[vorbis] Format comparison

[Craig Dickson]

Aleksandar Dovnikovic wrote:

> I have to disagree a bit. Vorbis delivers higher quality in less space,

The average listener can't tell the difference in quality, and the size
difference, as of Vorbis B4, isn't terribly significant if you encode at
the same average bitrate (and remember that the masses have been
brainwashed to think that MP3 at 128k is CD-quality -- which it might as
well be, since the average listener's PC audio hardware is incredibly
bad).

> removes the silence gaps that we have with MP3,

The average listener hasn't noticed. If you take a CD of songs with
silence between them (the usual pop-music format), and rip it into a
bunch of MP3 files, the silence gaps are not a problem, because the CD
had silence between the songs anyway. Unless you're referring to
something else entirely that I haven't even noticed; if so, then this
must be a really esoteric problem, in which case, again, the average
user hasn't noticed and doesn't care.

> delivers a better tagging system

The average listener probably never edits tags, or looks at any of them
other than artist name, album and track name, and maybe track number or
genre. That ID3 is a hack is not a concern for the average listener.

> and also gives us bitrate peeling that removes the need for
> reencoding.

That's an attraction for stream providers more than for listeners. Some
technically-inclined listeners (who are probably a small minority) will
like it; the average listener will continue to have no clue. And if the
average listener (using Windows Media Player or WinAmp) doesn't have
Vorbis playback capability (WMP doesn't, and WinAmp doesn't by default
-- you have to add the plugin yourself), that far outweighs any
conveniences that the format might offer to the stream providers.

> How's that for solving some problems for the consumer?

Pretty lame.

I like Vorbis for lots of reasons, but I'm not the average listener,
either in terms of listening skills or concern for patent and licensing
issues. Vorbis has a serious uphill battle to win listener interest. I
hope it wins, and I do what little I can in terms of promoting it
whenever someone talks about MP3, WMA, or other formats, but let's not
kid ourselves. To the average listener, who is perfectly happy with 128k
MP3 and doesn't (yet) have to pay anything for it, Vorbis doesn't really
offer any compelling reasons to switch over.

Craig

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