Ogg Vorbis Players?

TokyoBoy asks: "I have been looking at in-dash mp3 head units and changers lately. However, its occured to me that I would much rather make Ogg/Vorbis files instead of mp3s now. Does anyone know of any hardware manufacturers who plan on supporting the Ogg/Vorbis format in either portable or car stereo equipment?" I would figure this wouldn't be so hard to add on support to some of those Linux-based players out there. There has been a lot of press about the Empeg Car MP3 player (now RioCar...here's hoping that these units are still as flexible as they always were), over the past year, and Slashdot did this MP3 player project which also might proove to be a good starting point. If anyone out there has done this already, please share your experiences.

Comments

Dadio

[Anonymous Coward]

The FAQ on the Vorbis site refers to this

It's pointless

[dlb]

Ogg Vorbis is just the Betamax of 2001.
It's way too niche, and about 5 years too late, to really catch on.

Hell, look at the Microsoft engine and all of it's $$$ that can't get WMA to catch up to mp3.

Put a fork in Ogg Vorbis, it's through.

~dlb

Re:It's pointless

[tempest303]

the Betamax of 2001? I couldn't disagree more.

Ogg will catch on because *companies* want it. Hardware manufacturers, software companies, they want quality, Free audio - why wouldn't they? WMA failed because MS wanted $$ for it, and always will. Vorbis is utterly Free, and the tools are going to be ready to go when they do a 1.0 release. When that 1.0 hits, I think it's going to make a huge splash. If the transition from mp3->vorbis can be done seamlessly (which, if Nullsoft puts the Vorbis plugin into Winamp's default download package, it will be), I think MP3 may be what's "through." What is MP3's advantage, if all the major software players support it? (there's the hardware market, but weren't you saying something about "niche" earlier?)

Re:It's pointless

[dlb]

Mp3 is trucking along being synonymous with "digitial music" -- meanwhile, ogg vorbis MIGHT get a 1.0 release. What does a "1.0 release" really mean anyway? Your whole argument is based on "Ifs" anyway.

I'll wager that Duke Nukem Forver gets released, with 2 sequels, before ogg vorbis makes any sort of inroads on the digital music industry. *companies* are more likely to say "oh god, not another music format" than say "hey, ogg is 'utterly free'".

Besides, who wants to re-encode their entire collection just for the sake of ogg? Why do all that work for no real substantial gain?

Ogg Vorbis is too little too late along with OS/2, MS Bob, any language by Sun, and Corel's rehash of Wordperfect.

~dlb

Re:It's pointless

[ywwg]

um, who cares what other people think? The files are a good size, the sound is good, and the code is available. I rip all my cds to ogg, why do I need someone else's permission to use them. I doubt they'll ever be used in standalone players (unless someone hacks in a codec), but I don't see why ogg support can't be added to the empeg car deal-y.

Re:It's pointless

[OverCode@work]

Umm, right. There's already a popular product, so nobody else should even try to come up with something better. With that kind of attitude we'd still be living in the dark ages.

Vorbis may not be as popular as MP3, but it's technically superior, and it works, right now. The compression and sound quality are excellent. The people behind it are working hard to have support included in popular players, and have even written a firmware update for the HipZip portable player to add Vorbis support (I just bought one of these players, and the Vorbis update does indeed work). Furthermore, Ogg Vorbis is not patented, and you don't have to pay royalties to anyone to use it (whereas Thompson charges significant royalties for MP3-related products).

So yes, it's the underdog compared to MP3, but it's far from through. With the attitude of "it's not the most popular and therefore it's pointless", though, we have little to look forward to in this world.

-John

Re:It's pointless

[tooth]

Ogg Vorbis is too little too late along ...

I think that Linus said the same thing about Linux vs HURD. [does some searching...] ahh, here it is "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu".

I know personally when I get my in-car mp3/ogg player going, 99% of the music files are going to be ogg, and they are the ones that I rip myself. If friends want to .. "borrow" files from me, they'll get them in ogg format.

Re:It's pointless

[kger]

I don't exactly agree that Ogg Vorbis is a flash in the pan. But I must say that I think it would do better in the non-geek world with a better name. "MP3" just sounds a whole lot better than "Ogg Vorbis", or even just "Vorbis". IMHO, they need a cooler-sounding name for the technology.

Having said all that, I do hope that Vorbis takes off and makes an impact in the world of digital music.

Re:It's pointless

[siegesama]

Try "oggs".

Granted, "Ogg" is the name of the entire codec project (whereas "Vorbis" is just the audio portion), but if you're just going on a catchy name, "ogg" is it, baby!

"I've just ripped my 43rd album to oggs"
"Damn, my ogg collection is getting enormous"
"No officer, I don't trade illegally copied MP3s. What's Ogg? Oh, it's just some random data file, ignore that."

