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Handhelds Hardware

Xiph.org Releases Free Fixed-Point Vorbis Decoder 251

Posted by michael from the wave-of-the-future dept.
volsung writes "A lot of us want portable music players with Vorbis support, right? Well, Xiph.org has decided to help speed the process by releasing their integerized Vorbis decoder, named "Tremor," under a BSD-like license. Tremor is a Vorbis decoding library written for CPUs without floating point hardware, like most handheld devices use. It was previously a proprietary library--licensed by theKompany for their Sharp Zaurus player, among others--but now it's available for everyone to use. The release page also gives contact information for many of the popular hardware manufacturers. If you want Vorbis support in your hardware, now is the time to send some emails! (Also, please say thanks to the Xiph.org crew with a donation if you can.)"
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Xiph.org Releases Free Fixed-Point Vorbis Decoder More

Xiph.org Releases Free Fixed-Point Vorbis Decoder

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  • Woohoo, finally some *GOOD* news ... however, I thought most MP3 players used hardware decoders. Will they still benefit from this?
    • Generally, most "hardware" mp3 players are a CPU or DSP running some kind of software to enable them to play MP3s.

    • No. most use fixed point DSPs (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Most use fixed point DSPs which are pretty much general purpose CPUs.. This code is 100% applicable.

    • Re:Yeppee!!! (Score:3, Informative)

      by tomstdenis ( 446163 )
      They're not always entirely hardware. Often a "MP3 chip" is nothing more than a DSP processor with onboard ROM. Its cheaper todo it that way and easier to maintain [fixing bugs means recompile the code not rebuild the device]

      However that being said some MP3 players actually have DSP processors and the codecs in RAM [or flash of some sort]. The RIO-Volt IIRC has that functionality. Which means adding Vorbis support is not entirely out of the question.

      Tom

  • fp (Score:1, Funny)

    by volsung ( 378 )
    f1rst p0st for all my homiez in #vorbis!

    (I always wanted to try and fp my own story.)
  • Now put them down and get writing to the manufacturing companies!

  • No FPU required... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by VValdo ( 10446 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @02:31PM (#4190416)
    This was a big stumbling block in getting RIO & iPod type players to support Ogg.

    Any idea if this means we can look forward to some Ogg lovin' built-in to consumer products? Timetable?

    Thanks Xiph!
    W
    • yeah great how about a lib that is for the ARM arch
      this is how the windows media gets in most players

      then we are talking

      Ipod - ARM7 based (with hardware layer 3 MPEG)
      rio (new) - ARM7 based
      empeg - StrongARM based

      talk to cirrus and do a Lib that is ansi c and can be compiled with SDT 2.X and ADS

      oh yeah and if it was MIPS based we would have no problems but hey here's wishing (-;

      regards

      John '64bit for ieee754' Jones

  • Nice.. (Score:1)

    by simp ( 25997 )
    This is just in time... Are there any flash upgradable MP3 players out that can take advantage of this??
    • Yes... yes there are... and the NEX-II could be the very first player to support Ogg/vorbis with this release if the company making it would get going quickly! (Hell a hack that replaces wma with ogg would be awesome!)

      But the actual first player to use this and give you the first portable ogg player is going to be.... Archos Jukebox 6000, Archos Jukebox Studio and Archos Jukebox Recorder MP3 players.
      and you cant watch it happen right here
      • I'm not sure the proc in the archos can handel decoding of ogg in RT (the decoding af mp3 is done by a closed DSP, not the proc it self)

        I hope it can..

      • No.

        According to some documents I read about the Archos Jukebox devices over the last days, it seems that Ogg playback is impossible on them.

        Why? They contain a CPU to do the graphics and some other stuff and a hard-programmed DSP that is doing MP3->Audio conversion.

        Even if you would be able to use the fixed-point Ogg code, it would have to be re-converted to MP3 or the DSP won't be able to play it. It only plays MP3.

        And have a look at the fixed-point code. It contains lots of tables. This is quite much of RAM requirement.

        • (btw most of the information I gathered was from the Rockbox site &&|| mailing list)

          Another thing: There was an article explaining that even *if* you could make the DSP play "raw" decoded sound, the serial interface between CPU and DSP would just not be fast enough to transfer this amount of data.

  • Ya know, I bet the Kompany is probably pissed....

