Ogg Vorbis 1.0

uvasmith writes "According to the Ogg Vorbis website... Release 1.0 is now ready and tagged as 'vorbis1_0_public_release' in CVS. This is a full release of a 1.0 encoder, decoder and tool set. The encoder, decoder and tools now implement all Vorbis 1.0 specification features including low-bitrate, cascading and channel coupling." Update: 07/19 17:05 GMT by C :It seems someone jumped the gun a bit in mentioning the release, but now it's official! Check out the download page, the letter from their CEO and (if you wish) cough up a few bucks at the donation page! For those audiophiles among us, you can check out a side-by-side audio comparison here. Oh, and don't forget the free music!

Debian packages

[calc]

Ogg Vorbis 1.0 is already uploaded to Debian sid and should be installed today. It should be compiled for all arch within a few days.

oggenc -1 mode

[calc]

oggenc now has a -1 quality mode with a nominal bitrate of 45kbps. It actually sounds very good try it out.

The Vorbis Way

[boa13]

To quote irc.openprojects.net/#vorbis:

<xercist> sites are down, and staying that way until it's ready. period.

And slightly afterwards:

<xiphmont> Hello. Slashdot jumped the gun. So that we can actually get to our own servers, xiph.org and vorbis.com have both been taken down so that we can finish the release in peace. Or at all.

ALL YOUR BASE IS OGG TO US!

[Anonymous Coward]

Vorbis at 96kbps is usually somewhere between the quality of a good 112 or 128 cbr mp3, and I and quite a few other are already in the belief, after early testing from 1.0-ish CVS-code, that it is better than wma8 at 64kbps.

ff123 [ff123.net] will be conducting a 64 kbits/s blind listening test [hydrogenaudio.org] where people will send in their results, and that will show how vorbis stacks up against the likes of wma8, mp3pro and quicktime-AAC.

IMO it doesn't really matter if it is better.. if it is at least comparable, than that should be enough for us to make the switch. Because besides being a flexible codec of high quality, it is open source AND completely free of patents (amazing!).. oh yeah, plus it has that really cool bitrate-peeling feature. Anyway, this is one of the few chances we have to get something right in the computer world (for a change!), so let's not blow it! Spread the word and take your hats off for xiph and vorbis!

The waiting is over people, at last we can start ogging for real! ^_^

Re:Serious question: iTunes

[pigpen_]

You can get a beta quicktime component [sf.net] that will allow you to play oggs in iTunes and other quicktime aware apps. The iPod does it's mp3 decoding on hardware and there is not currently a solution for software decoding. I wouldn't expect one any time soon either.

Re:Still no specification

[Skuto]

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
A reference implementation is great and all, but until they get off their arses and release an exact specification of the Ogg format and codec, it's never going to take off.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> >>>

Vorbis 1.0 comes with a full specification.

--
GCP

Re:Question about licensing?

[Ig0r]

Vorbis uses a BSD-style license, so you can do whatever you like with your derivative works.

gcc licensing

[MenTaLguY]

Programs written in GCC have to be published opensource because they use special embedded "assembler" code. Also look out for programs like bison.

There's also the basic C runtime stubs (e.g. crt1.o), though I think that's part of glibc.

However, if you actually bother reading the licenses on the code that gets embedded by bison and gcc, special excemptions are made --

Thus, code compiled with gcc may be distributed under any license you want. Sorry, thanks for playing.

Ogg Vorbis is public domain, BSD, and GPL.

[kjoonlee]

The Ogg Vorbis format itself is public domain.

The reference library is BSD-ish.

The reference tools are GPLed.

Try Speex too

[jmv]

I thought some of you could be interested in my project Speex (http://speex.sourceforge.net), which is like Vorbis but optimized for speech. Bit-rates ranging from 8 kbps to 32 kbps for good quality speech...

Blame can lie in any of 4 places

[yerricde]

I find that when I "rip" music from CDs into OOG Vorbis Format that it has poor playback quality (very crackly).

Does the same thing happen when you rip from CD into .wav without encoding to .ogg or .mp3? What happens when you look at the .wav in a spectrogram?