Re:It's pointless

[Anonymous Coward]

"Never brand with initials! It's the path to obscurity!". That's what any book on branding will scream. barnesandnoble.com was too long and hard to spell, so Barnes&Noble switched to bn.com, which was completely bland and unmemorable (compared to amazon). The coolness of "MP3" is the exception, not the rule. You'll get used to "ogg" in no time, don't worry. It's a very cool name I must say, as long as you pronounce it ogg, not oh-gee-gee. :-)

Re:It's pointless

[jonathan_ingram]

I've tried out Vorbis on a couple of albums (started looking when it got to beta 2). Beta 4 is on a par with Lame (except I find 128Kb Vorbis nicer to listen to than 160Kb Lame MP3). There are a couple of builds of the alpha version 1 release candidate around, and they're even more impressive - they have a couple of bugs with amplifying noise, but have encoded a couple of my albums to approx. 85Kb/s streams that sound incredible. It's still not the best codec to choose for very low bit rates (i.e. IP telephony), but it's definately the best cross platform format you can get for music and mid-to-high-quality reproduction.

So, yes, I'll be reencoding my 150 albums to Vorbis when RC1 is out. If only for the 40% space saving on my hard drive.

Hip Zip?

[Sloppy]

The only one I have heard of is the IOMega Hip Zip, which will supposedly support Vorbis in the future which is useless if you want one now. (And also useless if you're in the majority that thinks 40 Megabyte media are too small.)

---

Re:Hip Zip?

[ejracke]

40 mb is not bad when you consider the amount of memory you get for the price of one 32 mb sony or flash media card... its the quantity and value of the player not the size of one little memory stick... oh wait, how many songs can you fit on that 40 mb?

It's there TODAY, in beta.

[Anonymous Coward]

Go bug the Vorbis developers. Hipzip supports vorbis in beta code today!

Car Audio Equipment

[webworkz]

Hey. Just reading through the posts regarding the in-dash unit you are looking for. I'd like to point you to a great discount site which I frequently purchase from. It's called MM X-Press. They've got some sweet deals from a lot of well-known manufacturers. They're not the cheapest on everything but they do have a lot of good deals. Let me know what you think.

Re:Car Audio Equipment

[joekool]

This sounds like the spam I get in my email everyday. Do you have ways for me to make money fast, too? Hows about some live nude girls? Do you work for them, or do they pay you for this?

Re:Hardware OGG Vorbis Player

[cymru1]

Got a bit of a split personality disorder?????? Effects on the Market (Score:1) by Citron1313 on Sunday July 08, @11:58PM EST (#151) (User #466130 Info) I work at a very reputable stock brokerage firm, and let me tell you, this merger is going to have quite an impact on the market tomorrow. I've had hundreds of clients calling me up trying to get in on this deal (AT&T is HOT right now!). Anyway, I this is going to be huge, the Wall Street Journal is billing it as the merger of the century. What will this mean for consumers? How the fuck should I know, huh, I'm just a stock broker!!!

Re:Hardware OGG Vorbis Player

[siegesama]

Checking recent posts, in addition to working at a hardware manufaturer and a stock brokerage firm he's also apparently recently worked for an (unnamed) ISP, and has somehow been in on some Polls taken at the University of Illinois.

Guy gets around!

ps- good eyes! I never normally look at the name of the person posting

Re:It's pointless (NOT)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ogg Vorbis has one feature that none of the other formats can boast, and it's one that makes a big difference for me. It's called bitrate peeling, and it basically allows you to encode a track at an archival bitrate (say 192kbps) and derive a lower-bitrate version from that archival file on-the-fly without re-encoding. This is particularly useful if you want to cram a lot of songs on a portable player (where 128kbps is more than enough if, for example, you go for a run) but you don't want to keep an extra low-rate version of every track on your hard drive.

I would buy any decent portable player for this feature alone. (I've been bugging Sonic Blue -- they make the Rio line of players, most of which are firmware-upgradeable -- about including Ogg support for a while now. If anyone is interested, call or email [see below] and ask them about it. The more interest they get in Ogg, the more likely they will be to consider using it.)

-cf

SonicBlue product/technical support: (541) 967-2450 or customersupport@sonicblue.com

SonicBlue pre-sales/customer support: (800) 468-5846

Whoa, there; I think we missed a step

[Khopesh]

BEFORE you look at players, perhaps we should examine the quality of ... the entire project with all its components?

I would use Ogg Vorbis if it were equivalent to lame in quality. Sad fact is that it isn't. It's getting closer, but not quite there yet. Sure, it's a better format, more free and useable, but I care about quality. I'm not comparing it to mp3 as a whole; it's better than most mp3 encoders. Lame still whoops ogg though. While the lame team is actually working on ogg (I believe that they're actually just supporting one guy who may have given up trying), Ogg encoders and decoders still have quite a way to go in order to be fully competitive with lame. ... and on the subject of decoding, WinAMP (with the ogg playback plugin) takes two to four times as much of the CPU (on my Win2k box) with ogg files as compared to mp3 files.

The Ogg team has the right ideas and plays them well, and I'd encourage others to use the format, but when I rip and encode music, it will be with the latest Lame. I try the new Ogg Vorbis on occaision, but I'll probably wait for a front page Slashdot article to claim it is equal or better than Lame (which I believe WILL happen) before my next return to Ogg experimentation.

Re:Whoa, there; I think we missed a step

[Anguirel]

... and on the subject of decoding, WinAMP (with the ogg playback plugin) takes two to four times as much of the CPU (on my Win2k box) with ogg files as compared to mp3 files.

