Ogg Vorbis RC3 Released

xercist writes: "Let's start 2002 off with some good news! The long awaited RC3 release of the Ogg project's Vorbis codec is now out. Major changes include much improvement in the quality to bitrate ratio, ability to specify a hard bitrate min/max to the encoder (good for streaming), and an entirely new bitrate management engine which can emulate CBR, do constrained bitrates, and will accept quality settings via the -q flag from 0 through 10 in .00000001 increments (currently only tuned for 44.1 KHz modes). Vorbis has kicked MP3's, WMA's, and Real's asses for a long time now, hopefully this release will change the minds of anyone yet undecided. Download RC3, then show your appreciation for all their hard work and dedication by making a donation to support the project."

Comments

A quality release

[Marx_Mrvelous]

I'm looking forward to getting and testing this. The last few releases have been very good, and another high quality release will really help people change their minds about mp3, etc.

Hardware Support...

[Cryptnotic]

We really need support for OGG on products like the Phatbox.

Cryptnotic

Re:Hardware Support...

[Antipop]

This is why I don't use OGG. Yeah, it sounds great and it's free in the true sense, but if I can't play it on my new RIO SP100 it's no use to me.

For now I've learned to live with MP3. lame --r3mix produces almost perfect MP3s that are more than good enough for me. Checkout r3mix.net for more info.

Re:Hardware Support...

[Enahs]

Really, it's not been all that long since there wasn't hardware support for MP3. Use OGG, and they (the hardware manufacturers) will come. Had it not been for MP3's popularity, you'd not see devices like the Rio line and others.

Re:Hardware Support...

[sgtron]

this is why i don't use mp3 players. if they can't support .ogg files, then they're no use to me. minidisc takes whatever i throw at it and loves it all. so throw away your faulty rio and quit accepting crap, especially when you know it's crap, just because they tell you it's cool to have one.

Re:Hardware Support...

[Antipop]

Actually I love my Rio. It's one of the CD-MP3 players. If I rip my CDs with lame --r3mix they sound perfect, and the Rio does a good job of playing them back. I've got a minidisc player and I got sick of waiting an hour to get an hours worth of music on disc. Plus I don't have the money to shell out to get a soundcard with a digital out, so I had to bother with setting levels and all that. I much prefer taking 5 minutes to burn 15 hours worth of music on a CD. Ogg's great and all, but MP3 is the standard.

I love OSS as much as everyone else here, but sometimes it's just not practical.

Re:Hardware Support...

[koekepeer]

i don't understand your argument. are you trolling?

minidisc accepts everything you throw at it? how do you throw it then? as far as i understand, minidisc uses a proprietary format to compress music (wasnt it called ATRAC or something?) so if you want to put something on a minidisc, you need a conversion step.

perhaps you're trying to say that one can't record with an mp3 player? well, it's a player :-], and not a recorder like a minidisc.

your comment has nothing to do with *ogg support on the diamond rio or similar players. the fact remains that *ogg-files are not supported in hardware players (yet). however, this has more to do with the fact that *ogg hasn't been accepted to the same extent as MP3 (yet). like anyone else, i'd love it if i could buy a rio-like walkman to play my *ogg-files, but i guess i have to be patient :-(

[off-topic, like the previous post]
IMO, the big advantage of MP3 walkmans is the lack of moving parts/optics (that is, when you have an MP3 player with solid state memory). CD's are never 100% shock-proof, so finally you *can* go jogging with your walkman, something promised in advertisements *years* ago.
[/off topic]

regards,

meneer de koekepeer

Re:Hardware Support...

[blooflame]

Surely by now someone has tried to hack an .ogg player into a Rio-type device by replacing the code on ROM/Flash/whatever-it-is? Also, wasn't the RCA Lyra supposed to be upgradable to support new formats?

Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still waiting for those properly conducted and documented double blind listening tests.... you know, like the ones that've been done in the past which shows that only the very best listeners only sometimes could tell 128 kbps MP3 (FgH encoder, not Xing, Blade, etc) apart from the original material. At least two of these types of properly conducted double blind tests have been done for MP3, WMA and others.

So where are these tests for Vorbis?

That is what it will take to convince me. A long laundry list of impressive sounding (in techno-speak) features does not necessarily make for an impressive sounding codec. True double blind listening tests with a statistically valid sample size, both in terms on the number of musical selections and listeners (who can even reliably tell the difference at all) are the only way to really know.

Of course, it's all a moot point for the majority of people who can't really tell the differences... but it makes for better conversation eg, my codec can beat up your codec.....

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[Anonymous Coward]

How about ff123's 128kbit double blind test. It's using RC2 as a basis, and the quality improvements since then have been quite substantial.

ff123 is planning more tests at such bitrates - it's difficult to organise a test, gather results and publish findings on the same day as an RC.

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[jonathan_ingram]

We're getting there. RC3 has only been released for about an hour :)

The best tests we have at the moment were conducted by
ff123 at 128kpbs. There have been two so far (the second is technically still underway, although it's now based on outdated encoders, so I imagine a third will start fairly soon). The
first listening test compared RC2 Ogg Vorbis, LAME MP3, Xing MP3, Liquifier AAC, MPC, and WMA8. The formal analysis showed that, on the file compared, the encoders could be divided with 95% confidence into three groups (from best to worst):

1. MPC and AAC
   
2. WMA8 and LAME and OGG
   
3. XING
   

.
The second test used a CVS version of OGG from about a month and a half ago. This time there are three test samples which participants can choose to evaluate. While technically still underway,
the interim results can be found here. Of the three test samples, the first can't discriminate between the encoders, the second looks like it will but needs more listeners (and the results so far look interesting), and the third discriminates well, to the extent that it shows that Xing and WMA8 are statistically much worse on that clip than all the others.

Now all we need is a third test with the latest updates of all the encoders - since we now have a new stable version both of Ogg Vorbis (RC3) and LAME (3.91).

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[staeci]

does it sound good enough for you?
is it free(speech/beer)?

Who cares about my format is better than your format contests?

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not test out ogg for yourself, and decide if it's right for you? I did just this, and found I could not tell the difference between ogg and mp3. Since ogg files are smaller, I switched.

If you need formal testing for a product development, then why don't you approach your managers, ask for funding for such a test (contact a local college for a psych professor or someone who can help design a valid test.)

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[Anonymous Coward]

With all the whining going on you'd think these people had actually paid to listen to this stuff. But, nooo, of course not. They just downloaded it off the net. Because they are a bunch of freakin freeloaders.

Buy the CD and rip it yourself. Then there is only one person to blame. Unless you bought the Natalie Imbruglia CD. In that case you are fucked. And your taste in music is poopy.

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[Anonymous Coward]

There was one post on /. a while ago. I forget the specifics but basically. MP3 came in last which
is not surprising since every uses that as the
baseeline to beat. There were several Golden ears
who listened and the results were double blind.

I believe thay WMA slightly beat ogg. But MP3Pro,
ogg and WMA were all so close as to be moot. There
was good commentary about where each format did
well, (i.e. stereo seperation, low vs high freq etc)

The other bottom line was on computer speakers everything from MP3 on up sound the same.

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[Anonymous Coward]

What stop you to conduct the tests yourself if you care
so much about the sound quality? You paid anything so far?

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[pezpunk]

this baffles me. maybe it depends on the type of music. i listen to guitar and drum heavy rock and roll, and at 128 kbps, the high-hats cut through my brain like a knife in a totally un-source-like way. and yeah that's with the fgh encoder. at 192, i find it much more difficult to tell it apart from the original, but i wish people would stop arguing in favor of 128 kbps as near-cd-quality cuz it just ain't.

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[Ignominious Cow Herd]

I'm still waiting for those properly conducted and documented double blind listening tests....

Don't you mean double deaf listening tests...?

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[Anonymous Coward]

So double blind listening tests were done with WMA, uh? So what? I compared WMA with MP3 at the same bitrate (to wich condition WMA is supposed to sound better ...), and it is garbage ...

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[Chris Johnson]

Well, such tests are more a test of the listener's ability to not get ear fatigue than anything else. That said, this guy has PC software to do this with, plus a lot of files to compare, including one (a test of 'articulation') that uses lossy-encoded files vs. an uncompressed version. He also has a link to a Mac version now, because I coded it for him.

When I did that, I also tried some of his tests to see what kind of listener I was. I can barely hear background noise at all, but was able to pick out the original from 256K mp3 encoding 11 out of 14 times, which is proof to ABXers. This was Arny's 'articulation' test at 'probably impossible' level... I am a mastering engineer who writes DSP software and I was using my studio reference system. He tells me there was one other person once who was able to ace that test, and he's considering toning down the language and not calling it 'impossible' anymore if people can get it 11 out of 14 and so on- but to most people it is impossible. Again, that's 256K mp3, and not Xing either.

I'm sure I could tell Ogg Vorbis too, but you have to know what to listen for when the bit rate gets luxurious. There was no real tonal change to listen for, it's just that the 256K file was recognizably characterless, sort of like 'pod people' of audio. Hardly surprising as this is just what I work to avoid in full-resolution CD audio- that too can be rather bland and characterless if you're not careful!

(My own audio work is at www.airwindows.com/dithering/, GPLed, recently added some mid/side stereo features and a GUI Knob class that worked out quite well)

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about? How could VBR possibly sound any worse than CBR? If the best mix for a given track happened to be the CBR mix, the VBR encoder should generate that. The set of VBR encodings is basically a superset of the set of CBR encodings.

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[Dr. Spork]

It's great to see a site like this. I only have two objections to ff123's tests:

1. He shouldn't decode MP3s with a decoder known for its inaccuracy. If he insists on Winamp, I recomend the mpg123 plugin.

2. Results at 128 kpbs are of absolutely no interest to me. I know everything will sound crappy at this bitrate. I guess it's easier to for ordinary listeners to hear defects at this bitrate, and one can guess that the best sounding codec at 128 will have a leg up for the higher bitrates--so it's not entirely beside the point... . Still, I would never consider encoding at anything below 160, and try to get VBR to average about 190.

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[ff123]

The decoder I use for mp3 is Fraunhofer's (in_mp3.dll from Winamp 2.76), and is as good as one can get, unless one thinks that dithering at the LSB makes a significant difference in sound quality. Winamp ditched its buggy Nitrane decoder starting from version 2.666. For a comprehensive comparison of mp3 decoders, see David Robinson's excellent site:

http://mp3decoders.org/

The optimal bitrate to use depends on the quality of the codec. To say that everything at 128 kbit/s will sound crappy doesn't allow for the chance that improved codecs may actually be acceptable at that bitrate.

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Where ???

[Mawbid]

Only the best listeners can tell a 128kbps mp3 from the original? Holy crap, I must be some kind of listening prodigy, because 128kbps mp3's sound like shit to me. Clearly identifiable shit too.

Maybe it's the Sennheisers.

Alright, instead of beating my head against the wall, trying to convince everybody that 128kbps won't cut it, how about I solicit some useful advice just for those of us who need more:

Can Vorbis currently make files that sound about as good as 256kbps mp3's(1) and take less space? Is Vorbis even paying any attention to high bitrate encoding?

1) Which, in my case, is almost the same as cd quality. Very rarely do I hear the difference (one example is the sound of the crowd in the beginning of some tracks on Live Art by Béla Fleck & The Flecktones)

This won't change much...

[DrEldarion]

Maybe some slashdotters will use this, but really, will anyone else?

Everyone and their mom knows what an MP3 is by now. They know how to rip their CDs into mp3s, they know how to play mp3s, they know how to download mp3s, etc.

This is like trying to get everyone who's using Windows for day-to-day things to switch over to Linux. Even if the alternative is superior, they're all using Windows, they all KNOW Windows, and they really don't feel like switching just for the hell of it.

-- Dr. Eldarion --

Re:This won't change much...

[Anonymous Coward]

Good point!

Fact of the matter is that tech like this will not make it into the mainstream until there is a very small "learning curve".

In iTunes on the mac, you pop a CD into the computer and then drag the song names into your library. The app does the encoding (does a decent job of it by default).

Most users never go into the preferences and fiddle with the bitrates or change the encoding type to AIFF (or whatever).

Same reason that people don't use a good encryption tool (like PGP), it's not built in to the mail clients. Once it is (and enabled by default) it'll be everywhere.

Re:This won't change much...

[Tsar]

Maybe some slashdotters will use this, but really, will anyone else?

Depends on how badly Microsoft and other major players fumble the ball, and forget who's actually buying their software. If they keep going in the current direction, I can see Ogg Vorbis becoming a standard almost overnight.

A few months ago a friend of mine, a staunch Microsoft supporter, converted his entire collection of MP3's (about 150 CD's—he'd ripped his whole library) to WMA format. The quality was fine, the files were smaller, and off he toddled. A few weeks later he upgraded his operating system, and WMA's Rights Management kicked in and told him he couldn't play any of those files anymore. Ouch! Weeks later, he'd re-ripped his collection to MP3—and ripped a friend's as well. Needless to say, he's not as staunch a supporter as he once was.

If WMA continues apace, and MP3 becomes co-opted, Ogg Vorbis may well step in. The name is odd, but who cares? The MP in MP3 stands for "Motion Picture" after all! I can see it getting abbreviated to "OVA" for "Ogg Vorbis Audio" and spawning a multitude of egg-shaped players. I can even see the slogans:

Finally, it's safe to put all your eggs in one basket.
OVA.

In the interim, and in the grand tradition of hacker jargon, I'd like to propose the following terms:

• Ovum: (Ogg Vorbis Unit of Media) An Ogg Vorbis audio file. "I have an ovum of the EFF speech that I can send you."
• Ova: (Ogg Vorbis Audio) Any number of Ogg Vorbis audio files, or a quantity of Ogg Vorbis audio. "Do you have any classical ova with you?"
• Oval: Of or relating to the Ogg Vorbis format. "Does your oval player have a spectrum analyzer?"
• Ovulation: The process of converting audio to Ogg Vorbis format. "Just a few more minutes of ovulation, and I'll be MP3-free!"
• Ovangelism: The process of converting audiophiles to Ogg Vorbis format. "I let him borrow my oval Walkman and a couple gigs of jazz ova, and he traded in his Rio the next day. Big ovangelism win!"

I'm not very clever at 5AM (or at noon, for that matter), so I hope this makes some sense.

Re:This won't change much...

[ichimunki]

Hmmm. Maybe some Slashdotters? I don't know... I've been listening to BBC Radio 1 via Ogg Vorbis stream for several days-- in fact caught their New Year's festivities live from Donegall Square in Belfast over it last night. I'd say they are exactly a group who wouldn't switch just for the hell of it, and they're exploring Ogg Vorbis.

What Ogg Vorbis really needs is some hardware supported devices. Soon. If I can buy a CD player that also plays mp3s, that is a clear win for the mp3 format-- those players are quite a bit cheaper than the no-disc players, and offer me some versatility. And as far as I know, there isn't any device (CD-based or Flash based) that runs even a beta Ogg Vorbis codec.

Re:This won't change much...

[Anonymous Coward]

I would like to make a bulleted list of stupid sounding software names:

• Grep: Honey would you grep me breakfast?
• /usr/bin: Oh, where did I put my Playboy? Oh yeah, /usr/bin/
• Perl: I lft te kys n te cr.
• Gnome: So your telling me there is a little person pounding out the pixels in my monitor? I hope he isn't mean like larry the Lawn Gnome...

Re:This won't change much...

[rseuhs]

Maybe some slashdotters will use this, but really, will anyone else?