If you hear crackling from the .wav, and you can see it on a spectrogram (it'll look like vertical lines through the whole spectrum), then you're seeing copy protection or some other form of physical CD damage.

If you hear crackling from the wav, but you can't see it on a spectrogram, check your audio drivers.

If you don't hear crackling from the wav, then use the reference encoder and decoder (oggenc and ogg123) to turn .wav into .ogg into .wav. If you get crackling from this, then libvorbis is at fault.

If wav->ogg->wav->player works, but wav->ogg->player doesn't work through the same player, contact the developers of the player.

Re:Lesson Learned...

[boa13]

Lesson to be learned here:
Mirror everything before announcing the release.

Tell that to Michael. The Vorbis team was mirroring everything when he leaked the story. The release has not been announced yet.

Re:Depends if you use GCC to compile it

[Space cowboy]

" Programs written in GCC have to be published opensource because ..."

You don't work for Microsoft do you ?

There are zero, nada, none, zilch, 0 licencing restrictions on code created with gcc. There are specific statements to that effect in the code and licencing. Perhaps you should read them.

Simon

Re:oggenc -1 mode

[RadioheadKid]

Well for music, WMA 64kbs vs. Ogg 64kbs, I definetly believed WMA beat ogg vorbis RC3, but not anymore. Ogg Vorbis 1.0 at 64kbs (quality setting 0) is amazing. Beats WMA hands down. In a some cases Ogg Vorbis 64kbs beats the poorer MP3 encoders at 128kbs.

Re:Yay!

[13Echo]

Moog is Bob Moog's last name. Maybe you don't know who he is, or how it is even pronounced. Regardless, I'll fill you in on something. He was the pioneer of the synthesizer.

Transcoding == Bad

[xercist]

Ok, since I see this asked 5x a day on #vorbis, I'm going to tell everyone now.

If you have an mp3 collection, and want to use ogg instead, please do not convert the mp3s to oggs. It's like faxing a document, then re-faxing the fax. It just gets all unreadable. The result is that people will hear the ogg file and think "Oh my god this sucks! Ogg really blows! I'm not using this format!".

If you have the original CD, rip it and encode. If you don't, keep the mp3s.

-q Quality:Bitrate graphs

[xercist]

I've spent time generating graphs of vorbis 1.0 encoder's output bitrate vs the -q (quality) setting input. They're very cool looking. enjoy.

http://www.lammah.com/~xercist/vorbis/bitrate-grap h/1.0/ [lammah.com]

BTW: OpenOffice 1.01 is out Re:The march of OSS

[randomErr]

FYI: OpenOffice 1.01 [slashdot.org] is out now.

The sites are back

[boa13]

Look especially at http://www.vorbis.com/faq.psp [vorbis.com], http://www.vorbis.com/download.psp [vorbis.com] and http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/ [xiph.org]!

Re:Hopefully, R3mix.net will pick this up

[Skuto]

>I'd love for r3mix.net (or a similar site) to
>analyze the OGG format so I can be ensured that at
>x bitrate, it is the same as CD-quality. I
>currently rip mp3s at 256k, using options that
>r3mix.net recommends, and I must say I've been very
>happy. However, now that ogg is out, I will switch
>all future rips to that format.

Most of the analysis on r3mix.net is way outdated, and most people involved with LAME left it after it turned out the author wasn't intrested in maximal quality, but just to promote 'his' preset. Most codec developers hang out on hydrogenaudio.org nowadays.

Ogg Vorbis has by default highly tuned VBR modes, which get to r3mix quality at about -q4 to -q5, so there is little need for 'special' presets.

--
GCP

Re:Hopefully, R3mix.net will pick this up

[Hitokage_Nishino]

Vorbis bitrate is a secondary function of something called a Quality number(or -q value). What that does is determine exactly how strongly vorbis's VBR model compresses the audio. How high or low the bitrate actually is depends on how much is needed for a certain song at a certain Quality.

I'm not quite sure as to how effective the 1.0 Quality scale is, but in RC3 many felt that 5-6 was about CD transparent. Personally, I prefered 4.99 because it was as close to 5 as you can get without activating lossless stereo coupling(5 or above)... which gives a nice bitrate spike. This behavior has probably changed, so again... I'm not quite sure.

