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Topic: Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal? (Read 7342 times) previous topic - next topic
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Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

which should be better ?

I currently host these file in .mp3, they are ok but  with lots of noise.

I want to encode all my source to Ogg either vorbis or speex, I seek your guidance .

I prefer to have them in less then 24k Mono as i have about 1800 hour worth of song and 24k will use about 40GB and i only have 60 GB space in my server.

I currently have the file as mp3 at 16k Mono

Thanks in advance.

Sample file i want to have in Ogg

Reminder, that link is a religous sound file , please dont be offended

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #1 –
There was a few comments in the Vorbis mailing list some time back about this.

*IF* Speex works just fine for you, then feel free to go with it.

However, it is questionable whether it will ever gain the 'wide' support that Ogg Vorbis has, so you may later have difficulty in listening to them.  But if that isn't going to be a problem for you, then that's not a problem for you.

However, speex can be a bit limited.  Earlier versions were pretty limited about working with just speech and could have problems with aplause or a chorus of voices repeating a phrase that had just been said by the preacher / pastor / etc.  And you can totally forget about any singing of any sort.

I remember reading one tester who commented that it worked okay in many situations (sermons, actually), but that every so often there were sounds in the recordings that just simply did not encode well and that he'd have to switch to a different format for those.

I don't know if newer versions have the same problems / limitations, but I suspect speex is true to its name in that it's aimed towards just plain speaking with no other sounds or singing or music.

Realistically, about all you can do is pick out a few dozen sections that you feel might cause problems and try them with both speex & Vorbis.

You may end up feeling that 8khz mp3 is better.  Or WMA.  Or WMA9.  Or Real.  Or AAC.  Or MP3Pro.  Or HE-AAC.  Or...  Feel free to limit the bandwidth a bit or tweak other settings and just try.

It's a little time consuming but since you have so many hours of recordings, it'd probably be a good idea to actually do some testing.

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #2 –
I spent quite some time already testing both but i cant find the differences, its just sound much better then current mp3 i have though, but i am not sure about vorbis or speex.

My ear power is average and eventhough i have great sound card my speaker are cheap and not as good.

I delayed encoding to Ogg almost 18 month now  because i cant find frontend for it earlier ) as I am tied with winxp  and know nothing about command line thing.

Now its time to support OpenSource  so i must make them in Ogg by next month.. something i set myself to do.

All help is really apreciated.

Thanks

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #3 –
ACELP.net or ACELP.wide is probably what you're looking for. Do a search, rjamorim has posted about it once. That's how I got to know about that algorithm.

Here's a link to: Developer's Website

Edit: It's not open source. It's just a very low bitrate lossy algorithm whose psychoacoustic goal is preserve vocal quality.
The object of mankind lies in its highest individuals.
One must have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #4 –
ACELP.net sound very good however i prefer to go with opensource from now on

Jaleel

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #5 –
Forgot to mention, the file i want to encode will be listed in my website for user to be streamed Online,

I believe most user at my website are using winamp and window media player.

Both speex and vorbis has plugin for both player so i am not worried to use either one  I just cant decide which would give better result,

I think a 16k 16kHz Mono is what i should keep the file at. so anyone have recommended encoding parameter for that setting with speex and Vorbis.
Once i get the recommended parameter i think i will encode some file with both speex and Vorbis and let my user give their comment / vote about the file to make life easier for me.

Thanks

Jaleel

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #6 –
Assalaamu'alaikum, Jaleel, 

Speex has some artifacts when it comes to encoding voice that Ogg Vorbis avoids.

I've chosen Ogg Vorbis the Qur'aan recitation files I have on my site, Hidayah Online -

http://hidayahonline.org

Click on audio, then go to the Qur'aan section, and choose one of the recitors.

It works out wonderfully, especially for he 56k modem users.  I use 44Khz mono files at the lowest Vorbis quality (-1), and they come out very decent.

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #7 –
Alaykum Salaam

I dont think that is the case anymore with the latest 1.0.3 speex as it has serious bug at wideband earlier  ..

P.S your website audio in
Mp3 is 16k
Ra is 16k
Ogg vorbis is 34K.

that 34k is way to high for me  as i have 7000++ file  for 1800 Hour

Jaleel

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #8 –
In that case, using OggDropXPd, I've found I can get acceptable results by downsampling the incoming audio to 22kHz and encoding anywhere from -1 to 1 quality.

You can go even further and downsample to 11.025 kHz, but Ogg Vorbis does not excel at this low sampling rate as it does at the other two higher ones - but maybe you can play around, and get it down into a range that is more acceptable.