    • Re:Hrrrrmmm (Score:3, Informative)

      by volsung ( 378 )
      Actually, Emmett says they were cool with it. None of the people who had licensed the code earlier have to pay any money from this point on, so they are pretty happy, actually.

  • 2 Questions (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Buck2 ( 50253 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @02:35PM (#4190447) Homepage
    I was wondering if someone with more relevant knowledge than I might make an estimation about how much more quickly we might expect to see Ogg support now that this has happened. Are embedded chips without FPU really that much more prevalent, or are they just that much cheaper?

    I also wanted to know, on a side note, why the hell portable mp3 players don't come with a damn FM tuner in them. Is it a design/form factor issue? Perceived marketability problem?

    I want to use my mp3/ogg player while at the gym ... listen to Howard Stern and then switch to music when it gets dull/commercials. Is this so complicated?
    • Some portable MP3 players do come with FM tuners. The salient sales factors that led me to get the one I got (a RioVolt SP250) was a) support for CD and MP3/WMA on CD-ROM (and the OS-independence that goes with that), b) FM radio built in, and c) flash-upgradeable firmware (so it could eventually support Ogg Vorbis).

      I've already emailed Sonic Blue customer support about Ogg Vorbis support, so hopefully soon they will listen to us and provide it.

    • Re:2 Questions (Score:5, Informative)

      by AT ( 21754 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @03:37PM (#4190857)
      The Intel StrongARM chip is pretty popular in embedded devices, including the Zaurus, iPod and other PDAs and portable music players. While the chips have an excellent power consumption vs performance and price ratio, it lacks a hardware FPU.

      I'm not sure companies choose the StrongARM because it's cheaper than chips with a FPU. More likely, they choose it because it is supported by GCC, Linux, Windows CE and hundreds of commercial tools. It is low power, widely deployed, and relatively powerful for a low power chip. And having Intel behind it doesn't hurt. In short, it is a very low risk platform with significant advantages and a few minor disadvantages (no FPU).

  • Nice, but I hope they stick around (Score:4, Insightful)

    by IamTheRealMike ( 537420 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @02:35PM (#4190448)
    This is good news, but without a big corp behind it I'm sceptical about whether hardware manufacturers will adopt it. What I'm more worried about now is Xiph themselves though. They've done a great job, and given us this fantastic gift, but now how do they make money? If the library was originally proprietary, then what do they have now?

    • Re:Nice, but I hope they stick around (Score:5, Informative)

      by iabervon ( 1971 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @03:00PM (#4190639) Homepage Journal
      They're contractors. They wrote this on contract for someone, and the contract allowed them to give it away after a while (IIRC). They weren't selling this in the first place. They wrote the floating-point vorbis, and then they were contacted by a company who wanted a fixed-point version and were willing to pay them to write it. Now they're giving away the fixed-point version in addition to the floating-point version, and probably working on other stuff for other people, with a similar deal.

      It's like working for a software company. Once you've written something for them, you give it away (to the company); you continue to make money by getting paid to write more software, not being paid royalties or paid for licenses for the stuff you wrote previously.
      • You're scared Xiph.Org is going somewhere? I can safely assure you we're not. Xiph is still rocking, Vorbis is just the beginning, the Ogg Vorbis Streaming archatecture, Ices/Icecast is on the way, a guy named trelane (well me) has been doing a lot of shellscripting and automated integration work to take a stock *ix box to a streaming multimedia platform with a few keypresses, and next year... ooh baby next year, the beauty of Theora will be released upon the world. That's all the iceburg, save the tip, and the tip is a supersecret (not) project that you're just gonna have to wait to find out about. Worst part of this one is they put me in charge of it... MUAHAHAHAHAHA! GO XIPH AND GET FISHED BABY!
    • Notice that xiph.org is a .org and not .com domain. Then notice that their web page states that they are a non-profit corporation, and that there is a link for donating to them. Re-read the writup in this article and see that it also has a link to their donation page.
    • Well, without this maneuver, they would pretty much be guaranteed to have a lovely music-format design that went nowhere. Now, there is a faint possibility that Ogg will be adopted into various devices.