Give it a few test runs for yourself and see what you prefer.

MD5 Sums

[boa13]

Here are the md5sums of the files I downloaded from a mirror [wiles.org]. * indicates md5sums that have been confirmed by insiders at Xiph.Org.

b1422a6ff7f58131921b9f2fabe2295c libao-0.8.3.tar.gz *
7d4fbdc48b443109618e9739648302bd libao-0.8.3.zip *
6e840822cf8d6a680917383444afe361 libogg-1.0-1.i386.rpm
c0f08ce15f1b0fe44539facc8dd0108a libogg-1.0-1.src.rpm
382a7089f42e6f82e7d658c1cb8ee236 libogg-1.0.tar.gz *
b0cb84b5f03321eb0fbe2c07350205e9 libogg-1.0.zip *
f5f8e08a0afbc3e0196955c4aa73b78a libogg-devel-1.0-1.i386.rpm
c461acec225454aeca034eeca7ecf62e libvorbis-1.0-1.i386.rpm
daec58d8a9d550889391f3f971c9840b libvorbis-1.0-1.src.rpm
d1ad94fe8e240269c790e18992171e53 libvorbis-1.0.tar.gz *
d300b3e50b97a4f4c14ceab8124db539 libvorbis-1.0.zip *
941621aee4865417f4c34b571b74f04a libvorbis-devel-1.0-1.i386.rpm
08090c4f17f531fc9b815b09d9d53a50 oggdropXPd.zip
5e81e5bff436dbe122531db0b63a053e oggvorbis-macosx-libs1.0.tar.gz
7ac318eb6ab3551059fa7232618be2ea oggvorbis-win32sdk-1.0.zip
d956ed3e3af7e0c8623142256f4d331d vorbis-tools-1.0-win32.zip
c0a9fee54835e9c5b32d1f42c02964c9 vorbis-tools-1.0.tar.gz *
e745ccaf378aeb6d057327b391803150 vorbis-tools-1.0.zip *
4ed76d186209fe2eafa5e77854e5d6d8 vorbis-x86linux-libs-1.0.tar.gz

Re:(don't flame me) Why?

[FooBarWidget]

There are several reasons why Ogg Vorbis is cool.

- Quality & File Size
Ogg Vorbis files sound better than MP3s at the same bitrate.
Or, if you don't care about quality, think it as this: Ogg Vorbis with the same quality as MP3s are smaller. Which means that Ogg Vorbis can save you a lot of space.
You can probably squeeze your 15 GB music collection down to 10 or 8 GB, while preserving the same quality.

One thing you must NOT do is convert MP3s to Ogg Vorbis! Both MP3 and Vorbis are lossy audio codecs, which means that the codec throws away information in order to make a file smaller. MP3 throws away information, Vorbis throws away other information, and throws it away differently. The end result is a file that sounds worse than the original MP3.
What you should do instead is rip the CD directly to Vorbis. CD -> Vorbis = good; CD -> MP3 -> Vorbis = bad.
Think CD->MP3->Vorbis as sending a fax, then fax the fax. You lose quality.

Other reasons:

- The file format is more flexible. Ogg Vorbis can be easily streamed. Perfect for Internet radios. Vorbis has a flexible tag system; in MP3s, all you can speficy is the name, year, type of music, and some other comments. Vorbis however supports freefield tags. You can add *any* information you want, and it can be as big as you want.

- It's open source (BSD-style license), which means that you can do anything you want with it (including using it in your commercial programs).

- It's not patented. No need to pay $$$ to patent holders.

Re:Serious question: iTunes

[evangellydonut]

Can you point me to the technical papers that states iPod uses a hardware mp3 decoder? To my understanding, Apple states that the iPod can handle multiple audio formats with a simple firmware upgrades, which suggests to me that it uses software for mp3 and other forms of decoding. (When building my MP3 player for an EE class project, one of the TAs did a CPU cycle count and found that MP3 decoding can be done on an 9Mhz 80188 chip, along with a basic UI.)

Re:The march of OSS

[GeckoX]

Moz unuseable with DHTML?
Um, stick to the standards dumbass, not the IE standards and you'd be just fine.