Don't forget to also play around with the low-pass filter settings, as most vocal recordings aren't really using the same spectral range as music, so you can gain some additional bandwidth room in that manner, as well (as well as reducing some artifacts).

That tool, really, is simply amazing.

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #9 –
I tested some file with both and they dont sound any different to me :|

speex --quality 5
Ogg -q -1
mp3 quality -0 ( hehehe )

the source is 16Khz Wav and they produce 17Kbit end file, they sound very much better then the Mp3 though

Ogg file

Spx file

Source Wav resampled at 16khz

Mp3 file

ok the only thing is I applied wavegain to the source wave file before encode to vorbis and speex and after i encode mp3 which i then applied mp3gain.

By the way i use speex-win32-1.0.3 with speek frontend..
ssrc to resample the original wav to 16Khz
vorbis-tools-1.0.1-win32 with Oggifier frontend by speek
CDex with Lame 3.93.1.32 latest stable version from lame website.

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #10 –
Try WMA, they are excellent for vocal at very low bitrate
I don't really like WMA9 ACELP.net, its background noice is to loud for me
WMA  8kbps 8khz mono? consider it !
or 10kbps? ots even smaller than 16kbps
Ummmh WMA is not opensource

since you use winxp, encoding WMA is not a problem right? and you can encode wma for free coz you've paid M$ when you buy windows

feel free to use closed source like wma, ppl in  this forum use closed source Nero and CEP too?
use only the best software if you can afford it
ppl use linux becaus its more stable than windows, free from viruses, and finally its free, not totally because its free. If Linux is far lousy than windows and often crashes for no reason, ppl will rather pay to M$ for Windows even if Linux is free?agree?

OGG is not bad too, its much better than mp3 at 16kbps, but i prefered wma, try to encode to wma
Or if you are an expert, you can tune vorbis the way you want it to be (one of OSS advantage) 

WMA
Windowsmediaaudio is Mother of Allah - so you must use it!
:
just kidding

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #11 –
Kekeke, God has no Father, No Mother bla bla bla

Yes i can encode it but i am not sure about distributing those file, if they need any licence for it as i will be streaming them.

Beside, I need to apply Gain to them and i see only Mp3, and Ogg have these, WMA? I am not sure.

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #12 –
You could use wavgain.

Are the files very long? If so, and if the level is consistent within each file, you could save hours by just using wavgain to find the correct level for, say, 1 minute of the file, and then use something else to apply this gain to the entire file.

For "ease of use" for all the non techy users, anything that is built into windows is a good choice. It just "works" - they don't have to do anything.

But you'll annoy all the hardcore geeks by supporting Microsoft!

So you can't win...

Cheers,
David.

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #13 –
Yes i use wavegain to calculate and apply to the wave file with +5dB as
the default is doing it at 87dB then i encode it as Vorbis and speex.

The original file have ~87-99dB. each file have same volume throughout the whole file i think.

there is 114 file each collection and each file are from 30 second to 2-3 hour long.

Microsoft has help allot of people including me 

Yet its not a reason for me to stay with MS in audio format when i definately get better result from Ogg.

I just need to know which would give better result for Speex or Vorbis for these?
I heard differences between them when i concentrate my ear to pass the bad things from my speaker but i cant decide which sound better, i know they are different.

another is i need to know what are suggested parameter to encode these file to these very low bitrate, preferably around 16Kbit while 11Khz/16kHz/22kHz/24kHz wont matter to me as i want to stream these online.

I assume the GT3b1 is not optimised for lowbitrate for Vorbis and i should stay with the official release 1.0.1 Vorbis.

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #14 –
Jaleel, I have heard (maybe someone can confirm this) that Vorbis 1.1 will also include many enhancements for low-end as well as high-end bitrates (though 1.0.1 has some for the low end as well, I believe), including Garf's tuned Vorbis settings found in GT3b1.

But I don't know how long you can hold out. 

One question - are planning on just moving to Vorbis without looking back, or are you planning on having options for users to download?

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #16 –
thats great quality at that bitrate..

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #17 –
It was these clips that made me feel Ogg was superior to Speex, I believe.

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #18 –
Speex is also OGG  .. now i know speex is not for these of file we have, speex work real well with normal speech not song type vocal.

Speex Or Vorbis for Vocal?

Reply #19 –
What do you mean, exactly?  Speex is part of the Xiph foundation, and it exists in the Ogg wrapper, but it is not Vorbis audio...

Oh, I see...I said:

Quote
It was these clips that made me feel Ogg was superior to Speex, I believe.