Programmers Will Debut Free MP3 Alternative 197
An Anonymous Coward writes: "According to an article on CNET.com, a group of programmers at iCast have created a free alternative to MP3, named Vorbis. According to the article, they're planning on showing a beta of Vorbis "at next week's MP3.com summit in San Diego," that it will be released without IP restrictions, and that it will provide equal or better quality than MP3. Gotta love free software!"
Re:But can it get a foothold? (Score:1)
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) -GAIM: MicroBerto
The skinny yo. (Score:5)
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/ 04/11/118219.shtml
Since then I have taken the time to actually check it out; compile the winamp plug-in, compile the encoder, browse through the mailing list archives
First off the code strikes me as very clean and well written, It looks like the guy knows what he's doing. Second he sounds like he knows what he's doing, he talks to people about the idiosyncrasies of audio compression, DSP etc... so I defiantly give the author props.
As for "how good is it". Well the skinny is that it's a little bigger then mp3, and a little lower quality, also encoding a 5 minute song a PII 500 took around 1/2 an hour. However REMEMBER IT'S 1.0. windows 1.0, Gnome 1.0, all sucked. This doesn't suck. And it's not even 1.0.
The author expects the low bitrate compression to surpass mp3, it's just a matter of time to get things finished.
Right now it looks like 90% of all the min-projects are done, they just finalized the bit stream format, xmms/winamp plugs only miss streaming support. And the command line project is nearing completion. Next I'm sure they will attempt to optimize it, and tweak the audio quality.
Somewhere in the mailing list I noticed the author was talking about how he kept the specifics of the quantization process open. Meaning it could be changed very easily, which in turn means that the compression could be very precisely tuned, that should be much more useful then simply picking bitrate/hz/stereo.
OggVorbis has the smell and feel of a next generation audio codec, It's open source, free and not owned by patents. I can't wait..
-Jon
Re:"CD" quality? Not. (Score:1)
Sheesh, I don't get why so many people whine and complain about bitrates and CD quality and digital sound and all sorts of mumbo jumbo when, in general, musically, these people lack the ear for it to make a difference!
Think about it - the large majority of MP3s traded are either a) popular crap (and in my opinion, no matter how many bits you got going Backstreet Boys is going to suck), or b) weird old stuff (which is probably stolen from tape, record, or TV as it is, making the quality kind of doubtable).
Personally, I listen to jazz/swing, classical, and other weird stuff. But, with the occasional exception of napster, you don't find those MP3s on the net. Search for Benny Goodman and you'll be more likely to find Britney Spears. It's pretty bad. So, given the music (if it can be called that) being traded, and the people trading it, I think that relative quality of a couple of this and that isn't important at all.
That being said, this new format does look pretty cool. But people have to stop being so anal retentive about little numbers and bitrates when they aren't even going to be able to tell the difference themselves....
(Disclaimer - I'm not trying to say people are stupid. A lot of them are, but not everybody. I'm not insulting the average /.er - I'm insulting the average pimple-faced, lazy AOL user who uses the letter 'z' more then the letter 'e'. And they think they're cool because they spout technical jargon about bitrates and stuff when they're trading 'N sync or some other new crap and they don't know a frickin thing about music, them or the groups they listen to. On that note, I've been thinking of writing a computer program that pumps out "Boy band" music. It's actually really simple - pick an easy key (concert B flat anyone?), set it in with a I-IV-V chord progression, make it be a set baseline, a drummer that just subdivides and OCCASIONALLY throw in some 2 against 3, then make up a boring and repetitive melody that fits to the chords, then swap the melody between whiny crappy guitars and vocalists. As for the lyrics, just take all the current boy group songs, stick em together and put it through Bable [ufl.edu]. The trickiest part would be getting the lyrics and the melody to match, syllable and pronunciation wise. But all in all, not that hard - and the fact that a computer program COULD be written to pump out the crap that's making millions in todays society is what proves to me that it really isn't music. So anyway, if you ARE a fan of Backstreet boys or something, I hope I've thoroughly offended you. Read whatever I happen to post next, I'm sure we'll be good friends :).
Re:Slashdot is repeating itself (Score:1)
Look at the editor's post there, tough guy. This story pointed out that the software was going to be officially demoed at the MP3.com summit, whatever that is. This is important, because they're basically voluntarily bringing themselves to public attention whereas before they were quietly working in the background to reveal something worthwhile in the near future. Troll elsewhere.
The Tori Test (Score:1)
I dunno, I'm not the biggest audiophile in the world, but I can tell the difference with MP3. The "pure" notes sound less pure and some noises such as certain electric guitar chords get distorted.
In cases like this where someone says "oh, you can't even hear any difference," I like to bring up the Tori Test. Put on a really good pair of headphones. Play a Tori Amos song. Almost any will do. Now rip that and encode it in MP3 in the highest bitrate and frequency possible and play it back. The notes she sings are so pure that MP3 mangles them badly and the result is not pleasureable to listen to.
And I think I'd have to agree with you on the Backend Friends bit. The only artists I listen to anymore are Tori, Weird Al, and Underworld. Quite a variety of genres there but I own every CD of them that I can get my hands on. I wouldn't have found Underworld if it weren't for MP3, so that THAT RIAA!
I know what extension they should use (Score:1)
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
Re:Linux crash? Nope .. [OT] (Score:1)
Re:Algorithm != Implementation (Score:1)
No. algorhythm maybe.
