[vorbis-dev] beta 2

[Monty]

My branch that I've been working on for the last few weeks is now the 
mainline; once I add a few more modes (mode_A.h through mode_E.h, 
corresponding roughly to 128,160,192,256,350 kbps stereo) and Mike Smith and 
Chad get the modes into OggEnc, we'll be at beta 2.

A few things to note:

I'd been really really hoping that I'd squeeze the last bit of performance out 
of non mid/side stereo to handle correlated noise (eg, voice) as smoothly as 
LAME/mp3 with mid/side.  It's just not going to happen.  Compare them in mono 
and Vorbis wins hands down.  With m/s, however, the resolution boost to mp3 is 
too much to catch.  Of course, in a month or so, we'll have mid/side stereo 
and then the winner will be clearly Vorbis across the board.  I'd simply hoped 
to win on non-coupled stereo alone.  Oh, well.

(OTOH, the fact that a 64kbps mono Vorbis stream sounds as good as a 80kbps 
mono mp3 is cause for happiness.  I just wanted more :-)

Also, the current modes setup is a temporary hack.  For one thing, submitting 
a mode description in a huge struct hardwired into the lib will present a 
binary compatability straightjacket.  I'll be changing that aspect of the API.

Lastly, I won't have all the modes I wanted in by noon tomorrow (eg, 96kbps 
isn't there yet).  Hopefully all the others will be.

Monty

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