It occured to me while reading the (excellent) news about ogg that there may be a risk in announcing ogg vorbis 1.0. I believe many people are used to mp3 as being 'the way'. While encoding options improve (e.g. lame versions) it's still mp3, not mp4 (a different thing altogether!).

I'd be interested in other's thoughts on this - should Ogg just be branded as Ogg (which is true, as the developers have mentioned several times with regard to backwards compatibility), and the *tools* labelled with version numbers?

Cheers, Paul
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Ogg stuff available at http://audio.ciara.us/rarewares/

My thoughts on this, if you care are...
ogg vorbis 1.0 means it is the first *real* release... The bitstream has been final for agez, so this is just the final 1.0 implementation of that 1.0 bitstream and feature set.

I am guessing that one day, when ogg vorbis 2.0 comes out, it will be because it has changes that mean that the ogg 1.x decoders can't cope with the files it produces. (eg, wavelets or another major change. Hell, that might even be 1.1, who knows).
For this reason, I don't see ogg vorbis 1.0 being in any way similar to mp3 vs mp4. More like a beta mp3 implementation going final; it is still mp3, but just the encoder maturity is referred to a 'final'.
Or something. Hope that makes some sense.

gnoshi - translation from thought to language has always been my problem.

I guess it just all depends on how widespread OGG Vorbis will actually be. If it's just a smaller but yet somewhat educated community, it will be like MPC, where everyone knows that version 1.06 can beat 1.04.

But if Vorbis will truly be as popular as MP3, then I guess educating the public would be a better idea than to change the extensions for the files after every release...

Well, don't forget that the "Ogg" part of Ogg Vorbis refers to a whole multimedia project that Vorbis is just a part of. Much as lame improves, vorbis will as well -- this you already know. There's also formative ideas for a 2-nd generation Vorbis that will use wavelets and things that won't necessarily be backwards compatible with Vorbis 1.0. Maybe it'll be called Vorbis II 1.0, or maybe it'll be Vorbis 2.0 -- nobody knows for sure yet. Well, except for maybe Monty, if he's thought that far ahead.

Much like everything else involving computers, there's always something better "just around the corner". You wait as long as you want, but the longer you wait, the longer you're not in the game.

Thanks for the thoughts everyone. Obviously I'm happy with Ogg anyway (been using it for many months), just a concern that versions might confuse the average person used to an (apparently) static mp3 version

Cheers, Paul