I, like many, use the ogg vorbis encoder. This article in today's Guardian (UK) may be of interest. In summary the writer states that ogg is a music file format without support or hope. Any thoughts?

I just got my iAudio D2



The difference being that Ogg is on its way up and Atrac and Real Audio are stagnant or going down.

I also don't agree with the quote (millions of users of atrac & real? ), but I don't agree that vorbis is on its way up either.

MP3 is going to be around for a long while thanks to its foothold, and there probably will be a gradual increase in the prevalence of AAC & AAC-compatable players with the advent of non-DRM iTunes.

Where does this leave vorbis? What exactly does vorbis have going for it that'll increase its popularity/usage? That it's free and open source? The general public is oblivious to this, as MP3 and AAC are effectively "free" to the end user anyway. The aoTuv builds perform great, particularly at lower bitrates, but nobody outside of HA knows/cares how well it did in a 128kbps listening test.

I'm not bashing vorbis, in fact I quite like it. It just looks to me like it'll eventually go the way of musepack.

It would be nice if all those crooning about the impending death of MP3 and WMA did not blatantly ignore the above fact. They both have wider support than anything else. MP3 isn't going away due to AAC or WMA any more than .txt files will disappear due to ODF/MS's Office formats.


True, but if that's really the case, how is it that FLAC is the most widely supported lossless format without any patent/IP issues? Or is that because its development predates that of formats from incumbents (WMA Lossless, ALAC)?

I have nothing against Ogg, the tests clearly show it's an excellent format. Unfortunately, achieving widespread support is more than a simple academic exercise that produces the best quality output (a point lost on many developers). From my viewpoint, FLAC rose to the top in the lossless category primarily because it was actively developed and promoted before similar incumbent projects (until just recently, lossless was pretty much ignored by MS and Apple, MS had a format in name only).

Ogg, on the other hand, is "just another" (in the marketing sense) lossy format competing against strongly entrenched MP3, WMA and AAC which are natively supported by the 2 primary preinstalled media players on the market. Neither of those 2 natively support Ogg, and they're unlikely ever to, either. The average user has to go pretty far out of his way to use the format, relative to the Big 3 codecs. I won't even get into the tagging/frontend issues, since the average person investigating the format probably wouldn't get that far.

As harsh as it may seem, while the codec will continue to exist and (sporadically, it seems) developed, I can't say I see much hope for it becoming mainstream either. However, I don't think it will suffer the same fate of being consigned to the abyss like MPC (those who say otherwise are just in denial), RealAudio, and ATRAC3

What you mean that the software that uses the format is open source?

So is LAME, for example:

http://lame.sourceforge.net/license.txt

Not that it makes much difference to anyone who doesn't want to modify the code, or doesn't like to compile from source for whatever reason, anyway. But insofar as anyone would want that some software using MP3 is distributed under open source licences, too.

Sorry for the off-topic, but why do you guys talk about Musepack as if it is a dead format. Yes, it has poor hardware support, but is perfect for PC playback. And yes, it wasn't updated for sometime (since 2005), but now development is going on. mppenc 1.16 & libmpcdec 1.2.3 were released, fixing the seeking issues, and now we are waiting for SV8. Just take a look here http://trac.musepack.net/trac/timeline
Once again: Musepack is NOT dead!

The wide popularity of LAME-encoded files is due more to the fact that it's practically the official audio encoder for scene releases than because the majority of users employ it for their personal rips. Were it not for the scene, I daresay LAME itself (not the MP3 format, assuming the scene just used a different MP3 encoder) would be in practically the same position as OGG.

Compare MPC's current status (support, popularity, usage, development, etc.) with that of OGG. I think you'd be hard pressed to say it's better overall (or more precisely but less tactfully, not worse). Technically speaking, any open source format is never fully dead, since anyone can jump on it at any time. But for all intents and purposes relative to the Big 3 and even OGG...

What a load....

Can't expect a journalist to really understand that people use what they are forced to use (who uses REAL or ATRAC by choice?) ...and citing his son as a 'credible' source sorry, but he is not into 'this sort of thing' if he's never heard of ogg vorbis.

Well, I guess, for me all that matters is that there is one good player with Vorbis support. That's all I need to be happy. Can't say I care if the rest of the world fumbles in the dark.

