[vorbis] I hate myself for asking this, but...

[Gian-Carlo Pascutto]

On Sat, 8 Sep 2001, elfin wrote:

> Hi!
>
> How good is ogg Vorbis gonna be at its highest bitrate?

Gonna be...I'm afraid the local fortuneteller is out of
town so I won't be able to say anything about the future ;)

> How good is ogg Vorbis now (compared to MPC or MP3)?

RC2 is comparable to the best MP3 encoders with the best
tuned settings (see first results of FastForwards listening test)

Since most people just use Xing or FhG and be done with it,
you could say that Vorbis generally gives better quality than
MP3.

There is no doubt in my mind once the stereo hiss and other
fixes are finalized, that we will beat _all_ MP3 encoders,
nearly always (at the same bitrate). I suspect this will
happen reasonably soon actually.

MPC is another matter. For what it does (VBR MP2-alike at 170kbps)
it is extremely good and without a doubt one of the, if not the
highest quality encoder available today.

I don't think Vorbis will beat MPC at its forte anytime soon.
Of course, you shouldn't forget that MPC uses patented technology,
the next version will be shareware and it cannot handle lower
bitrates nor has it the extra features that Vorbis has. (tag system,
peeling, ...)

I would hope that Vorbis will offer MPC-like quality at 160kbps
in the future, but I don't think it'll happen anytime soon.

> Are there gonna be any "advanced user options" added to Vorbis?

Monty has said he would add something like this, although no
details are known.

> Maybe you could add a 224 kbps option too. Not that I miss it,
> but maybe ...

Shouldn't be too hard, just like the 112kbps mode someone asked.
Monty has said he would like to have the encoder 'interpolate'
between the different modes so you could select any bitrate you
want and get it.


-- 
GCP

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