Recommended Ogg Vorbis Encoders


Please check the more frequently updated wiki for recommended Ogg Vorbis encoders.

You should consider adding links to Garf's site and original compile. I already did that for ReplayGain. Some people are a bit cautious about ICL compiles so it's always good to have alternatives available.

Another link you might want to add is Case's excellent guide and encoder component for foobar2000: foo_vorbisenc_gt3

@ QuantumKnot

Thanks for the effort, this has been long overdue.

Cheers

What are the recommended Vorbis setting for 16k Vocal song? no music instrument, just voice.

Sample mp3 file for new encoding with Ogg

I want to encode the source of above mp3 to be Ogg for online stream & downloadable.

I know realplayer have this feature, i doubt Ogg has it but let me ask anyway. Can i have 1 Ogg Vorbis file which stream to user at their selected bitrate?

for example with real audio file we can encode it and tell it to support 16k 24k 56k etc and we have only 1 file for that. very cool.

Configurable SureStream™ Encoding — Cool Real Audio feature

It should also be noted that with the GT3b1 encoder, quality settings between 4.01 and 4.99 (inclusive) will give incremental increases in bitrate above what the 1.0.1 version would generate.

GT3b1 currently uses a nominal bitrate 20kbps higher for each quality level of 5 and above, but anything over -q 4 begins getting an increase as well. A quality setting between 4 and 5 with GT3b1 will use a "portion" of the tuning enhancements, but not the "full effect" of those enhancements until you get to -q 5 or higher.

This can be noted, for instance, by encoding a track at -q 4.25 with v1.0.1, and the same track at -q 4.25 with GT3b1.

QuantumKnot's "Recommended Encoder Versions and Settings" is a good attempt at giving newbies to Vorbis like myself an idea of what encoder to use. But there is no mention on what quality setting to actually use for transparency.

For example, what -q setting should I use in oggenc GT3b1 to get a quality equivalent to lame --alt-preset standard, for example?

Are there any recommended -q settings on this forum for the various versions of oggenc which give quality equivalent to the various --alt-preset settings in lame?

Adding this information to QuantumKnot's FAQ, if it exists, would go a long way to helping new Vorbis users not burn their fingers by encoding at too low or too high quality settings during their early migration days.

Regards,
Vinu.

The problem is that 'transparency' is a very subjective thing and different people have different 'ears'. For some who arent sensitive to pre-echo and stereo separation, -q 1 is 'transparent. For' me, -q 4 may be 'transparent' while to others who are sensitive to the HF boost, -q 9 or 10 is still NOT 'transparent'.

Garf has recommended that you start at -q 5 in GT3b1 and if ABXing shows that its not transparent, continue moving up. Personally, I use -q 5 when using GT3b1 and that's the lowest you can go to get the full benefits of his tunings.

Time to update for the merged ogg encoder (GTb2 based on 1.0.1) ?

Soren

Can anyone update dll's for the CDex into GT3b2 (recommended for all quality levels)?

John33 will be doing those very soon. Keep checking.

I'll post links for these as I am still without ftp access to Rarewares!!

OK, I've made all the GT3b2 compiles that I've done so far available at: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jfe1205/gt3b2/

Nothing fancy!! Just a list of files. The names should be reasonably self-explanatory. I'll get these up to Rarewares just as soon as I can.

I'm assuming the CDex dll's is the one named 'oggvorbis-dllsGT3b2.zip'?

*goes and downloads them*

Yep!!

It's great to see the 3 month after I asked it:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....howtopic=15274&
the Vorbis sticky FAQ/Help is at last updated ...

I just wanna add my personnal feeling about it, I have a 150gig experience in Vorbis now & I just wanna tell that I disagree with pointing total ogg newbie to GT3B2 instead of pointing them to the last official version first.

GT3B2 is absolutly NOT the standard in Vorbis in the wild ... it is an advanced HA user toy ...

on 4000 vorbis rip in the wild ... you will found : 1 Garf tuned rip at best ...

so if you are a total Ogg Vorbis newbie try last official Monty version first ... & see if the quality is enough for you ... & there is many chance (95% I would say) that it will be enought for you ...

my "convert MPC/MP3 user to Vorbis" experience learn me that:
1: most Lame APS users switch to Vorbis V1.01 Q5 (95%)
2: most MPC Q5 (or HA readers) users switch to Vorbis GT3B2 Q6 (5%)

(Note: Lame users are very easy to convert while MPC users are very hard ...)

... so if you can't ABX audio artefacts, it is most likely that you will stick with V1.01 ...
I know more than 25 Ogg Vorbis ripper friends & several Vorbis networks ...

NONE of them is using neither GT3B1 nor GT3B2 ...