Apples upcoming AAC 256 kbps songs will do nicely for transcoding to Vorbis Q4.

No, buddy - the average user doesn't explicitly "choose" a format. But neither are they "forced" into using a particular format. They just rip into whichever their current media player offers by default, or offers in the options. For iTunes and WMP, OGG's not one of those options. As a result, for example, there are LOT of unwitting AAC users out there who have no idea what AAC or M4A are, or even that they're using the format. Sad but true.

His son is a member of a group known as "the average users," the most powerful usage "bloc" in the world whose actions have a lot more bearing on the success of a codec than the expertise of people such as us. The average user has NEVER heard of OGG. But as I said before, they could be using AAC unknowingly also. Usage is determined not by raw knowledge, but a combo of what's easily available and what works for the average user. Right now, relatively speaking, OGG fits neither of the above categories.

The point is that he's a heavy music user (DJ) and he's never heard of it. That's a problem (for OGG). Codec expertise isn't necessary for one to be a music fan. And even if he did know, there are plenty of people who know and still don't use OGG for a variety of reasons. I'm one of them. Yes, it's the best. No, it doesn't fit my purposes, setup, or current hardware/software ecosystem.

Maybe because it didn't become mainstream enough yet for interested (mischievous?) people to try to find patents inside it?

And if someone already found a patent he owns, he might be waiting for larger market acceptance. If he sued now, he would probably be able to catch nullsoft and a couple other big fish. He should at least until Apple includes it in Leopard, if he really wants profit.

If only the patent world was that linear and predictable as you paint it



We are waiting for SV8 since 2000.

But it wouldn't make any difference if it arrived now, anyway. Musepack stagnated while all other formats improved by leaps and bounds. It's no longer the undisputed champion at either quality or encoding speed. It's just an obscure format with shitty support.



...just like any other format out there. Yes, it is faster, but that should only be noticeable if your computer is 10 years old or older.

Besides, it's not that perfect for PC playback. If I take MPC files to a friend's computer, we'll have to start by hunting software that supports it, since chances are nearly 100% that his software won't. If I take MP3s, chances are nearly 100% that we'll start enjoying music right away.

Honestly, if given the chance, I would probably write an article with quite similar opinions. The fact that people are "forced" to use this or that format isn't going to make Vorbis look any better when numbers are thrown at the table. And yes, I know several people that are very much into music but don't know what vorbis is, or know because I mentioned it at some point.

Also, most of my friends that have iPods don't even know about AAC either. They just rip into whatever format iTunes rips by default, and just suppose it is MP3. In case you didn't realize yet, the actual compression algorithms being employed are absolutely meaningless to the vast majority of people out there.

I think that's more or less the whole problem for Vorbis. Music stores want to maximize their profits by using DRM, and Ogg Vorbis doesn't support it. On the other side, DRM-less music doesn't really need another format, as MP3 has proven to be good enough and free for most people, thanks to LAME.

With the companies not using it and Average Joe not using it (or not even being able to use it), that leaves only the enthusiasts. Sad as it is, things would look quite different IMO if Xiph.org implemented a DRM mechanism into the Ogg container. The fact that it wants to be free all the way is its greatest disadvantage. I love it anyway.

practically every method in FLAC is also in ALAC, which FLAC predates by several years. so if anyone is submarining then even Apple is not a big enough fish.

DRM has nothing to do with it. AAC doesn't support DRM either, that is why Apple had to create their own wrapper (FairPlay) around AAC to make it work for the iTunes Store. They could have done that with Vorbis or any other codec if they wanted. There were clearly other reasons to chose AAC over Vorbis.

I'm guessing the fact that AAC is an MPEG standard played a large role in that decision...

... and you don't have any issue with these similarities? I'm just asking.

Uhmmm... are you sure ?

http://www.sidespace.com/products/medias/



You, as old-economy industries managers, understimate the power of open sourceness: you can do whatever you want (or, better, whatever license allows).
That's the reason 'cause they're blowing out like brown leaves by the autumn winds.


Some examples:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/kamiariduki/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/frm/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/odrm/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/distdrm/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cctvdrm/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/authena/

...do you be a part of the revolution or just sit back on your a** ?

Could you point to a single project which is past the "Planning" phase?



I will join the revolution when it is past the hype phase and actually starts happening - if ever - thankyouverymuch.