Um, untested...You don't consider 3 YEARS of open public testing and bug tracking to be testing?

I know you're just flaming, but you're also a fuckwit.

Re:Transcoding == Bad

[jmv]

If you have the original CD, rip it and encode. If you don't, keep the mp3s.

I'd like to add something to that, AFAIK the patents on MP3 only apply to the encoder so if you already have the MP3 file, there's no problem for decoding.

Re:Hopefully, R3mix.net will pick this up

[DarkVein]

I've been using -q5.5 since RC2. This gives you CD quality, and an average bitrate of ~176kbps. I've got some Sennheisser HD580s, and I have yet to make an ogg at this quality that I can distinguish from the actual wav. I have found -q5.5 to be a worthy replacement for LAME VBR and CBR ~256kbps with optimal settings.

Is it still 256k? Is it 192k? Do you tell the VBR to go between 192 and 320? I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of ogg (yet), but I will convert as soon as I find some (or do some) good analysis between OGG and CD audio.

Bitrate is a measure of how uncompressed the audio is. You use higher bitrates in MP3 to mask shoddy compression and anomolies. Ogg Vorbis is able to represent the same audio sample more accurately with less information, yeilding a lower bitrate. With oggenc, you use a higher quality setting to pack more descriptive information about the sample, which produces a higher bitrate. Vorbis is also natively VBR. Using fixed bitrates can yeild lower quality vorbis samples. For this reason, the bitrate description is often useless except as a comparsion of bandwidth consumption.

Re:Serious question: iTunes

[Anonymous Coward]

This would involve codnig an integer decoder for vorbis

The Vorbis guys already have a fixed point implementation [linuxandmain.com]. They are licensing it (but not giving it away for free) in an effort to generate some money for the Ogg project. This fixed point version is ideal for portable players, and although it has license fees, it is most likely cheaper than the fees Fraunhofer charges for an MP3 decoder license. Also, Vorbis doesn't come with the same patent strings attached as MP3, as far as I know.

-Neo

webcasters won't use it until icecast works

[Jamie Zawinski]

There is currently no way for one Icecast [icecast.org] daemon to serve both MP3 and Vorbis streams. You have to run two versions of the server, on two different ports. Aside from being inconvenient to administer, this also means you can't do total-bandwidth-usage new-connnection throttling: you have to assign half of your bandwidth to one server, and half to the other, instead of letting the usage determine it.

I'd like to start streaming Vorbis at DNA Lounge [dnalounge.com], but I won't do it if it has to be a "flag day" where I tell the users "today you have to stop using MP3 and start using Vorbis." The only way I (and, I suspect, just about everyone else) will start streaming Vorbis is if it is convenient to give people a choice of whether to listen to MP3 or Vorbis versions of the stream. As you can see on our audio page [dnalounge.com], we stream in many different bitrates, by having the "master" stream be downcoded into various lower resolution streams. Until I can do exactly that with Vorbis, there's no way I'll use it.

The way to encourage adoption of Vorbis is to make it be an option without shutting out existing MP3 users. As the number of Vorbis users grows, you can then think about phasing out support for MP3. But a flag day will never happen unless they give us a convenient upgrade path.

The new version of Icecast has been an even bigger vaporware disappointment than Vorbis has been (weren't the both targetted for release by the end of 2000?)

(Not to mention that the current releases of Icecast still have completely broken metadata streaming, and are (again) incompatible with Shoutcast's directory services.)

We used both MP3Enc and LAME

[xiphmont]

We *are* comparing against LAME.

The first sample on the demo page is encoded using MP3Enc, because that demo is actually drawn from a larger test being done by an independent party. It also shows Ogg competing against a commercial encoder.

All other MP3 samples on the demo page (the 'Heavy Hitters' section) were encoded using LAME. If you check the auxiliary data in the samples you'll see that.

I'll go mark the samples as such to avoid furhter confusion.

Monty
xiph.org

Re:Speed!

[xiphmont]

Oh... um... yeah, we forgot to mention that in the press release. About 50-60% faster when using -q. We're aiming for greater than a full factor of two over rc3 by next release.

Monty
xiph.org