I guess some slashdotters will convert their mp3s to ogg and put it on opennap.

Now imagine the average Windows-user finding a file he's been searching for weeks. Yes I guess he will download ogg.

Re:This won't change much...

[jcr]

he upgraded his operating system, and WMA's Rights Management kicked in and told him he couldn't play any of those files anymore.

Well, that about wraps it up for WMA as far as I'm concerned. MicroSquish's products have always had a nasty habit of destroying one's work, but when they do so *deliberately*, it's time to tell BG to get stuffed.

-jcr

Re:This won't change much...

[mrfiddlehead]

No, this is nothing like switching from Windoze to Linux. Nothing. Switching codecs is trivial, especially for windoze listeners who use winamp (it does do ogg by default now, right?) Anyway, downloading an ogg decoder and installing it into one's favourite "mp3" player is easy, especially for all those technically savvy little buggers out there these days. And its not like one has to actually know what an audio encoder/decoder is actually doing (although, one has to admit that it is one hell of a lot easier to do if you know a bit of C and download the source code)

All it will take is for Oog to become cool. The kids will jump on it and before you know it no one will be using mp3 anymore to rip their own CD's. Q.E.D.

BTW, ogg is fantastic, I've been ripping my CD's to ogg for a while now and, IMHO, the sound is better than mp3, the files are smaller than mp3 even though the bit rate was lower than I used to use for mp3 (64 vs 128).

Re:This won't change much...

[Kanon]

Fortunately you can turn off that "feature" but for some bizarre reason Microsoft turn it on by default. It caught me the first time too. I've never used WMA since.

Re:This won't change much...

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'One Big Chill' that went out around 5am GMT is blissful, I'm just listening to it now after setting it to record yesterday, I saved the native stream from Digital Radio, they dropped to MP2 @ 128k joint stereo by this time, earlier recordings were at 160k js, and everything was at 192k stereo a couple of weeks ago.

It still has the edge over FM, if only slight at 128k (you have more dynamic range though).

Re:This won't change much...

[andcal]

...as far as I know, there isn't any device ... that runs even a beta Ogg Vorbis codec

Are we at all surprised that hardware makers are not taking the time to code in support for a beta sound codec? I mean, with the development time of hardware in general, the pre SP1 codec-supporting hardware would just be hitting the shelves right now, no?

Once the first non-beta release is out, then it would make more sense to expect business-centric hardware makers to consider including support for it, right?

Re:This won't change much...

[Shrubbman]

especially for windoze listeners who use winamp (it does do ogg by default now, right?) Nope. They had planned to do so a few releases back, but it just hasn't materialized. Many feel the spectre of AOL exerting control over it's subsidiary for some reason is to blame ;'

Re:This won't change much...

[sheldon]

"A few weeks later he upgraded his operating system, and WMA's Rights Management kicked in and told him he couldn't play any of those files anymore. "

That would explain why I turn of Digital Rights Management in Windows Media Player.

I believe Microsoft also now provides a backup system for the DRM stuff. Haven't tried that, again because none of my music uses DRM.

Re:This won't change much...

[Anonymous Coward]

Already Serious Sam Second Encouter is using OGG for it's music and it's only a matter of time before more companies realize the potential of this excellent format in conjunction with it's flexible commercial licensing options.

Re:This won't change much...

[yy1]

The Iomega HipZip supports ogg.

If I was a hardware manufacturer tho, I would definatly be waiting for Ogg 1.0/final/non-rc to try to implement it. Alot of these devices with flashram that said they would support future formats, but a non-finalized one would be a hard sell for any format.

-yy1

Re:This won't change much...

[cute-boy]

Where can you get the ogg stream from for BBC-R1?

It isn't on the availble streams on the 'listen' link of their web site?

Re:This won't change much...

[ericdano]

What about some of these Players, like the Nomad or even the iPod that support firmware, or OS updates. I think the iPod might have some possiblities there. Now if iTunes would support Ogg as a plugin or something.....

Re:This won't change much...

[damiam]

Where can you get the ogg stream from for BBC-R1?

Here.

Re:This won't change much...

[koekepeer]

actually, their file-format is frozen, so i don't think that will be a huge problem. see their web page.

meneer de koekepeer

Re:This won't change much...

[koekepeer]

erm, I just spoke (online chat) to an iomega representative, and he said:

[quote]
It may work but we doesn't support using playing obb-vorbis music files in our drive.
[/quote]

Where did you get your information? I'll buy a hipzip if it plays *oggs, so I'm very interested.

regards,

meneer de koekepeer

Re:This won't change much...

[ichimunki]

The file format is not frozen enough to prevent older players from having trouble in some cases with files ripped from newer versions. I had this happen on my home "jukebox" which was running a beta when I tried to play files encoded with the rc2 version encoder. The point is well-taken from the repliant who points out hardware development times as an issue about why nothing is on shelves now, but hopefully there will be something available soon after the 1.0 version is released.

Re:This won't change much...

[Prior Restraint]

...AOL exerting control over it's subsidiary for some reason...

Probably because of another of its subsidiaries, Warner Music Group.

God bless synergy.

changes

[chuzwuzza]

Does this mean that If I was to encode my CD's again with the new RC3 release that they would be better quality than RC2, or is the improvements just for decoding?

Re:changes

[jonathan_ingram]

RC3 is much better quality all round than RC2 (and RC4 will be better quality than RC3 particularly for low bitrates). Particularly, RC2 had some problems with high frequencies that have now been fixed.

So reencode - and use '-q' switches this time instead of '-b' switches...

Wonderful

[Krellan]

This is wonderful. The ability to operate at specific bitrates, especially low bitrates, is critical for streaming.

Having a flexible range, with definable minimum and maximum bounds, is a very good way to go. You get the bandwidth efficency during silence and other easily compressible sounds, without the unpredictable bitrate spiking of unbounded VBR.

Ogg Vorbis is a step well taken in resurrecting online music and radio streaming. After the losses in 2001 (RIAA fees, AFTRA fees, MP3 patent fees, increasing bandwidth costs, copyright concerns), we need all the help we can get....

I listen to Dr. Demento online and keep track of what stations remain: http://krellan.com/demento/

ogg and portable devices, a badly need marriage

[Indy1]

i'd so love to use ogg, but the problem for me is that i use a rio volt, which is a portable mp3 cd player. A lot of the existing hardware out there only works with mp3 or wma. I hope that the different vendors (HELLO RIO!) will get a clue and release firmware updates that give ogg support to their devices. Once this happens, i'll never touch mp3 again. Btw, do the different vendors of mp3 hardware devices have to pay a royality to fraunhofer? If so, wouldnt ogg support make sense financially ?

Re:ogg and portable devices, a badly need marriage

[Anonymous Coward]

Rio doesn't have a general purpose chip. They have hardware for mp3 decoding. There is no hope for Ogg in most Rio devices. Sorry.

Re:ogg and portable devices, a badly need marriage

[Indy1]

the rio volt has flashable firmware, and it does support wma as well as mp3....so if it can do two codecs, maybe with a firmware upgrade it can do 3? or am i talking out of my ass? any EE's want to comment ?

Re:ogg and portable devices, a badly need marriage

[fiftyfly]

Here Here!

my volt was prob. the best $300C I ever spent (well, I certainly thought so during a flight to Australia :).
OGG support would be nice

Re:ogg and portable devices, a badly need marriage

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone contacted iRiver (the Korean OEM who *actually* makes the Rio Volt) and they said it was possible. Supposedly they're waiting for the Magic Version 1.0 before implementing it.

Re:ogg and portable devices, a badly need marriage

[steve_l]

It should be possible to add it to existing PDAs that implement the decoding in s/w... maybe the Windows version of the codec would port to PocketPC. That would be something to do in my copious free time, if I had any.

Re:ogg and portable devices, a badly need marriage

[Anonymous Coward]

I second that! I've got an original rio-volt, I'd love for them to come out with an alternative bios for the thing that would play also play OGG, I'd even be willing to drop WMA suppor!

Re:ogg and portable devices, a badly need marriage

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI there ARE portable hardware MP3 players which are firmware upgradeable. I recently bought the iRiver 2 (http://www.iriver.com, or in English, look on http://www.mp3wiz.com), which supports this feature. All I have to do now is pray that the company stays around long enough to provide the upgrades.

Now THAT's an open standards site!

[Tsar]

They even use PNG-format images, instead of the notoriously closed GIF format so often seen on our own beloved Slashdot.

I only hope that Ogg Vorbis will work on my CPRM-enabled ATA drive...

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't get it. Slashdot (a gestalt entity) bitches constantly about Windows and GIF and MP3. Ironically they all use them instead of switching to the alternatives.

Taco uses Windows to play games. Case in point.

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[thelexx]

A website I created recently used PNG for about three days until clients started complaining that the graphics wouldn't display. Being a corporate site, telling them to get a newer browser wouldn't work. They'd sooner go to our competitors pages.

LEXX

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not GIF that's patented but LWZ. ImageMagick is a library that has implemented GIF without LWZ.

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah that'll do wonders for your website's bandwidth usage...

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[Ziviyr]

I know the feeling. Making my personal pages I realized that .png support was very partial-seated. :-)

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[suwain_2]

I was just at their site, and I was wondering...

All the pages end with ".psp". I vaguely remember PaintShop Pro (from my Windows days) using the .psp extension, but I assume that's not what they're using for their webpages... Can anyone clue me in?

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[MikeBabcock]

I had a piece of PHP lying around I used to embed my images that chose PNG or GIF appropriately on a per-browser basis. I ditched it eventually in the hopes of making a more webcache friendly site, but it did work well ... JavaScript was the other option but I hate adding to download times.

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[red_one]

maybe you should look up the object tag for using gifs when the user agent doesn't support PNG.
oh, hangon, IE is notorious for bad OBJECT handling.

nevermind.

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[Fweeky]

Just have the browser request the image minus the prefix; the server can then choose what type to send based on the Accept: header.

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[volsung]

Python Server Pages. The architecture is similar to the JSP/Servlets architecture, but you get to write your code in Python instead. Check out Webware for more details.

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[great throwdini]

Just have the browser request the image minus the prefix; the server can then choose what type to send

That is the better route to go, but only should you be able to enable "MultiViews" (Apache) or its equivalent on the server. The downside is that I have noticed that certain User Agents (I won't name names) don't cache files delivered in this manner well at all.

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[Sentry21]

I used to use PNGs on my site, until I found that they wouldn't properly display colour - or rather, they WOULD.

PNGs have tons of neato features, like gamma settings and so on. When used properly, it can ensure that the colour you see on your monitor is exactly the same as the colour displayed on another monitor - the image is adjusted so that the output remains the same, even on different hardware.

This is a problem when you consider the following:

1. PNG transparency support is not properly supported in a lot of still-popular browsers, so if you want images to blend in properly with the background, you must actually have a background colour
2. HTML cannot be colour-corrected in the ways that PNGs are, which causes background colours of web pages to change from machine to machine - sometimes subtly, sometimes not.
3. The GIMP does not have (that I could find) an option to disable this feature of PNG images when saving as PNG. I haven't checked to see if Photoshop does, but even if it does, that leaves a few options

Either I can use a closed-source app (Photoshop) on a closed-source OS (MacOS or Windows) and maybe have my graphics work out, I can use an open-sourced app (GIMP) on an open- or closed-source OS and have my site look like wang to anyone who isn't using the same hardware and software that I'm using, or I can make GIFs on any OS with any software and have my site look the way I want it to.

The choice, for me, is a simple one.

--Dan

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[damiam]

* The GIMP does not have (that I could find) an option to disable this feature of PNG images when saving as PNG.

You must be blind. When you Save As PNG in the GIMP, you get a dialog box that, among other options, has a checkbox labeled "Save gamma" . If you don't save gamma, you don't have to worry about gamma correction.

Also, almost every browser that supports PNG supports PNG transparency. It's just that some browsers don't support the full 256 bits of transparency, they just support 1 bit (off/on) just like GIFs.

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[Prior Restraint]

Also, almost every browser that supports PNG supports PNG transparency.

Some version of IE (I think it was 4.x), supported transparency, but always used gray as the background color. I suspect they released it half-finished.

Re:Now THAT's an open standards site!

[gpinzone]

This is a problem when you consider the following:

1. PNG transparency support is not properly supported in a lot of still-popular browsers, so if you want images to blend in properly with the background, you must actually have a background colour

This is true, so just don't use PNGs when you need transparency. However, that's not stopping you from using them otherwise.

2. HTML cannot be colour-corrected in the ways that PNGs are, which causes background colours of web pages to change from machine to machine - sometimes subtly, sometimes not.

It might be happening due to the gamma correction settings. Just filter it out using PNGCRUSH.

3. The GIMP does not have (that I could find) an option to disable this feature of PNG images when saving as PNG. I haven't checked to see if Photoshop does, but even if it does, that leaves a few options

Again, use PNGCRUSH to filter out all of the other stuff like gamma correction, etc. if it's giving you grief.

Just type:
pngcrush -reduce -cc -brute -rem alla Source.png Dest.png

To compress your file the max.

vorbis does rock.....

[reaper20]

I use Vorbis alot .... but man, these RC candidates might be harmful more than anything else.

Sure, I know the Ogg team wants to release a good quality codec, but the longer Ogg Vorbis sits in pre-1.0, the harder a time it will face in a market flooded by codecs. I can go out right now and grab a stereo for my car that will play MP3s, but not Ogg Vorbis ... you're running out of time, ship the thing, or we'll all be stuck in WMA/MP3 hell ...

more and more products are shipping, and they are not smart enough to have upgradeable hardware ... ship it now and tweak later!

Re:vorbis does rock.....

[jonathan_ingram]

There are plans afoot.

The Ogg Vorbis *decoder* has been stable since RC1, and will be able to play any Vorbis stream produced by RC2, RC3, 1.0, or whatever. There are slight problems in that the reference decoder is floating point, which doesn't fit well with the ARM chips a lot of hardware players use, but that'll be sorted eventually.

Re:vorbis does rock.....

[strangemoose]

> ship it now and tweak later!
Yes.. thats the reasoning that keeps me from running RedHat or Windows9x/Me.

Re:vorbis does rock.....

[Anonymous Coward]

There are slight problems in that the reference decoder is floating point

This is not a slight problem, this is the problem for ogg on hardware players. You will never see ogg on anything other than your pc until this gets done.

Re:vorbis does rock.....

[Joe Rumsey]

Harmful or not, it bugs me the way they use the term "Release Candidate". I don't know about the rest of you, but on every project I've ever worked on, once you start calling things Release Candidates, you stop adding features and just fix bugs until you get the actual release version nailed. Generally speaking, your first RC should be something you think has a shot at becoming the actual release, otherwise why are you calling it a candidate? This is obviously not the case with Vorbis, as they keep adding new stuff with every candidate.

Now, having said that, there's two things I'll point out. First, I can't find anywhere where they actually spell out "Release Candidate" so maybe RC actually stands for something else. Second, this post (mine, not the one I'm responding to) boils down pointless nitpicking over semantics. They can call it whatever makes 'em happy. But following the same conventions as the rest of the world makes it easier to figure out what they really mean. In the meantime, I will just mentally replace "RC" with "Beta" when reading about Ogg Vorbis.

Re:vorbis does rock.....

[jmoffitt]

My dreamcast plays Ogg Vorbis CDs. And I believe that it still is floating point. Already one company (iObjects, which makes the OS in the HipZip) has produced an integer-only decoder. It can be done, and I'm sure we'll see them rampant before too long.

