[vorbis] Vorbis determined to be as good as MPC at 128 kbps!

[noprivacy at earthlink.net]

From: "Ralph Giles" <giles at xiph.org>
>
> > The tested version is not, unfortunately, a "completely tuned, ready for
> > consumer" version.  But it does show that it can be substantially
improved
> > over what the current Xiph version is.  The Xiph version will always be
the
> > low quality 'reference' design, and never the 'high quality, highly
tuned'
> > one that consumers should actually use.
>
> Of course. Vorbis was designed to have significant scope for encoder
> tunings, and it's great that other groups are producing their own

That's true.  Codecs are specified by the decoder, just so the encoder can
be significantly improved over time.

> forks of the encoder. As long as they're still makeing valid Vorbis
> files, (and calling them that) everybody benifits. That doesn't mean
> there's somehow something wrong with the format, or the reference
> encoder for that matter.

I didn't say anything about the format itself.  (Although some comments
could be made once you start talking about using them in portables, decoder
requirements (cpu, memory, etc.), needing good battery life, and ultra-low
bit rate modem streaming.  Some of which are the goals in Vorbis-2.)

As for the reference encoder...  Well, if you've read many user comments
about it, and read about listening tests on it, you'd probably agree that
the official Vorbis encoder, while decent, definetly has its flaws.  And, as
first shown by Garf and now others, there is significant room for
improvement in the sound quality and bit-rate.

That's why so many people recommended Garf's version for oh so long instead
of the official version.

It's kind of like the mp3 situation.  The ISO encoder worked, but was not
great.  But yet somebody took it and tuned it and developed it and ended up
with LAME, which is generally considered to be the best around, and can do
pretty well against newer formats.  But I wouldn't dream of recommending the
official ISO version over Lame or even fhg.

There was a lot of room for improvement, just as there is for the official
Vorbis.

<p>--- >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.