Re:Filesize is King (Score:2)
click here [cs.sfu.ca]
I didn't see any attributions so I'm not sure where the concepts originated from.
Re:File extension (Score:3)
Actually, if you look at the Xiphophorus names and logos [xiph.org] page, you'll see that they explicitly state:
"Ogg" actually comes from Netrek [utah.edu]. I think that's pretty cool, since I used to play Netrek. They've actually got a couple of things with "Ogg" in the name. There's Ogg Vorbis, and Ogg Squish. I think they should make something called "Ogg Base". (okay, lame Netrek joke)
Incidently, that page also has an explanation of their logo [xiph.org]. That's Thor apparently, not Jesus or a picture of RMS from back when he was Mr. Universe...
All well and good, but.... (Score:2)
Not to put too fine a point on it, but lately I've been thinking that it's preferable to renounce one's claims to intellectual property altogether. The restrictions in the GPL and LGPL do not seem to advance the use of free software, they simply thwart commercial use of it. But commercial use is part of freedom, too.
Of course, this won't gain true acceptance until.. (Score:1)
Re:Doomed... (Score:1)
>the vqf thing or whatever. Heck, I can't even remember the names of
>the other formats, that is how dominant the MP3 format has become.
>This new format will just be another Beta vs. VHS thing, I'm sure of
>it.
>The only thing that will blow the MP3 away is something which has
>vastly better compression and comparable sound quality. Anything else
>is doomed to obsolesence.
I take it you weren't around for the ARC vs PKZIP wars eh? Here's a clue. The ARC/PKZIP war had more to do with the BBS politics of the time than anything else. The pro-ARC crowd basically drove people into the PKZIP camp. The same thing is going to happen with the mp3 format. Count on it.
RMS logo (Score:1)
Monty
Re:Jack the Ogg pimp (Score:1)
I should have read the article
I apologize...
(note: this is the author people, moderate his ass up!!!)
Re:Just some points for comparison (Score:1)
What about hardware players? (Score:1)
That would be my concern... will hardware players (Rio, Nomad, DVD&CD players that read MP3 off of CDR, etc) easily be upgraded to be able to read this?
I'd hate to have to encode my collection twice... to accomodate older hardware players. Or wait until some support this to buy any.
I was just about ready to get an in-dash CD player that reads MP3 off CDR/RW as well as audio CDs. Now what?
----- For the curious, I've seen two players like that. One by Kenwood [crutchfield.com] (expensive), one by Aiwa [crutchfield.com] (a bit better, pricewise).
Re:AGH! (Score:1)
Re:Yes!(Here goes my Karma, again) (Score:1)
Nope. not enough.
Seriously though, If you are going to criticise "sheep" mentality or gripe about how the use of certian buzzwords are used, do it right, don't use a combination of slashdot troll posts and 2600 (no offense you 2600'ers out there ;-} ) propaganda to make yourself sound like a total moron.
Haiku (Score:4)
Poet reduces music
To simple haiku
Re:What is wrong with the Lame MP3 Encoder (Score:3)
Re:The Tori Test (Score:1)
"Take THAT RIAA!"
Re:Lossy compression always equals loss in quality (Score:1)
Offtopic, but at the radio station I used to work at, a computer held all the commercials and announcements for insertion between the piped-in programs from a satellite dish. And if I recall correctly, everything was stored at 24-bit, 96kHz. Uncompressed. I couldn't find any option to change the default, but then they didn't allow me to play with the software because the computer ran the whole studio and if that got fucked up, dead air was broadcast until the engineer could drive 6 hours downstate to fix the problem.
Re:This will fail (Score:1)
Re:The bad thing about this... (Score:2)
I agree; any marketing droid will tell you "Ogg" is a horrible name. Of course, they'd have told you the exact same thing about "Yahoo!"...
Re:You are SO wrong! (Score:1)
File extension (Score:5)
Oh wait, that one's already taken, it means "Virus Building Script".
sorry about the bone headed question but... (Score:1)
Re:What's the point? (Score:1)
No profit is needed and thus even one user is a success.
And even if half the people who now compress their audio in mp3 format start using vorbis, you probably wont know the difference since the most popular mp3players are capable, or soon will be, of playing vorbis files.
Just my 2c.
Doomed... (Score:3)
The only thing that will blow the MP3 away is something which has vastly better compression and comparable sound quality. Anything else is doomed to obsolesence.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
NPS Internet Solutions, LLC
www.npsis.com [npsis.com]
Re:There were those who said this couldn't be done (Score:1)
won't make a dent in current mp3 market (Score:2)
1. Plenty of open source encoders/decoders/rippers
2. No royalties on above mp3 software
3. MP4 is in the works, VQF is already superior to mp3 but I don't see it used anywhere
4. See number 1
5. What difference does that make when EVERY cd made has two channels? Unless you want to rip the audio tracks from DVD's
Re:Still Interesting even if it's not news (Score:4)
In this case, a lot of publishers don't want to pay the Frauenhoffer Institute royalties, and this new format is a way to get out of that. Nor do software developers want to pay license fees.
If we want to push it, the best way is to start writing applications for it, and to start producing audio programs in it ourselves. The Free Software community is an effective engine for driving early acceptance.