One of these projects even says on the title page


Degital. Now that's a good start.

Sad but true, I have to agree. mpc does not play any role amongst most of the geeks. Vorbis does, but the hype around it is way not enough to have it play a role amongst the average users. And I think it's role is decreasing. A living codec needs the average user base in order to survive. This is not because of lack of drm... The codec needs a "critical mass" of users which it hasn't... Geeks are not enough.
We have to face the truth again and again: real life differs from what we see in our small HA world.

[nostradamus mode]Neither vorbis nor musepack will play any role in future. Vorbis will die. Musepack is dead anyway, apart from the 42 users out there in the world, who regularly use the codec. AAC will survive.[/nostradamus mode]

Well it's not geeks, the followers are geeks that prioritize filesize over battery time (for portable use) It reduces further the targeted market.

Well, actually I think such DAP centric discussion won't spawn anything new and interesting. Hardware support for Ogg is pretty low - partly because manufacturers don't care, partly because the Vorbis spec isn't exactly that friendly to players with little memory (albeit that species will finally die out thanks to the move to fancy GUIs and video playback - but back in the "critical" early 2000s that did matter).

However, there are niches where Ogg has absolutely no competition. On Linux it is what Windows Media is for Windows: The only thing shipping with encoders and decoders by default. Incidentially that's the world I am living in, so any thought of "has Ogg a future?" for me has a clear "not as a dominant format, but heck, yes" answer attached to it. It's the only viable solution in free (speech) environments. You could just as well ask "has Linux a future". It's a quite small niche, but it is a livable one.

In other news:

There'll be a <video> tag in "HTML5" that is thought to enable video playback without any external plugins ( http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#video ). Opera recently released an experimental build with Ogg Vorbis/Theora built in (go to http://labs.opera.com and download it there) and Mozilla also seems to opt for Ogg Vorbis/Theora ( http://developer.mozilla.org/presentations...7/the_open_web/ ).

They don't choose Ogg because they're loving "tree hugger formats" or because they don't like the technology behind the MPEG standards, but because there is no way to distribute free (speech) software with MPEG codecs (or something from Microsoft) and still keep the software globally distributable. That in effect means we may begin to see some Ogg in the web (most likely with Flash video as a fallback).

To put it into a nutshell: There is a *need* for Ogg in some environments (no alternatives currently in sight) while other environments (with the majority of people living in) just don't care for whatever format is used. The former means Ogg won't go away, the latter means Ogg most likely won't "replace" MP3 or MPEG video (actually I don't see AAC replacing MP3 either, but that is a different story).

If you're not a mad scientist or a dictator world domination shouldn't matter to you anyway - it certainly doesn't for me. Lately I was carrying some Ogg files to a friend of mine and we had no problem playing them back on his Windows and his Apple machine. That's all what matters to me. And as long as the big music stores wrap their files in DRM containers consumers couldn't care less what format is used: Before decryption it's all looking like digital noise, no matter what format was encrypted

Yeah, yeah. The difference is that Apple never released source code or specifications on ALAC. For someone to create a case against it, he'll either have to subpoena Apple into showing him the sources, or base his allegations on a reverse engineered decoder.

Vorbis has just added one follower, and that's me.

Having Ubuntu in my laptop and vorbis as lossy codec (flac as lossless) I have become more interested in using vorbis.

I even bought a 1 Gb Chinese Ipod Nano, just to have my vorbis files on a portable!

We just have to spread the word, that vorbis files are very efficient than your mainstream format.

Thanks for the explanation.

If you're talking about grassroots promotion, that's already been/being done with little effect.

My few personal ~128 kbps ABC/HR tests have given a slight edge to Nero AAC, but my new lossy conversions have been aoTuV b4.51 -q5. The main reason I'm using Vorbis right now is AAC's relative incompatibility with MusicIP tags (when archived, they don't play on foobar or Rockbox; apparently, iTunes is fine). That said, I'm still very pleased with Vorbis and would suggest it (and Nero AAC) to anybody who's willing to try something different.

Generally, I will use software that best suits my needs the most whether its open-source or not, though I'm willing to do a little bit of work if it's a free product.

