Ogg beats MP3 & The Rest In Listening Test

Nice2Cats writes "The Ogg Vorbis format came out far ahead of MP3, MP3Pro, RealAudio Surround, and Windows Media 9 Beta in a comparison of different audio formats by Germany's respected computer magazine c't. More than 6,000 people took part in the test. Heise says Ogg's dominance was most pronounced with 64 kBit/sec samples; the full magazine article (out on Monday) mentions that in pre-tests, some people actually mistook the 128 kBit/sec Ogg samples for the uncoded version. Let's hear it for those strangely named open source file formats!"

Babelfish Translation

[rjw57]

A babelfish English transtaltion can be found here [altavista.com].

Re:Babelfish Translation

[Jugalator]

What's so redundant with that link? Was a babelfish link provided in the news item? Was a babelfish link provided before this post?

Yes, we all know about Babelfish (if that's what the moderator was implying), but it's much easier to click on a link than copying the URL, navigating to Babelfish, paste and submit. :-P

Re:Babelfish Translation? No, English version!

[HacTar]

Here the original article in English [heise.de]

Keep it simple baby. =)

Fullscale deployment

[pajor]

I think we need to promote fullscale deployment of ogg vorbis. Windows Media, Quicktime, all of the major players should be equipped to play it. With Microsoft pushing WMA, Windows Media support is probably going to have to come from third parties. Ogg Vorbis playing hardware should be cheaper than proprietary format playing hardware, but I doubt anyone will release a player that DOESNT play mp3s.

The best way to support ogg is probably to rip your entire cd collection as ogg; pull your mp3s off kazaa and share away. This action might possibly be illegal depending on your cd collection, but if the entirety of Slashdot stopped sharing mp3s and started sharing oggs, I bet the public would take notice and it would take off. Although, the media companies would probably take notice too.

I do fear if ogg vorbis becomes to popular, patent holders will pop up (like the jpeg dilemma) and start wanting money. Ah well.

Re:Fullscale deployment

[pajor]

From Xiph.org:

For companies to produce portable Vorbis players, they need to be made aware that there is a market for them. Every day, I hear the same thing from Vorbis listeners; 'I'm not buying a hardware portable music player unless it supports Ogg Vorbis.' It's nice to hear, but we can't do anything about it (we're not a hardware company). So, this page is here to let you send that message to people who can. Remember, be polite!

The Companies:

Frontier Labs - URL [frontierlabs.com] - has told a lot of people that they're considering implementing Vorbis support for the NEX II machine. Here's their information:

Frontier Labs
Unit 2206 - 8, Cyberincubator, Kodak House II
No. 321 Java Road
North Point, Hong Kong
Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail] [mailto]

iRiver - URL [iriver.com] - has said they are planning to support Ogg Vorbis in the future via firmware upgrade, but the schedule is not yet finalized. Here's their information:

iRiver America
1716 Ringwood Avenue
San Jose, CA 95131
Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail] [mailto]

UPDATE: Forwarded E-mail from iRiver America

The engineers have Ogg Vorbis under consideration to support. However, at this time, there is no decision whether it will be supported in the future or not.

Regards,

Erica L. Briggs
Customer Service Representative
iRiver America, Inc.
Direct: 408.452.7940

Wouldn't you like to see Vorbis on the super-sexy iPod? We would, too. Here's some contact information for Apple Computer (URL [apple.com]):

Apple
1 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, CA 95014
Telephone: [phone]

UPDATE: Don't forget to drop a note to Apple about the iPod at http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html [apple.com]!

Other companies producing audio hardware:

Archos Technology Inc. - URL [archos.com]
3-A Goodyear
Irvine, CA 92618
Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

ReQuest Multimedia - URL [request.com]
435 2nd Ave.
Troy, NY 12182
E-mail: [e-mail] [mailto]

Evolution Technologies - URL [nowevolution.com]
118 Kitty Hawk Drive
Morrisville, NC 27560
Telephone: [phone] / toll-free: 866-848-8070
E-mail: [e-mail] [mailto]

UPDATE: Note from Evolution Technologies

Evolution Technologies, Inc. is committed to support our consumers music appetite. We will support the formats that are consistent with both their desires and good business practices. While we have not ruled out supporting "open source" formats, we must first evaluate the acceptance levels with the buying public so that our organization can justify the expense of developing a new compatible CODEC. When the demand is sufficient, we will support the technology.

Sonic Blue - URL [sonicblue.com]
2841 Mission College Blvd.
Santa Clara, CA 95054-1838
Telephone: [phone]

I-Jam Multimedia LLC - URL [ijamworld.com]
1092 National Parkway
Schaumburg, IL 60173
Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail] [mailto]

Alaris, Inc. - URL [gummy-mp3.com]
44061 Nobel Drive
Fremont, CA 94538

Creative Labs, Inc. - URL [creative.com]
Developer Relations
1901 McCarthy Blvd.
Milpitas, California 95035
Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail] [mailto]

Daisy Technology, LLC - URL [daisytech-usa.com]
111 N. Market Street, Suite 624
San Jose, CA 95113
Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
E-mail: [e-mail] [mailto]

Procell Media - URL [procell-media.com]
69 Wrexham Road
Whitchurch, Shropshire
SY13 1HT
UNITED KINGDOM
Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

G-NET Canada Headquarters - URL [gnetcanada.com]
11 Sinclair Court
Cambridge, Ontario
N1T 1K2 CANADA
Telephone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]

Re:Fullscale deployment

[Junta]

Well, under Windows, there is a directshow filter at http://tobias.everwicked.com/oggds.htm.

There is a quicktime component for .ogg, but it really sucks.

iTunes is the only player whose possible support is so poor (QuickTime component, as mentioned before, sucks), and that has a relatively small user base. WMP lacks it by default, but as mentioned the DirectShow filter corrects this. Winamp and others support it out of the box.

The problem is playing hardware, not software. The entrenchment of mp3 technology means that it will be difficult to migrate. If Fraunhofer gets too greedy with royalties, they will shoot themselves in the foot, and the markets will try to push .ogg more...

Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrates..

[altgrr]

As the article says, despite all this hailing Ogg as the most wonderful format under the sun (as has been done quite a bit recently), look more carefully at what the article has to say: (translation follows)

Especially at 64kbps Ogg Vorbis won over convincingly, and left the competition behind. From 128kbit/s, the noticeable difference between the formats became significantly lower, such that WMA, RealAudio, MP3Pro and also MP3, to most ears, was difficult to differentiate.

Yes, Ogg is good for low bitrates, and it'd be great to see it adopted as a streaming format, but I don't think there's really a need to convert to Ogg yet.

Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate

[rseuhs]

I don't see the need to create any non-ogg CD rips anymore. What's the problem with having both formats?

Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate

[Omnifarious]

Aside from the patent encumbrance problems, possibly not. Though, since ogg beats out mp3 so handily at low bitrates, I would trust it to be better (even if my ear couldn't notice it) at higher bitrates.

I think the patent encumbrance problems are easily enough for me to give up on mp3, even if ogg were slightly worse.

More poached oggs!

Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate

[Webmonger]

Obviously, you haven't gotten sick of MP3 artifacts like I have. Back in the day when everyone here was promoting mp3 ("It sounds just like a CD"), I thought it was perfect, too. But now, I can pick out MP3 artifacts pretty easily. MP3s bug me now.

I've never figured out what Vorbis artifacts sound like. To me, Vorbis still sounds perfect. This is why I rip to Vorbis now.

What MP3 artifacts sound like

[yerricde]

What do MP3 artifacts sound like?

Try 128 kbps joint stereo. Try harsh swooshing and ringing in the high frequencies. Try a flattening of the stereo field.

Try 32 kbps mono (standard for streaming over dial-up). Try the whole thing sounding underwater.

Now try Ogg at each of those bitrates. (Use OggDropXPd to find the quality levels that roughly correspond to the popular MP3 bitrates.) None of the artifacts I mentioned are present. Ogg Vorbis is designed to create complex and subtle "differences" in the signal rather than easy-to-pick-out "artifacts".

Re:What MP3 artifacts sound like

[nizo]

Your best bet is to simply turn up the volume of your mp3 player, eventually your gradual hearing loss will mask this unpleasant artifact noise.

Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate

[Gordonjcp]

They are difficult to describe, but one of the most common artifacts is a "thickening" or slurring of transients. Imagine a sharp, compressed, closed hi-hat hit. You might make such a sound with your mouth by touching the roof of your mouth, just behind your upper gum, with your tongue, and making a "t" noise, like the very first phoneme of "tick".

Now try it again with your tongue touching the back of your teeth. It's more like a "th" sound, isn't it? Now Ogg does this a tiny bit as well, but MP3 seems to do it in quite a noticable way.

Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate

[Webmonger]

I notice artifacts on MP3s I've encoded with LAME. Maybe that just means I'm a clueless user :-).

First 128-bit encodings sounded fine, but then I started noticing swishy noises in the high frequencies. For a while I was encoding, listening, and re-encoding at higher bitrates or VBR until it sounded good.

I encoded the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I had to take it to 256-bit encoding before it sounded good.

With Vorbis, I can just fire and forget.

The Xiph folks will say that MP3 is a comparatively old technology, and that Vorbis uses recent advances so it can sound better at the same bitrates.

Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate

[madrich]

Many people are using ogg for streaming already. IC Radio [icradio.com], Raw [warwick.ac.uk] and several other UK Student Radio Stations [studentradio.org.uk] are using it. The BBC [bbc.co.uk] were also using it for a while, but I think it vanished :(

Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate

[pointwood]

Yes, Ogg is good for low bitrates, and it'd be great to see it adopted as a streaming format, but I don't think there's really a need to convert to Ogg yet.

I can give you at least one good reason: Ogg Vorbis is an open and patent free "standard". Ogg Vorbis also produces smaller files.

Unless you need MP3 because you have a hardware player that only support that, I see no reason to encode using anything but Ogg Vorbis. I'll not buy a player that doesn't support Ogg Vorbis and I've told the manufactures that.

Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate

[syd02]

"Ogg Vorbis also produces smaller files."

Actually, I decided to do a test comparison of lame vs ogg at 64, 128 and 192.

Ogg is smaller at 64 (and sounds MUCH better), but lame mp3 is just slightly smaller at both 128 and 192.

Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate

[rseuhs]

I have the magazine (with the detailed test results) right beside me and ogg was the best codec in both 64kbps and 128kbps tests.

And on the 128kpbs tests ogg was found to be identical to wav (Wav: best to worst: 21%/17%/15%/13%/13%/11%/10%, Ogg: 21%/16%/15%/13%/13%/12%/10%)

The percentages are interpreted so:

21% thought that ogg sounds best of all 7.
16% second-best
15% third place
etc.

So at 128kbps, ogg was the only codec that was pretty much identical with the wav, all other codecs were much worse. (For example WMA was the best of the rest with: 13%/14%/15%/14%/16%/17%/11%)

At 64kbps, the difference is even higher: 41% found .wav to be best, 25% ogg-vorbis and only 11% mp3pro, 10% wma, the rest below 10%.

Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate

[Chris Johnson]

No. All they're saying is, they didn't use anyone capable of distinguishing much in the way of sound quality past a certain point. It proves nothing.

I run an indie mastering house with room treatment and scary homebrew monitors, and I've distinguished 256K mp3 from 16 bit AIFF in an ABX double-blind test. I've also got very close to distinguishing dithered 16 bit from truncated 16 bit audio (only about 94% confidence- my ear gave out after about 10 trials! Fatigue!). Ogg Vorbis' strengths are absolutely relevant for high bit depths.

In fact I've done an objective study on it- feeding encoders a 'torture test' sample, subtracting the spectrogram of it from the spectrogram of the original and looking at what was changed. Across the board, Ogg Vorbis does better than mp3 at maintaining both tonal purity and transient accuracy. Pretty much ALL mp3 encoders at ANY bit rate have to make a choice between these qualities, Ogg consistently manages to preserve both at once. At high bit rates it combines the tonal purity of BladeEnc with the transient aggression of Fraunhofer, while both of those encoders make a mess of each other's strong points at any bit rate- Fraunhofer never sounds really tonally convincing, and Blade can't do transients at any bit rate.

I would say that Ogg Vorbis is BEST at really high bit rates. You can always strip it if you want lower bit rates out of it...

Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate

[Pogue Mahone]

Maybe there is no need to convert to ogg...

Whatever you do, folks, don't convert your MP3 files to ogg. If you do, you'll end up with the MP3 artifacts encoded in the ogg file, along with the music.

Better to re-rip. If that's not possible, keep the MP3s.

Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate

[LarsG]

Whatever you do, folks, don't convert your MP3 files to ogg.

This reminds me of people that converted their GIFs to JPEG because "JPEG is better". *shudder*

Re:Ogg is only discernably better at lower bitrate

[jandrese]

If they were large pseudo-photographic GIFs that might have been the way to go. The files would be Smaller (although you've already lost most of your colorspace), and it's not like GIF is a lossy compression format (unless you had to drop an original 24 bit image to 8 bits). Plus there were patent issues...

A better idea would have been to convert your gifs to PNGs, although it won't save you as much space as the JPEGs will, you will retain the perfect copy of the original image.

I actually scored the 64kbps sample above..

[rseuhs]

... the "original" wav. (The wav was at 3rd place, ogg first, mp3pro second)

(No, I did not know which sample was which. I also know not enough about those codecs to recognize artifacts etc.)

Actually c't has conducted listening tests some years ago (but only with mp3, they were interested in CD-music vs. compressed) and mp3 was found *better* than what is on the CD.

It's probably the annoying frequencies that are filtered away in compression...

My point?

Well, there are a couple:

• ogg is better than mp3 ;-)
• There is no such thing as the "original", the material on CD is also a digitalized, sampled version of the real thing. A 256kbps ogg created with a higher sampling rate would probably be closer to the real "original" than what is currently shipped on CD.
• Whatever is on the CD is not sacred, if my ogg that takes only 1/20th of space sounds better for me, I don't see the slightest problem. Who knows, maybe some bands run their stuff through a codec before it is put on CD to make it sound better? (Oh my a can feel the hatred of audiophiles against me right now...)