Thanks
Bruce
What is the file extension? (Score:1)
Re:The skinny yo. (Score:1)
If computers improve their number crunching a lot faster than the internet grows in bandwidth, then maybe we will see sites where audiophiles can have music compressed for them personally on demand, according to their profile. Otherwise, if internet bandwidth grows a lot, we might start seeing losslessly compressed (e.g. gzip), or totally uncompressed, audio data (e.g. PCM) being sent.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Re:The skinny yo. (Score:1)
I got the impression that you are used to setting the controls a certain way, and leaving them for the whole track. With computers, it should be fairly easy to have an eq profile for a song, so the settings could change whenever you want. It could all be set, similar to a midi sequencer I think, so you wouldn't need to manually move sliders while encoding or any monkey business like that.
All this could make things very interesting: people who rip CDs would produce crap compared to official mastered compressed music distributed with a groups permission... This is good.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Re:My issue: Rio (Score:1)
Re:the trouble with png (Score:1)
Beta Test (Score:1)
Sorensen+QT (Score:2)
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It's already done, sort of (Score:1)
Re:"CD" quality? Not. (Score:1)
Doesn't have to be compressed real-time. Copy a tiny snippet of uncompressed PCM repeatedly.
Relevance of sound compression as bandwidth grows (Score:1)
In three to five years, that sort of bandwidth should be commonplace, correct?
Re:All well and good, but.... (Score:3)
Our software implementation is LGPL (for the libs) and GPL (for the utils). That's just *our* Ogg software.
Monty
Re:Doomed... (Score:1)
If you have a company, and you are faced with paying some percentage of income (don't know the specifics) or other large amount of money to FHG to use MP3, or use a freely available one that provides similar quality/filesize, saving your company (a made up) $10,000 a year, it's a no brainer. All that needs to happen is for the major media players (Winamp, etc.) to include support. Considering it costs them $0 to add it, that doesn't seem far fetched.
Similarly, what advantage does Network Solutions provide that any of the thousands of competetive registrars? That they own your domain name and can revoke it for any reason? (See here [domainname...sguide.com]). Sure they've got a head start, but that hardly makes them "VHS" to the other registrars' "Beta." Are you telling me that unless I register my domain with NS, it won't work for the majority of users? Not at all. You seem to misunderstand how the name registration system works. It doesn't much matter which one you use, if you pay more for less at Network Solutions, that's your perogative too.
Better luck next time, cheap shooter! I hope I get to compete against you in the marketplace. Pay your money to FHG, I'll use mine for advertising. We'll see who wins. Never forget, a competitive marketplace is brutal, and it is sometimes only thousands of dollars that separate success from ruin...
Hmm... (Score:1)
-Kysh
Re:Yes! (Score:1)
According to the previous slashdot article on this, the size of an ogg is "slightly" larger than an mp3. I would hope this is due to better quality yeilding larger files having to retain more detail.
I have not worked with compression very extensively (in the least hehe) so if, for example, mp3 opened its compression algorithm, how could a programming community such as ours better it? I say mp3 because we are all oh-so-very-familiar with it. This of course can then be applied to the ogg development. I am focussing on things such as better quality, smaller file generation, quicker compression, etc.
Music files are a waste of Internet Bandwidth (Score:1)
For crying out loud, then a company comes along and creates an open source MP3 alternative, crap, this really shows how "on the ball" the open source movement is, considering that the basic algorithims for MP3's where devised in the late 80's, it looks like the open source movement is a mere 11 years behind in technology.
Sheesh, I cannot belive that the computer using community would stoop so low as to follow popular trends in standard non-tech culture.
First people argue about the legality of MP3s
Oh, its big bussiness, who cares?
Try taking a few actual CD's from a music store and see *WHO* cares, (besides the cops that is).
So what if its a big bussiness, it's not the money that is the problem, but rather the morality of theft itself. Theft is theft is theft, and unless you are starving to death, it is wrong, period.)
Then people begin to argue about the evil bands and how they are deserting their listeners.
Hell folks, anybody who listens to the crap that is called modern music (either rock or cRAP, take your pick, both are garbage, and that goes for r&b too) deserves whatever they get. I myself would have them all executed for stupidity.
While this is going on, people are arguing over how they have the "freedom" to bog up university Internet connections with napster downloads.
For crying out loud folks, WHAT IN THE HOLY HELL gives *YOU* the right to interupt some LEGITIMENT students *WORK* so that you can ILLEGALY download some piece of crap song that describes a sinnfull way to get some measure of enjoyment out of your pathetic and worthless life?
Then this company goes ahead and plans to release a opensource MP3 alternative, just so that when the recording industry has a slight chance of getting things under control, all hell can break loose again.
And people wonder why I have lost faith in the human race.
The great thing about this... (Score:1)
mp3tovorbis and VBR ? (Score:1)
Does the converter understand variable-bitrate MP3s?
Come to think of it, is Vorbis itself able to encode in variable bitrate? You do need a rather good psychoacoustic model for this to work, but my current experience with LAME has been superb -- you basically get 200+-kbps quality with half the file size.
see this: (Score:4)
--
Using OV for original music. (Score:1)
It's the right thing to do, I think.
I hope other musicians will do the same.
http://www.fabco5.com [fabco5.com]
Re:Doomed... (Score:1)
But since it isn't clear, I'll make it so. See, I disagree with NatePWII, who I was replying to, about the viability of another audio compression format. And since Nate's sig mentioned domains at $15 a year, I assumed he was one of the OpenSRS registrars. So I decided that the best way to make my point was to parrot his post, replacing the subject at hand (OggVorbis chances of making it against mp3) with the whole domain registration issue. As a matter of fact, I think I do know how the domain registration system works, having registered domains under both NSI and various OpenSRS registrars. In fact, I've followed the whole evolution of alternate registrars and seem to recall serious comments similar to my parody. And look how they have been wrong. As the existence of Nate's business and the reality of $15/year domains shows, significant competition to a monopoly can arise.
