Ogg Vorbis, ADVANTAGES Part 4
Additional characteristics
The Ogg Vorbis format has several very interesting features, which we will now see.
ReplayGain technology
ReplayGain technology allows you to equalize the volume level of various songs and also helps eliminate distortion from songs at high volume. When using ReplayGain, the audio data in the file is not modified, it is only analyzed, and the information for sound correction is saved in the file’s metadata. When playing the processed file on a ReplayGain compatible player, the sound will be corrected automatically according to the correction data saved in the file.
There is a similar program for Ogg Vorbis – VorbisGain. As a more convenient option, you may suggest using the ReplayGain function built into the Foobar2000 player, which performs the same operation as VorbisGain.
Multiple songs in one file
As already mentioned, an Ogg Vorbis file can contain multiple tracks with their own tags. This function is very useful for continuous audio CD encoding. To create such a file, simply “paste” several Ogg Vorbis files in binary mode in the desired sequence into a common one. This can be done from the command line using the copy command.
copy / b test1.ogg + test2.ogg + test3.ogg out.ogg
This command will merge the files test1.ogg, test2.ogg, and test3.ogg into a common out.ogg. The resulting file will contain multiple songs at once. Each composition has its own labels. On players with 100% Ogg support, all songs in the playlist will be displayed as if they were opened from different files. On players with poor format support, the first track name will be displayed, but all songs will continue to play. You can edit tags within such files in foobar2000 itself; This player is fully compatible with the Ogg Vorbis format.
Edit without transcoding
The Ogg Vorbis format allows simple editing operations (cut start or end, replace frame, etc.) without re-encoding. To do this, you can use the standard utility vcut.exe from the Vorbis Tools standard package.
Reduce the bit rate without re-encoding
Lowering the bitrate without re-encoding is not a trivial task for any format. However, for Ogg Vorbis there is a utility for this task: Vorbis Bitrate Peeler.
WARNING
A complete algorithm has not yet been developed to reduce the bit rate without re-encoding. The proposed utility is purely experimental in nature. Maybe it is suitable only for small changes in bitrate, no more than ~ 10 kbps, for example, to adjust the file size to a certain size. Otherwise, the quality degrades a lot, because the program simply reduces the size of the frames in the file, removing the first available components without first analyzing their value.
Due to the lack of preliminary data analysis, the program works almost instantly. The bit rate change is set in the form of a coefficient that indicates how many times the frame size needs to be changed, that is, bit rate.
bpeel input.ogg output.ogg [factor]
As a side effect, it is possible to increase the bitrate without degrading the quality, although this is a rather useless function. Unless, perhaps, it helps in the event that a portable player requires a higher bit rate than the existing one. If it doesn’t help, we recommend using iRiver’s Ogg Bit Converter to convert Ogg Vorbis files to a different bit rate.
conclusion
As you can see, the Ogg Vorbis format is the most modern and optimal solution in the audio compression format market. If you follow the dynamics of the development of the format, you can easily see that it has a future. A large number of developers around the world are constantly developing the format, bringing it to perfection. It would seem that everything that could be done has already been done. However, it is not. The full potential of the format has not yet been revealed. There are still many problems that have not yet been fully affected. But we’re only going forward! We are the format, its developers and common users.