Re:I actually scored the 64kbps sample above..

[Mwongozi]

I always wondered about tests like this.

Would it not be a better idea to allow the participants to become familiar with the original, source audio, and then get them to rate the various compressed formats (without them knowing which is which) as to how much the sound like the original?

Surely "How much does this sound like the original?" is a better test than "Which sounds best?"

Re:I actually scored the 64kbps sample above..

[FauxPasIII]

>> Surely "How much does this sound like the original?" is a better test than "Which sounds best?"

Only if the goal of the developer is to create a codec which is closer to the original, rather than one that sounds great. I'd call that one a judgment call, actually.

Re:I actually scored the 64kbps sample above..

[sql*kitten]

Only if the goal of the developer is to create a codec which is closer to the original, rather than one that sounds great. I'd call that one a judgment call, actually.

The question is how close it gets to the original original: not the CD of the symphony, but the live performance the CD is a recording of. It's great if equipment can interpolate and filter to work around the limitations of the original format. But what sounds "better" is in the ear of the listener, it is therefore best to concentrate on reproduction and let the user shape the sound as they see fit *after* it has been converted abck to audio.

Re:I actually scored the 64kbps sample above..

[CoolVibe]

Didn't you know? Ogg encodes ueber secret subliminal messages into the encoded files that say "dig this audio format.... dig this audio format..." all over.

That would explain it...

(for the humor impaired: yes that was intended to be funny. My music collection is about 35% ogg. I love ogg)

I love ogg too. Ogg is the greatest. I love...

[Gordonjcp]

... ogg too. Ogg is the greatest. I love ogg too. Ogg is the greatest.

Dammit, shut that thing off!

Re:I actually scored the 64kbps sample above..

[Ioldanach]

I always wondered about tests like this.

Would it not be a better idea to allow the participants to become familiar with the original, source audio, and then get them to rate the various compressed formats (without them knowing which is which) as to how much the sound like the original?

Surely "How much does this sound like the original?" is a better test than "Which sounds best?"

I'm not able to babel it here from work (they block babel and the block isn't worth getting around this morning...) but a proper test of this sort doesn't ask either question. A proper test of this sort plays two tracks one after the other and asks the listener "are these the same or different". The tracks would be chosen randomly from all the formats, and the ratio of same to different tracks would probably be about 50/50. From this data you can determine how similar the tracks sound, and thus formulate a chart of how the tracks sound relative to each other. Alternatively, you could ask "which sounds better", and compare the tracks more dynamically, with an occasional playback of two tracks that are the same. This would give you a more subjective data set, though.

Re:I actually scored the 64kbps sample above..

[John_Booty]

# There is no such thing as the "original", the material on CD is also a digitalized, sampled version of the real thing. A 256kbps ogg created with a higher sampling rate would probably be closer to the real "original" than what is currently shipped on CD.

Absolutely false. Some information is lost when converting to the CD master. More information is lost when converting from the CD audio --> OGG. How could the OGG possibly be closer to the original than the CD? By definitiion, no matter what bit rate it's encoded at it contains less information than the CD audio.

Well, I'm speaking from a scientific standpoint, anyway. I suppose that various compression schemes could result in a sound which is artificially "crisper" at certain frequencies, causing it to be more pleasing to listeners' ears than the CD audio.

That's possible, I suppose, but that's sort of "faking it". Because the artificially-induced "crispness" or whatever is really an even-great deviation from the original.

Re:I actually scored the 64kbps sample above..

[John_Booty]

The person is talking about going from master->ogg resulting in an ogg a lot of people thought sounded a lot nicer than the CD.

Would encoding an Ogg from the master sound subjectively better than the original? Perhaps. These tests certainly suggest it might.

Would it be closer to the original? No, because a lot more information is discarded in lossy Ogg compression than during a plain-Jane downsmaple from the master recording to CD-quality 44.1/16 audio.

Re:I actually scored the 64kbps sample above..

[zmooc]

He didn't say the Ogg was to be created from the CD, but from the original.

Re:I actually scored the 64kbps sample above..

[cloudmaster]

"sensitive ears" = "ears that think there'll be a difference, therefore hear a difference", apperently. They can "hear" the difference between 10 and 12 gauge wires, too.

Re:I actually scored the 64kbps sample above..

[Gordonjcp]

Isn't that the bit that, when you do a spectrum plot of it, gives you a scary face thingy?

Something like this [yerbox.org]?

Manual Translation

[kris]

Full sound at 1/2 file size

For five years mp3 has been the format of choice for music downloads on the Internet and space-saving archives of complete CDs. What the human ear cannot hear is being filtered out by mp3, reducing audio files to 1/10th of the original size.

Meanwhile alternative file formats are challenging mp3 and had to prove themselves in the past weeks in the c't listening test. We tested mp3, the designated followup AAC (advanced audio coding), mp3pro with improved performance at lower bitrates, ReadAudio Surround, the brandnew Windows Media 9 Beta and finally the open source code Ogg Vorbis.

With more than 6000 online ratings (3300 of them concerning the 64 kBit/sec samples) this is one of the largest listing tests for lossy compression ever. We would like to thank all participants!

Especially at 64 kBit/sec Ogg Vorbis convinced and declassed the entire commercial competition. From 128 kBit/sec upwards the discernable differences between the formats become much smaller, making WMA, RealAudio, MP3Pro and MP3 indistinguishable for most listeners.

In a second parallel test c't assembled a panel of eight professional listeners in the Peppermint Pavillon, the Studio of music producer Mousse T. Testers were Mousse T. himself, the soprano Carmen Fuggis from the Staatsoper Hannover, a blind sound engineer, a Tonmeister (??? literal: sound master), a 12 year old pupil and the developer ofthe MusePack audio codec (formerly MP+), Andree Buschmann.

What "hardships of hearing" the experts faced and the detailed results of the online listing test can be read in c't 19/2002 (available in stores from 9th Sep 2002).

Re:Manual Translation

[operagost]

A Tonmeister is someone who has graduated from a special collegiate program which would roughly correspond to someone double-majoring in Sound Recording (usually a Bachelor of Science) and Music Composition (usually a Bachelor of Arts). Imagine doing that at a school at least as good as Berklee, and you can approximate the kind of achievement that requires.

Quality Rating

[Captain Large Face]

So what quality rating is 64Kb/s? Vorbis uses variable encoding bitrates, so giving a static value isn't 100% helpful. I know Vorbis encodes on a scale of 1-10, so what would be the recommended level following the results of this study?

Re:Quality Rating

[volsung]

Actually, the quality scale goes 0-10 (for general use anyway). You will get roughly 64 kbps (often smaller on some pieces) with quality 0.

For the brave, the Vorbis 1.0 encoder library added quality modes going down to -1. This will take 44kHz stereo sound and crunch it down to 48 kbps or so. It will sound pretty bad, so don't take it too seriously. I think Monty made that mode just for fun, so don't bother him with complaints about the artifacts you find. :)

For those of you wondering how to get Vorbis to compress enough to broadcast to modem users (24 kbps or so), you need to downsample your original audio to a lower sample rate and/or mix down your stereo audio to mono.

