After a long wait, the Ogg Vorbis project produces the final version of the eponymous open-source audio codec which, according to the project manager, makes any opponent format pale.
“The time has come,” the time has come, writes an enthusiastic Emmett Plant, CEO of the Xiph.org Foundation, announcing the release of the first stable version of Ogg Vorbis 1.0. It took over two years of development to design and write the code behind this young audio codec, code that since the release of the first Ogg Vorbis 1.0 release candidate has required another year of changes and improvements to reach the current release. public.
This latest birth in the open source world, from which Punto Informatico has been following developments from the beginning, is a compressed audio format whose ambitions are to compete with the new generation technologies that aim to replace MP3, which is now more old, including ‘Audio MPEG4 and its derivatives (AAC and TwinVQ), PAC, MPC, WMA, and no less MP3Pro, the successor to the MP3 released last year.
The big difference from the formats we just mentioned is that Ogg Vorbis is completely open, non-proprietary, and copyright-free and patent-free. Last year, its libraries switched from LGPL to BSD, an option aimed at promoting their adoption also in commercial products.
With the release of the definitive version 1.0, Xiph.org hopes that its codec will become the most serious alternative to commercial formats, both for users, still largely linked to the old MP3, and for the industry, often forced to turn off. Salty licenses to integrate audio and video transmission technologies into your products.
Ogg Vorbis could get even more attention thanks to Theora, the project born from the recent agreement between Xiph.org and On2 Technologies for the development of a streaming platform that combines the Ogg Vorbis audio codec with the VP3 video codec. In this way, Ogg Vorbis is a major freeware opponent not only of MP3, WMA and other well-known audio formats, but also of complete commercial streaming solutions based on technologies like MPEG4, DivX, Windows Media and others.
Xiph.org chief Emmett Plant seems ready to demonstrate that the nonprofit can create cutting-edge technology with quality even superior to the noblest business solutions. These are some of his declarations … of war. “The best-known software companies are sacrificing the goodness of the projects on the altar of the will of the shareholders,” wrote Plant. “They want quantity, not quality, and they want it as fast as humanly possible. They strive to find the fastest way to get money, following it in the most profitable way. If in this way they eliminate a competitor, much better. This is what successful companies are expected to do. This is his modus operandi. ”
But does this system, the wonders of the plant, really benefit users by giving them better products? In his opinion, no, and Ogg Vorbis would be the living proof of it.
“Companies fighting each other for a share of the multimedia market, Plant says, have products that pale in front of Ogg Vorbis. As of this writing, there is not a single lossy audio compression codec developed by a for-profit company that can compare to Vorbis and win on a hearing test. ”
Plant, in an almost bold tone, launches a challenge that goes far beyond the original purpose of the project: to develop an open source alternative to MP3. Ogg Vorbis is not afraid of rivals, proclaims the charismatic leader of Xiph.org and invites all users to visit the page from which it is possible to compare, by ear, the quality of Ogg Vorbis with that of its main opponents: MP3, MP3Pro, WMA, RM and MP4.
The sources, plugins and tools to encode and decode audio files with the new Ogg Vorbis 1.0 codec can be downloaded from here for Windows, Unix / Linux, Macintosh and, soon, BeOS platforms.
To date, Xiph.org states that more than 300,000 people have downloaded the various trial versions of Ogg Vorbis.
In addition to Ogg Vorbis, Xiph.org welcomes other open source projects: Icecast, an online streaming software compatible with Winamp’s Shoutcast; CDParanoia, a digital audio track ripper; and MGM, a health monitor for Linux.
