Opus 1.1 Released

New submitter rvalles writes "Xiph.org just released a major update to their Opus audio codec. Opus 1.1 offers major improvements over last year's 1.0.2 release. Opus is a general-purpose, very flexible, open and royalty-free audio codec that offers low-latency and high quality/bitrate, incorporating technology from Skype's SILK codec and Xiph.Org's CELT codec. Its first release beat everything else last year at 64kbit/s in a listening test held at HydrogenAudio."

Comments

Compatibility

[Anne_Nonymous]

So is this backwards compatible with my existing Monster Cables or do I have to buy new ones?

Re:Compatibility

[jmv]

So is this backwards compatible with my existing Monster Cables or do I have to buy new ones?

You will just need to update the firmware on your cables if you want to maintain optimal RDF (reality distortion field).

Re:Nice, impressive achievement

[Skuto]

Depends on what mobile device? The reference code has extensive ARM optimizations, that's in fact one of the main improvements in 1.1 And yes, it can be accelerated with a programmable DSP if present, IIRC there's some support for C55x in the same reference code.

Audio decoding is fast enough on modern ARM SoC that dedicated hardware isn't strictly needed to get good battery life.

Re:Oh lookie

[Skuto]

AMR is pretty widely used as a voice codec, Ogg is used in most major AAA games, and as for Opus/SILK, you might have used Skype before...

Props to the authors of TFA

[DigitAl56K]

As someone who has previously written outwardly facing articles on complex technology, I have to give props to "Monty" and Jean-Marc Valin for TFA. It takes a lot of skill to communicate good information about some very complex topics in a short amount of space, and they pull it off pretty well. I think it really helps sell the product and keep your enthusiasts more engaged when you can see how much work and thoughtfulness has gone into the guts of it - work that is often unseen, hidden within a dev team, or buried throughout a mailing list somewhere.

Re:Props to the authors of TFA

[Trepidity]

Yeah, Monty's writing on these topics is exceptionally clear. His series on the Daala video codec introduces modern video encoding in a way that's amazingly accessible. Maybe he should write a textbook.

Already has good adoption

[pavon]

Opus wasn't designed for audio files, but for streaming audio. In that realm it's adoption looks very promising. It has already been integrated into the Skype codebase and will likely be used in the next major release of Skype. It is also one of two mandatory audio codecs for in the draft for WebRTC, which is a new standard for browser-based chatting.

Re:Oh lookie

[jmv]

Sure, this was originally Skype, but Microsoft has continued to work with us even after acquiring Skype.

Re:Nice, impressive achievement

[savuporo]

The thing about audio encode/decode is that its relatively low MIPS - with todays mobile CPUs its almost not worth the complexity to offload it to DSP. During a call your CPU has to stay awake anyway and drain battery, there is very little wattage saving moving it to DSP. It would only make sense if you are dealing with multiple, and i mean more than 2 simultaneous encoded streams ( decode is cheap ). The story was different a few years ago when the dominant CPU was ARM9 running in a 150-200 mhz range, where audio codec easily chewed up 50% or more available MIPS.

Video encoding is a whole different matter of course.