Sure, there are technical details to be worked out, just as there were with opening the domain database to multiple registrars. And there is the issue of momentum in the business world. NSI will continue doing business becuase they are perceived as being trusted and because so many domains are already registered there. Mp3 will continue to be a popular format because of the momentum built up of the applications and hardware that support it. But an open, well engineered format like OggVorbis will be successful in its own right.
Oh, and the cheap shot was in taking Nate's words and twisting them around.
Re:"vorbis" (Score:2)
As soon as I heard the delightful name I headed for google, and the only hits I turned up pertained either to the CODEC or to Pratchett. Pratchett also features an Ogg family, though unfortunately no Ogg Vorbis per se.
--
How do we know it is patent-free? (Score:2)
Other than that, it looks great.
Re:sorry about the bone headed question but... (Score:2)
Just download this file [xiph.org] and compare the same file encoded with Vorbis to an MP3 and find out for yourself if you want numbers. Remember to test with a varity of files; every codec has strengths and weaknesses, though these should be basically similar.
See for yourself (Score:3)
There's also a page [xiph.org] here about Vorbis and one about Ogg [xiph.org] in general.
Re:won't make a dent in current mp3 market (Score:2)
Ahem. While software houses and the like may love the royalty-free open standards, because it's basically a free thing to add to their product, the rest of the people who hate MP3 will hate Ogg Vorbis just as much.
Fraunhoffer will hate the format because it competes with their MP3 stuff. The RIAA will hate it for the same reasons they hate MP3. (Do realize that with the RIAA comes all the major music houses, Sony, BMG, etc.) If it's better sound quality, maybe they'll even hate it more. Hey, if they go on from audio to video, the MPAA will hate them, too! We won't see even a vauge glimmer of support from these guys for a format that doesn't include psychotically draconian measures for copy protection. Of course, even Joe Q. Random is annoyed by stuff like that, so it'll probably take several years before they can find something they can accept and everyone else can accept. (Think they can push something like that through? Look at the late and decidedly unlamented DIVX... That's the kind of scheme they all really want..)
The upside is that even if all these big money people despise the format, they really can't do anything about it (as far as the format itself goes), since it's not encumbered by patent or reverse engineering issues.
Link to the logo explanation: (Score:2)
Filesize is King (Score:2)
"Didn't you cover this in last month's lecture, sir?"
Slashdot has covered Ogg Vorbis before. Informed posters commented that .OGG files consume approximately 20% more space than equal quality .MP3 files.
I'm sorry, but that's not going to cut it. Some streaming MP3 channels don't broadcast any slower than 56K bps (and 40K bps is about the lowest bit rate I'm willing to tolerate (go DJ Lithium! [djlithium.com])). If Ogg requires 20% more data to sound the same, that means a 56K channel has to either sound worse, or go to 67K, which puts them beyond modem users.
I don't have the background to know if the 20% premium is fundamental to the algorithm, or an artifact of it being the first generation of the compressor (i.e. refinements are possible). But I don't think it's going to win many converts until they can sound as good and be within 5% of MP3's data size.
They have a long row to hoe. I wish them all the best.
Schwab
Oh, you need to read the hidden seekrit FAQ! ;-) (Score:5)
People keep asking, so I'll just post it. From the name page [xiph.org]:
MontyDoomed, just like Linux ;-) (Score:2)
But anyway, I've been doomed for about six years now. Check back again in a year to see if I'm still doomed
Monty
What about vqf? (Score:2)
Re:Filesize is King (Score:4)
Second, and this is why you should be damn impressed, one man created this entire algorithm himself. That, my friends, is a really, really hard thing to do. Fraunhoffer had a think-tank stocked with well trained engineers for them to come out with MP3 the algorithm, to say nothing of making the crucial leap that a lot of sound sort of "cancels out" in our head and may therefore be ommitted - that doesn't even strike me as in the same field as computer science. For this guy to even come close to rivalling those achievements, alone... well, ever hear of the Small Pond syndrome? It just reminds you that there are people out there that are a lot, lot smarter than you
I have a feeling this algorithm will get better, but a 20% premium is still a small price to pay for insurance that some lawyer won't come knocking on your door, ever, demanding royalties.
--
keep'n up with the skinny, yo. (Score:3)
Moffitt, who is overseeing the project, is himself the creator of the open-source Icecast, a streaming MP3 technology similar to Nullsoft's Shoutcast, now owned by America Online. He came to iCast last year when the company acquired Net radio firm Green Witch.
Icecast [icecast.org] mixed with a nice audio format, nearly built in, will make for outstanding internet "radio" stations. This is mostly how I listen to MP3. Streaming. There are thousands of stations. All sorts of genres. 24/7/365 No commercials. It's awesome. With this, it will be possible to set up a truly free radio network. When wireless IP becomes common, the real radio better watch out.
And as a quick aside (I deal with radio stations and their web efforts on a daily basis) the radio industry is clueless about what is right around the corner. They are coming around, but now corporate inertia has brought them to a near complete stop. Case in point...This is the webside for AMFMi, the internet arm of AMFM [amfmi.com] (Yes, I'm serious, they just recently did a "reorg"), the largest radio holding company in the nation. Here is a quick rundown on their "terrestrial" efforts. [amfm.com]
Lots of what they call "market potential" around this area, no?
