Ogg Vorbis for Linux... Coming soon to Empeg?

I would think if they could do it on a Zaurus, it should be easy on an Empeg. Comments from the gallery?

http://linuxandmain.com/news/zaurogg.html

This is not free. :-( Its harder than it looks on the surface.

already there:) check out the release notes from 12F:

In reply to:

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Ogg Vorbis support has been implemented. This is an open source audio
format similar to MP3. Note: Due to possible patent issue with the
psycho accoustic engine, we have modified the decoder to play every
third note one semitone high. When these issues are resolved we hope to
return to the regular scale, although this actually improves Britney tracks.

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-mark

I guess I don't understand how they can do this. Ogg is based on GPL right? If you derive any software from something based on GPL, your new software has to be GPL'ed right? (Unless you're Apple, of course). So if he derived any of his work from the GPL Ogg libraries, his embeded stuff should be GPL'ed and therefore free, right?

Greg

They just provide the gpled section of the code along with the compiled program I suppose. I looked at some of the code, and its way over my head. It almost requires a math major to figure this stuff out, and I had trouble getting through calc 2.

Sean

No. If I write something (from scratch) and release it under the GPL, I'm free to create other works derived from that and release those under something other than the GPL.

Actually libogg and libvorbis moved over to a BSD license some time ago. Programs like ogg123 and oggenc are still GPL'd, but the reference implementation of the core codec is BSD licensed. Even before the change, they were licensed under the LGPL, which wouldn't have prevented Sonicblue from using the libs. The reason we don't have Ogg Vorbis support yet is a technical one.

The arm CPUs in the Empegs lack a floating point unit, and Vorbis makes heavy use of floating point numbers. So the free reference libs can't get anywhere close to realtime on these CPUs. However, xiph.org has a second set of libraries that are integerized and run at about the same speed as the mp3 codec. Those must be licensed from xiph.org though. So you guys just need to let Sonicblue know that you want Ogg Vorbis in all their future products, and maybe they'll license it and toss us Ogg Vorbis support in the Empeg as a gift

Jon

All my licensing questions were really regarding the integer math ogg library. I wasn't sure how he could charge a license for this new library when the normal float was based on GPL ... eh... money grubbers.

g

(Warning: I know all the xiph.org folks really well, and I'm a sympathizer. I know you weren't really going after them, but I want to explain things anyway. Sorry for being defensive.)

I understand the sentiments, but the reality is quite different. The xiph.org guys have been working on Vorbis full-time for over a year now with almost no money coming in. This isn't an attempt to get super-rich, it's an attempt to be able to continue full-time development without starving to death. The market has a need for an integerized decoder, and so they invested the time in writing one with the intentions of licensing it so they could buy food and such . They're still working their butts off so you can have the best patent free, royalty free audio format around.

Jon

Any idea how much the library costs? Or is it a per case licensing thing?

- Trevor

It's definitely done on a case-by-case basis. You can email the CEO of xiph.org, Emmet Plant, at [email protected] to inquire about licensing.

Jon

Thanks. I'll email him later

How many people would actually use Ogg Vorbis files on their empeg? No point spending money on it if hardly anybody would use it...

Also would the empeg team add it in to the software if it was available?

- Trevor

I heard it was into five figures, although I haven't had any official contact with them. I guess it may be different for a smaller company or an individual.

Rob

Vorbis is definitely catching on in popularity, but certainly right now it's a small amount of people that are using it. I think in the next year or two that may change, at least in certain circles. Hardware support is definitely one thing that hampers Vorbis's adoption though, so it's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. Would you try it if your empeg played Ogg Vorbis files, given that winamp, xmms, media player, etc. have plugins?

As far as the empeg guys go, I can't speak for them. But from my communications with them, it sounds like they want vorbis support.

Jon

I want to beef up the FAQ entry on this subject. As I understand it, the reason Voribis is not available for the empeg car is:

- It needs to be an integer-only (not floating point) implementation, compiled for the ARM processor. Until recently, such an animal did not exist.