Re:vorbis does rock.....

[jmoffitt]

Point taken, but we have tried to be conservative. The releases we've done have been betas and release candidates, but most professional shops would have started at 1.0 much sooner, and release 2.0, 3.0 etc.

We had a very clear picture of the features for 1.0. When the decoder was feature complete and frozen, we called the release RC1. As far as implementors are concerned, this is a feature complete release.

There was actually a bug found in RC1 decode that was fixed in RC2 decode. Since then, no chances to decode have been made, although new API additions were added to make developers happy.

Now the encoder is much more difficult. Getting good audio is hard, and it's only with RC2 and RC3 that we're exploiting the features that we solidified in RC1.

These have all been release candidates. But you have to look at what the important part is - the decoder. The encoder is going to constantly improve for the rest of time. It's the decoder you've got to lock down.

The current plan is to release an RC4 soon that fills out the rest of the missing modes and turns on bitrate management for non 44.1kHz audio. That will be the first completely feature frozen encoder. After some bugfinding fun, that will become 1.0.

We're very nearly there.

Re:vorbis does rock.....

[Deven]

We had a very clear picture of the features for 1.0. When the decoder was feature complete and frozen, we called the release RC1. As far as implementors are concerned, this is a feature complete release.

I have to agree with the previous poster. This is nitpicking, for which I apologize, but making substantial changes to the encoder between "release candidates" just doesn't make sense. In my mind, a "release candidate" should only be used for final bugfixes before a release. That's clearly not what's happening here, or you wouldn't see any improvement in audio quality between the RC1 and RC4 encoders.

Don't get me wrong; I fully support wanting to get the quality to a particular level before blessing a final 1.0 release. That's great! But please don't call it a "release candidate" if you're still tweaking the encoder.

It would be better to go through a series of "final" 0.x releases (each with its own release candidate(s) to fix bugs) with progressively better encoders, and not declare a 1.0 release candidate until you're satisfied with the encoder and have no intent to tweak it further before the final 1.0 release.

Of course, it's a bit late for that now. But it's food for thought -- it would have been a lot less confusing to have 0.9.1 instead of RC1, 0.9.2 instead of RC2, etc. When people see RC1 vs. RC3 they tend to assume they're functionally equivalent, but with more bugs squashed in RC3.

That's not what we have here, and some people who have RC1 working acceptably might not even realize it's worth upgrading to RC3, RC4 or the final 1.0 release. After all, if you're not tripping over any of the bugs in the release candidate, why worry about upgrading it?

I'm afraid it's just confusing, and it doesn't seem necessary to confuse people like that...

"Vorbis has kicked MP3's"

[Anonymous Coward]

Just when exactly has this happened? In the human history so far, I haven't seen any review where Vorbis would have been annouced better in quality than LAME MP3s.

Re:"Vorbis has kicked MP3's"

[DeepDarkSky]

It happened in the world of the Slashdot Propaganda Machine.

Re:"Vorbis has kicked MP3's"

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you just read a review that said it did.

Seriously though, the reason vorbis is better than mp3 (lame or otherwise) is because it's a completely open codec with no pstent issues. That it has better quality than lame (in my opinion) is just a bonus.

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Here!

[xiphmont]

ff123 from the r3mix.net/hydrogenaudio.org forums is conducting automated ABX double blind tests comparing Vorbis, mp3 (several encoders), AAC, WMA and MPC. The best part of this is... everyone can participate.

If you want to take the listening test yourself, read the instructions and jump in. For now, there's also a page of interim results, but to quote ff123, "Major conclusion: I need more listeners!"

Monty

Excellent work

[Anonymous Coward]

A toast to the ogg developers!

*clink*

just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[jstockdale]

the main problem ogg vorbis seems to be not the quality of the format, or the encoding/decoding engines, but rather in the inherient problems of accepting a new format.

people changed from wav to mp3 because wav was unusable due to its massive size, while mp3 was not noticably different in quality (to save the flames yes some people with studio quality gear can hear a difference) while resulting in a 10 fold plus savings in space. entire albums could now be stored in less space than one wav file. this in a time where pressure on any audio/video content was high due to shortages in storage capability was a breakthrough, bringing media to the people, and they embraced it. several years later the industry realized that since it was so widespread, they might as well latch on, and so beginning roughly two years ago, we saw the emergence of mp3 players for all uses, personal, car, home. this all based on two factors, compatability, and acceptance. once people accept something, they stick with it until it is blindingly obvious that the rewards of change are greater than the inherient risks.

fast forward to current times. storage capability has exploded. right now i have 100 gigs at my disposal on this box alone, and this quantity is not anything special anymore. do 5 600 meg wav files bother me anymore? no, in fact i don't even notice them except when i realize i should really archive them because that project is done. do mp3's bother me? not at all, in fact storage is so cheap that i can't even be bothered going through my collection to eliminate duplicates or outdated material. what i'm trying to say with this, is that space is no longer a limiting factor, nor is size of the file, therefore the savings accorded by any new format including ogg is not a selling point especially in the face of change.

so the only real selling points are quality or features. features are great, who wouldn't like to beable to pull up realtime lyrics, band info, pics, links, etc. all from within the music file, or spread throughout the files of a album. however, dvd has the video equivalent of these features and they have failed to be implemented to a major degree because of the time problems which accompany putting so much content into a basic product. so just to put features to the side temporarily, lets just say that features could be a selling point that would bring about a new format if the changed required to mp3 would be impractical or impossible to equal such support.

this leaves us with quality. therefore quality alone will be required to convince consumers and companys to abandon mp3 and change to something else like ogg. now quality is subjective to a great degree, but anyone i know can distinguish the difference in video quality from mpeg-1 to mpeg-2 (dvd), they can distinguish the difference between 800x600 and 1600x1200 screen res, but very few on a blind test can distinguish the difference between mp3 at 128 and 192, none, unless i pull out my dj headphones in wich case a very few, can tell the difference between a cd burned from a original, and from mp3s (which is a more accurate comparison because the hardware used to produce the sound is the same). ogg has nothing better to grab than the cd stream, and while a few hardcore fans will tell you that the audio quality is better, the filesize is smaller, and support will eventually come. right now i can not see how these arguments justify the switch from the widely compatable mp3 format, with my collection which can be expanded easily from an uncomprehensiably large supply, is supported wherever i go, and is having money thrown at it by manufacturers to deliver better and better products.

there are far too few pressures to make the change in the area that counts the most, the mind and wallet of the consumer.

-john

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[AYEq]

I think I might get shot down on this one, but the main reason to switch to ogg is political. While mp3 is "free" to us now, it might not be in the future. I think ogg is just a proactive strike to attempt to prevent anther gif fiasco. (not that people care about that either)

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[Anonymous Coward]

True, mp3 is "free" to Joe consumer, but it isn't free to someone running a legitimate business where the royalties must be paid. Ogg Vorbis will very likely see acceptance in sites that stream music, such as Internet radio stations. They stand to realize significant savings by avoiding mp3 or RealAudio altogether. And if they happen to get better quality sound in the process, so much the better...

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[Mattygfunk]

You cannot just write off any storage space saving as insignificant because of two reasons:

A. MP3 and OGG exist because most people need to download the files from the Internet using POTS connections.

B. Portable music players are restricted to 256 megs at the very most. Even a small space saving can allow extra tracks.

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[Corrado]

This was my thoughts exactly. I think the time of Ogg might come when the MP3 licenses get out of hand (or have they already), just like WMA has. If this happens, I think companies will switch to, or at least include the Ogg format. Why not, it's free (BSD style license) and the creaters are ready/willing/and able to help.

I wonder if we can convince Apple to put Ogg support in iTunes?

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[Ziviyr]

Portable music players are restricted to 256 megs at the very most.

You must not be aware of these newfangled compact disk things then, put 700 megs on a disk you can!

And there ARE portable players that support .mp3 and hopefully other formats in the future, just to avoid the 2nd generation trolls.

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[mrfiddlehead]

No, audiophiles are the main problem. Mind you, the good thing about audiophiles is that they don't matter to anyone else.

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[rseuhs]

fast forward to current times. storage capability has exploded. right now i have 100 gigs at my disposal on this box alone, and this quantity is not anything special anymore. do 5 600 meg wav files bother me anymore? no, in fact i don't even notice them except when i realize i should really archive them because that project is done. do mp3's bother me? not at all, in fact storage is so cheap that i can't even be bothered going through my collection to eliminate duplicates or outdated material. what i'm trying to say with this, is that space is no longer a limiting factor, nor is size of the file, therefore the savings accorded by any new format including ogg is not a selling point especially in the face of change.

I agree that storage is cheap and pretty irrelevant.

However, bandwidth is not. While harddisk-sizes exploded, most people are still hooked up the net with a modem.

If .ogg means you get your file off opennap one minute earlier, I think a lot people will go for it.

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[MikeBabcock]

You've too highly equated a savings in bitrate with storage space savings. While its true that the Ogg file may be smaller than the MP3 file, what's more important (to me at least) is that it will _stream_ at a lower bitrate as well. That means I can stream more Ogg Vorbis audio streams with the same amount of bandwidth than MP3s. I'm sure places like MP3.com are happy about that (or anyone else doing audio streaming). Bandwidth bits still get expensive in large numbers.

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[Glytch]

Yup. I bought a cheap $60 portable Venturer CD player. It supports mp3s burned onto standard iso9660 filesystems. I didn't have to do anything special to prepare CDs for it, I could just pop in my backup CDs and they play perfectly. No rights-management crap either. It even displays the ID3 tag on a screen. Battery life could be a bit better, but it's also got a builtin ni-cad charger for when it's plugged into a wall socket.

Hell, It even decodes MP2s, even though no-one uses them anymore.

And save your flames, audiophiles. I'm nearly tonedeaf, and I don't give a flying fuck about your quality rants. This thing works for me just fine.

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[asteinberg]

Perhaps another way to get people to start using Ogg Vorbis would be a better way to rip CDs into .ogg files. I've helped a few friends who aren't as into computers get Exact Audio Copy and LAME working together, and its not exactly the easiest process - people don't want to have to configure things for 10 minutes before they can start using the program, not to mention having to search for precompiled LAME binaries and then even after it's set up, having to tie up most of their computer's resources for the next 10 minutes while they rip/encode the cd. If Ogg had a very fast and easy all-in-one way for novices to do this (perhaps along the lines of iTunes, from what I've been hearing) more mainstream computer users might start encoding files that way.

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[cakoose]

The iPod can hold around 5GB. Thats plenty. That's enough to hold every song I actually listen to.

Though the iPod is one of the more expensive players, with storage capacity shooting through the roof as it is, 5GB may become standard in a few years.

Size-wise, MP3 files are probably small enough. But there are other issues here as well.

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[kisielk]

You should try using KDE/Konqueror and the AudioCD KIO slave. Basically what this lets you do is type "audiocd://" in to the Location Bar in konqueror and open a file-view representation of the tracks on your audio CD. This is somewhat similar to the way Windows represents things, but with one major difference. You have the option of viewing the tracks as either standard CD audio, MP3, or Ogg Vorbis (depending on which codecs you have installed). Viewing them as either MP3 of Ogg allows the files to be dragged to any other folder where they are automatically encoded and copied. I don't think it gets much easier than this.

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[asteinberg]

That's pretty nice, the only problem being that I haven't quite convinced those not-so-computer-savvy friends who have trouble setting up Exact Audio Copy to give Linux a try yet. A similar solution for Windows would be the perfect way for me to convince them to switch to Ogg.

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[koekepeer]

well, if your friends are willing to run linux, there's a nifty command-line utility called "abcde".

it's as simple as the name implies. it rips the tracks, gets info from the internet databases, fills in the ID tags, and encodes the tracks to *ogg. All this automatically. Of course, there are more options, but the defaults are *very* sensible.

I recommend this util to everyone, it's great!

here's the website:

http://freshmeat.net/projects/abcde/

meneer de koekepeer

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[uberdood]

Or my SSI America Neo-25 (discontinued now that the Neo Jukebox is available) with its 20 GIG HD.

Re:just my $.01 worth (depreciated accordingly)

[Tibe]

To be able to get a live stream will help your argument too, small sizes = quicker d/l's

Convert or die!

[leonbrooks]

They know how to rip their CDs into mp3s, they know how to play mp3s, they know how to download mp3s, etc.

Soon they will also know how to feed them to an MP3-to-Ogg converter so the thought-police don't ding them a royalty for every audio file on their disks.

Re:Convert or die!

[macinslak]

Two thoughts:
1. NEVER EVER CONVERT BETWEEN LOSSY FORMATS, it will add unnesessary artifacts and ruin the audio quality.

2. I wasn't aware that the thought police would be any more able to charge money for posession of MP3's than Ogg's .

Re:Convert or die!

[Ziviyr]

Soon they will also know how to feed them to an MP3-to-Ogg converter

A blaspheme if I've ever seen one...

/me shudders at the thought of feeding .mp3 glitchies into another lossy encoder. He looks ill.

Re:Convert or die!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if you mom and everyone else's mom only know how
to rip a CD to mp3, they will not tell the different from
a mp3 and an ogg converted from the mp3.

We are talking about someone's mom here!

more! more!

[studboy]

I dont use OGG yet, but I'd love to see a competitor to mp3 that would make my audiophile geeks switch over from raw CDs. Instead of people whining about double-blind tests, how about chipping in to continue development and/or help the developers get drunk? I just kicked in $25, which is my way of saying: you guys rock, please continue to get better!

What do 100% of net types use, every single day? 1) base OS, 2) web browser, 3) music. Whoever makes 1-3 a better thing deserves my hard-earned cash. Today, it's $25 to Ogg Vorbis, and it's money well spent!

Re:more! more!

[reaper20]

and/or help the developers get drunk?

you know, if more people had that kind of attitude, i think OSS would be WAY farther along than it is now .... :)

Here's to getting all those guys drunk and happy!!!

Re:more! more!

[Ziviyr]

RAW CDs will live as long as music comes in 44.1KHz dual channel (or even quad) 16 bit format.

Only format that a real hard f***ing core audiophile might consider is FLAC. That is still on average about %60 the size of RAW, but its also lossless.

And encapsulated to Ogg FLAC it'd have all the cushiness of the Vorbis streaming mechanism. :-)

Re:more! more!

[statusbar]

Well, 24 bit is a huge noticable improvement to 16 bit. I'm not an audiophile and my ears are somewhat shot from playing in loud bands, and even I can tell the difference between a CD mastered at 44.1/16 and the same CD mastered at 96/24. 96Khz is a clever ruse, what matters is the 24 bits vs. 16.

So support of 96/24 will be important.

--jeff

Re:more! more!

[Ziviyr]

Did I forget to make my statement conditional upon the standard not being enhanced? Or did I seem to not grasp what I was typing about?

In any case I do think the upped frequency is more important than you give credit for. Though I think we're moving the wrong way bit wise. 1-bit has the elegance of a very strong standard in the making assuming everyone can agree on the parameters it uses and start making actual products with it.

Re:more! more!

[statusbar]

There already is a standard for 96 KHz, 24 bit DVD audio. Problem is, hardly anybody uses it for distribution. And unfortunately I suspect that no one ever will - Any new audio distribution standard will focus on digital rights limitation crap above audio quality.

All the D/A converters in use now are 1 bit with many times oversampling. The filters used with them are very good too. What really matters at this point are their effective bits - even though a converter may be labelled as a 24 bit converter, it does not mean you will actually get 144 db dynamic range!