--
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
http://www.xiph.org/about.html [xiph.org]
Good troll attempt, though.
Insightful?
Re:The skinny yo. (Score:3)
The problem is that objective evidence is going to be hard to come by. Already we see a lot of people posting here on Slashdot saying "Hey! The quality sounds fine to me!" when subjective statements like this are just absurd. Unless you are doing blind A/B listening tests with decent equipment across a wide variety of music (Classical, Rock, Jazz, Electronic, Opera, etc), along with electronic measurement tests, you simply won't be able to tell which is better (unless one is just far inferior to the other).
That is only true to a degree. MP3 routinely fails blind A/B listening tests vs. CDaudio, and yet it's everywhere.
Mostly, audio compression is being used in the context of simple listening for enjoyment by non-audiophiles. In that context, 'sounds fine to me!' is all that's required.
Audiophiles will never find any sort of lossy compression acceptable anyway unless it is tuned exactly to what THEY PERSONALLY don't hear anyway. Such a 'compression profile' would not be likely to transfer well from one audiophile to another unless it lost very little (and compressed very little).
you've had weird experiences (Score:2)
I don't know why you are having the experiences that you are, but you paint the ogg vorbis format a lot darker than I've found it to be.
Re:Still Interesting even if it's not news (Score:2)
Thanks
Bruce
Re:"CD" quality? Not. (Score:2)
My question is, will VBRE be part of the official specification? And next, will someone make an inexpensive hardware device that plays both this new format, and MP3? The lp3 from lp3music [lp3music.com] is a parallel port device that plays mp3s in hardware; You can use it as easily on an 8088 as on a Pentium Pro. I've been planning to make an inexpensive and SMALL car player based on the lp3, but now am I going to have to worry about supporting this format, too?
Re:the trouble with png (Score:2)
You have to give it a little time, though. PNG is most definitely not declining in popularity. It's a little slow, but it seems to be gaining in popularity at a steady rate, which is very important.
Incorrect. Max bitrate is not limited (Score:2)
Not only does it say "128kbps per channel" (which is 256kbps stereo), that's just the intended usage range. Many of the developers who have been with us more than a few months remember Vorbis' original encoding mode of roughly 500kbps :-)
Monty
Alot's happened since then (Score:5)
The Slashdot posting in April was prealpha code. Substantial development and tuning has happened since then; not only is average Ogg filesize now *smaller* than mp3, the audio quality is much improved. We're now four days from 1.0 beta. Go get it and see for yourself if you don't believe me.
Monty
Re:"CD" quality? Not. (Score:2)
Monty's a sharp guy. (Score:2)
---
Why I should use Vorbis! (Score:5)
2. No royalties ever owed to jerks
3. Already comparable to mp3 and once finalized will be better quality and compression
4. LGPL
5. It will support more than 2 channels (if it doesn't yet)
6. Already have audio player plugins for it, they're getting better.
7. With a name like Ogg Vorbis, its GOT to be good!
8. Their logo [xiph.org] is awesome9. The extention is going to be
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) -GAIM: MicroBerto
The sweet bliss of new standards... (Score:5)
My first thought, of course, was that no new standard could compete with mp3. Then I realized it wouldn't really have to. Let's look at gif vs png, for example. Average Joe User coasts through webpages, never ever knowing if the pretty images he sees are gifs or pngs. He doesn't need to; all he cares about is that the pictures are there. Netscape and IE are the ones that had to do the work of getting png support for their browsers else worry about being slammed as "incomplete". The same will happen with any new open standard, I think.
Winamp, for instance, isn't going to stop playing mp3's. But I bet a future version of winamp will support the new format as well. This is the power of open standards.
Format types are a pain in the ass when they are closed. No company wants to buy liscencing rights to add support for a format, and will only do so if the format is so huge that their product won't sell without it. This stalls development of free software (if you're not going to be paid for it in the end IMHO the less likely you are to shell out thousands of bucks for a liscence) as well as a stagnation in standards. If all standards were proprietary, creating a new one would be hard to get out since companies would rather only impliment those standards that are set in stone. They likely won't purchase a liscence to a new commercial standard before it's been proven, and it won't be proven until it's liscenced. Without open standards stagnation would prevail.
For one last example look at the competition between OpenGL and GLIDE. GLIDE was too proprietory, and after a few years of fame slowly slipped away into the night. The industry is realizing this now, and is embracing open standards.
If only they'd realize the same logic applies to Open Source as well...
DranoK
Having honestly nothing better to do today than read old Slashdot stories
That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons even death may die.
Re:Haiku (Score:2)
check this out... (Score:3)
perhaps...in the next year or so...Vorbis won't get big. I, too, doubt that there's any real serious benefit to using a
However, if/when the RIAA really starts making the $#!+ hit the fan...then we'll see it get used. I think the very thing that major record companies want to see (i.e. everyone stops using mp3's) could come to pass if the conditions are right. which they could be in the next year or three.
The RIAA and whatever that company was who makes the mp3 codecs get together and say "wait a fucking minute...we're not getting paid here" and they pass all kinds of laws against doing it without one of those two organizations getting paid. There are all kinds of loopholes and wierd scenarios that hadn't been planned out by the U.S. Gov...and people go "wait...you mean if i use this vorbis thing i don't have to pay a cent to anyone??? HELL YEAH!!!" While it may be impractical right now...the internet, the RIAA, and anyone else trying to "bogart" the rights of consumers may just make it practical.
note to the RIAA: you want people to quit using thse illicit and illegal mp3's? be careful what you wish for...you just might get it!!!