- Those who recently wrote the ARM integer implementation do not give it away for free, and the licensing fees are not cheap.

Would that be an accurate set of statements for the FAQ?

I guess there should be more people using it once they release 1.0. It's still got the beta test stigma attached to it and not many people as you quite rightly say want to commit to using it yet without wider support.

I've email the CEO and will see how it goes. Hopefully it's not going to be a 5 figure sum! If it is going to have any realistic chance of appearing on the empeg then it's going to have to be a couple of hundred at the most. Otherwise somebody will have to sit down and rewrite the decoder themselves.

Who wants to try and create an ATRAC decoder without Sony sueing them to death? Does anybody use ATRAC files actually? I found an ATRAC plugin for winamp a few years back but never found anything that used it apart from some sample files.

- Trevor

I've got some good news about this actually!

I've emailed Emmett (CEO of xiph.org) and he is willing to license the integer decoder for Ogg Vorbis free of charge! The license would only cover the the empeg though so Rio Receiver and HSX-109 people would be out of luck unfortunately

I'll give more details in a bit...

- Trevor

Someone link that post where one of the empeg guys (don't remember who it was... Was it Roger?) where he said that if an integer-ARM vorbis decoder became available that it would end up being implemented on the player within 24 hours...

Splendid! Trevor, you da man.

Now who's going to convince someone to license a good voice recognition for free?

Someone link that post where one of the empeg guys (don't remember who it was... Was it Roger?) where he said that if an integer-ARM vorbis decoder became available that it would end up being implemented on the player within 24 hours...

Tick..
tick..
tick..
tick..
tick..

Clock only starts when they get the files, I would think.

This is the reply from Emmett I got. I had to ask his permission to repost it here which is the reason for the delay.

Hey, Trevor!

Tremor (the fixed-point decoder) is available for license, but I absolutely refuse to accept any money from anyone to get it implemented on the Empeg. Hugo showed me his demo box at LinuxWorld Expo about three years ago, and I've always thought it was groovy.

I think the Empeg is cool, and it has a great community. I'd be willing to license Tremor to SonicBlue for free, as long as it was only implemented for the Empeg.

Emmett

Also apparently he's never quoted a five figure price for the decoder Anybody at Empeg want to get this going? Rob?

- Trevor

OK, found it. By the way, it was Peter:

http://empeg.comms.net/php/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=wishlist&Number=70082

" I think it's fair to say that if an integer-only or ARM version of the Ogg Vorbis codec were released, there would be an internal development version incorporating it within 24 hours."

I think the Empeg is cool, and it has a great community.

Wow. Trevor, is there some way we could collectively buy this gent a pint? Dinner?

They've got a paypal account for donations if you want to do it that way: [email protected]

I've already given them a bit just because it's a cool project

- Trevor

24 hours

Ho boy. Wonder whether I'm going to regret saying that...

Peter

PS. Welcome to our newest member, Emmett!

Hmm... Internal development version...

This means you lucky lot that are beta testers get to play with it before the rest of us! Not fair!

- Trevor

/me wonders how long before he starts re-encoding all his stuff in .ogg format...

You're too kind! Thanks to Trevor for E-mailing me (and slothy for keeping on my ass about this). I've been reading this list for the past few days, and I've enjoyed the interesting posts. I decided a couple days ago to give the Empeg a free license for Tremor, but I wanted to see if anyone would e-mail me about it first.

As far as buying me a pint, I appreciate the offer, but I'd rather you purchase a pint for my developers... Go to the pub, ask how much a pint of Guinness is, come back home and paypal that amount to [email protected].

From a business point of view, there's no way we're going to be able to make money on the Empeg. It's not available, no one's going to give us money for the decoder. On the other hand, there are about 4,000 people out there who are using them, and if we can give a little support to a big group of friendly people who like music and want to get more out of their hardware, why not make it available?