  • you really gotta love that BSD license (Score:5, Insightful)

    by TechnoVooDooDaddy ( 470187 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @02:36PM (#4190461) Homepage
    I know that everyone is down on the BSD and up on the GPL, but we owe a tremendous amount to the BSD license.. Companys (like microsoft) took up stuff like the TCP/IP stack, BIND, etc..

    and I believe OGG will achieved the same popularity and extension that it's other BSD Licensed bretheren enjoy. It's gotta be the freedom of the BSD license that encourages companys to pick up on this stuff, rather than re-inventing the wheel with yet another standard because they don't like a particular clause or so in the license..

    • Both Licenses are Excellent (Score:5, Informative)

      by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @02:55PM (#4190605)
      I know that everyone is down on the BSD and up on the GPL, but we owe a tremendous amount to the BSD license.. Companys (like microsoft) took up stuff like the TCP/IP stack, BIND, etc..

      The BSD License is an excellent license for some things, just as the GPL is an excellent license for other things.

      OggVorbis is one area where the BSD License makes perfect sense, namely, in an effort to get a published, open format implimented as widely as possible.

      The GPL is an ideal license for persons and companies that wish to make their code available and participate in a public commons, without unconditionally handing their crown jewels over to a competitor. Indeed, there are many commercially written programs whose source code likely wouldn't have been released at all, or would have been released only under really onerous restrictions, such as Microsoft's so-called open license, Sun's community license, or something along those lines.

      Both licenses are excellent. Both philosophies are a positive contribution to the intellectual wealth of humankind, and both have their place. Which one is most applicable to a given set of circumstances depends largely upon those circumstances and the goals in mind.

      In this case, the goal is to spread the use of Ogg Vorbis as far and wide as possible, for which the BSD license is ideal. Indeed, even the FSF, which normally has strong reservations with regard to the BSD license, has endorsed the release of OggVorbis under the BSD license.

      • Re:Both Licenses are Excellent (Score:4, Interesting)

        by John Whitley ( 6067 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @04:20PM (#4191156) Homepage
        Excellent points. In this sense, a BSD-like license seems to be more appropriate than GPL/LGPL where the promotion of an open software-based standard is more important than any single codebase that implements that standard.

        I'm a firmware engineer in this market, and this definitely lowers the barrier to entry for companies who would previously have had to implement a custom Ogg Vorbis codec. Such a project would have been very expensive to undertake, probably prohibitively so. (both in the development cost and in the lead times to a QA'ed and marketable finished product.)
      • I really like the idea of Xiph releasing the fixed point decoder, It has the possibility to revolutionize the portable music market.

        However, I'm worried, still. Since it is under the BSD liscense nobody could see changes to the code that manufactures might make. Shoddy/out of spec, or smaller subsets of the Ogg spec could be marketed this way (since the manufactures won't have to open the code for everyone to see), and dilution of faith in Ogg could result. As I see it, someone (maybe Xiph themselves) should contract with manufactures to ensure that their products are Ogg v1.0 compliant (with a sticker on the box to prove it).

        On the plus side, you get the full implementation of Ogg in your favorite portable. Xiph might also have a nice income making sure products using Ogg are within specification.

        On the negative side, products might be slower to deploy, and cost just a tad more.

        That said, Xiph rocks. Them's some good folk.
    • I know that everyone is down on the BSD and up on the GPL, but we owe a tremendous amount to the BSD license.. Companys (like microsoft) took up stuff like the TCP/IP stack, BIND, etc..

      Companies can do the same with software licensed under the LGPL, except that they can't co-opt it like they can BSD software. Microsoft is in a position to fork TCP any time they want to and keep using the BSD stack. They also aren't obligated to make public their improvements.

      If only various big wigs would just explain the LGPL to governments, etc., all government-funded software would be LGPLed and both individuals and companies could use it for any purpose, but they couldn't 'steal' it from the public.
      • ...they couldn't 'steal' it from the public.


        Please explain how you can 'steal' code from the public if they still have a copy of it. (I assume that it's the same way that you can 'steal' a song from a musician by illegally copying it. Is that right?)


        In my opinion, all government-funded software should be put in the public domain. The people's taxes paid for it; they should be able to do whatever they want with it. Including modifying it and selling it to someone else.

        • Actually, you might be surprised just how much government code makes it out to the world. In general the source that doesn't make it out is the stuff that is either classified (which wouldn't be useful to most open source programmers anyway, since they don't need better missile guidance), or incorperates other copywritten code. For instance, my company often uses the Open Channel Foundation [openchanne...dation.org] to publish code. Most of the stuff in here isn't really that useful for your average Linux geek, but there is plenty of material nonetheless.

