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Xiph.org Releases Free Fixed-Point Vorbis Decoder

Posted by michael on from the wave-of-the-future dept.

volsung writes "A lot of us want portable music players with Vorbis support, right? Well, Xiph.org has decided to help speed the process by releasing their integerized Vorbis decoder, named "Tremor," under a BSD-like license. Tremor is a Vorbis decoding library written for CPUs without floating point hardware, like most handheld devices use. It was previously a proprietary library--licensed by theKompany for their Sharp Zaurus player, among others--but now it's available for everyone to use. The release page also gives contact information for many of the popular hardware manufacturers. If you want Vorbis support in your hardware, now is the time to send some emails! (Also, please say thanks to the Xiph.org crew with a donation if you can.)"

3 of 251 comments (clear)

  1. you really gotta love that BSD license by TechnoVooDooDaddy · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I know that everyone is down on the BSD and up on the GPL, but we owe a tremendous amount to the BSD license.. Companys (like microsoft) took up stuff like the TCP/IP stack, BIND, etc..

    and I believe OGG will achieved the same popularity and extension that it's other BSD Licensed bretheren enjoy. It's gotta be the freedom of the BSD license that encourages companys to pick up on this stuff, rather than re-inventing the wheel with yet another standard because they don't like a particular clause or so in the license..

  2. Well, integerized moving point, actually... by xiphmont · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Strictly speaking, this isn't 'fixed-point' although it is all integer. It uses primarily fixed point, but in the deep S/N vector paths, it uses integerized movable point in a way that most embedded architectures can do the shifts for free during ALU load (eg, look at the ARM assembly for the shift/multiplies). Have a look at the Vorbis codec spec on xiph.org if you want to know why this is necessary.

    Also, this code's been around for a while... we're releasing it for free now as commercial code has a short shelf life. It ran through it's commercial usefulness, and now we want it to be commodity code.

    Monty

  3. Re:Give feedback to Apple! by John+Whitley · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At last, someone with the right idea. The embedded digital audio space is a volatile new market, with a bunch of relatively young companies and/or young divisions within large companies (which is much the same thing for my purposes here) vying for marketshare. Feature sets end up being defined in two general ways: 1) via feedback about a shipping product (market success or failure, direct user feedback, etc), or 2) marketing gets the idea that customers Must Have This Feature. User feedback can make a difference in this latter model.

    Ogg isn't yet big enough on its own to be an automatic target for these electronics marketing divisions. It needs grassroots backing to give it the same boost that MP3's mindshare and Micosoft's market power (WMA) have done for those formats already.

    This codebase makes this grassroots effort VERY VIABLE. So write your favorite digital audio portable company (be brief -- you're talking to marketing) and ask for Ogg Vorbis support. FWIW, Apple's design prowess made big waves in this industry. If Apple adds Ogg it, it's very likely that it will become a bullet on everyone else's next product feature list. (Note: the iPod uses an ARM-based processor.)