Depending on exactly when you tested this out (meaning whether you were using the WinAMP-official plugin, or the Ogg Vorbis team plugin) the CPU requirements are, in theory, reduced somewhat. Part of the problem (as reported on the WinAMP message boards by one of the WinAMP programmers) was that there was no option to disable bitrate display updates in the Ogg Vorbis team plugin. The actual alteration of bitrates doesn't consume much, but apparently reporting it to the display takes a significant chunk of CPU time. That isn't to say that they are by any means equal in terms of workload yet (although they might be... it's difficult to test anything when all I get is 1-2% CPU usage reported for either type of file). However, it might be worth checking at some point to see if you have the most current version of the (Official Nullsoft) plugin. I'd be interested to know if it still takes up more CPU time.

~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
"Veni; Vidi; Vi C++"

Re:Whoa, there; I think we missed a step

[Khopesh]

very informative. thank you.
my experience was 1-3 months ago with the ogg team decoder on what was then the most recent winamp. my performance was actually an under-exaggeration, for mp3s usually take 0-1% while oggs take 3-6% CPU. your argument has convinced me to take another look the next time any ogg announcement graces /. (whereas I was otherwise waiting for a major announcement).

Re:Whoa, there; I think we missed a step

[3.1415926535]

Plus, once the encoder supports channel coupling, expect to see quality-to-bitrate increase considerably, putting Vorbis ahead of Lame (I hope...)

Re:Whoa, there; I think we missed a step

[kcarnold]

Though I admit that I have not done any real side-by-side double-blind tests (nor do I have the quality hardware to do it properly), I will have to say that I already consider Vorbis to be of better quality than MP3 (yes, lame included) at similar bitrates, and lame has had years of tuning and work while the Vorbis encoder is just reaching RC1. One of the things that should come in RC1 is channel coupling. Monty has already committed to his work branch a ~80k channel coupled mode for mode A encoding, i.e., what used to be 128k. If that holds up for higher bitrates, and I have no reason to think that it wouldn't, Vorbis will have a solid ~40k head on MP3, and -- unlike MP3pro -- the RC1 decoder, released a few weeks ago, can play the channel-coupled streams.

As for decoding CPU usage, ogg123 and mpg123 command line decoders are roughly equivalent -- the general rule is that Vorbis was designed to be little more computationally complex than MP3. Frontend implementions, as mentioned elsewhere in this thread, can have an impact on that.

Why?

[jdevons]

Use MP3 instead...

Re:Hardware OGG Vorbis Player

[sid_vicious]

VERY good catch.

This is one of those times I wish I had some moderation points sitting around -- someone mod this Citron1313 troll into OBLIVION.

Re:Hardware OGG Vorbis Player

[jdavidb]

Yeah, it would have felt good, but in retrospect, realize that Citron1313 existed for one day and has now either lost interest or gone on to a different nickname. I'm going to keep my eyes open for similar-sounding posts in the future, though. All those posts sort of followed a "formula."

Hardware manufacturers are interested.

[K8Fan]

I attend the Winter CES in Las Vegas, as well as the CEDIA show. I can tell you, every maker of music jukeboxes I talked to was very interested. MP3 licence fees cut into their profits, and if they had a free (as speech) encoder that they could optimize for their application, they would be very happy. That it is also free (as in beer) makes them overjoyed.

The empeg may support it in the future

[Drakino]

This topic comes up on the empeg BBS quite a bit. Last I remember, the major hurdle is to get a non FPU decoder for the ARM platform. Beyond that, it should be possible. And right now, the Rio-Car is on sale. $999 for the 10 gig model, well worth the money even if it is used for MP3s in the mean time.

Why take the hard way?

[ralphj]

Just use the mp3 hardware that's available - sound quality's pretty much the same. Ogg will never be more than a sympathetic open-source project, because it hasn't got much more to offer than mp3. MP3 is currently widely accepted and used, and hardware co's will keep sticking to it - except for a couple of geeks, there'll never be a market for Ogg-hardware.

Re:Why take the hard way?

[3.1415926535]

"Ogg will never be more than a sympathetic open-source project, because it hasn't got much more to offer than mp3."

• Ogg Vorbis is free (as in beer and speech)
• Ogg Vorbis supports more than two channels
• Ogg Vorbis supports a (nearly) unlimited number of comments - much beter than ID3
• Ogg Vorbis has no gap between chained files / files recorded from live mixes, etc.
• Ogg Vorbis has better sound quality than MP3 (usually, and it's getting better)
• Ogg Vorbis supports bitrate peeling (although there are no tools for it yet)

Those are only a few that I could think of off the top of my head.

U can make a difference

[xigxag]

Philips Audio is conducting a betatest of an mp3 boombox. In the application there is a place where you can recommend features for inclusion. You can also tell them how many hundreds of files you've encoded into .ogg format. Those people who wish to see .ogg become more widely accepted can make an impact by letting Philips know about it.

In any event, no matter how you feel about Vorbis, please let Philips know that you have absolutely no wma files nor any intention of using that format in the future!