You guys rock. I hope we can get the decoder working for you ASAP. Thanks for the opportunity!

<applause>

You guys rock

No, you rock. Thanks.

You guys rock

No, you rock. Thanks.

Seconded! Give thanks and praises...

/Michael

Hold the applause until you're listening to a Vorbis file on your Empeg. Then start cheering.

By the way, many thanks to the folks that donated to us! We love you!

You know, it makes me wonder... How come no one else realizes how powerful Empeg owners are? They've already decided that they want to use cool technology, and they're willing to pay for a sufficiently kick-ass application of said technology. People would kill their own mothers for access to that demographic.

Yeah, we are the dream target market, aren't we?

We are just too small. But we are good at converting people. I think you are going to have about 4000 more people promoting this

Could someone toss together a list of features/add-ons/tools that the community has provided? Everything from logo editor, java aps, lenes, button kits, facias, new fonts, bbs, faq, riocar.org, etc etc.... I'm sure I only know of a tiny part of that list.

Wow.

[Deleted due to corrected information later in thread]
g

[deleted due to the fact that Greg corrected his statements]

You're too fast Tony, I don't even have time to get frustrated, then angry, then surprised, then fantasmagorically excited, then kind of sleepy before you're already on the ball with new info ;-)

Greg

"They've already decided that they want to use cool technology, and they're willing to pay for a sufficiently kick-ass application of said technology. People would kill their own mothers for access to that demographic."

Yup. . . Makes the record companies strategy look silly doesn't it? I haven't even heard this before, but I'm definately going to try it now.

This is great news! Thanks for your efforts!

Sean

Thanks for doing this for us!

Peter: looking forward to seeing vorbis in the next public beta ;-)

Sean

/me wonders how long before he starts re-encoding all his stuff in .ogg format..

Well, I bought a few CDs tonight and encoded my first .ogg files. Actually recorded this Neil Finn live album in both Ogg and MP3 - maybe put on the headphones later to see if I can tell any difference.

Actually, since I'm not doing *that* much new ripping and I still have a good chunk of disk space, I have thought about setting Grip to not delete WAVs and encode new rips into both....but then I have double the tag/comment editing...decisions, decisions! I *did* submit a feature request for Grip that would let me switch config files b/w different LAME and vorbis configs.

One question I have is whether Vorbis will potentially improve so much in the next 6 months or year (say in file sizes or something) that I will regret encoding with the current version, but that seems unlikely.

I downloaded one Ogg Vorbis comment editor (vocoditor) and am going to try that out, but it looks pretty basic, and there doesn't seem to be anything out there on the level of something like MP3 Tag Studio.

Any of these temporary issues aside, I'm going to work on learning more about the particulars of Ogg Vorbis and fine-tuning my setup. This remains really fantastic news

Wow. I'm stunned. This is MOST excellent news! Thank you guys so much for making this even a possibility. I feel like I'm living in Disneyland since dreams really do come true...

off to PayPal land....
Tim

In reply to:

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I have thought about setting Grip to not delete WAVs and encode new rips into both....but then I have double the tag/comment editing...decisions, decisions! I *did* submit a feature request for Grip that would let me switch config files b/w different LAME and vorbis configs.

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You could perhaps configure Grip to use a script of your own as an encoder. Your script would take three input filenames, the first two being the usual WAV input and MP3 output, and the other being the Ogg output. Then you could turn Ogg and MP3 on and off by editing the script, or by using another parameter.

I hear that Ogg Vorbis is better for seamless playback - if so, then I'm interested for that feature...

I'm going to work on learning more about the particulars of Ogg Vorbis and fine-tuning my setup.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I probably won't be re-encoding everything into this new and wonderful format.

The primary reasons are:

1) I have other devices which are still dependent upon the MP3 format and do not (yet) support Ogg Vorbis. It's more convenient for me to let these devices all share the same set of MP3 files. Obviously, when the time comes that these devices do support Ogg, I will reconsider.

