Ogg Vorbis Gaining Industry Support

An anonymous reader writes "While Ogg Vorbis format has not gained much adoption in music sales and portable players, it is not an unsupported format in the industry. Toy manufacturers (e.g. speaking dolls), voice warning systems, and reactive audio devices exploit Ogg Vorbis for its good quality at small bit-rates. As a sign of this, VLSI Solution Oy has just announced VS1000, the first 16 bits DSP device for playing Ogg Vorbis on low-power and high-volume products. Earlier Ogg Vorbis chips use 32 bits for decoding, which consumes more energy than a 16-bit device does. See the Xiph wiki page for a list of Ogg Vorbis chips."

Comments

MP3 License

[Agent_Eight]

If you look at the price list for this chip it states that "Prices include MP3 license of Thomson Multimedia."

Wasn't the point of Ogg Vorbis to have a codec free of licensing?

Re:MP3 License

[mrchaotica]

I was wondering about that. I've never used it.

Unless I'm mistaken, just about everything (e.g. Windows Media Audio, AAC, Vorbis) is better than MP3. What's debatable is how the former three compare to each other.

Perhaps Ogg for all internal sounds to a device, and the MP3 capability for sounds the user wants to add so they don't have to use a "weird custom proprietary" format (despite the the fact it's not).

That makes sense, since even if the user has heard of Vorbis he doesn't necessarily want to re-encode (and certainly doesn't want to transcode, as the resulting file would sound worse because the previous encoding to MP3 would have thrown away information that Vorbis would need).

Re:MP3 License

[k8to]

It all depends upon the bitrates and the application. Also mp3 is not as static a target as you might think, with the advancements in lame over time.

If you believe the folks on hydrogen audio, when strong music fidelity is a concern, WMA has unpleasant artifacts at most bitrates, save the very high where even still mp3 is probably your best bet for transparent lossy compression. Well, maybe wavepack if you're really hardcore, but mp3 seems "good enough" for most ears, while wma does not.

At lower bitrates (128kbs down to 40kbps or so) mp3 isn't as competitive, and the winners at different bitrates seem to be AAC and Vorbis AoTuV. This is really impressive for Vorbis because it is a _much_ simpler format, without various special tweaks and features to help out at certain format ranges. The specialized features of AAC help it hit certain windows, but also cost overall in format complexity, which has a minor effect on size overall, and a major effect on implementability. Vorbis by contrast is much simpler and therefore re-implementable, although market forces have not pushed as hard for tuned implementations.

Once you start heading south of 40kbps, you probably aren't really so interested in music anymore, and other more focused audio codecs, probably for speech, are what you'll want to look at.

But the point is mp3 still has some application domains (~200-300kbps, full spectrum music) where it is probably the best format in terms of fidelity and certainly implementatability, primarily because of the maturity of the encoder sourcebase. Surprising, but true.

Personally, for portable music replay, I use Vorbis AoTuV at around 160kbps, because while in testing on my portable player I could often tell the difference, the differences were never offensive. It's possible that some form of aac encoder could achieve this as well for me, but FAAC could not, and I am not willing to pirate and run windows or mac binaries just to encode music in formats that aren't broadly supported anyway on current devices (especially mine). WMA had an unpalatable flat quality at all rates I tested. Maybe it's improved but I was really testing for novelty. That format is even worse than AAC, which at least has an open specification.

OGG is the Game Industry's Favorite Format

[StaticEngine]

OGG Vorbis is used all over the place in the Video Game Industry, since it's free, well documented, sounds great, and has source code available. I think MP3 is only in the forefront of people's minds because the news media coopted the name of that format to encompass all lossy compressed audio schemes, the way "Kleenex" is used by some people to refer to generic facial tissues.

That said, I've used Vorbis playback in an audio library I wrote, and thought it was probably the easiest part of the whole project.

