Ogg/Vorbis?

[MovZig]

Curious to know if anyone else is interested in this. Vorbis is a free and open-source audio codec that gets way better compression than MP3 and is comperable to AAC. The nifty is that you can use a low bit rate, get a small file and it will still sound pretty good (e.g. an MP3 at 64kb/s sounds pretty blah whereas a Vorbis file at 64 sounds like a higher quality MP3 file).

Pros:
- Better audio quality
- Less space used on site

Cons
- Not supported in as many players

[stefan4711]

I think you said it yourself. Not many players support it. Why bother? :!:

[Patch_Winter]

[dharden]

[Patch_Winter]

There are a number of decoders out there too... it would probably be hardest for mac users, I mean, OGG was originally a Linux format, and there are plenty of ways to do it with Windows...

[Jacara]

[stefan4711]

You should also bear in mind that not all of us listen to the files on the PC. I guess that not many of the MP3 players like IPOD or others would play OGG. So drop it for the time beeing.

[MovZig]

Theres a plugin to let QuickTime listen to Ogg files, but it doesn't gather the tags from what I understand (which sucks). AAC files are about the same, and those play on iPod but I'm not sure how many other players can play those (ogg is free to support in a player, aac has to be bought but can still be encoded freely).

My "ogg enthusiasm" comes from file quality and less space :D Something that you don't get when transcoding files.

[Patch_Winter]

Alright. I guess it would be inconvenient at present to completely switch to OGG (although cool for some)...

Just tryin' to keep us ahead of the pack.

I have a feeling, though, that in a couple of years we'll be having this discussion on drastically different grounds. (OGGs iz teh fyewt-tshyer!)

[neil1357]

[homerj1620]

[url=http://www.speex.org/]Speex[/url] would be a better choice. It's part of Xiph like Vorbis, but was desiged for speach.

[MovZig]

Speex tends to muffle the sound a bit though, and is not kind to background noise (things that normally might not be that bad get very annoying).

[wix]

OGG isn't like Betamax. It's a free format. No one owns it.

I would like to see WMM go towards OGG, but I think it won't happen since iPods don't yet support the format.

[EMG]

[Akir]

Vorbis implementation isn't that hard a thing to do, and it's extremely easy to convert to MP3 with VLC.

And personally, I already have about five different media players just to handle all of the obscure propriatary junk (WMP because it'll play DRM WMA, Quicktime for compressed QT video, Realplayer for encoded RM, VLC for Fricking everything, and Foobar2000 just for the masstagger).

And VLC isn't that hard to get, either. The installer is pretty much one-step, and it'll play any unencrypted format under the sun. Plus, It's available for virtually all systems, even available in source form if you want an ultra-optomized version. Heck, it's worth switching to vorbis just to get people away from Windows Media Player (WHICH IS EVIL!!!!! how can a media player that crashes all the time be so popular without good media support!)

[boomsmee]

I Pretty much use vlc exclusively, with the exception of quicktime for .mov movies. (vlc still dosn't handle those very well with sound problems and stuttering, even with an optimized version) the interface could use some improvements, but if you know how to do it is is a lot more customizable and can do a lot more than WMP. Want to watch a dvd displaying colored alphabet characters to approximate the video? You can do it. The only thing going for WMP is its a bit easier to use.

[just_lurking]

Just a thought, why not give the 'tists the option to upload a lossless version of their file and then encode it to what ever you want on wmm's side of the connection?

A single wavpack/flac (both available in easy to use programs on all major platforms) file could be used to generate a complete set of mp3s, oggs, whatever else @ 96, 128 and 192 kbps in <30mins.

And you could stash the original file away in case another codec/bitrate becomes popular in the future.

A nice plus would be that the tags on the files would be consistent/useful (I'm a programmer so I've a bit of OCD when it comes to metadata, I realise others may feel it's not a big deal).

Anyway just my idle thoughts when I came across this thread.
You know the kind of thought; in a perfect world were printers never jam, toast is always golden brown and no movie gets less than 4 stars this is how wmm would handle file uploads. :)