[opus] question on Opus quality vs MP3

[LRN]

On 27.04.2015 0:10, Konstantin Smirnov wrote:
> Can Opus provide better quality than MP3 320kbps?

MP3 at 320kbps is crazy good. Most lossy codecs have this kind of converging
point at the far right of the scale as bitrate increases. The more bitrate you
allow, the less difference you see between codecs.
At 320kbps any more-or-less-sane lossy codec should sound the same. Opus should
be technically better, but the difference shouldn't be audible.

Opus *should* provide better quality on lower bitrates, where it *should* be
audible. Think 128kbps and less. The comparison[1] shows that opus sounds just
a bit better than mp3 at 128kbps.

However, that's for stereo. For more than 2 channels you'd have to wait for an
answer from someone who knows opus better than i do. I could find some specs
for multi-channel opus, but nothing is clear about multi-channel coding
efficiency (using redundancy between channels to improve efficiency). I do
remember reading that multichannel mp3 is (still!) patent-encumbered, so at
least opus wins in that regard.

> Can Russian resident use opus for encoding music file without any
> limitations from any countries laws and patents, so .opus file can be
> loaded directly on any website and get revenue from it without any
> royalties or licenses?

I am not a lawyer, but as far as i understand this is exactly the intention
behind opus - royalty-free, with no restrictions whatsoever, in particular - no
geographic restrictions.

[1] http://opus-codec.org/comparison/

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