Take a look at my old sample alias viewer program for win32 here (beware of ugly gui colours though!)

The results are deceiving because the program doesn't display what really happens when you have a proper filter on the output.

When all is said and done, what really matters is how it sounds. I personally can tell the difference between 16 bits and 24 bits. I can not tell the difference between 48 khz and 96 khz. I suspect that anyone who says that they can tell the difference is actually hearing the artifacts due to a crappy resonant filter at 22 khz or whatever.

Also, beware of some gear that says it supports 96 khz - Some devices may receive or send it via AES/EBU or SPDIF, but are actually discarding incoming samples or interpolating outgoing samples. Seriously, some companies are scamming the customers with regard to 96 khz.

--jeff

Re:more! more!

[sheldon]

"What do 100% of net types use, every single day? 1) base OS, 2) web browser, 3) music. Whoever makes 1-3 a better thing deserves my hard-earned cash."

I just donated $300 to Microsoft for helping to improve all three.

:-)

Re:more! more!

[darien]

I misread that as: "What do 100% of net types use, every single day? 1) base, 2) ... "

And the thing is, it still worked!

Spooky.

Re:more! more!

[Trogre]

FWIW, I encode all my audio data in ogg vorbis format
.
.

Re:more! more!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the parent post modded as Flamebait? The modder should be modded to "bullshit".

It's an interesting perspective. Someone give credit where credit is due.

Fuckup Protection?

[DarkZero]

Personally, I can only barely tell the difference between a CD and a well-encoded 128kbps encoded MP3. From what I've seen, the real problem for the average listener, who does not have the super hearing of a musician or a total audiophile, isn't the quality of 128kpbs MP3s. It's finding lots of BADLY ENCODED MP3s that suck no matter what bit rate they're at in P2P services. So, does Ogg Vorbis have any kind of "fuckup protection" to get rid of the problems that most badly encoded MP3s have, either before or after the file is fully encoded? That's one thing that would REALLY impress me, in any music format.

Re:Fuckup Protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

exactly just becuase 2 mp3s have the same bitrate does NOT mean they have the same quality, i'd like to see someone address this.

Re:Fuckup Protection?

[reaper20]

So, does Ogg Vorbis have any kind of "fuckup protection" to get rid of the problems that most badly encoded MP3s have...

Sure it does ... the kind of people that use ogg vorbis and LAME already do this ... the kind of 'barrier to entry' that all technology needs ... lest joe and his Xing encoder get to screwing things up ...

Re:Fuckup Protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mp3 is a format but like all formats it's better to think of it like a language. Being lossy, there are many ways of expressing the same information. Some poorly represent the sound - others such as LAME do a wonderful job.

It's not a simple conversion, and your choice of encoder can make a difference even joe 6 pack can notice.

Re:Fuckup Protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're still going to get fuckups now and then because Joe 6 pack is encoding from a poor source (e.g. his disc is fubared, or he records from crappy analog first instead of ripping the CD, etc...)

There's only so much an encoder can do. Stupidity in sufficient quantity will rule the day.

Re:Fuckup Protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

you tell the peeps with uncapped cable (from which you download your mp3's after all) that something called 'Bl4d3' or 'XinG' is inferior to something called 'lame'.

Re:Fuckup Protection?

[Tim Browse]

So, does Ogg Vorbis have any kind of "fuckup protection" to get rid of the problems that most badly encoded MP3s have, either before or after the file is fully encoded?

No, but here's a great way to avoid that - stop thieving the music. I never get these problems because the only reason I ever get mp3s is to find old songs where I'm not sure which song I'm thinking of. I then find a CD with the song on it and buy it. I rip all my own mp3s. It's anecdotal evidence for sure, but the only effect Napster had on my CD buying habits was that I bought more (I realise I may be in the minority though).

Of course, you may just download the mp3s to avoid the hassle of ripping your CD collection, but having done my own CDs, I have to say it's easier than downloading the mp3s.

Yes, the RIAA are a bunch of tossers, and I hate what they are doing to the flexibility of digital music, but people who download a load of mp3s for free and then bitch about the poor quality of the stuff they just got for free are kind of making the RIAA's point for them.

Interestingly, the two internet services that made me buy more CDs simply by letting me work out what music I wanted to buy (the lyrics.ch server and Napster) were both shut down by the RIAA or similar entities for fear that it would lose them money. Of course, as I mentioned, I realise I may be in the minority (buying CDs rather than just stealing music) so maybe the RIAA have a point after all. Which doesn't justify all the crap they're trying to pull, but hey ho.

In my humble opinion :-)

Tim

Re:Fuckup Protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are refering to the click and pops and smear, its the ripper and the OS latency in Windows that blows. Bad encoder produce inaccurate sound but not noise.

Listen to the wav file to find out.

Re:Fuckup Protection?

[FFFish]

Thieving music?

If it's theft, then why am I paying a surtax on every CD I purchase? I'm up in Canada, where some artists' representation organization gets something like a quarter for every data CDR/RW and a couple bucks for every audio CDR that is sold.

Seems to me, then, that I'm paying for the right to share music.

Re:Fuckup Protection?

[13Echo]

I do the same thing. I personally can't stand the quality of most downloaded MP3s. It's 192k VBR LAME for me. I have my entire CD collection (300 CDs) ripped and encoded to MP3 on my PC. LAME is an excellent encoder. I don't see the majority of people switching from crap like Xing any time soon. In the mean time, peer-to-peer is still good for hearing songs.

Make a good product (this includes music) and people will often pay for it. Some won't, but those who care about you and your product will pay.

Re:Fuckup Protection?

[Chris Johnson]

A very good soundbite, that. "If it's illegal why am I paying taxes on it?"

Re:Fuckup Protection?

[couchslayer]

No, but here's a great way to avoid that - stop thieving the music.

Easy there. You're forgetting about folks who have legal MP3s which don't have corresponding CDs they can just re-rip from...

Example: I have a good collection of live shows from bands who encourage their fans to tape their shows and spread them far and wide as long as it's not a commercial enterprise. Some of these, for whatever reason, aren't the best MP3s on earth -- maybe someone had them up for others to stream, maybe this person likes distributing files which don't take half an eon for their friends w/ modems to download. Maybe the band hired some company that just wanted the job done, rather than done right.

Or maybe the band puts out MP3s of their disc tracks, for which you haven't the chance to get the disc at the moment. Yeah, it happens -- some bands still care about their fans, surprising as that may be. So you shouldn't be able to convert these, either?

Before you go calling all of us theives: how much did you blow on music from an RIAA member? You buy it new?

All of you who did: stop bitching. You're paying them, why should they care what you think if you're going to keep putting out like some two-dollar whore? Same with your DVDs -- anyone who has them, we can discount their bitching because they just don't care enough.

(Unless you bought your DVD player & your DVDs & your CDs used. In which case, rock on, friend, they've nothing from you...)

Re:Fuckup Protection?

[peter]

Sure that keeps it legal, but you do realize that you're just paying Celine Dion, don't you? I care a more about my own ethics/morals than I do about the law. I try to buy at least some CDs from artists who created music I've downloaded music and liked, unless they're already super-rich, retired, and/or dead (e.g. Jimi Hendrix, Chris Rock).

Re:Fuckup Protection?

[Anonymous Coward]

stop thieving the music

For the millionth time: copying is not the same thing as stealing. If you steal from me, my physical possession is gone, and is now in your hands.

With music, there is no physical possession, and we both have a perfect copy of the original.

Quit buying into the RIAA "theft" bullshit. Start thinking like you live in the 21st century.

DirectShow Filters would be nice

[Tomji]

But thats for MS and therefore evil ;(

Re:DirectShow Filters would be nice

[Sabriel]

Evil or not, it's what I'm waiting for. AVI and MPG videos with Ogg multi-channel surround sound anyone?

Re:DirectShow Filters would be nice

[Tomji]

same here

The previous Filters had some bad synch problems as well

Re:DirectShow Filters would be nice

[xiphmont]

The problem is not the AVI or Ogg; it's that the vast majority of AVI *players* cannot handle a VBR codec. These players ignore all the sync timestamping, assuming the audio is coming in CBR.

Have a look at ww.hydrogenaudio.org for discussion of players that work properly.

Monty

DirectShow filters exist!

[xiphmont]

DirectShow filters exist.... look at the front page of vorbis.com! (Or if you're lazy, here's the bloody link)

Monty

Re:oh please

[Anonymous Coward]

If I really cared about what format my music was in I would be using Studio masters. I don't, I use 128kbs mp3's (at least I have standards).

ogg filesharing apps

[bug1]

Can anyone recommend a filesharing program for .ogg files ?

ogg files seem to be very rare in comparison to mp3

Re:ogg filesharing apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Buy the CDs and burn them, you son of a bitch.

Re:ogg filesharing apps

[bug1]

Thats a great idea, i really enjoy contributing to the RIAA's lawyer fund.

Re:ogg filesharing apps

[Ziviyr]

Any Gnutella client should work.

Re:ogg filesharing apps

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, let me get this straight. You just expect someone to buy the CD's and burn them in a "free" format so you don't have to worry about your conscience.

Uh, whatever!

Re:ogg filesharing apps

[SomeOtherGuy]

Yea Try "OggSter", then you can download them to your "OggPod" and play them in your car on your "OggPEG", or how about popping them into your "OggVD" player?

Really folks: I have been listening to MP3's away from my computer for years....would really like to do the same with OGG's...Any word on portable device support? Or car stereo support.
P.S. -- I have karma to burn.

Re:ogg filesharing apps

[Scurrilous Knave]

"Away ... from ... computer"? What is this of which you speak? Your words fall strangely on my ears, good sir.

Where do I go to get help compiling this for OS X?

[anfloga]

I am trying to get this to compile under Mac OS X. There seem to be some references directly to X in the source code and documentation, but "./configure", "make" didn't seem to work for libao. Has anyone gotten this to compile on the new Mac OS?

Erik

256 Kbps MP3 can be CD quality, not 128 Kbps.

[Admiral Burrito]

shows that only the very best listeners only sometimes could tell 128 kbps MP3 (FgH encoder, not Xing, Blade, etc) apart from the original material.

It's not 128 Kbps MP3, it's 256 Kbps MP3. I can consistently tell 128 Kbps MP3 from the original rip, even on cheap $15 multimedia speakers (although I have to hold them right up to my ears). And I'm no audiophile.

Go to http://www.r3mix.net/ and click on the "Quality" link for some links to the MP3 tests.

Re:256 Kbps MP3 can be CD quality, not 128 Kbps.

[arkanes]

Interestingly, I've seen(heard? :P) many people who claim to be able to do this fail in single-blind tests. Never seen a double blind test, but I can't see how it'd have THAT much effect on the results.

Re:256 Kbps MP3 can be CD quality, not 128 Kbps.

[jallen02]

I have decent speakers. I can tell a huge difference in a 128kbps encoded mp3 encoded directly from a rip and the cd itself. It is easy to tell on ANY CD I have ever listened to.

I can tell in *most* songs 128kbps from 256kbps, not always, but most of the time. I can always tell a difference in a 128kbps encoding and 384kbps encoding. Again, only with decent quality speakers, but the difference is clear none the less, in most cases.

I would not be so quick to dismiss peoples accounting of this simply because the differences are rather large. I hate when people say "CD qualuty = 128kbps", which is commonly done in portable mp3 players. They will sell 128kbps as CD quality so they can make it seem as their product can carry XYZ CD quality songs in ABC amount of memory.

Anyway, most people CAN tell if you tell them to listen for it.

Jeremy

Re:256 Kbps MP3 can be CD quality, not 128 Kbps.

[bobb0]

Will any of you ever admit that occasionally you will find an mp3 encoded at 128kbps that DOES sound like the original?

I, like you, can usually tell the bitrate of a song from listening to it, but occasionally one does creep up that surprises me.

I hate how everyone tries to make things sound so cut and dry.

Re:256 Kbps MP3 can be CD quality, not 128 Kbps.

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course! It all depends on the music. I've even heard some that sounded near original at 112. On the flip side though, there's a higher percentage that gets mangled at low bitrates.

Re:256 Kbps MP3 can be CD quality, not 128 Kbps.

[arkanes]

I think the point is exactly that - you can hear it if you're specifically listening for it. If you don't KNOW that you're listening to a rip, will you really hear the difference? I'm not saying that no one can, just that many people won't. Also, on the crappy computer speakers out there, or most headphones, the distinction is greater. It also depends on the music - It's going to be alot more noticable in a classical piece than a feedback-drenched punk song.

Re:256 Kbps MP3 can be CD quality, not 128 Kbps.

[Admiral Burrito]

Interestingly, I've seen(heard? :P) many people who claim to be able to do this fail in single-blind tests.

I did my tests by forming a single command that would play either the original .wav rip or the encoded MP3, with equal probability, based on a read from /dev/random. Then I put my ears to the cheap speaker, closed my eyes, and hit enter. Once I had made my determination I looked at the screen to see what was played.

At first I got it wrong, every time. I thought the 128k sounded better than the .wav. It sounded slightly louder, which to my non-audiophile ears sounded more crisp. In any event, it proved to me that there was a discernable difference. :) I concluded that the loundness was from noise introduced by the lossy encoding, and from there I was able to consistently and correctly tell 128k from the original.

At 192k I could not tell the difference. At least, not on my cheap speakers. I now have a non-sucky pair of headphones but have not yet re-run those tests.

IRC or the developer mailing list

[xiphmont]

Join the developer mailing list for questions you don't mind having answered in non-real-time. This is the widest development audience.

For chatting with developers real-time (but no guarantee when we'll be there), catch us on #vorbis at irc.openprojects.net.

Monty

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Here!

[Anonymous Coward]

i'd like to help, can you please repost them to usenet?
-

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Here!

[Black Parrot]

> ff123 from the r3mix.net/hydrogenaudio.org forums is conducting automated ABX double blind tests comparing Vorbis, mp3 (several encoders), AAC, WMA and MPC.

Wonder what monolingual English speakers make of that sentence.

Heh heh

[Cave Dweller]

... then show your appreciation for all their hard work and dedication ...
By Slashdotting them! Bwuahahaha!!

[Yes, I am hung over.]

Hardware companies are listening

[Anonymous Coward]

My company is a hardware company and, although the company as a whole does not think in software centric terms, there is a realization that the delivery of high quality audio at the lowest possible bitrate is of utmost importance. I applaud Vorbis's effort in making this technology available to us all.

Yours downloading....

MP3 vs. OGG

[strangemoose]

In my quick test, I just used the default settings in Grip.
Song Length = 4min 1sec
o MP3 encoded at 128Kbps:
o file size = 3860304 bytes. (3.7 mb)

o OGG VBR: (average kbps: around 110)
o file size = 3320836 bytes. (3.2 mb)

Ogg saved a half a meg of disk space, and (IMHO) Sounds better.

(tested with a SBLive! Value, and Altec Lansing ACS54 4.1 speakers, OGG RC3)

Re:MP3 vs. OGG

[gazbo]

MP3 encoded at 128Kbps...OGG VBR: (average kbps: around 110)...Ogg saved a half a meg of disk space

So what you're saying is that by recording the same song at a lower average bitrate, you save a proportional amount of space?

Will wonders never cease?

Re:MP3 vs. OGG

[strangemoose]

not really. :) with a longer song i did, it turned out to save less space. I probably depends on the complexity of the audio. (ie: how far down ogg can shuve the bitrate)

Re:MP3 vs. OGG

[strangemoose]

I did. :)...waaaaiiiitttt... I was never in the asylum...

