to encode the song into OGG format.
Your mileage may vary.
If you can't hear the difference between an MP3 and the CD original, the differences in these formats will not be noticeable to you. In which case the question is do you have the time to wait for OGG to complete your encoding?
Honestly I found the differences between these formats to be quite distinct. I believe I could pinpoint them with 99% accuracy in a double-blind test.
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Nicotine free Amish .sig.
Interesting, in my comparison Ogg was nowhere near the quality of WMA.
But then I only did 160kbps.
I'm not going to get _into_ mass ability to play the resulting file- THAT can be fixed in the long haul! I'm saying that AS A MUSICIAN I _need_ more than just consumergrade lossy audio encoding. Each of my songs reacts differently to encoding, I know what I'm trying to get out of each, and treat it as a mastering situation. How? I use LAME and specify custom settings in detail to lock in a consistent, believable soundstage despite the coarsening of texture from the lossy compression. What if LAME didn't offer those controls? The version I use didn't! It's free software, I was able to _add_ them working from a version that compiled without issues and a drag-and-drop helper app (DropMP3)!
Let's not even get into the way there is _still_ no Mac 'hacks' downloadable. How many months, years has it been? There was some sort of quick-and-dirty hack written at MacHack- where is it? Let's see that. Let's see MPW tools, _anything_, because right now your attitude is very much like saying 'no soup for YOU!'. It's morally indefensible to not get behind Vorbis, but it's not _your_ problem to make that possible, is it?
I am increasingly of the opinion that backing Vorbis is a detour, and what people should _really_ be doing is mounting legal challenges against Thomson's obscene over-reaching regarding the mp3 format. It's not especially relevant that mp3 is established- that could change. What's relevant is that Vorbis is playing a defensive game, and I'm seeing multiple reports that the avoiding of obvious, optimal algorithms that Thomson considers 'theirs' has led to Vorbis sounding less good- which does _not_ please me, way to compete guys :P Given that Vorbis will do this in efforts to not challenge the Thomson claims of intellectual property, just what are you gonna do when Thomson, unopposed, proceeds to make MORE CLAIMS and further eat away at the permissible techniques for encoding audio?
There are people out there who are preferring to go ahead _assuming_ the Thomson claims are unenforceable, ridiculous and obscene, who are simply proceeding to use mp3 _without_ paying tribute, and I don't mean consumers, either. I'm increasingly of the opinion that we're better off doing that and getting ready to directly contest Thomson's right to charge content producers and distributors for USE of the format. Ogg Vorbis legitimises what they are doing by playing keep-away with them and conceding every claim to property they make. I'm not okay with conceding these claims they make.
> MP3 encoded the fastest, in around 30 seconds.
:-(
> WMA took 50 seconds. Yet it took nearly 3
> minutes to encode the song into OGG format.
Umm.. then I don't think you were using beta 4. Since we're comparing against *beta 4* now (and the speed/quality improvements is brings...)
your review doesn't mean that much
If you have problems with beta 4, please send us example samples.
Monty
xiph.org
Squish will reappear.
But there's also been other good lossless compression work done lately in the form of FLAC and Monkey's Audio. Squish will be updated after I've had some time to commisserate with the other projects and steal technology from them-- AHEM! I mean share what we know.
(sorry been reading Microsoft rants)
Monty
xiph.org
Evil Anti-Capitalist Anti-Innovation Anti-American Open Source Pinko Peckerhead Freak
Not really. All of the annoyances so far have been trivial. For a patent to be valid, it has to narrow to a specific innovation. Yes, that's been abused alot recently, but the research and commercial organizations we're talking about here (Fraunhofer, Dolby, AT&T, Philips, NTT, etc) don't actually have very abusive patents. it's just the way they're using them; it is nearly impossible to make an unencumbered MP3 derivative. But if you're not doing things the MP3 way (we're not), sidestepping the patent issue isn't that hard.
Monty
xiph.org
Whatever...
Track 8 "Where it's at" from the Beck Odelay album.
Machine is a Compaq PIII-550.
C:\usr\test>oggenc test.wav
Opening with wav module: WAV file reader
Encoding "test.ogg" [100.0%] [ 0m00s remaining] /
Done encoding file "test.ogg"
File length: 5m 30.0s
Elapsed time: 2m 45.0s
Rate: 2.0054
Average bitrate: 121.8 kb/s
C:\usr\test>oggenc -v
OggEnc v0.7 (libvorbis beta4)
If you listen to the resulting file you will hear incredible distortion in the first passage. I would call it a reverb effect.
My statements are accurate, your attempt to deflect criticism through ad hominem does not help your argument.
We talked via email, this is beta 4, just to make sure every one else sees it (ie, my previous response was wrong).
The low speed is a little surprising, but not as big a deal as the reported artifacts. I'm looking at it.
Monty
xiph.org