Re:Quality Rating

[Gordonjcp]

Actually, -1 is pretty decent. I can't tell the difference between -1 and up to about 4-5 when I play back oggs in the car. I doubt anybody could, no matter how good they think their car or car hifi is. There's too much extraneous noise.

Of quality & compression

[Powercntrl]

I've found 192kbit CBR MP3 to be more than adequate for my music copy-ahem- archival needs. The resulting quality is largely the result of using a good encoder. I can't read German and the fish is of little help, so I don't know if they used a good encoder like LAME or Fraunhofer, or some garbage like Xing when doing their MP3 comparison.

MP3 player quality also seems to vary considerably. The best player I've heard on Win32 is one called Nad (seriously, that's the name). From what I understand, the author sold the rights to some company and that was the end of it... Winamp's quality has varied over the years as the decoding engine was changed several times over the course of its life. Sonique seems to be pretty good as well. While Fraunhofer's encoder is very good, the free playback-only codec bundled with Media Player seems to have lackluster high frequency response, giving the audio a less "defined" sound.

Despite all my rambling, my point is simply that it is hard to do an objective comparison of MP3 to other formats since there are so many variations of the encoding and decoding software. I've done my own listening comparisons with OGG and found it to be comparable to MP3, but since my portable MP3 CD player only plays MP3s and redbook audio CDs, my use of OGG has been quite limited.

While I applaud the open source community for producing such a high-quality competitor to MP3 as OGG, the real issue of getting people to switch still lies in hardware support and easy-to-use, CDDB compatible OGG CD-rip utilities.

Re:Of quality & compression

[justsomebody]

As it concerns encoders. xiph.org. Almost every ripping software supports external encoder. So off to the site and download codec to use with your favourite ripper with CDDB.

Frauhoffer encoder is great only when music is consistant. Try to rip some Pink Floyd alike song (most of them start in acoustic and then transform to rock) and you'll notice acoustic vibrating pattern all across the song (even there where acoustic is not present). Basically Frauhoffer doesn't change encoding all trough the song. Lame was much better in that manner. Ogg? I'm giving it a test run just now.

Hardware will pop out as soon as Ogg gets reputation.

Re:Of quality & compression

[Lars T.]

They used the Fraunhofer MP3 codec from MusicMatch 7.2 (same for Thomson's MP3Pro), the AAC was the FhG Eval Build from Aug 23, Ogg Vorbis 1.0, the Real Audio from HelixProducer 9 Plus, and WMA Series 9 Beta (Build 2798).

Re:Of quality & compression

[root_42]

and easy-to-use, CDDB compatible OGG CD-rip utilities.

KDE's Konqueror [konqueror.org] has got full OGG and CDDB support. You just type in the URL "audiocd:/" and you get a list of .ogg-files with correct CDDB titles and all. Ready to copy them via drag'n'drop onto your harddisk. Also to be seen on this screenshot [kde.org].

Re:Of quality & compression

[Chanc_Gorkon]

A rareity? I have never had a ripper fail on XP be it CDex or something else. Musicmatch has suport for XP as well as others. But, in my opinion, CDex is so good why use anything else?

The problem

[Mr_Silver]

The problem I see here is that whilst Ogg may be better than MP3, it is not significantly better to get people to move over to it.

As many companies have found out, if you're going to compete with someone who has a large share of the market - your product will fail if there is no absolutely compelling i-must-have-it reason for making the switch (and enduring all the recoding of your, possibly, hundreds of MP3 files).

For me at the moment:

• 128 kbps sampling is by no means perfect, but (for me) it's acceptable
• There are hardware based MP3 players out there
• All my friends encode MP3's - not one uses Ogg.
• I have a large number of MP3's - it would be a serious slog to re-encode them
• The amount of Ogg files available out there pale into comparison with MP3.

In short, like the vast majority of people out there (who don't read slashdot and never have heard of Ogg), going to Ogg would be a step backwards for them. They'd have less choice, less options and would be isolating themselves from everyone else.

In a situation like that, you have to have a pretty damned good reason for going through all that - and as of yet, for the common man, there isn't such a reason.

Doesn't mean I won't keep watching Ogg though ...

Re:The problem

[CoolVibe]

In short, like the vast majority of people out there (who don't read slashdot and never have heard of Ogg), going to Ogg would be a step backwards for them. They'd have less choice, less options and would be isolating themselves from everyone else.

What do you mean? All major software mp3 players support ogg. Winamp, Sonique, XMMS, Audion. Well, iTunes not yet, but they'll catch up soon.

How are they isolating themselves if they can just play the damn files? They just gain another format.

Granted, support for hardware players is lacking, but that is being remedied. I predict that next year Ogg Vorbis will be an established format that will rival and even surpass the patent-happy crap that Fraunhofer dishes out.

Re:The problem

[CoolVibe]

WMA has ogg support. All you need to do is install an extra codec. With all the integration madness in Windows, that can be done automagically. Oh, iTunes? Oh, Apple will catch up soon...

What's your point?

Re:The problem

[GigsVT]

In short, like the vast majority of people out there (who don't read slashdot and never have heard of Ogg), going to Ogg would be a step backwards for them. They'd have less choice, less options and would be isolating themselves from everyone else.

Not to be rude, but what the fuck are you talking about? How much trouble is it to download and install another plugin for their players? No one has to reencode anything they don't want to. The migration to Ogg can be like the migration from old UNIX compress (.Z) to gzip (.gz). There is no reason someone can't have both at the same time.

Most people will probably be introduced to Ogg when they go to a streaming site, and it says "hey you need to get this player (or plugin) from here to listen, don't worry, it's free, click OK a few times". Then when they see .ogg files on the net, they will double click them, and everything will work automagically.

Re:The problem

[rseuhs]

To get the full benefit from Ogg, you need to re-encode everything. That is what I'm talking about.

You don't need to reencode anything. This is completely optional. Your mp3s don't stop working when you have an ogg on your harddisk. (Believe me, I tried it.)

Geeez.

Re:The problem

[p3d0]

Besically, all your problems come down to inertia. Remember: inertia doesn't prevent acceleration--it merely slows it.

Re:The problem

[Makali]

What do you mean, there's little reason? There's little reason for the consumer, because the consumer doesn't give a monkey's: if people really cared about the sound quality, Kazaa and Gnutella wouldn't be flooded with 128kbit MP3s. MP3s encoded at a higher bitrate can be used as a solution to all of MP3's audio problems, and storage is cheap, so yes, it's unlikely that there'll be an instant switch to any better format, and if there is, it won't come from the consumer.