2) The primary advantage of Ogg over MP3 is that it does a better job of encoding at a given bit rate. For instance, a 128kbps Ogg file will sound better than a 128kbps MP3 file. But I already encode my MP3s at a much higher bitrate than 128 and can't tell the difference between the original CD and my encoded MP3s. So the only advantage Ogg would give me is disk space savings, and thanks to products like the empeg and the Jupiter, storage is the least of my worries at this time.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to put down Ogg or anything. I applaud the format and its technological advances, and it's great to think that it may be coming soon to our beloved empeg player. I just don't have a compelling reason to re-encode my entire collection at this time.

I have a question about the Ogg format, though: Does it solve the gapless playback problem we experience with MP3s? If it does, I will likely re-do all of my continuous-track albums in Ogg format.

Yes, vorbis files have sample granularity, so it won't introduce any gaps that don't exist in the original wav.

Depending on the music you listen to, vorbis files can sound better than even higher-bitrate mp3s. This is especially true for classical music, but if you give it a test drive you might notice it on other music too. But your point #1 is particularly valid for people with multiple portable players.

Jon

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I probably won't be re-encoding everything into this new and wonderful format.

The primary reasons are:

1) I have other devices which are still dependent upon the MP3 format and do not (yet) support Ogg Vorbis. It's more convenient for me to let these devices all share the same set of MP3 files. Obviously, when the time comes that these devices do support Ogg, I will reconsider.

I have some of the same issues, but fewer of them I think. I have been using XMMS in place of Winamp, but even Winamp includes .ogg support now (new in the v3 beta?). With the docking station at home, virtually all of my playback is out of the Empeg, so if Ogg support materializes there, then I'm good to go. The one gap is a portable player for airplane travel.

I'm fairly certain that MP3 will remain more prevalent for some time to come given that most of the file sharing is in MP3 format. However, since virtually all of my listening is ripped from my collection, that kind of popularity doesn't matter to me.

To me, it's the same old "Chicken or the Ogg?" conundrum. I'm going to work progressively more with Ogg, 'cause it creates the opportunity for me to send e-mails (like I did this morning to the author of MP3 Tag Studio) asking politely if Ogg might be supported in future. What the folks at Xiph have done is awesome. I'll endure some inconveniences if it will help them succeed in the long run.

2) The primary advantage of Ogg over MP3 is that it does a better job of encoding at a given bit rate. For instance, a 128kbps Ogg file will sound better than a 128kbps MP3 file. But I already encode my MP3s at a much higher bitrate than 128 and can't tell the difference between the original CD and my encoded MP3s. So the only advantage Ogg would give me is disk space savings, and thanks to products like the empeg and the Jupiter, storage is the least of my worries at this time.

Yes. Just for fun, though, I have thought about enlisting a friend to help me with a "real-world" listening test. Encode 5-10 well-known song snippets in MP3 and Ogg at a variety of base bitrates, blindly randomize the various encodings of each snippet into pairs, put on some headphones and conduct "which is better? A.....or B....?" listening tests. Run this rerandomized 4 or 5 times to see if I can figure out the point at which my sorry old ears can tell the difference, then pick the notch above that as my new encoding standard. Save 0.01 GB at least!

.... I just don't have a compelling reason to re-encode my entire collection at this time.

For functional reasons (space, sound quality, convenience) reasons, neither do I at this time, but for long-term political, licensing, and technical reasons, I slowly, progressively will.

I have a question about the Ogg format, though: Does it solve the gapless playback problem we experience with MP3s? If it does, I will likely re-do all of my continuous-track albums in Ogg format.