Re:OGG is the Game Industry's Favorite Format

[acidrain]

I mentioned ogg to the lead sound programmer at the last games company I worked at and they started using it at their generic format. It still had to be converted to a console specific format for the runtime, because the hardware was designed to handle certain types of streams, and audio isn't cheap to transform cpu-wise. Of course that was ps2/xbox/gc and I'm under the impression that they were able to do a lot more runtime processing of the audio on the "next gen" consoles, but I don't know what role ogg played. Certainly the memory bandwidth savings off ogg in the runtime may outweigh the cpu costs, but again, that's probably something most companies are still working out and I don't know from experience.

Re:OGG is the Game Industry's Favorite Format

[ewhac]

Also, Ogg Vorbis is much more predictable.

Apparently, you can't take apart an MP3 in a deterministic way. That is, if you hand a compressed block to the MP3 decoder, you could get back an uncompressed block of any size, and it's not possible to determine this size ahead of time. You can partially decode blocks ("Decompress in to this buffer up to a maximum of N bytes,"), but then you can't restart the decoder from exactly where you left off. This means you have to either re-decode the entire block and throw away what you've already used, or blindly move on to the next block and hope no one notices the pop. This sort of sloppiness is generally frowned upon in game programming circles.

Vorbis apparently doesn't suffer from these shortcomings. And it sounds better.

This imparted to me by an experienced console game programmer, as relayed through my highly imperfect memory.

Schwab

Re:Storage vs processing vs quality

[mrchaotica]

Many voice mail systems only use 32kbps sampling and achieve fine results for that purpose, and the algorithms are easy enough to render on a 8-bit micro costing 50c.

I'm not sure exactly how lightweight the algorithm is, but Speex would be more appropriate for that than a general-purpose audio codec, and has the same "no license fees" advantage as Vorbis. I wonder how Speex is doing in "the industry?"

Re:Worthless for hobbyists

[MightyYar]

There's an LQFP version pictured. You don't have to use the BGA.

Speex works excellently.

[jbn-o]

Quite well as far as I'm concerned; Speex is useful with Asterisk (a popular and extensible open source telephone system), I use it to make high-quality low-bandwidth encodings of talk shows I work with, and a lot of players play it (including VideoLAN Client which works on many operating systems). I never have to worry about patent hassles, proprietary software hassles, or losing control of my audio to digital restrictions management.

Re:Informal poll

[Creepy Crawler]

Actually, that was "Noob Saibot".

Backwards, it spelled the name of two developers: Boon and Tobias.

As a note, he make his first appearance as a super-hard hidden fight. You had to fight 50 times in 2-player on Mortal Kombat 2, and then you fought the Noob.

The noob looked like Scorpion with the ninja garb, but completely black. He was just a "shadow". he also could kick your ass super-quick.

Ogg Vorbis

[Nonillion]

I have been encoding my music CD collection in (DRM free)Ogg Vorbis for years. The audio quality is noticeably better than mp3 encoded at the same bitrate. When I give a demonstration to my friends they even say it (Ogg Vorbis) is better sounding than mp3 (most notably, the absence of compression artifacts, you know, that fluttery metallic sound in the high frequency content). It's nice to see a superior and free audio format actually making inroads to AAC, WMA and mp3.

No, Worse because M$ Squished it.

[twitter]

It's the PNG/GIF thing all over again.

Except in this case M$ gave music player makers a choice: our way or the highway. The Janus DRM license actually forbade the use of ogg. Though this was shot down by the EU, you might imagine the pressure is still there. Well, it was until M$ hosed every one of them over by dumping the former "Plays for Sure" for whatever their new "service" is. You would think they would revolt given they can't win in the M$ world.

flash support

[bcrowell]

It would be really nice if Adobe would support ogg in the next version of flash player. Currently the only audio codec supported is mp3, which helps to make flash a more closed platform.

Ah yes, Vorbis

[Trogre]

Ogg Vorbis is a wonderful format with lots of nifty features. My little Samsung YP-U1 plays my oggs perfectly well, but my Pioneer car stereo won't.