Now, for the content provider, it's a different story entirely. Thomson/Fraunhofer are actively pursuing royalty fees, and all the other "next generation" codecs do too. Except Vorbis. With Vorbis (one of the Ogg formats; there are several), audio can be coded at a lower bitrate and sound the same as a higher-bitrated MP3, and there's no royalty fee which means the development costs are lower, and (potentially) the product is cheaper. Thomson aren't making any friends running around with their team of lawyers and threatening people left right and centre with license-fee demands. If a good quality alternative presents itself (quality as a function of price and ease of use, rather than audio quality), developers will be tempted to switch. From what I hear, the Vorbis libraries are very easy to use.

New formats are being picked up by software developers (especially console game developers, where RAM and Storage are at a premium). Once developers start using the format, they'll use it in other products too. If it costs little to add a codec to encoding products (and well, the vorbis libraries are free, but you still have to pay a guy to learn the APIs and program for them), then there's little point in not implementing it.

Ironically, Thomson/Fraunhofer are trying to play down the significance of MP3 because they're trying to sell AAC, which benefits all alternative codecs pretty much equally.

Finally, don't be a fool. No one's asking anyone to recode anything. Unless there was an outright ban on the MP3 format tomorrow (and some way to enforce it), there's no point recoding your audio. There's no isolation in using Ogg when you can use MP3 at the same time. Winamp, the next version of RealPlayer, and Windows Media Player (via a DirectX plugin) all support OGG Vorbis files. To the consumer, little changes... to the average windows user, they probably won't even know! Windows hides file-extensions by default, so it'll just be another "Winamp Media File".

There's no "step backwards"; it's a step /sideways/, but still going in the same direction. Instead of being on the centre path of MP3, you can switch to Ogg, and still have MP3 at your right hand. You're given /more/ choice, not less. You now have a choice whether to use OGG or MP3 in many applications. That's a good thing, right?

Re:The problem

[miguel]

I remember the migration from ".ARC" to ".ZIP" a few years ago, it happened very quickly, and was surprised it actually had happened.

The same thing can be said about the .Z to .z (and later renamed to .gz) transitions. Eventually freedom concerns took place, and the migrations happened.

On the other hand, you have gif, and we never quit got rid of it, but the good side is that we got a nice, better format in the meantime that is wildely used (png).

I am confident ogg will happen, and I am waiting for cheap hardware decoders to exist.

Miguel.

File size comparison

[Nosher]

Listening to music over a couple of soup cans tied together with string is better than MP3 encoded at 128Kbps. At this sample rate, MP3 has always been a bit naff (which is one of the reasons my 3000+ MP3s are all my own encodings from my own stuff). I always encode at 192 or VBR (variable bit-rate) with a minimum of 160Kbps using LAME, and to be honest, think it sounds pretty darn good (Ok, it doesn't quite stand up to direct comparison with CD, but then it's only one-tenth the size and way more convenient). And yes, I *do* listen through a good HiFi. So can anyone tell me a) is there really much detectable difference (in terms of audio quality) between Ogg and a well-encoded, high bitrate MP3, and b) how the file sizes really compare, when one of my average 3-4 minute MP3s weighs in at 6-8MB?

Perhaps the 64 kbit format could be called...

[Omnifarious]

Perhaps the 64 kbit format could be called a hard-boiled ogg.

• 64kbit - hard boild ogg
• 128kbit - over hard ogg
• 160kbit - over easy ogg
• 192kbit - sunny side up ogg
• 256kbit - poached ogg

"Germany's respected computer magazine c't"

[KAMiKAZOW]

c't is a good computer magazine, but it's not an professional audio magazine.
If you want to learn about audio encoding, listening tests and so on, visit audio-illumination.org [audio-illumination.org] and ff123.net [ff123.net]

A discussion about heise's listening test can be found here [audio-illumination.org].

Better than the fish...

[OneFix]

The WorldLingo Translation [worldlingo.com] seems to be better than babelfish because of the option to do content specific translation...

Compare the different translations of the same text...

BabelFish: "RealAudio Surround, the fire-new Windows Media 9 beta"
WorldLingo: (using Computer, Data Processing as the subject) "RealAudio Surround, the fire-new Windows Media 9 beta"

You can also do your own translation here [worldlingo.com].

Re:Better than the fish...

[Quixote]

BabelFish: "RealAudio Surround, the fire-new Windows Media 9 beta"
WorldLingo: (using Computer, Data Processing as the subject) "RealAudio Surround, the fire-new Windows Media 9 beta"

And whats the difference between these two, again?

Re:Better than the fish...

[OneFix]

Sorry about that, some of you have pointed out that I used the same translation for both.
It should have read...

BabelFish: "RealAudio Surround, the fire-new Windows Media 9 beta"
WorldLingo: (using Computer, Data Processing as the subject) "RealAudio Surround, improved with low bit rates Windows Media 9 beta"

Has anyone ever considered...

[Jace of Fuse!]

That maybe Ogg would take off much better if the name weren't stupid?

It is. Just listen to it? And I'm not joking. Asthetics in some things wins over a greater majority of the time vs functionality.

Maybe if the file format was called something like OVM or something, then we would actually have a cool file-format name that is cool to say, even cooler than MP3 (which just sounds cool and high tech.)

Imagine...

Person: "Man, I was listening to those OVMs, this weekend... they sound really good!"

Person 2: "OVMs? I've seen those, are they cool?"

Person 3: "Are you guys talking about thos OVUMs?"

Person: "The wuh?"

Person 3: "Those OVUMs... I keep seeing them when I do web-searches for MP3s, they keep popping up instead."

er... well... maybe a little more thought should be put into a name. Heh. OGG... "Did you download any Eggs this weekend?" You know -- there --IS-- more to a file format than the technical specs.

If you think the above post was a bad attempt at humor, put good taste aside for a moment and concentrate on the point.

Ogg just sounds stupid.

Re:Has anyone ever considered...

[horza]

Whenever I hear the name 'Ogg' I keep imagining the caveman from "Chuck Rock" (now that was a good game) bumbling along the screen, stopping in the middle, and going "OGG".

Can we keep the official name "Ogg Vorbis" (as the author won't change it no matter what we say) but change the extension to .mp5? Can you imagine Joe Public looking for MP3s but coming across .mp5 files ("it MUST be better...")

Phillip.

Re:Has anyone ever considered...

[Junta]

Turn back the clock a few years and I'll bet you'd say the same thing about mp3. Now you say it sounds high tech and cool, but back then you would probably criticize it for being too technical. With hindsight, the technology was so superior, that people didn't give a rat's ass about the name, it was the only way of encoding. Look at every thing else, .rm, .avi, .mov, .mpg..... Maybe mov is familiar, but the rest just go to show that the name has little to do with success, it is about technical quality. The other issue at hand is entrenchment. On this count, you can argue the case that mp3 may be hopelessly in place since ogg is only marginally better, there is little incentive for the common person to fork over resources required to go to .ogg. But it won't likely be over the name. This is not a boy band, this is a file format. If the tech is good, people learn to live with the name. In this case, if the populace really couldn't stand the name, they'd probably say Vorbis or something. Crticism over the name is just too uptight.

If somehow .ogg comes to dominate in five years and another tech comes around, I'll bet you'd argue that .ogg is a good name, because it seems cute and peculiar and therefore intriguing, and x format is stupid because it's name....

