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The Future of Ogg Vorbis

Posted by Hemos on from the patent-free-royalty-free dept.

Brett writes "The author of MAD, the fixed point MP3 decoder comments on what is wrong with Ogg Vorbis, with a response from jack, one of the founders of the format. "Ogg Vorbis may be the holy grail of patent-free audio compression, but there are some serious issues blocking its path to widespread acceptance. Unfortunately most of us are powerless to correct the situation; the problems must be addressed by Vorbis' creators. " The rest of the of the story is currently running on K5." And Jack's response is enlightening as well.

13 of 227 comments (clear)

  1. Barriers to acceptance by lushman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I can see one main way for Ogg to gain widespread acceptance quickly - as the sound track of your run-of-the-mill, MPAA-angering DiVX. MP3 soundtracks only allow for 2 channels, whereas Ogg will allow for n. The main thing that pisses me off about DiVX is the lack of 5.1.

    Imagine how widespread Ogg would be if it was the favored soundtrack of the DiVX generation.

    1. Re:Barriers to acceptance by sessine · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Widespread acceptance? Yes, making OggVorbis the audio standard for divx would make that... 5.1 would be nice.

      However, is this what 'we' really want? Because if Ogg becomes associated with DivX and associated and therefore ends up getting noticed by those sweet lads and lasses at RIAA... then what chance is there of seeing widespread use of Ogg in commercial applications?

      I mean, its all well and nice that the quality is better and all the rest... but if your appliance dont work with it, then its mucho useless, no? How many people apart from the few 'in the know' actually use it?
      The hard truth is that companies will stay away from anything divx-related like it's the black death.

      The way I see it, Ogg needs all the support it can get by all the manufacturers.
      If that means no surround sound on DivX, so be it

      --
      ~I am not as think as you drunk I am~
  2. A little confused... by BigBadPete · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Near the very end of Jack's reply, he says something to the effect of, "If you'd like us to get the spec done sooner, here's where you can send money."

    I'm not too sure how throwing money at the problem will solve it, as it seems to me that time is the real issue. Of course everyone says that time==money, but perhaps in this case not for all reasonable values of "time"?

    -Peter

  3. multichannel divx by 2br02b · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not really, divx only specifies the video format. You can plug in any sound codec you want to, including AC3. Here's a nice guide

    1. Re:multichannel divx by phreak404 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Multichannel DivX with OGG is not all that its cracked up to be. Good multichannel surround sound will take a bitrate similar to the original AC3 bitrate, so you're transcoding for virtually no space savings, secondly, what exactly will you play this multichannel OGG on? I suppose you can use the Multichannel DirectShow filter and map it to your computer speakers manually, but its going to be a while before you can output it via SPDIF and play it on something 'real'. Hence the advantage of AC3. For 2 channel tracks, I suppose if you like the sound of OGG better, or wanted to use a lower bitrate, that would work, except for all of the lame bugs in OGM files.

  4. Re:The author of that article needs some cheese... by PunchMonkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Honestly...what kind of embedded system would have an Ogg player in it? Your microwave? A candy dispenser?

    Seems silly now, but what if someone makes a talking microwave, or a talking candy dispenser. Compressing the audio files, even if it is just a voice, would save space.

    --
    I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
  5. Re:Most embedded systems don't have an FPU by pslam · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The way you state this sounds like as if Vorbis can't be done with integer-only artihmetic, which is false.

    Sorry, didn't mean to have that impression come across. The main problem is that it's going to take a long time to rewrite all of the algorithms for integer. It's a shame really, because it would have taken just about as long to write it in integer in the first place. Floating point isn't the magic bullet everyone makes it out to be - it doesn't eliminate truncation and it certainly doesn't eliminate word size issues.

    Actually, I find DSP code written in integer easier to understand because you can see exactly where the author is taking care of those issues much more clearly. In floating point it's all a bit magic, and in most cases they just didn't realise what's actually going on.

    There's integer decoders for MP3 and WMA (and all sort of other codecs), so I agree there's no particular reason Vorbis couldn't be either. In fact, there are integer implementation of Vorbis - the trouble is Xiph want to sell them. Fair enough, but hardly anyone's going to buy it, and you've got to weigh that against the market penetration you'd get if it were free. Maybe they've got it right, but it still annoys me that, for example, I couldn't add Vorbis to an empeg car player because integer Vorbis isn't free, and I don't have the spare time to write an integer version.

  6. Somewhat offtopic remark by Skuto · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is somewhat besides the point, but in case noone had noticed, the latest Winamp 2.80 ships with Vorbis support by default.

    This is very nice because:

    a) no more explaining how to install plugins to less-literate users

    b) it seems that the legal team of AOL considers Vorbis to be patent-safe (they looked into the matter, which is why this lasted so long)

    c) some of the WinAmp developers have become Vorbis freaks :)

    --
    GCP

  7. Re:Most embedded systems don't have an FPU by jonathan_ingram · · Score: 2, Interesting
    There's good news about the empeg - it looks like they're going to be granted a free licence to the Vorbis integer code, so you'll be seeing Vorbis support on the empeg quite soon.

    See http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200204/0300.ht ml for more information.

    --
    -- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
  8. Re:Mentality by Dominic_Mazzoni · · Score: 4, Interesting

    > How does MAD compare to mpg123 ? Is it much better?

    MAD is more portable, higher quality (outputs 24-bit samples instead of 16-bit samples if you want) and an order of magnitude faster.

    Is that good enough for you?

  9. Re:Mentality by iabervon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Jack mentions that one of the implementations only plays files up through beta 4. That means that something changed at that point in the file format. In part, they didn't release a full specification, most likely, because then their later versions would break compatibility with it. It makes sense to only release an official specification with your version 1.0 release, where you have worked on it enough to believe that you can avoid breaking compatibility in the future. Similarly for getting standard bodies involved; there are plenty of things where there's a "official standard" that is not quite right, because not all issues had been resolved when the standard was made.

    Also, it seems like the Ogg Vorbis people will only write up a specification if they think anyone is interested in reading it. It's obviously a lot of work, and, if they didn't think their format would be implemented by other people, they would just work more on their own implementations instead. It's not particularly useful for people to complain about the lack of a specification (since they know it hasn't gotten done), although it is probably useful to hear that people still care.

  10. Re:The author of that article needs some cheese... by salmo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hey, at my school they just built a new dorm last year that has apartment-like rooms in it. When I moved in I was suprised to find my microwave telling me I had a message. I thought WTF? Why is my microwave telling me I have a message? So I hit the message button like it told me to, and I got to hear half a conversation about hardware that the guy who was installing it must have been having.

    Anyway, talking microwaves exist now. Why? I have no idea.

  11. Stupid non-audio techie question... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    How the hell are the Xiph.org people building a codec without a spec? I understand why a spec is desired by the audio gurus that want to implement their own encoders/decoders for Ogg Vorbis but what are Ogg's inventors working off of? Isn't it kind of like trying to build a house or a car with no blueprint for the end product? Seems to me thats a really good way to end up with a lot of uneeded garbage in the codec.