          One of the problems is that the government doesn't bother to build a better web browser, they're building interface kits to expensive milspec satellite systems.
  • If you own a NEX II [frontierlabs.com] like I do, please write to frontier labs [mailto] and let them know that you'd like an ogg decoder in their firmware and that it's even freely available for them to use now too!

    Then we won't having to worry about that stupid mp3 licensing fee.

    Go OGG Go!!!

    P.S. Thanks xiph.org dudes!!!
  • This is good for the public at large, but I'll bet theKompany feels like suckers for buying a license.

    And I'll bet that this will make it more difficult for Vorbis to sell more licenses for other products down the road.

    • Re:theKompany is screwed (not) (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @02:50PM (#4190562)
      Actually not at all. We didn't pay a big licensing fee for Tremor and this came about before we paid any royalties, so it works out just fine for us. We love Xiph and Ogg Vorbis and have lots more stuff coming along to continue working with them. We have a nice easy to use and multi-platform (later this week) ripper for Ogg Vorbis called tkcOggRipper which you can check out at www.thekompany.com/projects/tkcoggripper. We also have an entirely ogg based internet radio station coming online shortly at www.progrock.com - we ripped about 350 CD's using tkcOggRipper, and we have even more fun stuff ahead.

      Rock on Xiph and may Ogg Vorbis rule the day!

      Shawn Gordon
      President
      theKompany.com
      www.thekompany. com
    • actually iirc, theKompany paid them to right the fix-point decoder, with an agreement that after a time they could open it up. basically theKompany wanted to be the first on the block with a new toy, not necissarily the only kid on the block with one.
  • I had a project that implemented a MIPS R3000 [man.ac.uk] with everything you needed to run an OS. I even got gcc to compile code. I nearly made a fixed point MP3 player (MAD) to run on it but I run out of time. I found MAD a little complex to walk throuhg and convet each function so it can run without an OS.
    I might have a go with this OGG player and make a fully open source digital music player.

  • Processor requirements? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dschuetz ( 10924 ) <david&dasnet,org> on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @02:44PM (#4190523)
    Does anyone familar with this implementation have any idea how processor-heavy it is?

    I ask because people have played with an earlier floating point implementation on the Rio Receiver, and have found that it wasn't terribly usable. I'm a little short on details, but I think it was too intensive for the low-speed CPU in the receiver.

    On the other hand, there has been work to build replacement clients for the Rio Receiver that use FLAC lossless compression, and that apparently works pretty well. So the current thinking is to transcode .ogg to flac at the server level. Or just to rip everything to flac (which requires a whole lot more disk space. :( )

    • Re:Processor requirements? (Score:5, Informative)

      by zsazsa ( 141679 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @03:04PM (#4190660) Homepage
      Does anyone familar with this implementation have any idea how processor-heavy it is?

      Using tkcPlayer on my Sharp Zaurus (which uses this library,) Ogg Vorbis playback takes up less CPU than mp3 playback (and the .oggs take up less space - it's a win-win situation.)
      • Why does everyone say .oggs are smaller? I rip everything using Lame with the r3mix settings and in blind A/B/C testing I have to use ogg at q6 or q7 to not be able to pick out the ogg file with 80% accuracy. The mp3 file is not distinguishable from the wav even with my Sennheisers, but some tracks are easy to pick out even at q6. At q7 my average vbr ogg is areound 220-250kbit/s whereas the lame mp3's are 192-220kbit/s. For reference my first file I tested was Alicia Keys - Piano and I, track 1 off her album, there is a mic crack about 10 seconds in and a bass/snare combo at about 1:12 that tripped up ogg until I cranked it up to q7.
        • For me, .oggs have a lower bitrate for 'acceptable' quality. When I'm playing music on my Zaurus, I'm using my little earbuds (Sennheiser MX500) in pretty busy environments. The headphone jack of the Zaurus isn't the cleanest thing in the world, either.

          When using the Zaurus, my primary concern is file size, as I only have a 128MB SD card. For serious listening at home, I've tended to stick with LAME VBR for MP3s.
        • Results of a blind test of ogg vs. mp3 are very useful, even (and especially) if the outcome is disappointing.