Re:Has anyone ever considered...

[Nimey]

"MP3" isn't necessarily a good name either.
Used to be, when someone mentioned them, I thought they were talking about some kind of German machine-pistol, like the MP5.

Re:Yeah, like "MP3" sounds really smart

[rseuhs]

MP3 has one digit and no vowels. It looks like a 1337 h4X0r word, especially when written in lowercase. Therefore it has negative connotations, relating to online piracy and cracking.

Since when is that negative?

I think you have listen too long to propaganda, in real life Joe Consumer will run away screaming from anything that will not allow him to pirate. (Especially if he is used to pirate it)

Great now what?

[Chanc_Gorkon]

I know OGG is better. Seen it in person. Stil does not change the fact taht I don't have players where I want them. This will soon change I hope! Pocket Divx for PocketPC will play OGGs, but it doesn't read tag info concerning artist. Filenames are kind of hokey. At least I hear iRiver is looking at a ROM update to add support for OGG in the future. But I want to play OGGs where I want now....not 2 years from now. It's getting close....but I won't re-rip (only way to encode a OGG RIGHT....conversion from MP# is not a good option) unless I can do this.

ogg

[NetGyver]

In Other News:

WinMX has included ogg as one of it's search options in their newest client v3.3. Their website is devoid of update changes, but I haven't seen it prior to the release of v3.3. (as far as memory serves at least.)

As far as format of Choice(TM), i still perfer mp3s over ogg. I backed up a chunk (109 cds) of my cd collection into 320k mp3s and that was a *bitch* even with automatic cddb labeling. I recently purchased a portable mp3/cd player as well. There are a good number of car mp3 players as well, which extends the convenience of the format, not to mention the abundance of mp3 home stereo solutions.

MP3 is a proprietary format yes, but it isn't restrictive. John Q doesn't need the source code for the format, he just likes the fact that the mp3 format gives him lots of options when it comes to where he listens to his music.

Ogg definately has potential, it seems like they got the format down pretty nicely. Its the hardware-player area that they need to spend some time focusing on to really be a challange to the mp3 format. And I wish them luck because to me, it's nothing but choice, and choice is good.

As far as the name itself, i still find it a bit "weird" speaking the name. "Ogg", i mean that's the kind of noise i make when i'm sick :)

Re:ogg

[larien]

Re: backing up CD's. If you can configure grip [nostatic.org] it'll do 99% of the work for you. Insert CD, let it grab CDDB info, click a couple of buttons and rip. I've got mine configured to dump it into /path/to/mp3//.mp3

grip will also do ogg encoding, according to the Freshmeat entry.

moccasins better than shoes....

[Lumpy]

and it has been proven in tests that soft leather moccasins are better for your feet and feel better than the horribly designed dress shoes that most of us office workers wear.... yet widespread acceptance and the ability to buy dress-moccasins in a store cripples acceptance..

You want Ogg to win? it HAS to be in the hardware players.. and more specifically, in the next firmware update for many of the recent players (NEX-II.... Audiotron... etc...)

the numero-uno reason people use mp3 is for their portable devices.. If the only place I could listen to mp3's was my computer then I wouldn't waste my time encoding them.... except for maybe trading them... but that's illegal and nobody would do that...

ot: internet languages

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

As a moderately proficient German reader, I'm glad to be able to enjoy these kinds of technical articles.

Kind of OT, what other languages are folks finding interesting in today's Internet world? I've seen a lot of content in English, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish, but really, not much else, aside from the Italian page or two.

Is the Internet speeding up the proliferation of these 5 languages, and these 5 alone? And what happens when the Western world all speaks English/German/Spanish and the Eastern world all speaks English/Chinese/Japanese? I tried learning Japanese, but my meager brain was not up to the task. German and Spanish come fairly easily to an English speaker.

What ogg is not...

[BitGeek]

.. is a standard. AAC may not be as good as Ogg, but I'm encoding to it in my application because it is part of the MPEG-4 standard.

The Ogg team should get on the MPEG bodies and start lobbying to be included. This is the only reason MP3 was able to be as popular as it is-- it was a clear standard. Ogg should do the same.

IF, for instance, it had been part of Mpeg4 then any of the hundreds of thousands of cellphones, computers, pdas, musicplayers, stereos, tvs, DVD players, etc, that come out over the next 10 years that make use of the MPEG4 standard would be able to play back ogg content.

The last major standard like this was MPEG2 (and MP3 is part of MPEG1) so these are not things that happen often, and companies are highly unlikely to add playback support for something that's not part of a standard.

Phones will be MP3 capable going forward, but not ogg capable unless it becomes at least a defacto standard-- getting it into the Profile 0 of MPEG4 would have accomplished this....

This is not to bash the Ogg developers, just to give a recommendation for going forward.

How about OGG to MP3?

[dschuetz]

Okay, so I've got about half my 300-CD collection ripped. Some is ripped with 128k MusicMatch (with crappy joint stereo artifacts and pumping), some with 160k LAME, and more recent stuff with 160-256k LAME. I want to finish ripping everything, and re-do all the old stuff, at once (I even found an old 18-CD SCSI jukebox to help automate it just a little).

So, if I'm going to go through all this trouble, I'd better rip it to as good a format as possible. I'm generally happy with 160+ LAME, but if OGG can give better quality with smaller size, then I'm all for that. I briefly considered a lossless format (like FLAC), but the idea of a half-terabyte array for music, while cool in an uber-geeky way, doesn't sit well with my bank account right now.

I need to retain some kind of MP3 compatibility, for small portables (64k Nomad) and my "long trip" portable (20G Rio Riot), not to mention my three Rio Receivers (though we've got 3rd party software supporting FLAC and some OGG at this point).

My question, then, is this: If I rip everything to ogg at quality 6 or 7 (it's sounding like 6 would be 'best' for my purposes -- I'll never own a super-audiophile tube amp with 20-pound speaker magnets :) ), can I then transcode to MP3 at a lower quality (96 to 128 or so) without significant artifacts? Or will the simple fact of combining two lossy compression steps totally hose me? (sort of like re-compressing a JPEG image)

I understand why you can't take a decent mp3 and encode it to a 'better' ogg, the information simply isn't there. But if the output of a q7 ogg decoding is a near-perfect wav file, can't I then encode that at a lower bitrate without any significant differences from an original mp3 rip? Or will inaudible artifacts and/or the resultant lossy frequency spectrum coming out of the ogg decoder confuse the MP3 encoder?

My embarassing test results

[florin]

I know some people went to great lengths to do this test carefully, using high quality amplifiers and waveform analyzers and what more. I simply plugged headphones into my SB Live, listened to each piece twice, and then gave them a grade from 1-5.

I thought the 128 kbit was very hard because there were hardly any noticeable differences between the samples. The fact that they were very short didn't help. I handed out 5 points to 5 of the seven pieces, so the order there is almost random.