Re:MP3 vs. OGG

[bobb0]

For my listening test I encoded Star Wars: A New Hope - Burning Homestead (cd1, track9) at 96kbps (I used the -b option instead of -q) and compared it with the source wave. Overall I was very pleased with the resulting quality of the 96 (average = 95kbps) file.

I listened with Altec Lansing ACS33 speakers and a SoundBlaster PCI64.

Re:MP3 vs. OGG

[Anonymous Coward]

(tested with a SBLive! Value, and Altec Lansing ACS54 4.1 speakers, OGG RC3)

I just thought I'd point out that the ACS54 speakers, while being an impressive 4 speakers plus a sub for about $60, are hardly a high quality speaker system suitable for testing audio codecs.

The signal-to-noise ratio is somewhere around 75 dB. If you turn the volume all the way up, with the input disconnected, it is easy to hear the hiss.

The four speakers are inexpensive single-cone designs. Sure, it's great for games for a real bargain for four of these plus a 4-inch subwoofer for about $60. I purchased on of these ACS54's only a couple weeks ago.

There's also a lot of fault that can be found with the SB Live Value card... same basic story, incredible card for normal PC gaming at a great price, but a fry cry from a system suitable for testing audio codecs.

Re:MP3 vs. OGG

[Anonymous Coward]

now go back and look at your CPU usage during playback. I have not tested the new RC, but in the past it has been my experience that decoding an MP3 takes about 1-4% of a P3-500's time, and decoding an OGG takes 10-14%.

You can compare quality all you want, but if you don't look at performance as well, it's only half the story.

Many computer users push their PC to the limits, whether they're extreme gamers, or the average joe who's squeaking along using horribly out-of-date hardware, and the extra hit of decoding OGG files is noticeable.

Re:MP3 vs. OGG

[cduffy]

Thing is, ogg's lower bitrates are quality-equivalent to mp3's higher ones. As ogg is fully VBR, you turn it on and let it run; it selects the bitrate necessary for the data in question (unless you bound it manually or otherwise adjust). Hence, he didn't select that lower bitrate; the encoder simply found that it could provide it without audible quality loss.

Admittedly, it would have been better if he'd been using a VBR-capable MP3 encoder -- though my experience with both indicates that ogg would still be quite superior.

Re:MP3 vs. OGG

[strangemoose]

Im getting a max of 3% :)

Re:MP3 vs. OGG

[strangemoose]

Yes Im aware that my equipment isnt the best, especially since I have to keep the SBLives PCM mixer at 90% or I get a ton of noise. But Its deffinitly better than my old setup... some kind of builtin yamaha card with $16 speakers.

And as i said I did a quick test, its the kind of test most people will do. Just listining with thier current setup.

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Here!

[Anonymous Coward]

'automated ABX double blind tests '

The tests on the page are not double blind.
And they do not require that the listener tell the encoded versions apart from the originals.

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... here !!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://linuxmonkey.freeservers.com

Debian packages available

[psamuels]

I've just compiled for woody/sid i386.

deb http://wire.cadcamlab.org/debian woody/

Of course you should never install random binaries you got from a slashdot poster. Who knows, they could be trojaned.

Sweet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet on it.
8)

db Power AMP.

[Night0wl]

With new computer hardware coming my way I've decided it's time to abandon the mp3 format in favor of Ogg. And thnkfully I've already got the tools on hand to make it easier.

http://admin.dbpoweramp.com/

db Power AMP is a handy tool I found in my quest for auto-mated audio conversion. I had a bunch of ASF files (no video) that I wanted to convert to Mp3. And I sure as hell didn't want to do it by hand, extracting a wav then reencoding it. So I went hnting and found that program. It doesn't do directories, but it DOES do playlists.

All I gotta do is wait for an Ogg made for db Power AMP and also wait for my new motherboard to arrive.

I'll be happily moving to a Tyan Thunder K7, with fond memories of my Abit KT7-RAID. But my old board will stick around long enough to play work horse.

I'll make a playlist in winamp with all 24 and a half gigabytes of mp3's, and let the box sit quietly while db Power AMP converts from mp3 to Ogg.

Oh! It does any and all available formats by the way, well practically all of them. you'll need specific codecs for conversion. They don't have one for RC3 yet. But I'm sure it's on the way.

Re:db Power AMP.

[FFFish]

But it's converting from lossy format to lossy format... doesn't that introduce artifacts?

General rule of thumb is to never re-encode lossy-compressed music.

Is PowerAmp just transmogrifying the data, or is it decoding/re-encoding?

Anyone know a quick way to convert an MP3 library?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a fairly extensive MP3 library (27 gig) and would like to convert the lot of them to MP3 to help support OGG Vorbis. Anyone know a quick way to convert this number of songs?

My two cents

[tomstdenis]

This is what I like/dislike about the Ogg toolchain

Pros:
--free
--simple to use
--really fast
--makes good sounding audio

Cons:
--Requires "quality==3.5" before it even matches the quality of an decent MP3 codec at 128kbps. At q=3.5 it got about 117kbps average...

I can see the value of free tools but as a replacement for mp3? LAME is free and it uses open and free psychoacoustic modelling [i.e no patents!].

While OGG is a good idea I don't see it as a huge improvement over MP3 compression.

BTW for my test I was using the 2nd track of the Godzilla CD [lots of wide band audio in the first two seconds good for picking out distortions]

Re:My two cents

[Anonymous Coward]

if the mp3 patent holders wanted to they could crack down on lame. hard.
you really should take a quick look at the ogg site, it is mentioned there.

Re:My two cents

[jonathan_ingram]

Two things.

First - you say it's a drawback that Ogg at 117kpbs sounds better than MP3 at 128kpbs? I don't understand your point.

Second - LAME's legal status is unclear. The MP3 patents are not (only) in psychoacoustics, they affect the basic MP3 file format, together with natural (obvious) optimizations you would use in creating an MP3. LAME *does* infringe these patents.

Re:My two cents

[tomstdenis]

First point. I'd rather save my files at 128kbps, then play them back on my ****MP3**** CD player.

Saving 9kbps on my files and losing time tested MP3 playback hardware support? Not even worth it.

Second point. Not all of those patents apply all over the world. Also you cannot patent a file format thats like putting a patent on a byte. You can patent an algorithm that does the compression [which is what has been done].

A lot of MP3 encoders exist for free so I think as long as you don't use exact derivatives of the MP3 patented algorithms you're ok. Otherwise they **would** have cracked down on them already.

Re:My two cents

[bobb0]

You wrote: "Cons: --Requires "quality==3.5" before it even matches the quality of an decent MP3 codec at 128kbps. At q=3.5 it got about 117kbps average... "

Use what you want, it doesn't matter. But please don't tell me that saving space, even a small amount, is a Con.

Vorbis at 128kbps is comparable to MP3 at 160 or 192kbps. That is more significant savings than you realize. Consider that an average CD encoded at 128 is approx 68 megs. The same cd at 192 is nearly 100 megs or over!

Classical is hard for mp3 to handle at lower bitrates like 128. Go encode some classical music at 96kbps in vorbis, let me know if you like the vorbis@96kbps or the mp3@128kbps.

Re:My two cents

[tomstdenis]

I don't think you read what I wrote. At q=3.5 it sounds as good as MP3s at about 128kbps.

Therefore your statement about "192kbps for mp3" is moot since for me thats not required.

Saving 9kbps just so I can feel proud to use something /. approves off [and my mp3cd player can't read] is not something I am willing todo.

Also you have to realize these "tests" you guys perform are just stupid. On dorky computer speakers [99% of all computer users own] the actual threshold of noise is higher than the quality difference between OGG and MP3 at comparable bitrates. So this "oh I need 192kbps for MP3 and only 128 for OGG" are just stupid points since for 99% of all popular music you can't tell the difference past 128 kbits [and certainly not past 160]. I've encoded alot of piano music for instance at 160 and it sounds just fine. I've encoded folk music [i.e acoustic+base guitar] at 128 and it sounds fine.

Now if I had a $10K sound card with a $250K sound system then maybe I'd hear the difference... but for 10$ headphones on a MP3CD player it doesn't matter.

Also I'd like to point out that OGG performs horribly at lower bitrates. It distorts far more than MP3 does at 32kbps for instance...

When all is said and done, OGG is a good idea, and its technology that is maturing. When it gets more stable, encodes better and gets accepted in commercial applications we can sit and talk about "replacing mp3 files with ogg".

Tom

What we really need:

[rseuhs]

A simple standalone (read: CLI) converter that also converts MP3-tags correctly.

Last time I checked (which is a couple of weeks ago, I admit) I found nothing like that.

Re:What we really need:

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd write that in normal conditions, but I believe you'll use that to convert MP3 to Ogg.

You shouldn't do that, because you'll get artifacts from MP3, artifacts from Ogg and extra artifacts added and the resulting file will sound crappy.

So unless you give me another reason to write such an app, I won't.

Re:What we really need:

[Greg W.]

About once every... oh, 10 minutes... someone asks for a tool to convert MP3 to Ogg.

Do NOT convert MP3 to Ogg! Converting (transcoding) between lossy codecs only makes the quality horrible -- the artifacts interact in unpredictable ways. It's like faxing a photocopy of a fax.

Rip your CDs with Exact Audio Copy (win32) or cdparanoia (Linux, et al.). Encode them with oggenc (or LAME if you need MP3 for portable devices). Share them with your friends.

Re:What we really need:

[rseuhs]

Do NOT convert MP3 to Ogg! Converting (transcoding) between lossy codecs only makes the quality horrible -- the artifacts interact in unpredictable ways. It's like faxing a photocopy of a fax.

Call me deaf, but I just converted an mp3 to wav to ogg and I couldn't hear any difference between the three formats. Of course the mp3 was 128kbps and ogg ended up being 131kbps average ;-)

On 128kbps mp3s, it's probably not worth it, but I think converting 196kbps or more to 128kbps-ogg should work well.

Re:What we really need:

[papa248]

Rip your CDs with Exact Audio Copy (win32) or cdparanoia (Linux, et al.). Encode them with oggenc (or LAME if you need MP3 for portable devices). Share them with your friends.

The problem is that it takes me ~30 minutes to rip a CD using EAC, wheras Adaptec CD5 will do it in about 5 minutes. Does EAC work better...perhaps, but since I'm encoding lossy anyways, I haven't ever noticed a difference.

Re:What we really need:

[ywwg]

that's exactly what you shouldn't do. converting an mp3 to wav doesn't fix mp3's artifacts. You don't get the original CD-quality waveform back. you are basically going from mp3 to ogg

Re:What we really need:

[rseuhs]

Sorry, but did you read my post?

I said I don't hear any difference. I know very well that the wav is not the same on the CD, but when I don't hear any difference, the artifacts can't be that bad, can they?

Re:What we really need:

[ywwg]

the point is there's no point in reencoding an mp3 to another codec, resulting in a worse file at a higher bitrate

Ogg and iPod... Can I dream?

[helixblue]

I'd really love to see better Ogg support tied into the iPod & iTunes myself.

I ripped 150 CD's into Ogg format early in this year from my FreeBSD box, and threw myself into the Ogg format totally.. hacking up a nice multi-queue ripper/encoder, and going at it. I was unhappy with how slow the Ogg encoder was (it was 0.7 at the time I believe), and artifacts that came onto some albums (Junkie XL comes to mind). I still dealt with it happily. When it came time to move from FreeBSD to MacOS X as my desktop, I simply began to use Audion as my

Then, I get an iPod. This throws my world upside down. Suddenly, everything I had ripped is useless. So, I begin re-ripping with iTunes. I don't care for iTunes for a player, but it's a DAMNED nice ripper/encoder for my albums. It's simultaneous rip/encode process means I can take a CD from insert to rip to encode to eject in 4 minutes (if I'm lucky and I score a 15X encode/rip time).. With it's auto-encode-on-insert and auto-eject-when-done modes, it makes it a real factory process.

Apple is making a very big deal about moving everything it can to a standards based form.. While Ogg is not really a standard, it'd be really nice if a future iPod firmware update would support Ogg's, being a first for a *publically available* portable audio device supporting Ogg.. it'd be keen, wouldn't it? :) Of course, it wouldn't actually be Apple doing it, since Pixo actually took care of this part of the software design I believe. A little strong-arming never hurt anyone though.

That and then I could theoretically store more albums on my little angel. I am worried about the extra firmware bloat on the iPod though. It's very saddening for me to say I won't ever go to Ogg's till my iPod has support for it now.. but we can keep on dreaming, can't we?

Re:Ogg and iPod... Can I dream?

[BlueGecko]

While I can't vouch for the iPod or iTunes (sadly), I can make a comment about QuickTime: one group of developers has finally written an Ogg QT plugin that allows you to use Vorbis audio in QuickTime just like everything else. That's definitely a step in the right direction. It should allow you to play Oggs from within QT. If iTunes can play any QT-supported audio codec (and quite frankly I simply cannot remember whether or not it relies on QuickTime; sorry), then you now have the ability to play Oggs from within iTunes if you wish.

Re:Ogg and iPod... Can I dream?

[GeorgieBoy]

I don't care for iTunes for a player, but it's a DAMNED nice ripper/encoder for my albums. It's simultaneous rip/encode process means I can take a CD from insert to rip to encode to eject in 4 minutes (if I'm lucky and I score a 15X encode/rip time).. With it's auto-encode-on-insert and auto-eject-when-done modes, it makes it a real factory process.

iTunes IS a nice app, though the simultaneous rip/encode process is something I've done with grip for years. It may not be as fancy-shmancy as iTunes but it always gets the job done, plus lets me pick from a list of encoders.

Re:Ogg and iPod... Can I dream?

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be cool. Whoever makes a decent hardware vorbis player is going to get an initial revenue burst (from excited hackers) that their 2nd-place competitors and non-vorbis competitors will not get.

Too bad for IOMega's HipZip, though. Their 40 Megabyte media limit conflicts with the "decent" qualification. So the prize is still open. Who will take the money? Does Apple want money? Does IOMega? We all are waiting to see: Who wants money?

Re:Ogg and iPod... Can I dream?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is full of shit. They can talk all they want about open standards and avoiding vendor lock-in, but the fact remains they rely on closed standards (OS X, Quicktime, etc) for their very viability as a corporation. Until Apple figures out what they hell they are (a software company or a hardware company), then they are only speaking out of their ass when they talk about open standards.

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Here!

[phaze3000]

As a monolingual English speaker (I don't think the ability to buy a loaf of bread in French really counts :)) I find that sentence perfectly understandable. Whilst some additional punctuation may have helped, I don't think there were really any major issues..

Where's the changelog?

[Magila]

For such a major release you'd think they'd have a changelog clearly linked on thier site, seesh.

Re:Where's the changelog?

[aaron p. matthews]

I find that odd too. I was looking for it but it was not right there so I gave up.

Nobody cares

[Anonymous Coward]

MP3 is here to stay.

Additionally, it may help if Ogg Vorbis didn't have such a stupid name.

Just the company's .01$

[cgenman]

Consumers have a large library of MP3's that are currently free to encode, use, and share. They access the free CDDB to get information for ripping their CD's, and they share them for free on Kazaa, Napster, et. al. Life is perfect.