          Thank you, afidel, for trying to conduct some reasonably objective tests and posting the results.

        • Where ogg really wins out, is at q0 - q3, the oggs will be quite acceptable (especially on crappy speakers), and an mp3 with the same file size will have the horrible hollow metalic sound to it that you get from low bitrate mp3s.

          I did some comparisons with lame and bladeenc, and oggenc, and found that ogg at q2 was pretty much indistinguishable from the original wav. There was maybe a slight difference in overall sound, but not noticable unless you compared pretty closesly to the original. And there were definely no artifacts in the .ogg that weren't alredy in the original recording.
          The mp3s however, had the awful metalic sound, and very noticeable tendancy to mush the high end sounds.... 'S's at the end of words became 'Shhh' and cymbals sounded bad, and drums lost their crispness severly.

          Naturally you're not going to want to use q2 for archival quality sound, but then it's the low bitrate quality that matters on portable audio players anyway.
        • The only reason that I haven't switched to OGG is because my entire collection is R3-mix 128 LAME encoded MP3s. I have trouble topping the quality.

          Ogg is great for smaller, higher quality files when compared to MP3. But when you get to large file sizes for each format, then it doesn't really matter to me. When portable OGG vorbis players show up, then I'll make the switch (I don't care for Thomson's royalties on MP3). But until then, it's LAME VBR MP3s for the most crisp, compact sound possible, and the greatest flexibility.
    • I ask because people have played with an earlier floating point implementation on the Rio Receiver, and have found that it wasn't terribly usable. I'm a little short on details, but I think it was too intensive for the low-speed CPU in the receiver.

      I think they were using a fixed-point implementation (see here [comms.net]). Maybe (probably) Tremor is a more optimal implementation. I suspect we'll find out soon enough.

      The chip used in the Rio Receiver I believe is pretty common in other designs (PhatBox, Empeg/Rio Car, AudioTron) and seems like it's becoming the de facto measuring stick for whether or not a codec will run in consumer hardware.

      On the other hand, there has been work to build replacement clients for the Rio Receiver that use FLAC lossless compression, and that apparently works pretty well. So the current thinking is to transcode .ogg to flac at the server level. Or just to rip everything to flac (which requires a whole lot more disk space. :( )

      FLAC adoption happened relatively fast after a free integer decoder library was available (though it is LGPL, not BSD, which has caused some hiccups). So if that's any indication, if Tremor can run on the Rio Receiver it should catch on quickly.

  • I've been using tkc's player on my Zaurus for a month now and it's been solid. This is great news to hear it's under a BSD-style license.

    However I still recommend Zaurus owners shell out the 10 bucks for tkc's player to help support further development of Zaurus applications.
  • First Apple announces that they will make their iPod's compatible with PCs and now there is a fixed-point Vorbis decoder!

    I was hesistant in buying an iPod because all my music is in ogg vorbis format (and with good reason, given all the legal issues that are coming up with mp3). The iPod processor is capable of decoding Vorbis but it is fixed-point and I was desperately waiting for someone to port over the algorithm and I even considered undertaking the project myself.

    But now that they have released the fixed-point implementation it should be any day now that we see a port to the iPod making it the best portable digital music player and a truly kick-ass piece of hardware. Now if it would only take standard AA batteries...

  • The lack of a floating point processor in most mp3 players was a major technical problem with vendors adding ogg support to their hardware. Now that a non-fp codebase is available for the taking, this could very well mean the beginning of widespread ogg acceptance! My only concern would be the following: If was a company like Sony and I did some R&D to improve the quality of ogg files in order to give my products a competative edge over other brands, would I have to make those improvements open source?

    • My only concern would be the following: If was a company like Sony and I did some R&D to improve the quality of ogg files in order to give my products a competative edge over other brands, would I have to make those improvements open source?

      RTFL:

      Copyright (c) 2002, Xiph.org Foundation

      Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

      - Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.

      - Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.

      - Neither the name of the Xiph.org Foundation nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

      THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

  • Salut (Score:2)

    by T3kno ( 51315 )
    /me raises a pint of Murph's and salutes Xiph.org. May MP3 die a fast, utterly shamefull and painfull death.

