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Speex Joins Xiph To Bring Free VOIP To The Masses

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the naughty-dirty-masses dept.

xercist writes "Xiph.org has added a new project to their plate of goodies- Speex. Speex is an audio codec specifically for, you guessed it, voice. It has integration with Xiph's OGG container, but is mainly being used right now for VOIP. There is currently an XMMS plugin available, and is also supported by LinPhone, OpenH323, and GnomeMeeting. Asterisk PBX is working on adding support. This is not a new project -- Jean-Marc Valin has been hard at work writing the codec for quite a while now. However, Jean-Marc is now a full-fledged member or the Xiph.org team, and in celebration, Speex beta one is being released. Xiph.org has brought you (or is currently working on bringing you) Vorbis, Tremor, Theora, Tarkin, Icecast2, cdparanoia, now Speex, and, of course, the Moaning Goat Meter. This is a LOT to do, so please donate to show your support."

4 of 133 comments (clear)

  1. Xiph is great by 0x0d0a · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I didn't even know that Monty had also done cdparanoia until recently. Great coder.

    Here's to Xiph -- singlehandledly taking on the tech-media companies (Real/Apple/MS and tons of failed companies) and steadily gaining ground.

    We've had propriatary media formats for a long time. (Incidently, propriatary file formats are one of the strongest weapons incumbents have against upstart open source projects). This is a big movement that's starting to cascade, with more companies joining the Xiph bandwagon daily (and little interest in the MPEG4 people).

    --
    May we never see th
  2. donations by jadavis · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I already donated US$7.50 to xiph (10 times the price of an mp3 decoder). It's really not much, but it seemed about right in proportion to the other software I use (especially since I only use xiph's products for my desktop, not servers). I know xiph is working hard, but I feel more of a debt to the creators of linux, gnu, postgres, apache, exim, debian, python, perl, openbsd (I only use their openssh, but that's important), and all the other great projects I didn't mention (and those aren't necessarily in order).

    --
    Social scientists are inspired by theories; scientists are humbled by facts.
  3. Next step for UT2k3? by SexyKellyOsbourne · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The badly dated Half-Life engine still has one feature that is more powerful than anything in UT2k3: and that's voice over ip, in-game, mostly used in Counter-Strike.

    UT2k3 already uses OGG for its music -- and I recall reading a UT2k3 developer plan file that states the wish for voice-over-ip, but basically they were waiting for someone in the open-source world to do all the work.

    Why just hit a few buttons to say, "Ownage!" when they can hear your true compressed, overly nasal-sounding voice say it -- or perhaps more insulting, filthier things?

  4. Re:voice codecs by grahamsz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yes!

    Generally voice is sampled at 8kHz because it generally ranges from around 200Hz to 4kHz and Nyquiest suggests we need a digital sampling rate of twice the highest frequency.

    The reason music sounds crappy is that in a well designed system you will loose all the audio components above 4kHz, and in a badly designed system they will manifest themselves as other lower frequencies.

    Now this *does not* mean that this codec is a bad codec - merely that's it's one optimised for a specific task.