After the testing period had finished, C'T sent me the following results:

Ihre Bewertung für 64 kBit/s-Codecs:

Platz 1: MP3Pro
Platz 2: unkomprimiert (WAV)
Platz 3: Windows Media Audio
Platz 4: Ogg Vorbis
Platz 5: AAC
Platz 6: RealAudio
Platz 7: MP3

Ihre Bewertung für 128 kBit/s-Codecs:

Platz 1: AAC
Platz 2: MP3
Platz 3: Windows Media Audio
Platz 4: RealAudio
Platz 5: unkomprimiert (WAV)
Platz 6: Ogg Vorbis
Platz 7: MP3Pro

The order may not be what I'd like it to be, but my only conclusion can be that compression in general is good enough for me!

Ogg is God's gift to the classical music world

[cortense]

Or at least, Xiph's gift... Yes, we know already how much ogg rules! One of the things that I haven't seen mentioned is the fact that ogg encodes the entire file, whereas mp3 tends to loose about half a frame on either side, due to the fact that adjacent frames depend on one another. While this may be just fine for your Britney Spears cd, when you're listening to opera, it's just awful..

This makes ogg the ideal lossy compression method for classical music.. just one problem! There's no support for portable players!

Thousands of souls cry out, but are suddenly silenced when I commit the sacrilege of transcoding ogg to mp3, so that I can listen on-the-go. So I have to give up all the wonderful benefits of ogg (quality, gapless, great tagging, free, etc) for all the limitations of MP3, so I can actually listen to the music!

The moment I see a cdplayer that will play OGG and MP3, I'll put all my new music in ogg from then on!

Re-think this...

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Dont promote ogg on the basis that it is better quality than mp3. It is, but if you're listening on cheap headphones at a bus-stop right next to somebody digging the road up, who cares?

2. Do promote ogg on the basis that hardware devices will be cheaper as there are no royalties to pay.

3. Do promote ogg on the basis that it is the 'right thing'. Mp3 is *so* last year :-)

4. If people want to convert mp3->ogg - LET THEM. If they are that uninformed that they don't understand why it's stupid, just let them do it.

Translation (Site has an english version)

[Chucow]

Just thought it interesting that everyone is posting babelfish / translating service translations when there is an English version [heise.de] available from the site.

Ogg doesn't need to "win"...

[mcrbids]

There's an interesting detail that's commonly misunderstood about OSS projects. They don't have to be #1 in market share to "win".

All it takes for OSS projects (such as ogg) to succeed is that somebody continues to develop the project, and some people use it.

Linux is just now really starting to "take the enterprise"... I read about it every week in my CRN weekly trade rag, but Linux has been around over 10 YEARS before this!

Was Linux "losing" 4 years ago just because it wasn't well known yet?

OSS slowly wins because it is:

Good enough. Come on, let's face it: Apache isn't as easy to set up as IIS, and there are other alternatives out there that have some clear advantages over, say, Apache. But Apache is "good enough" and seems to have the most mindshare, so Apache it is.

Cheap/Free: Traditionally, the low-price leader is the one that wins. EG: WalMart, Microsoft. Linux is free, Apache is free, and OGG is free.

NT is cheaper than Unix (and so was slowly taking it over) until Linux came along, which is cheaper than NT. Now, Linux has arrested NT's progress into the enterprise & Unix spaces, and is slowly taking the market, piece by piece. Not overnight. Slowly. Linux will be here tomorrow, too.

Market share changes happen more rapidly when circumstances change to provide a clear financial incentive to switch.

Thus, Microsoft's license changes provide a financial incentive to switch. The active persuit of royalties for MP3 players provides a new financial incentive to switch.

And the price doesn't have to be high, it just has to be higher than before.

How many times have you driven by a gas station because the other one a mile down the road is $0.03 cheaper? Never mind that it adds up to $0.60 cents for a 20-gallon SUV, and you spend ~$0.50 of that savings driving the extra mile and a half, you do it. Be honest...

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why .ogg will win - eventually. So, re-rip your CDs, and with every single song, .ogg moves forward that much more.

So, give it time, and ENJOY!

What about MPC?

[BitterOak]

I must confess, I don't fully understand the German article, but it didn't appear they included the MPC [musepack.org] format in their comparisons.

Most people who have compared it to other codecs, including MP3 and Ogg, claim it is superior. You can read some of the discussions at Hydrogen Audio [audio-illumination.org] in the MPC forums.

I understand MPC, unlike Ogg, may be encumbered by some patents (as is MP3), but for a pure quality comparison, it should be included. Does anyone know why/if it was omitted from this comparison?

Re:Time To Switch

[dybvandal]

do not convert from mp3->ogg
this will not get you the result you want to

i am afraid you will need to re-rip all your music

Re:Time To Switch

[Mr_Silver]

do not convert from mp3->ogg
this will not get you the result you want to

i am afraid you will need to re-rip all your music

Unfortunately, this is a major issue which will always hinder the adoption of Ogg.

If you can't convert from MP3 to Ogg without losing sound quality (which you can't) then I think you'll find an extremely large number of people (that is, the 99.9% of people out in the world that don't read Slashdot) reluctant to change.

We have to face it, someone whose downloaded even as little as 50 songs from Napster is never going to touch Ogg if converting is going to screw over the sound quality.

Re:Time To Switch

[CoolVibe]

Do you encode your mp3s with mp3? I guess not. Do you see my point?

Don't convert your mp3s. Keep 'em. From now on, if you rip a new cd, use Ogg.

Maybe on a boring afternoon you could re-rip your already ripped cd's to Ogg and send the old mp3s to the bitbucket.

Fraunhofer's mp3pro doesn't have mp3->mp3pro converters. Why should Ogg Vorbis need that?

Re:Time To Switch

[ssyladin]

What? Rip from CD? Re-rip? Heck, boy, I just download them from WinMX, Kazaa, DirectConnect, etc. Tphffft - buy a CD. I'm the bastard the RIAA is trying to get!!!

Re:Time To Switch

[p3d0]

People could just use ogg for their new stuff. It doesn't have to take over the world all at once. If what you say were true, we'd all still be listening to music on wax cylinders.

Personally, I think one of the main incentives is not for the listeners, but for people who sell anything with an encoder in it: they won't have to pay Fraunhoffer. Once mp3 players are no longer maintained, the listeners will switch, just as they did with previous media changes.

Re:Time To Switch

[ANTI]

This is not 100% true.

Since both (mp3 + ogg vorbis) use a psycho accoustic model that drops "unrecognizable" information and both models are quite close, you might not hear a difference.

Just do the test:
1. Take one of your (r3mix) mp3s and convert it to ogg.
2. Decode both (.mp3 + .ogg) to .wav (mpg321 + ogg123 will happily do that).
3. Do a diff of the waves, maybe you'll have to adjust a small timeshift.
4. Look at the diff and drop your jaw while looking at the tiny jiggle in the LSB.

But:
Now rip that song again and encode directly to ogg.
The quality is much better.

Brief:
When converting mp3 to ogg you (usually) don't loose quality,
but a direct rip to ogg will (usually) be better.

Re:Time To Switch

[Mr Z]

Uhm, no.