Isn't this one of the killer advantages of Ogg? Heh. A search just found a version 1 of a Windows player (VUPlayer ) that "Version 1.0 introduces gapless Ogg Vorbis playback & comment editing" (I'll have to check it out). Perhaps this is implementation-specific, but it sounds like it's out there. Great for live stuff and soundtrack (Oh, and some Rush albums!)

[edit: I expanded my second to last paragraph. I looked at it and realized that somebody might look at the post and wonder why the heck -- in general terms -- I would switch.]

Aren't the Rio Central and the empeg very similar in hard ware? I assume that if the empeg team is going to provide Ogg support because they are getting the license for free, they may be able to pursuade the bean counters to pay for Ogg on the Rio Central (because the license would be the only cost - they've already done the needed in house developement!)

Seems like this format would really kill in the portable market. Yet WMA has some of the same advantages.

Yeah, but WMA is a Microsloth codec. For that reason alone I won't use it.

I agree. I'm with you on that. While I'm not a big "anti-MS" guy, I hate the digital restrictions they built into the format. A few years back, WaxTrax! records released many wma's free on their site. I spent most of the day downloading them at work. I owned nearly all of the cd's but didn't have any ripping program at the time (2000). After I was done, I went home for 2 weeks (I was able to spend all day DL'ing because it was the last day before Christmas vacation). When I came back after New Year's, they had all expired. Nice.

Tony, I think the main reason people see Ogg gaining importance is the licensing/royalty situation with MP3. I think that issue is overplayed a little bit, and nobody from Fraunhofer is going to chase us down and ask us to pay them a quarter for each of our MP3's. But in this open source world we all adore, people like the idea of getting away from proprietary formats, even if "the cat is out of the bag."

I think that issue is more important to a lot of people than the bitrate, etc. I think we all agree that disk space is (almost) irrelevant, and modern encoders (LAME especially) are doing such a great job of squeezing out quality per bit anyway.

Saying that OGG only offers quality/size ratio over MP3 is understating things a bit... Bitt even said in the other recent Vorbis thread that OGG doesn't suffer from the gap between tracks. That's definitely an advantage, no need for special LAME tags or whatever.

I'm no huge Ogg torch-bearer, but if it evolves sufficiently, there are compelling reasons to switch besides the marginal quality/size improvements.

Points taken.

so, do they have the source yet??
when does the 24 hours start ticking??

Holy Cow, check out this thread!!!

OMG, if we get ogg support on the empeg I will be one happy earthling. Emmet, you da man. Hats off to ya.



OK, one question regarding ogg for the gallery...

Would it be harder, easier, or about the same to implement a crossfade for it...?

(Yeah, I'm still on that tip...)

Because a crossfade feature would happen after the audio was already decoded, the type of decoder is irrelevant to crossfading.

For example, if they were going to implement a crossfader in the current software, they would have to make it work with WAV, MP3, MP2, and WMA files crossfading over each other. So whether or not OGG gets implemented has no bearing on it whatsoever.

Yeah, I kinda figured that part...

The reason I asked, is because I'm guessing the actual decompression of the files will take different amounts of cpu cycles, depending on the format, and I'm not sure where ogg is compared to mp3. Will it take more or less cpu power? I have no idea, but I know we only have so many spare cycles to play with on the unit for extra stuff, like crossfading, so I was just wondering if ogg files would give us more, less, or about the same headroom.

If ogg files take less cpu cycles, than that might be another point in their favor. If they take more, it might be a point against.

And of course, if the hit is negligible, and we have plenty of cycles left over no matter what the format, than Woo-Hoo! Fun for the whole family.

I'm just curious...

Initial tests on a Sharp Zaurus shows that the fixed-point decoder works its magic with a significantly lower amount of CPU overhead than mp3's, but your mileage may vary.

I don't know which mp3 decoder theKompany uses in their tkcPlayer app, but on that unit, the Vorbis fixed-point decoder took about 25-35% usage, while mp3's took 35-45%. That's on a 206Mhz StrongARM, but you may get different results. We'll see. My educated guess is that it'll take less firepower to decode oggs than mp3's on the Empeg, but it's just a guess.