  • Have there been any REAL double-blind tests as well as equipment tests of quality comparisons between MP3 and Ogg Vorbis yet? They never seem to get done. All the tests so far are of the form "Hey! My music sounds really l33t !!!!!"

    Anybody know of some honest testing across a wide variety of music (particularly instrumental / classical / baroque) that is not just one person's subjective opinion?

    Everyone seems to think that doing a lossy music compressor is just a "matter of cranking it out", but it's an extremely difficult problem. I'm not going to trust a bunch of amateurs until I see some real evidence that they know what they're doing. And no, "test it out yourself" is not an option. I have better things to do with my time, particularly since MP3 is free.

    • Re:Quality (Score:3, Insightful)

      by EastCoastSurfer ( 310758 )
      that is not just one person's subjective opinion?

      The problem is that music as a whole is subjective. Some people like it with a lot of bass, others like it bright. I'm sure that most people are being honest when they say that they like the sound of ogg over mp3 or vise versa. That is why you really have to do the testing yourself (or you can wait for someone with a similar "ear" for music to test for you).

      About the only way I could think of the really test the two formats is to overlay a graph of the outputs of the .wav, .mp3, and .ogg and see which of the formats differ most from the .wav. This method would also have inherent problems because you are only looking at raw output and not what you may possibly hear. Thus, while one format may "look" better than the other it may sound the same or worse depending on which parts of the music it cut out.

      • Re:Quality (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Reality Master 101 ( 179095 )

        The problem is that music as a whole is subjective.

        That's why you don't do it subjectively. You use a large number of people, both professional audio people and "normal" people, and you average the results.

        About the only way I could think of the really test the two formats is to overlay a graph of the outputs of the .wav, .mp3, and .ogg and see which of the formats differ most from the .wav.

        There are known, mathematical ways to test audio quality.

        This method would also have inherent problems because you are only looking at raw output and not what you may possibly hear.

        That's why you do both measurement tests and listening tests.

        • Re:Quality (Score:3, Informative)

          by poot_rootbeer ( 188613 )
          There are known, mathematical ways to test audio quality.

          s/quality/fidelity/

          You can measure how accurately an algorithm reproduces a given input signal, but there is no objective mathematical way to measure the quality of the audio, eg, whether the signal is any good in the first place.

          Other than that, you're correct -- a thorough evaluation of an audio algorithm's worth will include both objective (waveform analysis) and subjective (humans listening) testing.
    • Full listening tests to evaluate codec quality or perform a comparison are quite laborious and expensive to run. They are done very rarely. The implied "they" in your note -- "They" who should conduct the listening tests -- is also left undefined. Xiph almost certainly doesn't have the resources to run such a test series. If not Xiph, then who else has the financial motive if the result is, in practice, good enough?

      Moreover, your complaint should enompass more than Ogg: few if any shipping MP3 encoders or decoders have actually been run through listening tests to create a baseline comparison with the tested MP3 reference codebase. Virtually all of them have tweaks, refinements, optimizations, etc. that affect the resulting output and quality.

      • If not Xiph, then who else has the financial motive if the result is, in practice, good enough?

        How about any of the major audio magazines? They do equipment testing all the time.

        Look, I don't mean to be critical of Ogg per se. But there is way too much "rah rah" around here that the only the thing that matters is that Ogg happens to have the source code available, and no one seems to care whether it sounds comparable to MP3 or not. You're probably right that there is far too little analysis of MP3 as well, but it has enough mass distribution that the general public has decided that MP3 is good enough.

    • Yes, yes, there have. Try leaving the cave. (Score:5, Informative)

      by xiphmont ( 80732 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @04:41PM (#4191290) Homepage
      Your point would in fact be insightful (that only the quality matters, and quality is a hard problem) if you had looked around for a few tests first.

      Start here: Hydrogen Audio [hydrogenaudio.org]

      No, that's not us (Although we like them as they're likely the least bullshit-laden codec comparison and development bulletin board out there. These guys were *very* harsh about Vorbis's quality the first few years. That feedback was invaluable for making the codec as good as it is today.)

      c't has also run tests including Vorbis, and will have a big test run on several thousand listeners to offer here sometime soon. It's basically a much larger version of the tests ff123 has run on Hydrogen Audio. We're not privy to any of the current results, but I expect we'll do just fine ;-)

      As for 'cranking it out', Ogg development started in 1993.