How many more of these conditions do you see surviving the next two years? Let's be realistic. MP3's eventually won't be free. Period. There will come a time once it has become an entrenched standard in the commercial world that group behind the MPEG codec start behaving in the way best fitting their stockholders. We've seen it with CDDB, we've seen it with GIF, we'll see it with MP3s. Ogg Vorbis, on the other hand, is a freely available alternative for streaming or downloading audio. While the idea of a non-recordable Ogg Vorbis stream may be as palatable to most slashdotters as having to pay Microsoft every time someone wants to print from word (don't get any ideas now), such a proposition could serve as a very appealing alternative to many broadcasters. If the end-to-end solution is in place, who cares what format it comes over? It can find a home there, especially if it can reduce both software and bandwidth costs.

Let's not forget that if you can reduce file size by 30% for the same audio quality, you can reduce your data costs by 30%. This will be a non-negligable issue to most large providers, and may become a non-negligable one to the average user as broadband companys start enforcing bandwidth caps.

There is no reason to go through your music collection and delete all of the WMA files you may find. There is no reason to convert all the GIF's on your website into JPG's. There is no reason that OVA's have to entirely supplant MP3's. There's no reason it has to happen right away.

Being open-source *should* also make it easier to build audio applications around it, though we all know how that can go.

The mind and wallet of the consumer is *not* the most important place to make changes. The mind and wallet of providers is (In the case of Gnutella, that is also the consumer. Que sera.) We don't need everyone to come on board for Ogg to survive, we just need some forward-thinking companies that realize the bottom line they should care about is theirs.

P.S. the majority of people on Gnutella are still dialup. Tell them that 30% faster transfers are unimportant.

Re:Just the company's .01$

[MisterBlister]

The overwhelming majority of people who uses MP3 are commiting copyright violations in the first place..Do you think they'll care if they are commiting licensing violations by not paying royalties for MP3 usage? And guess what? Old versions of Winamp will still work with their vast MP3 collections... Unless Microsoft et al implement insanely tight secure audio paths...which they won't do because it would break all existing software (including games, music creation software, etc, anything which uses winmm.lib or DirectSound directly)...So the original poster's point still stands.

Sorry, OGG developers, you've done an outstanding job, but the vast majority of users will not switch from MP3 to OGG. Ever.

digital

[dalinian]

Don't forget that in the conversion from analog (sound) to digital you already lose some information. If your file has a sufficient bitrate (~300), it might not make such a big difference if you convert from a lossy format to another.

Re:Anyone know a quick way to convert an MP3 libra

[norculf]

A short script in any of a dozen different languages could do it easily. If you don't know any, pick the one with the most appealing name, and spend a few hours learning to write one. Then sit back and watch it run.

It would be more time consuming, but you will get better quality if you rip from the original CDs instead of MP3s.

mirror and comments

[noodlez84]

Because vorbis.com is becoming slow, I have decided to post mirrors:

win32 binaries: vorbis-tools-1.0rc3-win32.zip

i386 RPM libao: libao-0.8.2-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM libogg: libogg-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM libvorbis: libvorbis-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM vorbis-tools: vorbis-tools-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

To encode files, you need all the above RPMs.

There's little question that Vorbis is impressive. The question is, what is its competition? MP3 (created using LAME) is currently the most popular digital audio compression algorithm, but anyone will tell you Vorbis rocks its world. That can't be it, then... is RealAudio/WMA the true competition? How about Quicktime? Perhaps Vorbis is playing to different audience than the "big boys," mainly for the home enthusiast? Vorbis is not quite ready for streaming (e.g., not yet perfectly tuned for 22.1kHz like for 44.1kHz, not very low bitrates, etc.), so until then it seems Real will lead the pack in that arena.

When, however, Vorbis gets these features, I feel it will even be able to replace Real and WMA.

question

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I need to remake my music files to take advantage of RC3, or do I just need to install it?

Lets do a Linux port for the iPod !

[tempmpi]

Well, the iPod has 32 MB Ram and ARM core based cpu and of cause a 5 gb harddisk. Wouldn't it be nice if it could run with linux ?
The arm core should be fast enough to do ogg decoding too. The harddisk could use ext2 or 3 and all this sdmi copyprotection crap could be disabled, too. Even the mp3 royalitys wouldn't be a problem with a hacked iPod because Apple already payed them.

Re:Lets do a Linux port for the iPod !

[stripes]

The harddisk could use ext2 or 3 and all this sdmi copyprotection crap could be disabled, too.

Um, what SDMI crap? The iPod doesn't pay attention to the SDMI stuff, it never lets you copy files via iTunes, and treats the iTune loaded sound files as hidden through the filesystem (which means standard file tools can see them if you click "show hidden", or use, you know, "ls").

I think that is just as much to keep the drooling idiot users (and Apple has more then it's fair share) from deleting and moving the files around as to let them claim the iPod can't promote piracy since it won't let the files back out. I'm sure they knew it would take about no time for people to figure out how to take the files out. If they had really wanted to keep people from them they would have stored them in one big file, and XORed it with 0xdeadbeef.

It would be cool for it to play ogg files though. If iTunes and the iPod did I would start re-ripping my CDs...

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Here!

[xiphmont]

First: They are double blind. Neither the tester (the computer) nor the testee know which is which. They are also randomized, the second big requirement.

As for ABX: Oops, you're right. The results ff123 asks for are not ABX, they're the traditional 1-5 scale that MPEG has always used. ff123 *does* suggest using ABX to certify the results, but that's not the same thing, and you're right to point that out.

Last, parts of the tests are automated, parts aren't; if you go the ABX route, there are automated testing packages to use (linked from ff123's page). I've not added my results to this test only because it's a little too easy for me to cheat. So, I didn't go through the test process myself, I've only been watching the results.

Monty

mirror

[gimpboy]

i dont know if this is necessary but i have a mirror here:

http://sage.che.pitt.edu/~harrold/mirrors//www.o dd sock.org/vorbisrc3/files/rc3/

Fast?

[Dr. Evil]

Every decoder I've tried typically consumed at least 10% CPU utilization on my Windows K6-2 450, and 40-60% utilization on my Linux powered 200MHz Cyrix machine.

This is enough that I need either dedicated hardware, or I need to upgrade my machines to use Ogg properly.

MP3s on the same hardware is nearly imperceptable on Linux, and for some reason spikes to around 0.5% on my Windows machine.

The WORST/(most discerning?) MP3 players on Windows spike to 10% on me.

I just can't use Ogg. Find me a decoder which will run under at most 3% utilization on a 200MHz machine and I'll start encoding everything with it.

As for audio quality, I'm no audiophile, but there is this one opening rift which I've encoded in both Ogg and MP3, and on the worst pair of speakers I own, they're both pretty rough. I mean, playing the CD directly through the same speakers on an analog cable was noticably better, and to make sure it wasn't my soundcard, I tried the source WAV file, still sharp. I have to submit it to the Ogg guys as it might be a very good rift to test against.

My technical incentive to go Ogg is pretty weak, as an open spec, I've recommended many technical people I know to give it a try. They like it. I just don't have sharp enough ears to pick up the differences between Ogg and MP3, unless I load a webpage in Mozilla and watch the memory thrashing beat my CPU into submission causing Oggs to stutter where MP3's play fine.

Re:Fast?

[Shrubbman]

Every decoder I've tried typically consumed at least 10% CPU utilization on my Windows K6-2 450, and 40-60% utilization on my Linux powered 200MHz Cyrix machine Well Cyrix sucks ass, and so does pre-Athlon AMD (well, I heard good things about the K6-III but I never got the chance to see it for myself). My P200-MMX under Windows never needed half the processor to play OGG's. I read earlier that the reference decoder used everywhere is floating point intensive, so it's really no surprise to see this on procesors with crap FP (I believe a Cyrix processor at 200 had less FP power than a genuine P90 if memory serves, and until the Athlon came along AMD wasn't much better off). If that's all the hardware you've got to work with then I guess you have to use whatever software works best for you, but really you're falling into the same boat as all those gamers complaining that Quake was'nt up to snuff on their non-intel systems, for the exact same reason.

Re:Fast?

[Dr. Evil]

Quite true about the FP. It was so long ago that people were talking about that issue I just forgot. What you're saying does explain quite a bit. IIRC, although the AMD K6-2 has better FPU than the Cyrix chip, even AMD addressed their poor FPU by introducing 3DNow! to scrape back some performance. I'll have to try it out on my work machines. They're PII and PIII's. I'll also have to give it a go on my girlfriend's Celeron.

If that is the case, swapping the chip for a slower one with a better FPU I have kicking around might very quickly solve the problem.

Re:Fast?

[peter]

Note that the vorbis codec didn't take advantage of 3DNow! at all, last time I checked (rc2), but some people were thinking about maybe putting in some 3dn support to speed up some parts of it. Anyway, MP3 has a lot of FP anyway, unless you use an integer decoder on purpose. Other than on a Cyrix, you probably want to use the FP hardware. (as for your MP3 decoder not showing up as using any CPU on Linux, that might be an illusion. Some multi-threaded decoders somehow don't show up as using as much as they are...)

Anyway, I'm pretty sure you'll be a lot happier with vorbis once you try it on an Intel chip, or an Athlon.

Re:vorbis does rock.....so does iPod

[kresmoi]

WARNING
excessive and shameless advertising and gloating ahead
WARNING

reading the info on my new iPod, i can't help but recall that it states specifically that the iPod has upgradeable firmware. why? to fix bugs... and to support future audio formats, not just AIFF, WAV, and MP3.

problem solved.

Re:vorbis does rock.....so does iPod

[generic-man]

You know, most decent MP3 players have upgradeable firmware -- including the popular Rio Volt CD players. Plus, they work with Windows, America's favorite operating system. There is software to let the iPod connect with Windows, but it is not fully capable as of yet.

MP3-OGG Conversion Script Here

[Anonymous Coward]

I know that audiophiles would object horribly to doing this, I have written a bash script which will (should) turn mp3 -> oggs.. It DOES NOT respect ID tags, but does work (at least for me!). YMMV!Read the script, and check it looks ok before running it... Go to : http://www.davidmpye.dyndns.org/mp3ogg to D/L

Thoughts on OGG

[mindstrm]

It's good to hear that OGG is progressing.

Will I convert my music collection to OGG? No. It provides no advantage for me, in fact, it's a disadvantage.

If I'm developing an audio app, or require audio compression for my own projects, will I use OGG? Absolutely. As far as I'm concerned, that's what it's all about. It's a codec, not encumbered by patents.. it's fantastic for OSS development.

But for playing music? Unfortunately, mp3 is just more portable. I can give it to my mom, use it in a portable, etcetera.

Also.. and I have no idea either way..
Does OGG have something akin to VBR? Can it compete with the size:quality of, say, lame's default VBR parameters?

Re:Thoughts on OGG

[donglekey]

Before you discount ogg too much more you should do some research on it, it sounds like exactly what you want. Ogg is only VBR, it competes well already with Lame's VBR and now it probably blows Lame, and any other mp3 encoding away.

Re:Thoughts on OGG

[Sentry21]

It does, in fact, have VBR capability, though for some reason, all the encoders I've tried default to encoding between 192 and 256 kbps (VBR). This is great, except that the original file I was encoding from was a 128 kbit MP3, which means that the file gained 50-100% more size, and, at BEST, stayed sounding exactly the same.

Seems kind of silly.

I'm trying out the dbPowerAMP mentioned a few posts up, and it's pretty nice, as far as ease-of-use and so on goes. Slow as wang, but that's probably because it's using RC2 (I think).

--Dan

Re-encode?

[mstich]

Should I be re-encoding all my audio every time a new RC is out?

Re:Re-encode?

[mstich]

I re-encoded some CDs with RC3, and I can't tell much of a difference in sound. But the file sizes are significantly smaller.

Side topic....

[mindstrm]

I know everyone will get into a discussion about music quality... so here's another question.

We all know (I hope) that what you hear is also limited by your listening equipment.

I recently bought a pair of Sony MDR-V500 headphones .. they were about the same price as my old but trustworthy Sennheiser HD330s.
I was dissapointed when I actually had them side by side; the Sony headphones are basically, well, crap. Any listener could distinguish that they are severely lacking in several areas. The sennheisers sound oh so much better.. and that's on a computer, through a cheap desktop speaker headphone jack, listening to 160Kbps mp3.
So what's the point of arguing over compression formats, or whether something is *really* CD quality, or studio quality, when your equipment can't even come close to reproducing it?

Oh.. to the unitiated.. I highly recommend a good pair of $100 headphones (Sennheiser or Grado, and yes, that means towards the lower end of their product lineups..don't let that discourage you. A low-end Grado or Sennheiser sounds fantastic compared to anything else you'll find in the store.
And those $100 headphones will sound better than a $2000 stereo, anyday.

So what do you guys/gals use?

Re:Side topic....

[sheldon]

If you are going to by Sony headphones you want either the MDR-V6 or MDR-7506 sets.

The V500 are meant for rap music, not studio work.

I have a pair of the V6 headphones I purchased about 12 years ago, and they still sound incredible. Yes, I agree that with a good pair of headphones you can hear much more detail in the music.

Re:Side topic....

[The Madpostal Worker]

I have to disagree with recommending the MDR-7506. I own a pair and I love them, but their fidelity isn't great. They are indestructable (well almost), fold nicely, and provide great isolation from the out side but their high end is very warped and the low end is over emphasized. The short version: they're great for live sound stuff, but if you're doing anything sensitive on them you either need to listen to them against lots of speakers (and learn where it over/under emphasizes things) or use different headphones.

I really love them, but there are places when my HD580 really do preform better.

Re:Side topic....

[tomaasz]

I have Koss R35/S headphones and I'm happy with them. Sound good, even when the volume is [very] high. Haven't heard the famous Porta Pro headphones, but I'm satisfied with what I have now. Good headphones can make even a poor stereo/desktop speaker sound VERY good - for those who haven't tried it: go and try it now.

It's much better to spend $80-100 for kick-ass
headphones than for anything else between the source [be it mp3, ogg or audio CD or whatever]and your ears.

As for ogg - I'm all for it. As soon as everyone else has software supporting installed it by default in their xmms/winamp/media player.

For now, I stick with 320kbps mp3's. Try beat that in quality in a properly conducted listener test! Even the damn xing will not be distinguishable.

Re:Side topic....

[matt-fu]

So what's the point of arguing over compression formats, or whether something is *really* CD quality, or studio quality, when your equipment can't even come close to reproducing it?

Because some of us actually have decent audio equipment that will handle it. I suspect that those who don't have it don't actually care in the first place.

I highly recommend a good pair of $100 headphones (Sennheiser or Grado

I heartily agree. I have a set of Sennheiser 495s that are wonderful. However I also have a friend with a set of Sennheiser 500s that are awful.

Re:Side topic....

[llin]

I've been using a pair of Sennheiser HD580's and Grado SR-60's for portable listening for the past two years. Definitely well worth the money (the Grado's are probably the best headphones you can get for the under $100 price range [I've heard good things the new Sennheiser HD495's, but haven't had first hand experience), the discontinued HD580's I got for $200, but apparently new ones can still be found online - they're going for about $150 or so, a steal).

I'm looking to get the Musical Fidelity X-Can v2 headphone amps, but it looks like no one in the US seems to carry them anymore.

Re:Side topic....

[afidel]

The SR-60's were the best sub $100 headphones before the 495's came out. But the 495's beat many phones up to $400-$500. To see graphs of how they perform, as well as get a great price see this link headphone.com

Re:Side topic....

[zardie]

The thing with audio is that choice is very personal. Not everybody has the same ear, not everybody has the same music listening tastes and only few people have a large wallet.