A follow-up to myself...

I got a very pleasant, appropriately noncommital e-mail back from Magnus Brading, the author or MP3 Tag Studio, about Ogg Vorbis support. MP3TS is basically an extended hobby of his, and he said that Ogg Vorbis isn't something he knows much about or had given much thought to.

A fair chunk of the goodness in MP3TS is in tools to rectify ID3 version differences and such. If adapted to Ogg Vorbis, the functionality would be reduced, it seems, simply because some of the ID3-specific problems/functions do not apply. Still, it seems like there is a lot that would still be useful such as mass and recursive tagging.

I volunteered that I would try to assemble some information for him regarding Ogg comment structures and ID3-->Ogg mapping. I found the Ogg comments spec on xiph.org and also found some perl modules on sourceforge. Recycling some of this prior art may be complicated by the fact that they are open-source and MP3TS is proprietary shareware, but it's worth gathering the info anyway.

One probable complication for a gent who has been working pretty strictly within the ID3 tag context is that Ogg comments are so purposely free-form. i have been looking to see if there are any efforts to develop an ID3 mapping standard that would be usable. I found one suspicious-looking metadata effort here , but if anybody else has any pointers or any more inside info on trends in tag-->comments mapping, I'd be interested to hear about it.

Hope that makes some sense. Not sure if this is something that will make it into Mr. Brading's stack, but I figured it's worth trying to help move it along.

Side note: As a registered user I got this e-mail, but others may not have....he has released a new version of MP3TS that, registered or unregistered, is adware-free. Good for him.

I just encoded some songs in both ogg format and mp3. Ogg at 128 and mp3 at 192 and using my crappy SBLive Platinum sound card and Sony DJ headphone the ogg songs sounds better. Not a night and day difference but detectable. I ripped a CD that my high school band(PC: Wind Ensemble) made( We we like the best in the country). I guess Ill be re ripping my entire CD collection again.

Jim, this is why I've gone to FLAC ... only have to rip and tag just once. Every other encoder is just a script run away.

g

Aren't the Rio Central and the empeg very similar in hard ware?

Yes, and they're even more similar in soft ware.

I assume that if the empeg team is going to provide Ogg support because they are getting the license for free, they may be able to pursuade the bean counters to pay for Ogg on the Rio Central (because the license would be the only cost - they've already done the needed in house developement!)

Seems like this format would really kill in the portable market. Yet WMA has some of the same advantages.

As someone else pointed out, it's a chicken-and-ogg situation. Part of the idea of the Rio Central is to talk to Rio portables, so there wouldn't be much point supporting Ogg (or at least Ogg encode) until all the portables knew about it.

But we have to start somewhere, and I for one am very grateful to Emmett and Xiph for offering us the chance to start with the car player.

Peter

so, do they have the source yet??
when does the 24 hours start ticking??

We have to get a contract in place with Xiph before we get the source (to assure us that we can use it in the car player, and to assure them that we won't use it in other products within the same terms). We also have to check with our lawyers if they are currently happy with the legal status of Vorbis. Finally, we have to persuade Peter to do the work in his own time because our schedule is packed solid for the next two months at least.

Rob

this is why I've gone to FLAC ... only have to rip and tag just once. Every other encoder is just a script run away.

Are you using some front-end for FLAC? Whatever extra tagging I have done, I don't lay the blame at the foot of LAME ('course, I couldn't get --id3v2-only switch to work!) or oggenc. They seem to add the tags pretty predictably.

Grip, as a front end, works well, but it doesn't allow me to vary artist or year within a rip of a single CD. This comes in with soundtracks, compilations, and "best of" CDs where I often change one or more of these from CDDB values to either the actual artist (instead of Various Artists) and the actual year of an original recording (instead of the compilation year). This is one place where I like Mp3 Tag Studio for "post-processing".