FluX
After 16 years, MTV has finally completed its deevolution into the shiny things network
That name has to change, though... (Score:2)
em-pee-three. nap-ster. gnu-tella.
The name's the thing.
iCast is helping out on legal (Score:4)
The legal review of Ogg and Vorbis patent status is one of the things iCast is helping with. I don't know how much of the patent review will be on the website at 1.0 beta-time. For the most part, I've been keeping my head technical and not tracking the publicity or legal push going on around me at iCast; I know that the lawyers so far are very comfortable with the patent review, but I don't know what documents they've produced so far to prove we're not just bluffing
Of course, results of the legal review will be public knowledge as soon as it's finished. So far, no surprises (I have more patent summaries in my inbox to review right now...)
Monty
Re:keep'n up with the skinny, yo. (Score:2)
Well from the copyrights at the top of the code I've looked at, a chap by the name of Monty [mailto] has done all the work.
I think Moffit is working on implementing OggVorbis into icecast, but I seriously doubt he's "overseeing the project", as in leading it.
-Jon
Re:"CD" quality? Not. (Score:2)
Mike Roberto (roberto@soul.apk.net [mailto]) -GAIM: MicroBerto
Re:The skinny yo. (Score:5)
Now this is what interests me. Usually when I am participating in discussions on this kind of stuff, it is as a musician, but underlying that is more than ten years of extremely hardcore audio geekness- I would feel pretty confident in saying that w.r.t sound engineering hardware I am as good as Monty is with this compression programming. (I realise that sounds like a big claim- it is. I make no such claim about programming or software :) )
From that viewpoint, I have to say that the idea of being able to 'very precisely tune' the compression is wildly exciting, just wildly exciting. Does everybody fully understand where that leads? It gets away from the computer geek core skills, but you know there are geeks whose core skills it leads _towards_. What you are talking about is effectively a form of MASTERING. Let me take a minute and give a little background on what this could be like...
First, mastering. Once music gets mixed down to a final two tracks (or more, if you're doing funky surround stuff, but mostly it's two tracks), what you have isn't the final media. You have a 30 ips openreel two-track tape, maybe, or you might have a 48k/20bit digital master if you're smart, or possibly just a 16 bit 44.1K DAT or something if you're not. If you have a CD you've basically done the mastering yourself- and that's not necessarily good, because you might suck at it and the idea is to do it really really well, possibly at huge expense and possibly not.
Mastering engineers always desperately want some form of much-higher-quality media to work from- if you are making a CD they would prefer 20 or 24 bit output. If you're making a record, you could use that or the traditional two-track open reel tape which generally exceeds vinyl playback quality levels by a wide margin. In some cases a mastering engineer making a CD might want analog open-reel tape instead of _any_ form of digital: the idea is that he knows waaaay better than most musicians how to do the transfer, and may have lots of sophisticated equipment to extract every bit of detail and color off that tape and make it jump out of the CD sounding totally lifelike. Mastering engineers are the ones who will get mad at you if you go around normalising all the levels on your digital master for 'em- the mastering engineer tears his hair in angst at such a situation because he or she knows exactly what damage the algorithm is doing to the sound, and that it can't be undone once done. In analog the mastering engineer handled compressing the sound and imperceptibly summing the bass frequencies of each channel to utilize all of the LP's ability to put across music. In all-digital, for instance the example of mastering a 48K 24 bit mix to CD, the mastering engineer will be keeping untouched versions of the files and experimenting with various EQ algorithms, different multiband compressions, all to try to FORCE the resulting lower quality version to sound BETTER than the supplied master tape. That's really the name of the game- making it sound as good as, isn't enough. And that's where you get into really expensive equipment and total voodoo engineering and guys paid on the scale of computer professionals whose names are recognized by lots of studio engineers and almost nowhere else. Ever heard of Bob Ludwig, Wilma Cozart, Bob Clearmountain?
Now. To bring this neatly into context with Ogg Vorbis, imagine getting access to a Vorbis 'compression settings box' that took up the whole screen crammed with little settings and adjustments. Stuff like 'masking threshold curve for left channel's frequency', or whatever goodies are there- the stuff that apparently none of the MP3 encoder writers think is the user's business. Almost everyone in the world would take a look at that and run screaming. Almost all computer geeks would look really confused and wonder, what is the point, isn't there just one right setting? Almost all serious mastering engineers would take one look and cry YEAAAAHHHH GIMME MORE O' THAAAAT! ...and they'd be off and running, and you wouldn't believe what they'd be capable of. _Every_ _single_ _song_ would be tailored to the optimum compression details for THAT SONG, not some mythical standard...
From what I've seen, encoder programmers seem to think the idea is to match test tones as accurately as possible- and that is not going to be good enough, going into the future with digital compressed media. It took reading that comment about 'very precisely tuned' to realize just what's happening with all this. Look, if you told a big recording studio or an 'audiophile' act like Pink Floyd that they had to have their music mastered in just one particular way, but that's OK it's 'optimal', they would KILL AND EAT you *g* the fact is, recording projects vary so widely in both recording quality and SOUND that it's totally, totally impossible to 'master' to mp3 or anything else using a preset algorithm no matter how clever. Compare the sound of Rush (heavy on pushing the edges of the frequency range, dynamic, over-clear) with the sound of Tangerine Dream (really deep ambiences, liquid sound _necessary) with the sound of AC/DC (punchy as hell but it's gotta hit you in the stomach, no shrieky grating edges allowed and no show-offy super low bass) and you can see the problem. All compression must trade off _some_ qualities. But how can one arrangement cover all those bases? That's like mastering all their tapes through the same EQ and compression settings- disastrous.