I'm the sort of person who can walk into a HiFi store and casually listen to loudspeakers, amplifiers, decoders, preamps, receivers and what not with very high price tags. Although I can only dream about one day owning some of the more expensive stuff out there, price doesn't always mean it's better. I've heard speakers with five figure price tags that I've been quite unhappy with.

I'm not a big headphone listener. I've heard the HD495s (been very impressed with them) and a few other models that I've not been too happy with but I really don't remember the model number (HD500 series, unsure which ones). I've got a pair of Sony MDR-E888 earbud headphones which I use with my Sony MZ-R91 MD walkman. They suit the task well, are very clear and well defined on middle and high frequencies but lack a bit of intensity on very low frequencies.

Sennheiser make fantastic headphones. I can't say I've heard the Sony high end series but I haven't been impressed with any of their loudspeakers. If I had the need for a good set of headphones, I'd probably go for the 495s.

not charging for posession

[gimpboy]

it's not that the thought police can charge you directly for the posession of mp3's. the mp3 standard is patented by the fraunhofer folks. this means that when someone like rio wants to add mp3 decoding ability to their devices they have to pay fraunhofer royalties. also if you want to do any encoding the person who make the encoder has to pay them royalties.

so if you want to listen to mp3's on a commercial player these costs get transferred to you the user. also people who have developed free encoders (like bladeenc) have been threatened by the mp3 thought police for giving away the encoder without paying the mp3 hordes.

Hardware players

[chrysalis]

This post is probably redundant, but the more post like this, the more hope we get in seeing something sooner or later.
Ogg Vorbis rocks. But the reason MP3 is widely used is that nowadays, *hardware* support it : cd players, portable players, handhelds, and even sound mixers.
Making these work with Ogg Vorbis is probably very simple, moreover Ogg Vorbis source code is free. So why don't hardware manufacturers provide support for Ogg Vorbis? Should we start a petition?

Re:vorbis does rock.....so does iPod

[Anonymous Coward]

America's favorite car is probably some piece of shit Japanese sedan. America's favorite SUV is probably a Ford Exploder. Who cares? If all your friends jumped off a cliff would you follow them?

Re:This won't change much... (or it might)

[farmkid]

Modded 'Funny'? Actually, I think his proposed egg terminology has a catchy, human touch that could be a winner. Perhaps this should be seriously considered.

I didn't discount it.

[mindstrm]

And I'm not bashing it.. it was an honest question.

Again, my main reason for not using ogg to encode my music is the fact that mp3 is currently much more portable.

Re:I didn't discount it.

[StarTux]

Then you are creating the problem too, by not using any Ogg files you are helping keep it small. If everyone like you with the same issues would encode only a small bit of your collection with Ogg progress would surely be quicker.

Matt

If no one has done it already..

[Anonymous Coward]

How about an ogg plugin to MS's shiny new Windows Media Player 8 that they bundle with XP? WMP8 doesn't even come by default with an mp3 encoder (they want you to pay ~$15) for ripping; if there were a FREE download of a BETTER encoder than mp3 or wma, it could be quite popular. Plus there's the delicious irony of the possiblity of making ogg popular through MS software...

Something to ponder.

Hello? IT DOESNT WORK!!!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey I just encoded a bunch of wav files with the command line enconder AND the oggdrop encoder and none of them will play in the latest version of Sonique... Is Sonique broken or the win32 version of Ogg?????

Question - Can iPod, Archos support Ogg?

[BlueOtto]

Is the MP3 encoding in the Archos players (which I have) and iPod tied to the chip or the firmware? Is it even theoretically possible that in the future they could release new firmware that would support Ogg??

Hardware Vorbis is out already

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure I will.
It's called the Iomega HipZip.
http://iomega.com/hipzip/

Re:Hardware Vorbis is out already

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. I can go buy a HipZip right now. But it will not play a vorbis file.

The vorbis-compatable firmware hasn't been released. At present, it is vaporware. Yes, we all know Monty has one that he's hacked Vorbis support into. But that only helps Monty, not you and me.

Not sure if this helps...

[Amiasian]

But, there is a link for a BETA Quicktime Plug-in that is a simple drag-and-drop install. I've been using it for the past few days and, yes indeed, it does play .Ogg files. (Stability needs to be worked on however.) http://www.VersionTracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=130 12&db=macosx

Bad Idea

[LRJ]

As somebody has already mentioned in a post above, you should never convert from one lossy formay to another. Converting from MP3 to Ogg is going to lower the quality of those files. If you really want to do it right, you're going to have to rip them all again.

Re:Bad Idea

[Night0wl]

Yes, but what's the point of using one format when 99% of your collection is in another?

that and i don't have access to a number of the CD's I originally ripped from... heh ;p

Re:Anyone know a quick way to convert an MP3 libra

[jonathan_ingram]

Yes - if you want to support Ogg Vorbis then *don't transcode* - Re-rip to Ogg. Otherwise all the file sharing networks will be flooded with poor quality Oggs, and we'll be no better off than we were with MP3s.

Licensing costs

[cduffy]

One thing to remember -- vendors of embedded hardware doing audio recording and playback, commercial software with need for an audio format (ie. games w/ theme music) and the like need a good audio codec they can use without dealing with licenses or patents.

MP3 isn't this.
Vorbis is.

Why Ogg Vorbis will not succeed. Yet

[iGawyn]

Although Ogg Vorbis seems to be more promising than MP3, WMA, RA, or any of the other formats out there, for filesize and quality, it's lacking something. MP3 is by far the most supported format, not just in software, but in hardware. There are MP3 CD players, portable MP3 players, as well as tons of software on every platform imaginable.

Because of this, as well as the popularity of programs such as Morpheus/Kazaa, Napster, Gnutella, and so on, that help you find MP3s, the public equates "digital music" with "MP3," and so Ogg Vorbis is already a step behind, publicity wise.

The public opinion will be almost impossible to change, as normally, whichever company/standard/format grabs the opinion first, and is popular enough, is what stays. Regardless of quality. It's dismaying, but I don't think that we'll see, at least for another year or two, Ogg Vorbis having anywhere near the level of popularity as MP3s, as far as hardware devices.

Gawyn

Now we need free video streaming.

[Restil]

I might be blind, dumb, or lazy, but as much as I have searched for either an open source or at least free as in beer method for video streaming, I have been unable to do so. The only option I have found that even works for me is using realserver/realencoder to encode/broadcast live video. However, the license fees to use realserver for anything significant are so astronomical as to make it practically useless.

This really could be a killer ap for open source. A lot of companies spend a LOT of money to do commercial video streaming, and would jump at this in a heartbeat if it was even remotely similar in quality. They money they save would more than make up for any slight deficencies. And besides, it would give some serious competition to the very few companies that provide such services.

-Restil

Re:Now we need free video streaming.

[Binary Boy]

There are quite a few opensource RTSP servers based on Apple's Darwin Streaming Server... i've tested builds on Solaris 8, Linux, and Win2000, very impressive and quite free. If you can't use an RTSP-friendly format then you probably don't want streaming anyway (or want Windows Media - and we know where to look for that!) then you'll get your "streaming" fix with MPEG-1 on Apache!

Hope this helps,

BB

I recently converted...

[Tim_F]

My entire cd collection (approx. 500 cd's at this point) over to 192 kbps ogg files using rc2. I haven't noticed a difference listening to them in rc3 as of yet, however, the vbr seems to be behaving a bit differently. Before all files would show the range 190-210 approximately. Now some files go well below 190.

I have also noticed an increase in popularity for ogg files on gnucleus.

Mass production

[yerricde]

America's favorite car is probably some piece of shit Japanese sedan. America's favorite SUV is probably a Ford Exploder. Who cares?

Mass production reduces the price of the finished product by up to 90% in some cases.

my history with ogg vorbis

[bobb0]

RC1... ahh, what a wonderful introduction. i fell in love with vorbis, but it failed to become my main codec, as i realised it had lots of potential, but it was not quite up to snuff yet.

RC2... nice. i encoded my entire skinny puppy collection at 160 (to be safe, although 128 sounded good too)

RC3... great! as a trial i encoded a few songs (star wars: a new hope (special edition disc one) - 09 - burning homestead; sloan (live 4 nights at the palais royale) - g turns to d; st germain - so flute) at 96kbps (oops, i used the -b option!) and i am happy to report it sounds great! i also found that -q2 is nearly equivalent to 96kbps, -q3 ~ 112 and -q4 ~ 128.
btw, q10 ~ 400kbps. for now i will probably start encoding all my stuff at -q4 (just to be safe) i'm glad that i can once again start encoding my materials at 128kbps!

no doubt when 1.0 is finally released, i will be able to safely choose 96 or even 64 kbps for my music.

RC3 will mostly likely become my favourite music codec. until 1.0 is released :P

congratulations, developers! vorbis sounds good (and gets significantly better with every release!) don't listen to those people who tell you you're too late. who cares? vorbis may or may not become a standard. i hope it does, but if not you will always have a small group of loyal vorbis fans :)

44/16 CD quality is still lossy compression

[yerricde]

General rule of thumb is to never re-encode lossy-compressed music.

Then what should I encode? Commonly available CDs are lossy compressed down to 1.4 Mbps (44 kHz 16-bit stereo) by adding "dither" noise in the 16-22 kHz band.

However, in general, I agree. Transcoding 128 to 128 will lose a generation, but 256 to 160 shouldn't sound too bad, especially if it's part of a remix.

Also, Ogg plugin for OS X QuickTime, finally.

[MoNickels]

There's finally and Ogg component for OS X QuickTime that seems to work pretty well for a beta. Another fruit of the BSD underpinnings, I believe. OS 9 version on the way. A second version of the QuickTime component apparently also exists, although I could not get the page to load.

Silly audiophiles! mp3-ogg is still useful.

[raygundan]

If I'm in front of a pair of studio monitors and I'm *really* paying attention, I might be able to pick out the difference. Most people can't even tell. And of those who can, some don't really care one way or another. Scratches, dust, and tape hiss never kept me from making tapes for the car of my old records-- and that's a nasty lossy to lossier conversion if there ever was one.

So an mp3->ogg converter would introduce additional quality loss. It might also mean someone converted to ogg who wouldn't otherwise want to put in the time to re-digitize their 400 zillion CD collection. (Let alone anybody who did LP->mp3 and doesn't want to muck around re-recording everything!)

I'm all for quality, but there is absolutely no reason to shout "NO CONVERSIONS ALLOWED" from the hilltops.

Donations

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure paypal is fine for some people, but others, for whatever reason, don't like paypal.

You dudes need some other ways of sending donations. I looked around the xiph.org site and couldn't find anything about donations at all. Not even a snail mail address that I could mail a check to.

The easier you make it, the more likely people will do it.

vorbistools wants libcurl

[Sloppy]

Trouble configuring vorbistools on .. oh, say.. Slackware? Get your libcurl here.

damn this is awesome

[Anonymous Coward]

this is great, ogg sounds awesome. I can't wait until version 1.0 and some portable players come out. I am listening to rc3 under the stereo-link and Musical Fidelity gear. Sexcellent.

best p2p for finding oggs?

[rjnagle]

Hi, I'm interested in downloading ogg format music, but I can't seem to find a good peer to peer application that lets you specify ogg.

I use kazaa,limewire, winmx, and it's next to impossible to locate ogg files.

Perhaps I can just hope they randomly show up, but does anyone use a p2p program that can filter out everything but ogg?

Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Austin

Re:best p2p for finding oggs?

[Anonymous Coward]

When you do a search, ever though of including " .ogg" in the search string? (That's the typical file suffix.)

Was Ogg created by RIAA?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup that's just what we need another audio format. Yes it may be better, but there are dozens of other formats out there that are better than mp3 as well. All Ogg will do is dilute and fracture the online music scene to the benefit of those who wish to see it destroyed. I personally think and this is just my opinion that we should get behind 1 format and stick with it and put our efforts into making better / usable / unstoppable p2p networks.

peace

Re:Was Ogg created by RIAA?

[DaCool42]

I fail to see what audio file format has to do with making peer to peer networks. As long as they are cross platform, it doesn't make a difference to that kind of thing. Except for personal preferences in audio formats

Re:Was Ogg created by RIAA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally think and this is just my opinion that we should get behind 1 format and stick with it

Fine. And that one format is called Ogg Vorbis.

Re:Silly audiophiles! mp3-ogg is still useful.

[peter]

You're missing the point. If you don't have a reason to convert your MP3s to vorbis, then leave them as MP3s. All fancy playback programs (e.g. XMMS, freeamp) that support Ogg also support MP3. There are no restrictions on MP3 decoders the way there are on encoders, so The Man can't come after you and stop you decoding your MP3.

The people who are telling you not to transcode your MP3s to vorbis don't mean that you have to re-encode from the original CDs, they mean that you should not waste your time, and leave your MP3s the way they are. (If you want to re-encode from CD to get more quality, like if you just got better speakers and want more audio quality, so much the better, of course.)

.xph

[Decimal]

I don't know about you, but I'll be renaming my .ogg files .xph and associating that file type with my player. "Ogg" would be okay if it was pronounced "ohg", but I think "ahg" is ugly. And after all, the standard is being created by the Xiph foundation...

Donations good, but paypal?

[Anonymous Coward]

the URL is 'secure.paypal.com', so when did the word "SECURE" undergo such a drastic 180 degree change in meaning?

can I join in the pissing contest too?

[Anonymous Coward]

even a flowery worded (basically non flaming) post like these is still just a pissing contest.

Sony does make a few more...

[iotaborg]

Sony also makes a few more good headphones, the discontinued CD1700, the CD3000, and the R10... the last is prohibitively expensive ($4000) and the CD3000 is expensive ($400), but I have the CD3000 and it is pretty damn good (ran out of a dedicated headphone amplifier and a good DAC from my soundcard's unresampled digital out).

Sad to say, even with this equipment, I have diffuculty telling decently encoded mp3s from their originals... I can tell a difference but I can't tell which one is in a lossless format and which one is MP3.

here is your change

[Anonymous Coward]

by your argument, I assume that are both fabulously wealthy and your physiological makeup enables you to withstand temperature and pressure ranges that have never before been seen in living creatures. This wacky statement is another way of saying that it is rather silly to poopoo a superior encoding method simply because 'at higher levels, but with the average speakers you don't know the difference' (paraphrased of course). Now what you say has merit, if it is true that all things being equal, users merely want to increase quality without significantly increasing file size. However, did you ever stop and think that perhaps the benefit would work on down stream, enabling a person to store the same quality music but now using a smaller file size? That is simple efficiency. Your argument is like me running a shipping business and claiming that a newer and more efficient fuel (more gallons per mile, but same cost per gallon) is only the tool of fools and we would be better off sticking with the old fuel simply because "Most of our customers do local business (cheaper from less usage) and that they would not care if we get better milage on long intercontinental trips" Cheaper is cheaper, and the logical mind understands the concepts of 'long term' and 'big picture'

Re:here is your change

[tomstdenis]

Um, lets review the pertinent facts

a) I have 10GB of mp3 files
b) My MP3CD player plays MP3s
c) There is not a huge improvement in terms of bitrate.

As to a), I am not going to re-encode all my cd's [plus my "borrowed" songs] in OGG format since that would require a huge amount of time.