When you decode your MP3 in XMMS, you'll have all the wonderful, yummy MP3 artifacts in that nice WAV file you just wrote. These artifacts will be encoded into the Ogg, along with whatever other artifacts Ogg may introduce. Decoding an MP3 to a WAV does not exempt you from the lossiness that is MP3.

Guess what? The quality will be worse than the MP3 was by itself, and worse than what Ogg could do from a clean rip.

In short: Don't do it, unless you have an Ogg-only player that you need to play the music on, and you *cough* "lost your original."

--Joe

Re:Time To Switch

[randomErr]

2. what's the best linux, windows and/or mac ogg player?

Try WinAMP for windows, and FreeAMP for for everything else

Re:Time To Switch

[CoolVibe]

I seem to remember something being mentioned a few days ago about a new ogg-decoding program that didn't require floats, and so this could be the basis for hardware decoders (such as portable ones etc).

Floating point maths is never a problem for hardware encoders. You just need to do your floating point math through fixed point math instead. It's more work for the silicon developers, but certainly not a problem.

Just a nitpick. Think nothing of it :)

Re:This test is flawed, OGG may not be better

[rjw57]

Surely if the aim of the codec is to reproduce the sounds in such a way that it sounds better to people then this is a valid technique.

Re:This test is flawed, OGG may not be better

[OrangeSpyderMan]

You are mistaken. It's Windows Media that does that. And anyway, this is a subjective test - what matters is what people say sounds better. You could also say the test was flwad cos they only chose people who liked listening to music with tin cans on their ears - it just wouldn't matter!

Re:This test is flawed, OGG may not be better

[Gainax]

I thought it was WMA that did the 3dB boost. I just encoded my Crystal Method stuff yesterday, and it came out crystal-clear, with the same loudness as the CDs...

Either:
A. I'm going deaf
B. danny256 is on crack
C. Someone slipped some crack into the french toast I ate this morning.

Here's what I encode with:
oggenc -q 7

Most people will say this is insane, and it probably is. I end up with .ogg files of a nominal bitrate at ~220 kbit/sec. Most people can probable be happy with -q 4 or -q 5, and end up with far smaller files as well (The Xiph people recommend -q 6 if you want lossless stereo coupling).

Re:Conversion

[Dog and Pony]

It is not so easy. You will, in best case scenario, end up with crappy sounding music. Since the algorithms for Ogg and mp3 are different, you can not just "translate" it from one to the other. You could encode your mp3s (say via wav) to ogg, but then you will have had destructive compression applied to the songs twice.

Re:Yahoo!

[PerryMason]

The thing is that most people really couldnt care less about the sound quality of their music. They're happy to listen to tape recordings of radio broadcasts of music on shitty boom-boxes. They simply don't know the difference.

For mine, this explains the massive boom in P2P music swapping networks. The chimps on campuses and in homes around the States download these tunes in mp3 format and play them through 10W speakers and really don't give a shit. These are the people who are costing the music industry while people who actually care about music quality are still buying, because they actually care about the sound. This also explains the steady increase (and current mini-boom) in vinyl sales.

The point is that MP3 will continue to grow, despite its flaws. OGG will remain a somewhat niche format, preferred by audiophiles. Just like VHS and Windows, they hold the market share despite their flaws.

Re:Is it me?

[Khalid]

Or maybe you need to see a doctor , just joking :)

Seriously, 128kbs/s is clearly different from CD quality, it's just not as brilliant, as clear, or as limpid, well you feel that there is very subtle thing missing. But you need good HIFI

I find the bass is off...

[Shade, The]

MP3s don't have as good bass as CD quality, at least from what I've heard. Oggs do seem to handle bass very well though; quite often I'm hard pressed to tell the difference between them and the real thing.

Re:Is it me?

[DrunkenPenguin]

It is you or your earphones. Why don't you people *invest* in good earphones? For example, for $50 you can get a very high quality KOSS earphones and your music listening experience will be unbelievable enjoyable! You don't have to buy HIFI equipment which costs several hundreds of dollars - buy decent earphones!

Re:Is it me?

[jridley]

It's you, you're going deaf. 128k MP3's sound like hell. They're OK for listening to music on cheap headphones while mowing the lawn or something, but in any kind of real situation, 192 or 256K mp3 is minimally acceptable. I'm anxiously awaiting the first OGG compatible portable.

Of course, depending on the kind of music you listen to, munging up the waveform may not have any noticable effect :-/

Re:Is it me?

[SHiFTY1000]

On computer speakers you wont hear a lot of difference, as the noise floor and distortion level of the speakers will be larger than the source. Most computer setups are pretty nasty.

However with a component amp and hi-fi speakers, it is easily to hear that mp3 has serious deficiencies up until around ~256kb. 320 vbs is pretty darn close to CD tho.

mp3 particularly has a bad habit of turning the treble into a munched up whooshing sound, i believe this is due to the higher sample rate necessary for higher frequencies. When you restrict this too much, its not so good for sound quality.

My local alternative radio station www.radioactive.co.nz has a big mp3 server they leave on at night, its very easy to pick.

It's you.

[DrSkwid]

but don't be downhearted.

Like running, listening is a skill that varies from person to person and can be improved with practice.

I've worked in a recording studio through which many many people have been and I've witnessed the variation first hand.
engineer : "Which do you prefer, this... or this?"
client : "Okay, play the second one now."

What makes me smile is that when I was a lad we were satisfied copying records to tape by playing the record loud and utilising the condenser mike on the tape recorder. Good quality was when there wasn't the sound of someone walking in the room followed by "your tea's ready, oh. what are you doing?" "shhhh mum, we're taping" on it.

Re:But we knew this already...

[Salsaman]

Well, of course we all knew it, but it's nice to have test results to convince the sceptics.

Hopefully results like this will make hardware manufacturers more keen to include ogg support in their players.

Re:But we knew this already...

[Powercntrl]

Anyone who has their computer linked to a less than cheesy hifi knew this already...

Funny you should bring this up... It's amazing how much more quality you can squeeze out of your EXISTING MP3 collection just by getting some better audio hardware. Before anyone starts taking my advice too far and goes to their local "overpriced audiophile extreme" store, here's how you can get GOOD sound INEXPENSIVELY:

* Get a good sound card. As a general rule, onboard audio stinks. The Audigy is popular - I personally don't like the way it sounds, so YMMV. Try the

Turtle Beach Santa Cruz [epinions.com].

* Good speakers can be expensive. Good headphones aren't. Next time RadioShack has the Pro 35's [epinions.com] on sale, pick up a pair for $19.

* Try a few different MP3 players - quality varies. If you're a Windows user, don't waste your time with players that are basically just DirectShow front-ends, they'll ALL sound the same.

Re:But we knew this already...

[hype7]

anybody else reminded of the "Pepsi Challenge" by this? the consumers always picked the pepsi when blindfolded and handed coke and pepsi, but when they went home, what did they keep buying?

hint: it wasn't pepsi.

-- james

Re:But we knew this already...

[Bedouin X]

Well I took the Pepsi challenge back in the 80's as a kid and always chose Coke.

Back OT though, the quality of OGG at 64k is really unbelievable. Maybe Nullsoft will consider making this a part of their NSV format.