Grassroots promotion is just silly. It's like those zealots that scream at people using Internet Explorer because they should be using FireFox (or maybe IceWeasel, eh?). I don't want my friends to think I'm a pinhead that cares too much about these idiotic, quasi-religious redefinitions of "freedom" (is there a more abused word in the lexicon?).

If anything, these redefinitions are certainly not "idiotic". Now the applicability of those said definitions or the behavior of some of the believers of the "Holy Church of reinvented Freedom" is a whole different story.

There's a fine line between balanced, reasonable advice and pure evangelism. I admit that it's often difficult to produce the former if you have a liking for a certain method, tool, etc.

Very good point. That's why I avoid giving advice

I have only converted one person into a Vorbis user. My sister.

She was amazed when she heard how good oggs sounded at ~80 kbps, and on her small hard drive she could really use some extra space. So we re-ripped all her CDs.

[offtopic]I don't think there will ever be an HTML5. XHTML 2.0 is next up. Becides, the <object> tag can (theoretically) already embed anything you could ever want into a webpage. It's just that the browser isn't going to know what to do with type="application/ogg". It would be nice to see vorbis/theora support built into browsers though .. as long as there is a firefox extension to let me choose if I really want to load it [/offtopic]

A question. Does it really worth to rip as ogg vorbis and confront the commercial standarts of digital audio. I mean, the article has its points. Me, as an example. I can't really say "this one sounds better" when i rip the same song in the same quality settings with different codecs. So why sould i bother myself and rip my cds in a widely unsupported and potentialy future unsupported format so that i can feel good "physcologically".

Of course i support free software, it is amazing something free coming in such great quality, but for us "non-commercial users" of digital audio, it doesn't seem like the most important issue. If i am to use some particular codec, it better come with big advantages that others don't have. Except a little more quality in sound (which i can't sense personally).

You need to weigh up the advantages and disadvantages for yourself. Personally I use Ogg Vorbis because:

* It sounded superior (to mp3) at the time of testing
* It is supported in the hardware I use (and software of course)
* I support open/free software where I can

If these things aren't true and important for you, then I guess you won't be using it.

I'm not sure of the relevance of 'potentially future unsupported format'... for me anyway. Ogg Vorbis is supported in Linux, Rockbox (and therefore many portable players) and foobar2k - I don't see any of this support disappearing for a long time.

I don't need Vorbis to have "a promising future" in order to use it It's the best format for lossy encoding, it can be used on every computer, that's all what's needed.

I do not intend to let corporate politics affect my music enjoyment, thank you.

gameplaya15143
The latest information I heard is that XHTML 2.0 is abandoned, W3C is now working with WHATWG on HTML 5.0. Sorry for off-topic...

turke
If there will be enough Ogg Vorbis users (and there is quite a lot of them already), it is very unlikely that the format won't be supported for a very long time. There is probably not a single player which doesn't support Ogg Vorbis.

Ummm... neither iTunes, WMP11, nor 9/10 DAPs support the format natively.

Sure, I forgot to mention I mean SW players. And for WMP, iTunes or RealPlayer you can easily add Ogg Vorbis support AFAIK.

Very soon, IMHO there will be no cellphones, PDAs nor PMPs. It will be all one device running a regular OS. So it will support formats depending on installed SW.

Btw. Ogg Vorbis is the only good quality lossy format, that is free from any fees for player makers. So it is only a matter of laziness (or company strategy) if they don't support Ogg Vorbis now. It used to be a problem of performance and memory (MP3 is easier to decode).

Yeah. Guess how many users (outside of HA.org) enable 3rd party codec support on their software players. Not that many.

It's not so much about what is possible as much as it is about how easy it is. To an average user, it's much easier to just use what's already on their PC than figure out how to even get started with OGG, which usually requires a visit to this website (or another like it, if any exist) if you're going to do it correctly, not to mention downloading and installing more software. Compare this with inserting a CD and simply clicking "Rip" in WMP or iTunes.

That's a very good description of the present. Only Linux supports OGG as shipped.

The more things a manufacturer officially supports, the more tech support resources it needs, which increases its costs. Hence OEMs tend not to officially support codecs, etc. that aren't sufficiently widespread.

