Ogg Vorbis

I know it was on the wish list back in July, but ...

http://smw.internet.com/audio/tools/vorbis/

suggests we may want to look into it further. I for one am starting to get this creepy feeling that this might go the same way as the Unisys/GIF controversy ... Where the patent owner decides to cash in on the success at a late date. Man sounds like a Micro$oft tactic... Hey wait ... IT IS!

Personally I would say, lets look into it just in case.

Hans


Mk2 - Blue - 080000431

Haven't checked into the status of the integer-based port of OGG Vorbis, but the reason it hasn't been implemented for the empeg is because of the high usage of floating point operations in the decoding of the audio. The ARM processor that the empeg employs does not have a FPU (floating point unit).

Like I said, they are creating an integer-only port of the OGG Vorbis decoding engine, and once that happens, I would assume empeg would implement it as soon as possible.

OGG Vorbis rules. :)

(O|||||O)

OGG Vorbis rules.

Just for the heck of it, I downloaded a Win32 command-line version of the Ogg encoder yesterday just to play around with it. I found a couple of problems with it. Since you seem to be an expert, what do you think of these things?:

- I couldn't get it to work on any of my ripped wave files, it complained of an unrecognized format in the wav header. I don't understand this since every single other piece of audio editing software that I own doesn't have any problems with my ripped files.

- I noticed that the encoder only lets me tag artist, album, title, and comment. No fields for genre or year. When looking for information about the Ogg format at their web site, they talk about how flexible the tagging options are, but they don't give any details on how the files are tagged.

___________
Tony Fabris

Has anyone on this list actually done any taste tests? Does the Vorbis format sound better than high quality MP3's? Space is really becoming less and less of an issue ...

I made an MP3 VBR that hovers between 160kbps and 224kbps with lame. Then I made an Ogg Vorbis file with the default settings. Winamp displays the bitrate (VBR) between 155kbps and 202kbps. The track was made from a 10min 18sec WAV (103MB). The MP3 file is 15,759,612 bytes and the Ogg file is 12,827,676 bytes.

After listening to both a couple of times, I think that the MP3 sounds brighter. This may be because of the higher bitrate range, but I don't care because we're only talking about saving 3MB. It took about 5 minutes to encode the WAV to Ogg on a PIII 850 in Win2K.

-Rob
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12GB MK2 Blue 090000736 (6166 in the queue)

The benefits of OGG Vorbis vs. MP3 are not size. It is a comprable sound quality vs MP3 and it lacks all of the licensing restrictions MP3 has. So from a developmental and licensing point of view it FAR outweights the MP3 format.

Tony, as for the Win32 Encoder.. I'm not sure. I'll go check into it though and get back to you. :)

(O|||||O)

Actually, various people claim that Ogg infringes on their patents, so I wouldn't say it's out of the woods yet. It's still a perceptual audio coder, and Frauhofer/Thompson hold a lot of patents in that area. I'd be very suprised if Ogg didn't infringe at least one of them - not to say they didn't come up with the ideas themselves, just that it may well have been patented before that point.

Hugo

Funny you should mention that:

http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-4101023.html

Quote:

"But the lack of a corporate sponsor has left the team, at least temporarily, without funding and without the prospect of a high-profile showcase for its work. "

and

"We doubt very much that they are not using Fraunhofer and Thomson intellectual property," Linde said. "We think it is likely they are infringing."



Paul Haigh, Reg. 4120
(mk1) 6GB, Blue, 00254
(mk2) 12GB, Red, 00357

Of course, knowing Fraunhofer/Thomson, I'm probably infringing on their intellectual property by simply talking talking..... I mean, using my method or apparatus for generaing air pressure in the lungs of a human or animal, pushing said air across a "vocal chord device" (see USPTO#611263362881846) producing vibrations in the air of controlable frequency and waveform, and method of communicating via aforementioned instrument, and method or apparatus of interception of said waveforms by an "ear" device (patent pending), which translates vibrations in the air into electrical impulses.

My original post was indeed mostly made because I am starting to get a little disgruntled and worried with the whole mp3 scene. If there is one thing I hate it is a 'squeeze them as hard as you can' mentality in bussiness. Sure everybody wants to make a profit, nothing wrong with that at all. But there is a fine line where you step over from making a decent profit into milking it for the last penny. The whole resistance against mp3 and the lawsuit we see left and right lately often fall in the latter category if you ask me.

So that is why I applaud the Ogg Vorbis initiative.

Cheers,
Hans


Mk2 - Blue - 080000431