I don't say that Garf, QuantumKnot, aoTuVa maker & John33 work is bad ... it is GREAT indeed ... but it will only be usefull in two case IMVHO:
1: Monty include the tweak to the official version without the damn 20Kbps bitrate jump.
2: They fork & create their real own encoder tuned for 64to128==>movie & 128to256==> music which will have an harmonized bitrate jump & willl cover all the audio/video bitrate range ... if they would do so ... they should reduce the quality setting mapping to keep the parity with the official version ... then we will have the equivalent of what is Lame versus official MP3 ...

In the wild estimation:

Versions:
pre-RC3: 4%
RC3: 15%
V1.00: 70%
V1.01: 10%
post CSV: 1%
GT3B: 0%

Settings:
Q4: 5%
Q5: 65%
Q6: 20%
Q7: 2%
Q8: 2%
Other: 6%

... so the Ogg Vorbis Standard is clearly V1.01 Q5 ... & that is what I recommend to Ogg Vorbis newbies ...

Hope it Helps ... Thks QK

Point taken. I'll include the official encoder as well for completeness. However, there is no golden rule which says the 'standard' version has to be the recommended one or the best one.

The purpose of this page is to let everyone know what is currently the best quality Vorbis encoder out there (whether it be for listening tests, archiving, etc.) and judging from the opinions of most people in the GT3b1 thread, Garf's tunings were superior to the official version.

The biggest factor in determining popularity is the amount of coverage. Hence you see the Xiph.Org version everywhere since its got its own page on Vorbis.com while GT3b1, as you point out, is only known by the few who visit HA.org. And for those newbies who do visit HA.org, they probably already have some experience with the Vorbis at Xiph.org, so informing them of Garf's version can only expand their impression of Vorbis as a codec of potential.

Why recommend the standard, just because it is the standard, when there is something claimed to be better, is compatible, and ifree to use?

Whatever is done, I think fixing the documentation and distributions of audio rippers is most important.

The conversion path for someone from MP3 -> OGG is hampered by misinformation, contradictory information, and most of all, PATHETIC documentation on the CDex and Audiograbber sites.

Perhaps an e-mail to the respective maintainers of those audio rippers would be useful.

Update your links, dude.

Everything is still pointing to rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org

Just remove the hydrogenaudio from the link and it should work

Done

Hi QuantumKnot,
I wanted to complain a little bit about the "GT3b2" confusion... The same dénomination (Gt3b2 for an older Garf tuned version and for the John33 merge between original Gt3b1 and 1.0.1) isn't very newbiefriendly...
Of course your "Ogg history" should put away any confusion but maybe this issue should be solved by a new denomination...
However my purpose wasn't to complain, i respect your great tuning work (and others coder one) for the ogg codec and i would like to see Xiph taking care about your worl...
Please apologise if the GT3b2 denomination issue has been discussed yet (it's quite probable...)...

Best regards,
Tanguy

PS: I've well understood tht the actual GT3b2 version is the John33 merge between 1.01 and GT3b1 and so i'm aware thats GT3b2 IS the recommanded version...

This GT3b2 should be exactly the same as the one John33 did so we decided to keep it consistent there. At the time John33 did the merging, I think Garf wanted the merge to be called GT3b2, despite another GT3b2 existing which wasn't any good. I didn't realise that the old and mostly forgotten GT3b2 was still known

Anyway, I'm all for a change to GT3b3. Any feedback on this?

Hi QuantumKnot,
Indeed i'm a little bit paleolithic...
No in fact maybe i've remembered some very old things about GT3b2 due to my status of very casual HA user...

So if i'm just the only one who thinks that the GT3b2 could make some confusion there is no need to inaugurate Gt3b3 name...
Maybe you should keep it for an AoTuV/GT3b2 merge if there is such a project... (in case the dénomination change should increase confusion...)
But why not let the HA ogg community give it's advice about this... I'm not a specialist afterall...
regards,
Tanguy

Maybe I'm misunderstanding things a bit but shouldn't it state that aoTuV is recommended for lower bitrates and GT3b2 is recommended for higher bitrates?

@QN

From the way you did the headings it looks like no encoder is recommended from q 4.01 through q 4.99.

Quite a wake up call that AOTV blew off the pack.

I thought that would be implied in the "128 kbps multiformat test'. But it was only a very quick change I made to get it up there. I'll definitely rework it, now that I have some time.

not very static at all

$ ./oggenc-aotuv
./oggenc-aotuv: /lib/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.3' not found (required by ./oggenc-aotuv)

how about 100% static version for those of us without glibc2.3?

Oh. I'll look into it then. Judging from the filesize, I was confident that it included everything. Maybe not

I also think GT3b2 can be newbie confusing. Actualy most of them don't know of New/Old versions. And somebody can accidentally use GT3b2-Old.
I propose to name merged version as GT3F (Final) or GT3S (Stable)

well, theres nothing "stable" about it

it doesn't at all address the problems <q4, and tests have shown that >q4 needs better/more tuning to be (more) effective than aotuv is

at this point it should be considered to tune aotuv for higher bitrates and drop gt3 all together... garf doesn't tune it any more, and all later versions from gt3b1 are just hacks anyways...


later

Seems to be a good choice to avoid any confusion indeed...

