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

Hardware Support...

[Cryptnotic]

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

Cryptnotic

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 ???

[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 There have been two so far (the second is technically still underway, although it's now based on outdated encoders, so I imagine a third will start fairly soon).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).

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...

[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...

[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.

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 ?

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!

[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

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.....

[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: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

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)

[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.

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!

[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!

[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: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 .

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: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

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.

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

Heh heh

[Cave Dweller]

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

[Yes, I am hung over.]

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?

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.

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.

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: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: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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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