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Hydrogenaudio Forums > Lossy Audio Compression > Ogg Vorbis > Ogg Vorbis - General

maikmerten

Jun 28 2005, 03:26

Hello,

seems Monty finished his job on a new high-speed encoder for Mercora. http://search.mercora.com/

QUOTE

Mercora moves exclusively to Vorbis
posted by xiphmont on 2005-06-27 20:56:00.91

Mercora is a large distributed radio network that enables anyone with a Windows PC to webcast his or her music to anyone else on the net. One can immediately search, find, listen and record music that is being webcast on the Mercora Network. Mercora now broadcasts *exclusively* in Vorbis using a specially commissioned ultra-high-speed Vorbis encoder. Naturally, replacing WMA with Vorbis also improved the sound quality!

Anyone who has wanted to try out peer-driven Internet Radio but was still waiting for the easiest possible [and squeaky-cleanest legal] way, here it is.

I'm on linux and cannot have a listen...

Edit: eeek... typo in topic...

Edit2:

From http://www.mercora.com/radio.asp

QUOTE

Listen to music in premium sound
Our specialized "open source" OGG/Vorbis encoders & decoders deliver awesome sound - sound that is better than what you get with MP3, WMA or any of the other media formats in the market. Listen to it and you'll notice the difference.

(the AAC guys will most likely disagree - but this is how marketing works

)

The interesting thing is the "open source" part... it seems, however, that they didn't release their encoder (yet?). Anybody with more information?

Hamman

Jun 28 2005, 04:19

Well, I can't really comment on the sound quality as my mother is hoovering, but the software is quite nice, and there's quite a bit of music. It's nice that they use an open source encoder instead of some crappy WMA or mp3pro.
My only concern is the legal issues; isn't there a risk that RIAA will shut them down in a month or so? Or is it legal do broadcast copyrighted material over the internet?

guruboolez

Jun 28 2005, 04:27

QUOTE(Hamman @ Jun 28 2005, 11:19 AM)

Or is it legal do broadcast copyrighted material over the internet?

I can't say for other countries, but in France, it's strictly illegal. This kind of software allows people to share unprotected material or music protected with less restrictive license.

maikmerten

Jun 28 2005, 04:33

From their FAQ:

QUOTE

Is webcasting music on the Mercora network legal?
Yes. Mercora has obtained the necessary licenses so that you can broadcast music on the Mercora Network legally.

Specifically, Mercora enables the webcasting of music according to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. § 114 (required Adobe Acrobat to read). Mercora has obtained the statutory license for the non-interactive streaming of sound recordings from Sound Exchange, the organization designated by the U.S. Copyright Office to collect and distribute statutory royalties to sound recording copyright owners and featured and non featured artists. Mercora has also taken care of all U.S. musical composition performance royalties through its licenses with ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. Most song writers are represented by these agencies but there are some who are not affiliated with them, and you will need to obtain their permission before you can webcast their music. Mercora also ensures that any broadcast using the Mercora client adheres to the sound recording performance complement as specified in the DMCA. Read more about broadcasting on the Mercora Network.

westgroveg

Jun 28 2005, 04:41

I suspect there will be much drama to come on this topic

but I'm also sure this company would have been well researched before OGG Vorbis developers started working with them.

I tried listening to a song but before I could even fill out the details the program stoped responding & I had to terminate it.

botsing

Jun 28 2005, 05:46

QUOTE(westgroveg)

I suspect there will be much drama to come on this topic but I'm also sure this company would have been well researched before OGG Vorbis developers started working with them.

Here is your drama

Mercora is what I would call 'pain-in-the-ass'-ware. After starting the installation I told my firewall (zonealarm) to grant it internet access. After that nothing...
except an unkillable process running in the background, program added to windows startup and zonealarm taking up 99% of cpu-time. Rebooted, tried again. I get a registration screen, filled it in, after that same story again. Uninstalled, but the unkillable process still kept running and the program is still on my hard drive. Reboot again. Uninstall again. Now the program's gone, directory still there. A quick look through the windows registry showed some 40 remaining traces of the program, which I all subsequently had to remove by hand.

Hamman

Jun 28 2005, 07:53

botsing: That really sucks. Well, it has been quite stable for me at least, but I might just be lucky (for once).
Regarding the quality, it waries from unacceptable to listenable, at least as background music. It's up to the webcaster to set the bitrate, so it waries greatly.

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