Maybe there's one, single do-it-all tool out there that I'm overlooking and that would eliminate any fix-up editing. If I were more *patient*, I could process soundtrack/complilation tracks one track at a time in grip, editing each track as I go, and maybe avoid this. Still, I really like having MPTS around for the day that I decide to restore all of those "The"s!

I just encoded some songs in both ogg format and mp3. Ogg at 128 and mp3 at 192 and using my crappy SBLive Platinum sound card and Sony DJ headphone the ogg songs sounds better. Not a night and day difference but detectable.

Interesting! The more I think about it I am motivated to try to come up with something that would help me figure out what my ears think are better (I pass hearing tests OK, but I don't have what I consider the most discriminating ears). I may take this thought to Off-Topic or somewhere...

In reply to:

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Are you using some front-end for FLAC? Whatever extra tagging I have done, I don't lay the blame at the foot of LAME ('course, I couldn't get --id3v2-only switch to work!) or oggenc. They seem to add the tags pretty predictably.

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I use a little shell script to listen for a cd insert, start ripping, do a freedb.org query, encode to flac, script tells id3lib to drop the tags on the flac file. Since inevitably, there's some incontinuity in freedb and cddbdbdb, I use EasyTag to go in and do corrections on the tags in the flac files. The MP3TagStudio seems to work okay as well, on windows, as long as you tell it to ignore the file extension. Typically I just stick with EasyTag on X-windows just cuz it's a bit faster and easier for me to use on the basic operations I usually do. It does a mass correction of any field selected, which I use often for fixing genre's, years, album names, etc.

In reply to:

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Grip, as a front end, works well, but it doesn't allow me to vary artist or year within a rip of a single CD. This comes in with soundtracks, compilations, and "best of" CDs where I often change one or more of these from CDDB values to either the actual artist (instead of Various Artists) and the actual year of an original recording (instead of the compilation year). This is one place where I like Mp3 Tag Studio for "post-processing".

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True, but this is really a problem I see with freedb and cddb. There needs to be some finer granularity. For single artist cd's they work fine. For mutli artist CDs, I still have to go in by hand after ripping and do a little touch up. But the benefit of Flac is that I only have to touch up once ever.

In reply to:

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Maybe there's one, single do-it-all tool out there that I'm overlooking and that would eliminate any fix-up editing. If I were more *patient*, I could process soundtrack/complilation tracks one track at a time in grip, editing each track as I go, and maybe avoid this. Still, I really like having MPTS around for the day that I decide to restore all of those "The"s!

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I usually rip a pile of cds into flac, then when I have some time, I'll go in and edit the tags with EasyTag in one sitting. This is a lot quicker than doing it between rips it seems. Many times, especially with Madonna CDs it seems, I don't have to do anything at all.

Greg

alright, it's been a few days. Are we getting Ogg support in the next beta?

later,
ajay

alright, it's been a few days.

Hey, I'm as eager as the next person, but let's not be a PITA. Did you read Rob's last post? (about 4-5 posts up) That "clock" starts when the guys start it.

crap... sorry. I missed that post by rob and now I will contine to wait patiently like everyone else.

later,
ajay

Grip, as a front end, works well, but it doesn't allow me to vary artist or year within a rip of a single CD.


Did you click the "Multi-artist" box in the tag entry area? It will even split title tags automatically into seperate title and artist tags where they are downloaded from the FreeDB in "Songname - Artisit" format.

Hmm, year is not variable though, your stuck with disc year and not track year there.

Did you click the "Multi-artist" box in the tag entry area?

Well, Grip's multi-artist feature doesn't change the Disc Artist tag, it just adds artist infor to the track name. I have Grip configured to create music directories based on Artist/Album, so all of this music would wind up under "Various".

Yes, year, too. I just bought a used 4-CD "Beach Music Anthology" for one song ("Searching for My Love" - Bobby Moore and The Rhythm Aces, 1966). Left to it's own devices, Grip would mark every one of these 90+ songs as 1996.