There are more considerations:
- the fees for the other formats are low (mp3) or very low (wma, aac) - low enough not to care much.
- for mp3, the fees will be zero somewhere after 2010, 2011 anyway when the last patents expire
- the dev support for the other formats is *perceived* (true or not, that's a matter for debate) as better
- ogg is claimed as patent-free. as discussed earlier on HA, it looks like it isn't on at least one count. if the shit hits the fan, the lawsuits will fall on the head of whatever ogg-using company with the most money. For mp3 and aac this is also possible, but the first casualty will be MPEG-LA, or Microsoft (see last month's news). For wma, it will be Microsoft. Xiph.org has no money, so it will be the biggest device maker with ogg support. Any legal department will be weary of it, because there's no big organization to back up its claims or take the first hit if the lawsuits come. Best wait until 2010 until these patents expire.

As someone said, Ogg Vorbis is the standard for the OpenSource world (and all its developers ) . For an os audio software (player, ripper, editor, ....) supporting Vorbis is quite mandatory ^^.

And since the OSS world is quite healthy these days, Vorbis will not have any problem to survive in the foreseeable future, if it will remain open and if it will remain the (technologically) best open format: it doesn't need to be widely used.
The oss world doesn't follow strictly the rules of the market, it usually chooses simply the best open solution.

Also (ihmo) If an hw player manufacture (without the money for a mass marketing campaign) want to enter in the market using something different than cheap prices, it needs to go thought lead users that usually are geeks that know about Vorbis.

When mp3 will be free of patents the challenge will be (ihmo) on multichannel sound more than sound quality... How good Vorbis handles it?

Not only linux, BSD too and probably every Desktop OS except Win/OSX. (Yeah I know, these two are the major players )

Win/OSX do not want Vorbis to exist. Seems like the main reason they don't support it, don't you think?

I think seeing multichannel support as a motivation for future audio-only developments is mistaken, as there are vanishingly few multichannel only music releases and the technology serves little to no practical purpose for the majority of genres. The video world, clearly, is a lot different in that respect.

I would say almost everyone installs 3rd party decoders. People want to play "DivX movies", so they usually install a codecpack, some of them include support for Ogg Vorbis. I hate codecpacks, but Haali Media Splitter and ffdshow will do a very good job on playing Ogg Vorbis/Theora in DirectShow players. But Xiph.org should give the users a clear advice: "Use this software".



Yes, you're absolutely right here. This is what I said and wrote already many times. Using Ogg Vorbis is to complicated, things need to be easier to attract more users.

Hmmm... this may be OT, but a quick check of the W3C web site shows that a Working Group for XHTML 2.0 was created in March. I don't see anything about "abandonment" with regard to XHTML.

But yeah, back on topic, open source codecs never die... they just become inactive, collecting dust until some determined soul works and improves on the code. So while Vorbis may be losing market share to AAC, it won't totally disappear.

You see, this is a perfect example of why you should think before you type.
In one short sentence, you have revealed so much about yourself - probably more than you ever intended.

While you intended to say "almost everyone installs 3rd party decoders", what you actually conveyed was "almost everyone I know installs 3rd party decoders, because I don't know any normal people at all. All my friends are highly computer literate. Most of them built their own PCs. I don't even talk to people who use WMA, especially those who use it while thinking it's mp3. And as for those people who play CDs in those really old things, er, CD players...!"



Sorry - couldn't resist.

There is a world out there that thinks "a music track on a computer" = "mp3". I think this will stay for a long time. I think people will be talking about "mp3s" long after the format is dead.

Just like people talk about "Hoovers" even if someone else made the vacuum cleaner.

Most normal people do not install codecs. Most normal people don't even install their own choice of media player unless someone else does it for them!

Cheers,
David.

@2Bdecided: +1 to what you said. It's a common mistake by experts, because we think everyone else reasons as we do, given the same information we have.

Most of us could not imagine someone actually not caring about the quality of his/her music library even when presented with the facts and motivation to do so.

This site has just over 36000 members. How many digital audio users are there in the world, lol? We are very, very, alone

I work as a technician doing maintenance in the labs of several schools and colleges, and I've been asked by several of them to install codec packs so they can see divx on the PC's. eMule is *really* known by the "normal people", and as such, .avis (divx) and .mp3's are the average user file.
Obviously,for the first, codec packs are required on a common PC.

So while people might not know how to install codec packs, what the codec packs contain, or even if there are better or worse codec packs, they *do* know that they have to install them.

Could you back that up please? What's that "at least one count" patent?