      Monty

      • Your post would in fact be informative if the link had pointed somewhere relevant.

        The Hydrogen Audio link you gave just redirects to a message board at audio-illumination.org. Now I didn't go through every post with a magnifying glass or anything, but I did look around a bit, and didn't see any listening tests in any sort of prominent location. Care to comment?
    • Have there been any REAL double-blind tests as well as equipment tests of quality comparisons between MP3 and Ogg Vorbis yet?

      In general, your point is sound, but in this case you picked a really bad example. With mp3, it's not even close: vorbis wins in a landslide, especially at low bitrates.

      Just take literally any sound file and encode it at 64 kbps vorbis vs. 64 kbps mp3, and listen to it once. The double blind concept isn't even useful here because the mp3 sounds so much worse than the vorbis that anyone can instantly tell which is which, rendering the blind useless.

      Whether the same holds at high bitrates, or with other formats, is a different question, one which is well served by a blind test. Others have already pointed out some links to such tests. But in many situations the advantages of vorbis, especially over mp3, are so obvious that the concept of blind testing is not even applicable.

    • Have there been any REAL double-blind tests as well as equipment tests of quality comparisons between MP3 and Ogg Vorbis yet? They never seem to get done.

      Heise was just doing this (German) [heise.de] at the moment (ended August 29th). Public double-blind test.

      Featuring:

      • MP3 (of course)
      • MPEG4-AAC
      • MP3Pro
      • Ogg Vorbis
      • Windows Media Audio
      • RealAudio

      Watch out for results, which are being published (according to the web page) in c't magazine [heise.de] 19/2002 (out 2002-09-09).

  • Give feedback to Apple! (Score:5, Informative)

    by binaryfeed ( 225333 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @03:08PM (#4190681) Homepage
    Please tell Apple you want Ogg Vorbis support in the iPod [apple.com].

    • Re:Give feedback to Apple! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by John Whitley ( 6067 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @05:06PM (#4191445) Homepage
      At last, someone with the right idea. The embedded digital audio space is a volatile new market, with a bunch of relatively young companies and/or young divisions within large companies (which is much the same thing for my purposes here) vying for marketshare. Feature sets end up being defined in two general ways: 1) via feedback about a shipping product (market success or failure, direct user feedback, etc), or 2) marketing gets the idea that customers Must Have This Feature. User feedback can make a difference in this latter model.

      Ogg isn't yet big enough on its own to be an automatic target for these electronics marketing divisions. It needs grassroots backing to give it the same boost that MP3's mindshare and Micosoft's market power (WMA) have done for those formats already.

      This codebase makes this grassroots effort VERY VIABLE. So write your favorite digital audio portable company (be brief -- you're talking to marketing) and ask for Ogg Vorbis support. FWIW, Apple's design prowess made big waves in this industry. If Apple adds Ogg it, it's very likely that it will become a bullet on everyone else's next product feature list. (Note: the iPod uses an ARM-based processor.)

  • AudioTron support for Vorbis? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Wee ( 17189 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @03:12PM (#4190698)
    Does anyone know if there's planned AudioTron support for Vorbis? I spent a long time looking through their site, the discussion boards, etc this weekend and found nothing. I don't even know that it's possible via a firmware upgrade.

    I don't care about portables, it's my home system I'm curious about. XMMS I don't so much worry about, but I'm not going to replace hardware. What I have works for me, and if I have to use .mp3 with it, then I will, no matter what license the format has. I suspect a lot of people that have bought and are using MP3-only hardware feel and will act the same way, at least until that hardware gets replaced. mayeb what we need is for new hardware to decode both formats? I could see phasing in Vorbis decoders as being easily doable.

    I really wish OGG would have been around (read: taken off) like in 1997...

    -B

  • Yay, because now Vorbis will be more implementable on all kinds of hardware.

    Yawn, because it took so long for it to happen. Come on. Fixed point is not exactly difficult to deal with. Why didn't we see it sooner?

  • Well, integerized moving point, actually... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xiphmont ( 80732 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @04:26PM (#4191206) Homepage
    Strictly speaking, this isn't 'fixed-point' although it is all integer. It uses primarily fixed point, but in the deep S/N vector paths, it uses integerized movable point in a way that most embedded architectures can do the shifts for free during ALU load (eg, look at the ARM assembly for the shift/multiplies). Have a look at the Vorbis codec spec on xiph.org if you want to know why this is necessary.

