[vorbis] Format comparison

[Craig Dickson]

Jack Moffitt wrote:

> Have youy listened to any electronic music at all?  This is a pretty
> seriuos problem, and growing in seriousness as the rise of DJ culture
> continues.

You mean continuous mixes? Sure. So you just rip the whole CD as one
MP3 file. No silence gaps. Or you get the WinAmp gap remover plugin.

Neither of these are perfect solutions, of course. With a one-file CD,
you can't easily play a specific track. Then again, the continuous mix
idea is that it's supposed to be a seamless experience, so people who
are really into that sort of thing probably don't play individual tracks
all that often; surely it can't be normal to play such a CD in shuffle
mode, either.

Anyway, are you seriously arguing that continuous mix CDs are something
the average listener is into? I think not. Can you name even one
continuous mix electronica album that has ever even gone gold, much less
platinum? The only platinum-class electronica artist I can think of is
Moby, and he's dismissed as pop music by a lot of serious electronica
fans. And he doesn't do continuous mixes anyway.

To look at it another way (perhaps a more relevant one), have you ever
searched for Paul Oakenfold or Sasha+Digweed stuff on Napster or
Gnutella (even back when Napster was a big deal)? I have. Usually
there's nothing. Sometimes you find somebody who has an album. I've had
better luck looking for cult pop acts from twenty or thirty years ago,
to say nothing of the top classic-rock songs or current hits.

Again, I like Vorbis and I want it to succeed, but I don't see much
point in kidding ourselves about all the imaginary great reasons that
the general public should want to switch. The major issue is patents,
and as long as the average listener isn't being asked to pay for it, he
won't care about that. The quality issue is distinctly secondary,
especially, as I said, for the average listener with his abysmal PC
sound hardware. I've known a number of people who are quite happy
ripping their CDs with RealPlayer at 96k. As long as they can keep doing
that for free, how can you take seriously the notion that these people
will perceive that Vorbis has anything to offer them, sonically or
otherwise?

By all means, continue beating the drums for Vorbis' superior quality
and freedom from patents. You're right, and eventually I hope you will
win out. I'll continue to do the same whenever I hear friends or
co-workers talking about MP3, RealAudio, WMA, or whatever else. But
let's not kid ourselves -- it's an uphill battle just to get most people
to consider Vorbis.

Craig

--- >8 ----
List archives:  http://www.xiph.org/archives/
Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request at xiph.org'
containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body.  No subject is needed.
Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.