I always think of a particular guitar note when I think of mastering- it's on Alanis Morrisette's "Jagged Little Pill" CD, I think on the song 'You Learn'. There's a brief instantaneous moment where an acoustic-sounding guitar, quite in the background, 'snaps' a tiny highpitched note on the high E and instantly mutes it again. Sounds like a set of light electric strings on an acoustic. This one short note cuts through the whole mix with stunning airiness, like a tiny instantaneous holograph of the note popping out. It's magical, impossibly delicate and clean- and that's what mastering can do for a song. That Alanis album is brilliantly mastered by Chris Bellman at Grundman Mastering- without him, that moment would NOT BE there. It might not have even felt that way on the original tape! The guy reached out and found the essence of the sound and caused the CD to cast exactly the right sonic spell to reveal it.
MP3ing that track almost certainly obliterates that moment and makes the little 'plink!' into a tinny clonk, ruining it. But if it was possible for the mastering engineer to also master the MP3- I guarantee that things would be very different. If I was doing it I would key off that sound and weight the 'masking' or whatever so that you had the deep pulse and a big emphasis on the airiness- the highs would be stealing lots of data for themselves. The thing is, simply going 'Oh OK' and coding in a radio button for 'more air' is unacceptable- if I had to master that track to MP3, I'd need to keep going back and adjusting the curves of the masking and all that until that instant and other important moments jumped out of the resulting mp3 JUST EXACTLY like it did on the original recording- or *gasp* BETTER! It's not at all a question of finding 'the masking thresholds of the human ear' and coding in those. Mastering engineers need total control over all those details at an amazingly low level, even though they are NOT programmers and wouldn't know memory management or b-trees if one bit them on the ass. Mastering engineers know better than the programmers how to set the 'equaliser dials' for the compression- because that is their JOB, to know that.
So _on_ behalf of all the other mastering engineers who don't read slashdot and aren't rubbing elbows with programmers as great and brilliant as Monty, let me just say- "Give us the controls!" We can't do your job, don't try to do ours! Every project has vastly different needs, and sometimes the needs are quite unusual! I could easily see, for instance, a song in which you masked 3-5K (normally the presence area!) very heavily and threw lots of data at the extreme highs which might normally be masked! I can even name a song that calls for that off the top of my head- "Hot Sun", from Adrian Belew's album "The Lone Rhino". Lots of Bowie's "Low" album would demand a _very_ different compression than most material because it is meant to sound claustrophobic, sometimes quite artificial and grating, and sometimes totally Enoed out lack of highs. I could keep on giving examples for ages- the point is, pleeeeease give us arbitrary control over these things and stop trying to perfect them for consumers all the time. There needs to be a way for mastering engineers to practice their craft on compressed media. If you make that possible, then we will start getting music from talented mastering engineers that really pushes the technology to the limit- and the difference will not be subtle, it will be a massive blast of very individualised sounds, letting different bands _really_ get their own distinct sound, and everybody will be able to appreciate that while still being able to use the 'consumer' version of the encoder (with all the scary parameters covered up and set to nice 'optimal' values) to rip metallica CDs *g*
If you can't force Ogg Vorbis to be the mainstream format with the help of mastering engineers, maybe could you make an MP3 encoder with a similar level of adjustment over its parameters? This needs to happen.
If I understand things correctly, MP3 encoding can be free (or partly?) but it's been hard for the free encoder coders to catch up with the totally patented and proprietary Freihofer stuff. And so you have Xing which gets tinny and artifact-y, and Blade which is said to be dull and lacking in extended highs, and LAME which some people claim is 'perfect' because it comes between the other two in personality.
When will people understand that these are all settings on the EQ dial? Mastering engineers do not need a single black box with the 'ideal' settings locked in painstakingly. Mastering engineers need KNOBS.
Give us KNOBS! :)
Re:Poor Geocities, Tripod, etc... (Score:2)
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
My issue: Rio (Score:2)
Sure, it might be better. There are people who insists Betamax was better, but VHS got control of the market. Well, guys, MP3 has control of the market...
Re:"CD" quality? Not. (Score:4)
Personally, i can't stand the goofballs who post 256 and higher MP3's on USENET. It doesn't significantly change the quality enough to merit the bigger files.
Simply having another music sound encoder that's open source will not solve the higher problem of the massive copyright violations that MP3 brought about.
Having said that, I will say that I do post and download lots of MP3s on a weekly basis, I just don't try to justify it with weak excuses and "reasons." I do it simply because I can. If I didn't have DSL, I wouldn't bother. Hell, I had ADSL for almost a year before I even thought of looking for them on USENET. I mean, isn't that where all the pr0n is?
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
What's the point? (Score:2)
These are some reasons why I feel this mp3 alternative, and any other commercial alternatives are doomed to fail.
Re:But can it get a foothold? (Score:2)
cvs -z9 update -d
cd vorbis-tools # by me
make install
mp3tovorbis [mp3] [Vorbis output file]
Happy? I also wrote vorbize and ogg123. Have fun.