    Also, this code's been around for a while... we're releasing it for free now as commercial code has a short shelf life. It ran through it's commercial usefulness, and now we want it to be commodity code.

    Monty

  • Strange things are happening ... (Score:3, Informative)

    by DVega ( 211997 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @05:58PM (#4191686)

    On May 04, Nicolas Pitre released a free (GPL) fixed point vorbis decoder [linux.org.uk] and announced it on Vorbis Developement list [xiph.org].

    But this important contribution was kept in silence. Even all posts from May 2002 had mysteriously dissapeared from Vorbis-dev archive [xiph.org].

    Fortunately a copy of Nicolas announcement could be find here [handhelds.org].

    Now Xiph.org anounces that its fixed-point implementation is available for free under BSD style license.

    This seems very strange to me.

    • Re:Strange things are happening ... (Score:5, Informative)

      by xiphmont ( 80732 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @06:47PM (#4191921) Homepage
      The mail archives didn't disappear; they were never there. I made a permissions error in the archive spool after fixing a log rotation bug :-( None of May was logged.

      The previous non-Xiph fixed-point decoder releases are derived from a flawed 'good enough for now' port of Vorbis to the HipZip originally done by iObjects/Fullplay. This port was a quick integerization of beta 3 done in late 2000 and has signal depth problems. It does not decode later-than-beta-4 files. Even if updated to full 1.0, it will still have dynamic range problems when playing 1.0 and later bitstreams.

      Tremor was originally done as a report to ARM at the request of Fullplay after determining that starting from scratch was easier than repairing the existing beta-3-derived code. Fullplay opted not to purchase the new port, and eventually released their own beta-3 port under GPL on SourceForge. Those who then derived their own versions from the SourceForge project were generally aware that this was an incomplete 'good enough for now' version and that the code would eventually hit bitstreams that it couldn't play well or at all.

      Now that Tremor is BSD, there's no reason to keep using derivations of this old beta-3 port.

      Nothing strange about it. You can go back to chasing government UFO conspiracies now....

      Monty

  • Which vorbis is faster on Intel? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by iabervon ( 1971 ) on Tuesday September 03, 2002 @06:25PM (#4191830) Homepage Journal
    Is the original libvorbis faster (due to making productive use of the FPU), or is the new integer math one faster (because floating point is pretty slow in general)? I'd guess that libvorbis is better on Intel and tremor is better on non-Intel x86 (due to the relative strengths of different vendors), but it's hard to say. Has anyone actually benchmarked them? libvorbis is a noticeable load on one of the machiens I use, so it would be worth switching if it would help.
    • >I'd guess that libvorbis is better on Intel and
      >tremor is better on non-Intel x86 (due to the
      >relative strengths of different vendors),

      Apparently, Tremor is faster on the K6. For the Pentium Pro and related architectures (P2/P3/Celeron), and the Athlon, the floating point decoder is faster.

      --
      GCP
  • So admittedly this is a bit off topic, but, having been frustrated with my RCA lyra for 2 years now (esp. 'cause i got it as a gift so i feel bad selling it on ebay, but owning it makes it hard to justify buying a real player), i thought "schweet. soon i can get an ogg codec for it, and maybe it won't be like their proprietary brain-damaged MPX format which is like MP3 but 'unpiratable' and requires a particular CF device and software to load onto the card." Well, lyrazone.com has links for an mp3pro codec, wma, etc, but no mention of an ogg codec. Ok, it's a little early for that, it did just come out after all. But there's no way to contact them to inquire about ogg support, request it, etc. Not even in help. Not even in help help.

    So the short story is, if i can prevent anyone from buying an rca lyra, please allow me to do so. Their product sucks, their customer service more, and i'll be surprised if they release a vorbis codec which could possibly redeem the lyra.

    ok. done ranting. mod at will.
  • Well gee, now I can do a port to the SM2496 module [sm2496.com] for the Visor. Oh, wait... Handspring has killed the Springboard market. Nevermind.
  • I received this reply:
    Dear Sir,

    Thank you for your suggestion. We will definitely look into the Ogg Vorbis format for the NEX II player.

    Thank you.

    Customer Support
    Frontier Labs.

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