[vorbis] Format comparison

[John Morton]

Craig Dickson <crdic at yahoo.com> wrote:

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

>  The average listener can't tell the difference in quality...

> > removes the silence gaps that we have with MP3,

>  The average listener hasn't noticed. 

> > delivers a better tagging system

>  The average listener probably never edits tags, or looks at any of them...

>  > and also gives us bitrate peeling that removes the need for
>  > reencoding.
>
>  That's an attraction for stream providers more than for listeners. 

The average listener you're describing here is obviously the lowest common 
denominator. They don't even care about encoding formats, they just want to 
listen to stuff. Marketing Vorbis to these people simply involves having the 
decoder included in as many players and devices as possible, or having 
support for the format only a hyperlink away from being installed.

It's the producers of encoded material that matter. This group includes 
people who want to archive their CD collection, which are rather a lot of so 
called average listeners, as it happens. Being able to get 160kbit mp3 
quality for 128kbit  is good, even though storage is cheap. Being able to 
encode Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall or the latest Tool album without
the prospect of wincing between tracks is good. Using bitpeeling to squeeze 
lots of tracks onto a portable player without re-encoding is good. Hell, this 
rocks for J Average Listener who doesn't encode their own tracks.

Then there's the stream providers. If vorbis can capture just 20% of the 
streaming market, it's set, and I think bitrate peeling is the killer feature 
with the right tools. Think about it - your server could encode your stream 
at an archival rate and both store that stream for later rebroadcasting, and
send it to the bit peeling pipe line that can provide as many streams at 
different ceiling bitrates as you need. Quality-wise, you're future-proof. As 
the listeners bandwidth improves, you can provide them higher bitrate streams
at the touch of a button.

I think vorbis has got the features to comple a critical mass of people doing 
the encoding to start using it, all it needs is the tools to make the 
desicion a no-brainer.

John

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