Hi! Could somebody help me? :
I`d like to use a lowpass filter when encoding with low bitrates (EAC). What is the additional parameter for the command line? Thanks in advance.

for NN kHz cutoff.

I think it would be nice if some information about possible candidates for next recommended versions is on the first post of the thread. That way people can get some information about them without searching wild. Like information about the Megamix merge and testing of it.

There is already a thread that lists out all the different versions.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=21126

As for candidates for the next recommended versions, I can only decide via listening tests from others as well as their opinions. Vorbis development is in a state of flux at the moment so one version chosen as recommended may soon be outdated by another (eg. Vorbis 1.1 may be coming out soon)

I've got a question regarding this:
I'm using dBpowerAmp music converter (Release 10.1) to convert from FLAC to Ogg (-q6). According to dBpowerAmp, it's using 'Release 11.1 (Ogg V1.0.1)' of Ogg Vorbis. But if I look at the tag of any given converted file more than once, it displays different information. One time it may read 'Xiph.Org libVorbis I 20030909 (1.0.1)' and the next time I open it, it may read 'Xiph.Org libVorbis I 20020717'.

Any idea what's going on? (or what version I'm actually using?)

Thanks in advance for the help!

~esa372

The old Winamp Vorbis plugin would overwrite the actual encoder version with its version whenever you changed any of the tags. This doesn't change the quality of the encode, it only makes the encoder string incorrect.

Maybe whatever you're using to tag your Vorbis files has the same bug?

IIRC, the old Vorbis plugin bug caused the vendor string to be changed to RC3.

esa372:

What program are you using the view the tag information?

Just would like to add that the compile of 1.1 with the impulse_trigger_profile switch available from rarewares has a vendor tag of Xiph.Org libVorbis I 20040920 and not 20040629 like 1.1 RC1.

Thanks. Change made. Actually, this is a bit confusing since the vendor tag hasnt changed in the source code. Hence the linux build with ITP is probably using the old vendor tag while the win32 builds use this new one.

I found out what the problem was... Peter Harris was right...


Apparently, this happens with several tag editors - JetAudio and Rio Music Manager both change the encoder version in the tag... as well as dbPowerAmp(!). Gotta be careful with these things!

Now I'm using Foobar2000 without any such trouble. But, what a hassle it was to trace the problem!

Prolly interesting to add:

Xiphophorus libVorbis I 20010816 (gtune 1)
1.0 RC2 GT1

Xiphophorus libVorbis I 20011014 (GTune 2)
1.0 RC2 GT2

Thanks for your EDIT of the 1st post QK... Very nice job...

Nice revision there QK - much appreciated

i'd like to use the new 1.1 but i hate these switches (i use oggdropXPd)
can someone make a new compile of the new 1.1 with GT3b2 tunings ?

Thanks for the update, QuantumKnot... excellent work..!

Just one question:
I see that the default setting for the 'microattack' is 2.7 - what (if any) is the default setting for the 'pre-echo'?

Anybody know? Is there a way to check this?

Thanks!

~esa

The answer is simple. The default value for impulse_noisetune is 0 impulse_noisetune is a relative setting. It will add to whatever is the default for that quality level. To force more aggressive coding of short blocks, lower the impulse_noisetune to negative values (max negative value is -15).

Thanks, QK!


Here's another question for you:
You said that...
Can you explain what this "something" is that we might be loosing by using the new ICL compiles rather than the MSVC? What are the potential drawbacks?

Thanks (again)!

~esa

I'm not familiar with the problems with ICL and in most of the cases where I've used it, it seems great. However, perhaps that something is 'certainty' or 'the warm and fuzzy feeling' But yeah, I think people have pointed out some issues with (particularly older versions of) ICL cutting corners in some ways that aren't good. I'm afraid that's the most detailed answer I can give. I'm sure there are plenty of others who know more about this than me.

Thanks for all your help, QK! It really helps us newbies out!

One more question:
Regarding the 'impulse_trigger_profile' setting, you said:I'm not sure what you mean by 'relaxed block switching'. Are you referring to a lower profile number in the 'impulse trigger profile' string (ie, --advanced-encode-option impulse_trigger_profile=0 (or 1))? In other words, are you recommending the use of higher ITP values?

I was intending to use an ITP value of 3 for most (if not all) of my files, but your warning to 'use sparingly and with caution' caused me to balk. Any clarification would be great!


Also, I noticed that in the 'Vorbis History' section, it still reads:Does this still hold true in light of the release of 1.1?



Thanks again. I hope all these questions aren't a bother...

~esa