Does anyone here remember back in 2001 when Ogg Vorbis proponents were touting Bitrate Peeling as a big must-have feature? Well it's 2007 and I'm still waiting to see a single workable implementation of it.

Re:Branding: "Ogg" vs. "Vorbis"

[zsau]

Why bother with extensions at all? On my Linux computer, I have all my Ogg Vorbis music with filenames like "Nochnye Snajpery/2004 - SMS/16. 1/2 chasa na vojnu", and my filemanager and music player work out from the contents that it's an Ogg Vorbis player. Same deal occurs with my movies, so I have a video clip named "Nochnye Snajpery/2002 - Ty darila mne rozy". I don't know and don't care what format it's in, ROX-Filer works out it's a movie, and mplayer works out the format...

For my part, I only choose to use extensions when I'm going to have lots of files in one directory with the same name, like "essay.tex", "essay.toc", "essay.aux", "essay.pdf" etc. And I *never* launch a program, then open a file; the filemanager always does it.

(For some reason, neither ROX-Filer nor the "file" command line utility can't work MP3's out without the .mp3 extension. But music players can. If anyone knows what magic I could tell my computer to work them out, I'd be happy)

Re:Branding: "Ogg" vs. "Vorbis"

[xtracto]

Perhaps someone can try to explain why I should care, or an actual good reason to use ogg...

One of the advantages OGG has advantages over MP3 is that it sounds *better* at less bitrate. This is great for me, as I can put more music on my Samsung YP-Z5 (which of course plays OGG) in less space.

You can try it, from a CD create an mp3 at 128kbps and a OGG q3 (112kbps) or even q2(96kbps) and the sound will be equivalent. Of course the size of the file will be smaller in the OGG.

(not that I can hear the difference at normal bitrates), b
You have an inherently advantage there, as you can not hear small differences, you will benefit the most with OGG lesser bitrates (but similar quality as mp3 higher bitrates).

The only problem I had was finding an OGG player, but the one I mentioned is *really* good (and for the "cool" guys, it was designed by the same guy who designed the iPod, go figure).

Another rant I listen often is that people argue there is no point in having acceptable bitrates for portable music, as you are going to listen in the bus, metro or any other high ambient noise place. In that case, I would suggest you one of the in-ear earbuds that are now quite popular (you can buy expensive ones like the Shure brands, some Sony or better yet, the not-so-expensive Phillips).

Re:AVI does the same thing.

[TheRaven64]

There's nothing to stop you using .vorbis.ogg or .theora.ogg as extensions. Then, if Tarkin is ever finished, you can just start labelling video .tarkin.ogg. I've seen a few AVIs recently that have this naming convention (.h264.avi, or .XviD.avi for example), so it wouldn't be too difficult.

The only exception is MP3, which didn't have a container format, it was just a raw byte-stream.

Re:Branding: "Ogg" vs. "Vorbis"

[Delkster]

The only thing Vorbis has over AAC is that it's not patent encumbered, and if you live in a jurisdiction where algorithmic patents are not valid (such as the EU, for now at least) then it doesn't even have this advantage.

This isn't even entirely true. So far the EU has not ruled over the patentability of algoritms, so currently the matter is in the hands of the member countries, at least as far as patentability through local patent offices and enforceability go.

IANAL and IANG (I am not German) but if my memory serves software patents have been granted for example in Germany. I don't know if that pertains to algorithms per se. Here in Finland it seems that software patents are at least somewhat valid (AFAIK some have been granted by the patent office but I don't suppose their validity has been tested in court), even though the legislation would seem to either deny patentability of algorithms or not say anything about it.

Not to mention that even if the patents aren't valid in the EU, they still hinder competition in the global market, and I believe competition in the market would benefit us all in the long run.

Again, IANAL so there may be mistakes and misunderstandings in my knowledge of software patentability in the EU. I also even see your point, but while interesting, it may not be correct in all parts.