[vorbis] beta2?

[Gregory Maxwell]

On Mon, 21 Aug 2000, Hugo van der Merwe wrote:

> The debian vorbis-tools package is labeled version 1.0beta2-1 - does this
> mean that better compression for stereo has been implemented? (I forgot

Joint stereo. No, not implemented yet.

> what the correct term for this was.) I am waiting with a couple of CD's I
> would have ripped and made mp3's of (I don't have a multi-cd shuttle in
> my laptop... ;), so that I can rather make ogg files, but I don't want to
> make them now and have to remake them later.

Why wait. So far, mode 3 appears to be perceptually lossless on a wealth
of samples (I'd love to see counter examples). If you can accept the
160Kbit rate then go for it.

> (Decoding and re-encoding
> using lossy compression will give a worse result than just encoding once, 
> right?)

Yes. Don't do that.

> That brings up the question - will the quality of vorbis streams produced
> by vorbize continue to improve, or will there be a point at which I can be
> sure that it will make good quality streams that will not soon become
> "obsolete" (in quality)? This stereo thing is of course a good example of
> what I mean...

The 'quality' won't improve, the bitrate/quality will improve. I.e. right
now I believe the 160kbit/sec avg mode is perceptually lossless, after
joint-stereo and more enhancement, we will probably achieve the same
quality in the 120kbit/sec or less range.

Waiting would likely be like waiting for a new cpu to come out to
upgrade. You'll wait forever. Vorbis encoders will be continually
improving for a time to come.

Almost 10 years after the widespread availability of software mp3 codecs,
today there are still quality enhancements occurring on mp3 encoders and
(IMHO) mp3 has a lot less headroom then Vorbis for growth without format
changes.

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