So, for compilations, I'm going through the somewhat time-consuming process of editing artist/year/title and ripping/encoding in Grip one song at a time.

One not-so-great side effect of this approach to compilations is that I'm encountering "artist bloat" -- my artist view is getting crowded with one-hit wonders. I need to build more custom playlists!

Well, Grip's multi-artist feature doesn't change the Disc Artist tag, it just adds artist infor to the track name. I have Grip configured to create music directories based on Artist/Album, so all of this music would wind up under "Various".

I just double checked some of my rips i still have on my PC. Disc artist isn't changed, because there is nothing sensible you could change it too, apart from what is grabbed from the freedb.

However the important part is, with multi artist enabled, the ID3 Artist tag is set to the Track artist, the disc artist field isn't actually used, as there is no ID3v1 tag for it, the only place it is used is if you have told grip to place the MP3s in a directory structure based on the album artist name.

It does not add artist info to the track name.

I usually set the disc artist to the name of the compilation series ( i don't have any soundtracks) So grip will place compilations in a directory structure like

/Gathering/The Gathering
/Gathering/Gathering 2
/Gathering/Gathering 99

So Gathering is the disc artist, Gathering 99 is the album name, but all the songs won't have Gathering as the artist, they will have the actual artist set in their ID3 tag.

Note that you can customise allot of this, %A is the artist of the current disc, and %a is the artist of the current track. So you could probably have each track in it's own directory if you really wanted by specifing the destination directory as %a instead of %A.

That would get real complicated if you're like me and have six or seven albums from a band named The Gathering.

Heh, not really though.

The albums from the band "The Gathering" would all be under the directory "The Gathering"
The compilation albums from the annual "Gathering" event would all be under the directory "Gathering"

Well, it depends on which convention you follow, some people prefer not to specify "The" because it screws up sorting (they'd rather see The Gathering among the G's than the T's.)

There were some interesting threads about this recently, and how to get the player software to gracefully and robustly handle articles like "the." Not sure if any of those suggestions will make it into the software, but anything's possible.

In reply to:

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Side note: As a registered user I got this e-mail, but others may not have....he has released a new version of MP3TS that, registered or unregistered, is adware-free. Good for him.

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Hey, thats great. Appearently the guilt is more powerful than the ads. I just registered.

Gosh...do you have six or seven The Gathering albums? I only have...um, four I think...maybe five. Are the earlier ones worth getting? I understand they're quite a bit different musically/vocally.

Hmm...I've ventured off topic.

The earliest album I own is Mandylion, the first album with Anneke. But I was counting my EP's (Rollercoaster, Adrenaline/Leaves, Liberty Bell) in that number. I have the same 4 studio and 1 live albums you have. I've heard Almost a Dance and it's not bad, but it's certainly a departure from the albums with Anneke. I would like to own it eventually but it's not on my top 5 right now.

BTW there's a new album coming out in June. Very psyched for that one.

Does anybody knows whether the empeg guys and the guys from Xiph are actually trying to get together and making a contract?

Any news from this?

janosch

We've talked. Right now I'm not going to even think about chasing our lawyer for a contract - as you may be aware our legal department is just a little busy at the moment.

The development team also have the tightest and most important deadlines over the next 1-2 months that we've ever had. I would almost certainly be sacked on the spot if my boss thought I had them working on anything else

Right now this falls into the "back burner" category. In my book its way lower than other Rio Car tasks, such as releasing Beta 13.

Rob

Rob.... thanks for the Update. Beta 13 would rock, and I can't wait to find out what you guys are working on - even if it is not RioCar related. I like knowing that your team has added thier touch to other products. Hopefully you didn't get sucked into having to write that Spyware code in 30 day...

Speaking of legal issues - your company has guts - that's for sure. I can't think of another major corporation that would be better fitted for you.