reading your forums from time to time i feel that not too many things have changed in the coding scene

still is vorbis the best for low and middle bitrates
for the highest 250p , mpc has not been reached in overall quality

since vorbis can be played on various devices with little firmware change or software on even mobiles (see oggplay on symbien os) do we need a commercial solution for everyday use (only for itunes buying music)

what do you think

IIRC AAC+ beat vorbis on Roberto's tests at low bitrates (32kbps and again at 64 kbps), and everything seems to do the same above 200 kbps.



I think most formats seems to perform about the same at most bitrates, so unless theres a special situation (ultra low bitrate, license fees), the choice of format is largely personal preference.

No we don't need it, and especially not when buying music.

commercial solutions in terms of DRM, it's just there to shove down consumers' throats

and IMHO, commercial codecs have yet to prove their vast superiority (at least to me)

Personally I'm in favor of DRM as long as it is fair. iTunes for example lets users burn 7 copies of a play list to a standard CD. That seems pretty fair to me since you can alwas rerip from the CD if desired with minimal quality loss. The only DRM I disaprove of is highly restricted versions like the one proposed on the HD-DVD specs. Anyways, DRM is not going away. All we can do is lobby to companies to be fair to the consumer.

Also, iTunes AAC streams much better than Vorbis in my opinion. I seem to remember a thread awhile that also agreed with me. Moreover, development on the Vorbis camp is non-existant while AAC is advancing pretty fast. If Xiph.org doesn't get their act together, they'll probably go the way of the Doo-Doo. Besides, the most popular audio codec is still MP3 be far. Vorbis, and especially MPC, are infrequently used.

Well a big reason for the better streaming of iTunes AAC than Vorbis is that iTunes AAC's bitrate doesn't vary as wildly as Vorbis. VBR and streaming don't necessarily mix all that well

Only really official development of Vorbis has halted, third party development in the form of aoTuV is actually pretty strong as listening tests have shown

MP3 is ubiquitous. Nothing else can claim that. Both AAC and Vorbis are quite a bit behind it in terms of total users. I do feel AAC has the upper hand on gaining more users over Vorbis due to a very popular audio player ripping to it by default.

I don't care for DRM at all, but that's my choice not to buy into it. I personally feel in a few years (well maybe 10 or so) with how quickly storage amounts grow lossy audio as the main storage for a lot of people will hopefully give way to lossless compression more and more. That being said I think lossy will always have a place due to DAPs.

I wouldn't dare say any one codec is really the best. Vorbis is quite strong in the 64kbps-200kbps range however. AAC is as well IMO. Then again LAME isn't shabby at all from the 128kbps range and up. You can't really go wrong with any of them to be honest as long as you have support for the format you choose on all your devices.

And I'm through babbling now