What is going on with Vorbis? (or Xiph overall) Options

[rjamorim]

Today I was checking RareWares' links page to find broken links, and happened upon Xiph's page. I noticed the "news" there were 3-4 years old.

So I was wondering, does anyone, by any chance, know what is going on there? Are they working on Vorbis2, or Tarkin, or Theora? Have they disbanded and only the web pages remain? I remember that in Emmett's time, he would feed us news non-stop, mostly from #vorbis (he was a little too loud, matter of factly :B). Now, we listen nothing but crickets.

Do we have some insider here that knows if something is going on there, at all? Maybe Coalson or Valin?

And what the hell is Emmett up to anyway?

Thanks for any info.

R.

[Spikey]

Well, for my money, I find the 'ease of encoding' argument an interesting one.

I'm no expert in these matters, I'm a member of HA to learn more and understand more, not dole out advice.

But- in my experiences, I find popular MP3 encoding programs such as 'LAME' to be convoluted and confusing- whereas using the OggDropXPd Lancer build is damned easy- set to whatever quality you want and drag and drop! (And set tags and whatever else you want of course.)

Obviously, as was said in this thread or another (which linked to this thread) most people simply hit 'rip' in their ripper or player (which does rips) of choice. But as has been covered in this thread, Vorbis isn't currently used amongst such 'average' users, but rather more sophisticated ones.

So I think saying to such users, use Lancer build, and use WinAmp with a codec you may/may not need to download, isn't asking much of such users, if Vorbis use/ease of use (or at least, understanding) is our desire here.


Incidentally, hasn't some HA users recently expressed a lack of ability to distinguish between Vorbis and MP3 (and probably other codecs like AAC) at bitrates of around 128 kbps? I would have thought that was a barrier to taking up Vorbis, if most 'audiophiles' or audio enthusiasts can't even ABX the difference at such common (dare I say, low) bitrates.
If average users who probably use 128 or better kbps MP3 files, you get my point- saying "Vorbis doesn't really sound different, but you should use it", plus asking to use different software, isn't a very enticing argument.

Note that that's not my opinion, I use Vorbis for several reasons (quality, filesize, open source/free, easier than LAME, and so on). But I run a music website, and if a forum member puts that to me (the question that doesn't MP3 and Ogg sound about the same as most commonly used bitrates)- I can really only say "Yeah, if that works for you, that's great", or "Yeah, there really isn't much difference". Not really satisfactory answers, but I'm not sure what else to say without getting into codec wars.

- Spike

[Junon]

Incidentally, hasn't some HA users recently expressed a lack of ability to distinguish between Vorbis and MP3 (and probably other codecs like AAC) at bitrates of around 128 kbps? I would have thought that was a barrier to taking up Vorbis, if most 'audiophiles' or audio enthusiasts can't even ABX the difference at such common (dare I say, low) bitrates.
If average users who probably use 128 or better kbps MP3 files, you get my point- saying "Vorbis doesn't really sound different, but you should use it", plus asking to use different software, isn't a very enticing argument.

Well, the 2005 multiformat test concluded that users actually weren't able to distinguish between Vorbis and MP3 at a VBR average of around 128 kbit/s. Since the test was carried out in this community it's safe to say that even a lot of audiophiles actually fail at ABXing the differences.

And that leads to the "barrier" you described: There does seem to exist a psychological barrier that prevents people from testing bitrates below the 128 kbit/s threshold, simply because they're aware of the often poorly encoded 128 kbit/s MP3 material found in the internet. A good example for this claim is this quote:

But I cant believe that 128kbit files are absolutely transparent?

Be Positive obviously often had the pleasure of listening to non-transparent 128 kbit/s MP3s, which has resulted in the conclusion that this bitrate isn't adequate for transparent listening experiences. From a technical point of view this argument doesn't make any sense for different encoders, since all of them make use of their own algorithms to create the audio data. This is especially valid for entirely different formats, like MP3 vs. Vorbis in this case, but how should you explain that to the technically uninterested, average user? She/He will keep encoding to what she/he already knows about, and this will most likely lead to 128-192 kbit/s files. At these bitrates Vorbis doesn't provide any serious benefits compared to MP3 for the majority of listeners, rather disadvantages due to less compatibility, therefore the format remains uninteresting for them.

I even doubt Joe Public would actually want to seriously test ~96 kbit/s AAC/Vorbis vs. 128 kbit/s MP3 due to this psychological reason. He'd most likely become victim of a placebo effect when listening to the AAC/Vorbis encoding, simply because he knows that the bitrate is lower. And from my own past experiences (prior to regularly reading these forums) I can tell that the necessary blind listening tests aren't carried out by the average user. She/He most likely just adds both test files to the audio player's playlist and listens a bit to them, being full aware of which file represents which codec. And this, of course, can't lead to an objective result.

[MedO]

He'd most likely become victim of a placebo effect when listening to the AAC/Vorbis encoding, simply because he knows that the bitrate is lower.

This goes so far that many people seem to think that bitrate is actually the same as sound quality. A friend once told me that he had found a new format (don't remember which one it was) that produced "smaller files than mp3 at the same bitrate" (not an exact quote), and I think someone posted in this forum, who was concerned because his losslessly compressed files had a lower bitrate than the original wav.

So maybe it would actually be better not to talk about bitrate at all when telling uninformed people about codecs different from mp3, but instead about file size, which is something people might understand better.