As to b), I paid 169$ for a MP3CD player [Samsung that works like a charm and doesn't kill batteries]. It doesn't play WMA or OGG files so I cannot use it with those

As to c), Overall a VBR OGG at 115kbps and a VBR MP3 at 128kbps sound about the same [I didn't really try MP3 at 115...]. In otherwords there is not a huge difference in terms of efficiency. Yes, OGG sounds better [seems a bit crisper] but the improvement is subtle and doesn't outweight the effort and cost of using only OGG.

Getting back to my main theme. I agree OGG is getting better than MP3. The problem is MP3 is more commonplace [hence my MP3CD player] and OGG compression is just not far out.

Say a 64kbps OGG file sounded just as good as a 128kbps MP3 then I could say "wow lets all use OGG" but the truth is the savings is meager and the cost is great.

I'd first get OGG more portable in software [i.e default with winamp, XMMS,etc...]. Get people used to it [and improve OGG along the way] then when commercial apps [i.e portable players] support it you will see a huge popularity boost.

Just randomly switching from 10GB of MP3s to 9.7GB of OGG files because OGG is "cool" is stupid.

Re:here is your change

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. With 9,000 mp3 albums, I'd have to start stealing all over again.

Being just over half way to my goal of 1 Terabyte of mp3's, I say MP3 all the way.

"Read the documentation"

[xiphmont]

Does OGG have something akin to VBR? Can it compete with the size:quality of, say, lame's default VBR parameters?

OK, I have to ask... why do people feel the overwhelming need to pontificate/ask profoud questions when they haven't even read the manpage? I'll summarize Ogg's VBR support. You'd have learned this from the FAQ, the READMEs, the manpage a trivial search of the mailing lists, or any of the previous Slashdot stories:

Ogg is natively VBR. It always has been. It's VBR is much better than LAME's because the format *itself* is natively VBR, not supporting it as an extra-spec hack that someone saw fit to kludge in later. Ogg's VBR output is and will likely always be higher quality than its bitrate managed (ie, ABR/BBR/CBR) modes. Don't use -b, -M, -m unless you actually have a *reason* to (eg, streaming). -q will always produce better results for the same output size.

[for the record, the following bits don't apply to this gentle poster, but to other comments]

Also to those below who are complaining, "wah, I reencoded my mp3s to ogg and they got bigger and sound worse," well, think for a second about what you've done. You've taken a lossy format, full of artifacts, and full of characteristics/artifacts specific to mp3 encoding. You're then encoding them in *another* lossy format, with it's own characteristics and saying 'do a good job'. Ogg is going to waste bits trying to reproduce mp3 artifacts perfectly. And because both formats are lossy (even if Ogg is very good), you still lose a bit in the process, a bit like transferring a cassette tape to 1/4" reel-to-reel. The reel to reel is pretty sweet.... but it's still a generational loss.

It seems exceptionally important to nip a few myths here. Most of you will laugh, but there are folks out there who still take a few of these as gospel, because sombody on some website four years ago swore up and down it was true:

1. Decoding your mp3 to WAV and burning a CD does *not* improve or recover the lost sound quality. Once it was in mp3, those bits are gone forever. Similarly, converting from mp3 to ogg can *only* make it worse. It will not magically restore anything lost in the sound.
2. bitrate is a measure of *size*, not quality. '128kbps' means absolutely nothing about file quality, just how big the file is. If you're rencoding mp3 into ogg (like a large number of folks here are...), of *course* making 256kbps oggs from 128kbps mp3s is going to result in bigger files! The encoder is doing exactly what you told it to.
3. "VBR sucks. It saves space, but it's low quality and it messes up players." No, Xing's VBR mode sucks, and since they were the first mp3 encoder to hack this little travesty into a format that can't really support it, breaking most existing players at the time, people only remember Xing. Also add to this that Xing is consistently rated as the lowest quality of all commercial mp3 encoders, people who stopped learning in 1998 remember VBR as being a bad thing.

   In Ogg, VBR is not a hack, it's native. We've been designing it that way for eight years. *VBR modes always sound better. Use them.*

Monty

No. The Archos players use hardware decoders....

[Anonymous Coward]

No. The Archos players use hardware decoders. There is a development website up and running where we are looking at rewriting the firmware for the Archos machines. Email me if you want the link...

wards@paradise.net.nz

Don't want to Ogg you on too much, but...

[leonbrooks]

...all yolking aside, could a collection of ova within a single Ogg file be called a roe? If so, I can imagine a music shop name white now: ``Unhygenix, Oggmonger.''

(Apologies to Goscinny and Underzo)

Other tools

[Kallahar]

To encourage adoption of fr33 audio codecs, I'd like to convert my mp3's to ogg's... I'm not interested in re-ripping everything yet, and I know that quality won't be better, but when ogg's start showing up all over the net more people will catch on. So, is there a free easy tool to convert from mp3 to ogg, automaticaly?

Slooowwww Performance?

[glomph]

I downloaded & installed the RC3 stuff and am satisfied with the sound. -BUT- I did some -q3 encoding with oggenc, and the bad part is that the performance is about EIGHT times slower than RealJukebox's encoding to the same approximate bitrate to MP3, on the same exact box.

(oggenc encoding preripped wav files, run under Linux, RealJukebox doing straight rip/encode under Win98)

I can understand some lack of optimization, but not a factor of EIGHT! WTF!

Royalties on mp3 technology

[yerricde]

There are no restrictions on MP3 decoders the way there are on encoders

Not anymore. The royalty-free license for free(beer) software mp3 decoders appears to have disappeared from Thomson's royalty schedule. Winamp and XMMS as free products seem no longer legal.

Even then, hardware decoders have never had a royalty-free license.

Re:Royalties on mp3 technology

[peter]

Holy shit, you mean they don't even want to let us decode MP3s any more!?! Well, I won't bother transcoding the stuff I've got, I'll just hang on to some MP3-decode source code, in case I ever need to transcode. I remember seeing a shell script or similar that could do a large batch of them. Maybe it came with some vorbis package or something...

wav to high bitrate to low bitrate

[yerricde]

the point is there's no point in reencoding an mp3 to another codec, resulting in a worse file at a higher bitrate

Did you read rseuhs's comment at all? Can you hear the difference between wav -> 128 Kbps ogg and wav -> 256 Kbps mp3 -> 128 Kbps ogg, especially if you can't hear the difference between the wav and the mp3? Yes, it will sound marginally worse, but if you can't tell the difference, you can't tell the difference.

Re:wav to high bitrate to low bitrate

[cduffy]

fine, you can't tell the difference. acknowledged. now, (1) WHAT'S THE POINT? and (2) if someone were to distribute transcoded oggs via a file-sharing service, and they were to get into the hands of someone who *can* tell the difference, that person would then think that ogg sucks, whereas in reality just transcoding sucks.

Point (2) there is the number one reason I would never put any transcoding app on freshmeat, even if I were to write one.

No need to re-encode

[yerricde]

Should I be re-encoding all my audio every time a new RC is out?

If you're happy with the quality to data rate ratio that previous programs provide, you need not re-encode your existing wav files to ogg. Current ogg players can play any file encoded with Beta 4 through RC3.

After a couple more revisions, say RC5, will the encoder be so time-optimized that it has time to run a few rounds of encryption cracking after each second of encoded audio, in cooperation with distributed.net? (Get it? RC5?)

EAC avoids scratches

[yerricde]

[EAC is six times slower than Adaptec's software]. Does EAC work better

EAC, like cdparanoia, may work better than other audio extraction software on scratched or "protected" CDs. A read error will sound like a read error, that is, a 1/75 second burst of noise, no matter what compression technology you use. The better rip tools will compensate better for read errors.

Just testing RC3 right now

[Jucius Maximus]

I'm just experimenting with the now encoder now. My first response was "oh my lord it is FAST!!" but then I realised I moved from a PII-350 to an AthlonXP at christmas... On my Athlon XP 1700+, encoding at level 9.6 (which gets bitrates up to well over 400kbit/s) it encodes song in the in 1/5 to 1.6 of the track length. This is actually about the same speed as RC2-256kbit/s (maybe a tad faster) my new machine.

As to quality ... RC3 sounds better. I'm not a self-proclaimed audiophile but my speakers are not cheapie (Cambridge Soundworks FPS1000 FourPointSurround) and my sound card is an SbLive Value (which is good but by no means the pinnacle of perfection.) With the new encoder, percussion sounds more focused like on the CD, and instrumental parts that are supposed to sound smooth are more so than in RC2. Pianos sound more true to the stringed instruments they are. The music sounds more alive.

But don't ask me to quantify it. My ears simply tell me that RC3 sounds better than RC2.

My Verdict
RC3 is a bit faster than RC2.
RC3 sounds noticeably better than RC2.

Write a fixed-point decoder, and they will come

[yerricde]

Making these work with Ogg Vorbis is probably very simple, moreover Ogg Vorbis source code is free. So why don't hardware manufacturers provide support for Ogg Vorbis?

The ARM processors used in many pocket-size MP3 devices have trouble even dividing integers, let alone doing the floating-point arithmetic that the current Vorbis decoders require. ARM processors more easily handle the fixed-point multiplications used in many implementations of spectral-transform (e.g. MP3 and Vorbis) and linear-predictive (e.g. ADPCM and Shorten) compression technologies.

If you want Ogg on pocket-size hardware, then port (or fund porting) the Vorbis codec to fixed-point arithmetic.

VBR sucks for streaming

[yerricde]

In Ogg, VBR is not a hack, it's native. We've been designing it that way for eight years. *VBR modes always sound better. Use them.*

I understand, but there's a reason for using relatively constant bitrates in some cases: common telephone modems are not VBR. They have a practical sustained bandwidth ceiling of 32 kbps plus TCP headers. Streaming really needs ABR with a relatively short buffer.

Re:VBR sucks for streaming

[Anonymous Coward]

Duh! That is why Ogg RC3 allows you to specify maximum and min bitrates.

Why don't you read the friggen docs.

Consumers are not a factor in format acceptance.

[TheMCP]

Regard the DVD format. Essentially, it offers us nothing that wasn't achievable with the old laservision format, and consumers were perfectly happy with VHS tapes (you may not have been, but any number of studies showed it was true as a generality), but DVD was pushed on us by both movie studios and electronics manufacturers. It has the so-called "copyright protection" technology that causes any amount of inconvenience. It forces us to watch ads and obnoxious threats about copyright law before we get to see our videos, and doesn't allow us to fast forward through it. It costs more. Yet, it has caught on, not because it's better than the previous technology in any way consumers especially care about, but because it has been heavily advertised and everything is coming out in the format now. Indeed, I have friends who don't have DVD and they're complaining that it's starting to get difficult to find what they want in VHS.

Ogg Vorbis doesn't excite the consumer, in general. I've compared it to MP3 and prefer OV, but most consumers just want to "suck their music into the computer" and don't understand or much care how that happens. Even most of my slashdotter-type friends don't give a damn and say that mp3 is good enough. However, I reiterate that it's not consumers who will make this decision, it's industry.

Electronics manufacturers may start getting interested in making portable music devices that use the Ogg Vorbis format because they may find it easy enough to add, and free. It lets them claim their product supports one more format than the competition or that it's "new and improved". Software companies may decide that it's a good format that they can use for free and just go with it... look at Apple, which tends to use whatever codec seems best to them. If the right people at Apple decided that Ogg Vorbis is best, I can easily imagine it becoming the default audio codec for Quicktime.

Look at WMA. It's not really that great, and consumers don't really care about it, but it's so widely supported (because the monopoly operating system manufacturer ships it in every system and because they've either convinced or bullied hardware manufacturers into supporting it) that it's just becoming used anyway. Ogg Vorbis could easily achieve success through the same processes.

Do you have an old decoder?

[yerricde]

I just encoded a bunch of wav files with the command line enconder AND the oggdrop encoder and none of them will play in the latest version of Sonique... Is Sonique broken or the win32 version of Ogg

Your copy of Sonique may contain an obsolete Vorbis decoder. Try Winamp with a recent 1.0-complete decoder plug-in.

Sennheiser HD570s

[Anonymous Coward]

They cost me $~200CAD and I love 'em. They never cause me ear fatigue (sonically), and the around the ear padding (as opposed to on the ear), means I never have sore ears. Of course the sound is great, too.

AC23

Howabout an applet-based player?

[Anonymous Coward]

What I'd really like to see is an open source, plugin-free streaming player for Ogg. I really like Hello Network's Java-based streaming video/audio, because you don't need a player or plugin of any kind. All you do is go to a web page with a stream, and there it appears in an applet. Cool! Now, if only there was an open source, free encoder for such a thing, we'd all be able to run our own internet radio stations, without worrying about plugins, or licensing.

make it easy to implement

[Anonymous Coward]

give us an MCI driver, or an OCX. something we can hack together a player with in 5min. then you will see it take off

Not so!

[leonbrooks]

/me shudders at the thought of feeding .mp3 glitchies into another lossy encoder.

AFAICT it doesn't actually get decoded and re-encoded, but transcoded. The implication is that there will be no bonus glitches.

Re:Not so!

[Mr Z]

It depends on whether the two formats represent audio information in a similar enough form to allow transcode without introducing glitches. You also still have the question of how to decode the MP3 sufficiently for transcode w/out violating Fraunhofer's intellectual property, not to mention the fuzzy area that comes from the fact that an MP3 encoder produced the audio data to begin with.

--Joe

Re:Not so!

[Ziviyr]

AFAIK, .ogg and .mp3 are very different formats mechanically. I've heard the line "The magics in the encoding". In any case all the evil stuff .mp3 does to the audio to make it .mp3 will not be nearly undoable when "transcoding".

Space DOES matter

[cayblood]

Space savings are INCREDIBLY important! The issue is not how much space the music takes up on your hard drive, but how fast you can transfer it from one computer to another. Internet bandwidth is still severely limited. Also, portable devices don't have a lot of space and more memory is expensive, so your issue about space being a moot point is false.

Semiconductor costs

[BillX]

I haven't put on my cost-benefit cap for this, nor do I have any plans to get involved in any hardware decoder projects (these tend to be hairier than Bin Laden's back). But what the decision probably comes down to is the cost a fast, low-power, low-heat DSP chip fast enough to decode OGG vs. the cost of a chip that can decode the less cpu-intensive MP3 format + Fraunhofer royalties (per unit). Currently, Vorbis files take more (about twice as much, IIRC) processing to decode. There are cheap DSPs out there, but the pricing rapidly goes skyward as the MHz, MIPS and MACs/clock increase.

The fact that Vorbis is still an 'evolving standard', meaning that a player made now could be obsoleted (or at least require the user to reflash something) when a newer version of the codec is released, is probably also a deciding factor. Developers would have to hinge their product on the hope that nobody adds a new CPU-intensive enhancement to the codec before it is finalized. (I don't suppose they would, but then again, engineers who suppose also tend to get sacked.)

Doomed without an integer decoder

[n6mod]

The one thing the Ogg Vorbis folks have never figured out is that they're doomed to the desktop until they have an integer decoder. Everyone wants portability, but not even the most luxurious portable players (Rio/Empeg Car, iPod) will ever be able to support Ogg until there's an integer decoder. All of the portables either use a) hardware decoders, or b) ARM or similar chips with no FPUs.

Unless these guys do something more than say they'll "eventually get that sorted" they will never see the broad acceptance that will make Vorbis take off.

It really is that simple.

Re:Double Blind Listening Tests... Here!

[schon]

They are double blind. Neither the tester (the computer) nor the testee know which is which

Wrong.

One of the samples is known both by the tester and the testee to be the original - therefore it's not 100% blind.