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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."
We really need support for OGG on products like the Phatbox.
Cryptnotic
My other first post is car post.
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.....
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 --
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/
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
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 ?
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
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...
I use Vorbis alot .... but man, these RC candidates might be harmful more than anything else.
... you're running out of time, ship the thing, or we'll all be stuck in WMA/MP3 hell ...
... ship it now and tweak later!
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
more and more products are shipping, and they are not smart enough to have upgradeable hardware
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
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
**AA: a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes
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.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
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!
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.
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...
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Monty
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
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.
For chatting with developers real-time (but no guarantee when we'll be there), catch us on #vorbis at irc.openprojects.net.
Monty
... then show your appreciation for all their hard work and dedication ...
By Slashdotting them! Bwuahahaha!!
[Yes, I am hung over.]
I've just compiled for woody/sid i386.
Of course you should never install random binaries you got from a slashdot poster. Who knows, they could be trojaned.
"How can you claim that you are anti-crack, while still writing a window manager?" — Metacity README
I'd really love to see better Ogg support tied into the iPod & iTunes myself.
:) 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.
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?
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?
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.
The ______ Agenda
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
It happened in the world of the Slashdot Propaganda Machine.
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.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
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?
I know everyone will get into a discussion about music quality... so here's another question.
.. they were about the same price as my old but trustworthy Sennheiser HD330s.
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
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?
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.
-- john
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?
{{.sig}}
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.
"Away ... from ... computer"? What is this of which you speak? Your words fall strangely on my ears, good sir.
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.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
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.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
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.
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
Freedom of Speech?
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
Play with my webcams and lights here
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?
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
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.
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.
Wordnik, a dictionary project which aims to collect
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.
Trouble configuring vorbistools on .. oh, say.. Slackware?
Get your libcurl here.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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?
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:
- 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.
- 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.
- "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.
MontyIn 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.*
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?
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.
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.
AFAICT it doesn't actually get decoded and re-encoded, but transcoded. The implication is that there will be no bonus glitches.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
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.
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
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.
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.