Why the RIAA is *really* afraid of MP3/Vorbis. (Score:2)
The RIAA knows by now that MP3 poses little threat to their bottom line. Despite huge amounts of "pirated" music being distributed across the net, sales have actually increased. The *real* threat is that artists may begin to realize that they don't need the record companies anymore - they can put their music out there on the net and promote it themselves (actually, I bet their fans will do all the work for them if they'll just put it out there!).
One of the arguments that I hear put forth a lot is that the time warners of the music industry provide a "filtering" service - so you don't have to waste your time listening to tons of shitty garage bands to find good music. This is somewhat true, but the big failure of this argument is that they filter the music based on their own priorities, not necessarily the quality of the music. So the music you get to listen to has simply been selected because it is the most profitable of the bunch.
The internet is vicious - even more vicious than all the barking lawyers the RIAA could ever hope to muster. Filing all the lawsuits in the world won't change the fact that the record companies are basically fucked. The artists (their suppliers) hate them. The listeners (their customers) hate them. And the two groups now see a way to work together in a mutually beneficial way. It's time to cut out the middle man.
Re:Filesize is King (Score:2)
--
Ow. It works, but... (Score:2)
Monty
Re:Alot's happened since then (Score:2)
I stand corrected; thank you. That is excellent news.
Schwab
Re:The skinny yo. (Score:3)
As for "how good is it". Well the skinny is that it's a little bigger then mp3, and a little lower quality, also encoding a 5 minute song a PII 500 took around 1/2 an hour. However REMEMBER IT'S 1.0. windows 1.0, Gnome 1.0, all sucked. This doesn't suck. And it's not even 1.0.
I don't think this is comparable to Gnome, etc. When you're doing a UI, it's really a pretty mechanical process. You pretty much know where to go, it's just a matter of spending enough time.
Music compression is different. It's very much more art than science. I recall an article on Slashdot a few weeks ago that described the process the guy who developed MP3 went through to perfect it. There was an enormous amount of tuning and tweaking that went into it before it reached the stage it was at now. It simply is not the case that any 2-bit hacker can whip up an audio compression algorithm given enough time.
Now, it sounds like the people working on this new CODEC may be smart people who know what they're doing. However, it is not a given that this will ever reach the quality of MP3. On the other hand, since it's open source, it may fall into the hands of people who can do something with it, so there is hope.
The problem is that objective evidence is going to be hard to come by. Already we see a lot of people posting here on Slashdot saying "Hey! The quality sounds fine to me!" when subjective statements like this are just absurd. Unless you are doing blind A/B listening tests with decent equipment across a wide variety of music (Classical, Rock, Jazz, Electronic, Opera, etc), along with electronic measurement tests, you simply won't be able to tell which is better (unless one is just far inferior to the other).
I wish them success, but I also think people need to keep in mind the difficulty of the task.
--
Re:Still Interesting even if it's not news (Score:2)
A big thing for me is portable players. I love being able to go on a run, or even mountain biking or skiing with a portable mp3 player. They're really the greatest thing to happen to music, IMHO. I don't like to listen by sitting in a room, but while I'm out doing something else.
So here's my promise: When Vorbis is finalized, I will switch to it in a heartbeat IF there is a portable player to play
Here's hoping one gets made.
--
grappler
Jack the Ogg pimp (Score:4)
Ogg got written because of me... but Ogg is getting the attention it deserves because of Jack.
Monty
Re:But can it get a foothold? (Score:2)
Once people learn that
There were those who said this couldn't be done (Score:2)
So what I'm wondering is... why were they wrong?
Re:mp3tovorbis and VBR ? (Score:2)
AFAIK, Vorbis in its present state is variable bitrate. You may want to ask Monty on the specifics, but from what I have seen, the encoding modes for Vorbis are numbered 0-6, and each has an approximate bitrate, but the bitrate can vary. Is this due to the accuracy of the quantitization? Or is the psychoacoustic model actually dynamic wrt output? Monty?
What I'd really like to see is the ability for the encoder to scan the entire input file (if possible) and tune the encoding tables etc. This could provide for a small file at really good quality without too much extra work.
Kenneth
Cheap Karma (Score:5)
"Here's a link to an interview with the author, with his explanation of why vorbis is better than mp3. http://www.advogato.org/article/56.html
One thing that everyone seems to be missing, is that Vorbis supports bitrates of 16kbps-128kbps per channel! Since it uses better algorithms than MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3), it has the potential to sound much better. It's not done yet, and the development team is still making changes to it that will affect the quality. I'm going to wait and see how it works, but it sounds like it will be excellent when it gets done.
It's terrific to finally see an open, IP-free audio codec with (seemingly) great sound and compression efficiency. One of the things most often complained about at Slashdot is the lack of Quicktime players for Linux, and more specifically, lack of a player capable of playing moviescompressed with Quicktime 4's Sorenson codec. Many sites, especially those of the movie industry, have adopted Sorenson because it has genuine advantages over industry-standard MPEG video: Sorenson produces significantly better video quality at the bitrates preferred on the Internet today. While Sorenson and Microsoft's proprietary offerings are gaining ground, the use of free video standards like MPEG is becoming more and more scarce.
The only feasible way of reversing this trend is to come up with a superior video codec and distribute it freely. Until now, many people have argued that developing a good media codec involves such high-end mathematics that developing one under traditional Open Source development model is not possible. It is high time that someone proved them wrong."
...oh all right then, I'll settle for (score:13, reundant)
- Andy R.