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Today's Topics:
1. Re: Advocate Digest, Vol 11, Issue 2 (Brian Kemp)
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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 13 Apr 2008 10:33:19 -0400
From: Brian Kemp <address@hidden>
Subject: [Advocate Play Ogg] Re: Advocate Digest, Vol 11, Issue 2
To: address@hidden
Message-ID: <address@hidden>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Jon:
This is good. However I'm going to make one suggestion here:
Don't call names. Use "Microsoft" and "Apple"; if you don't your
argument comes off as much more childish and less well-thought out.
c: what kind of free?
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Message: 1
Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:49:14 -0600
From: "Jon T" <address@hidden>
Subject: [Advocate Play Ogg] Follow up to Stevey[dot]eu
To: <address@hidden>
Message-ID: <address@hidden>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
To Steve (Stevey[dot]eu),
Thank you for your contribution.
I would like to add a few items about Ogg.
a.. There are several objective tests that can show you that "byte" for
"byte" that Ogg outputs superior fidelity to MP3. The best test of course
is the listen test. When listening, understand the better the hardware is
(headphones, amp., speakers etc), the more one can hear the superior
output of Ogg.
b.. I have noticed that there have been several PC games that my kids
have installed where I saw .Ogg files being installed. SMART company.
This relieves them of any licensing fees for the distribution of their
music. I know all of the Lego PC games are like that and a lot more.
c.. On the PC level, Ogg can be played on all audio players that I know
of. In my opinion, the best, latest of the he Ogg decoders and encoders
can be found on the Rarewares Site. http://rarewares.org/ogg.php . It is
all free.
d.. On Rarewares, there is this outrageously simple and "cute", Ogg
encoder/decoder front end program called oggdropXPd .
http://rarewares.org/ogg-oggdropxpd.php .
There are even versions of it that are customized for 64 bit
processing. Adding the support "dlls", adds decoding from other formats
which gives oggdropXPd to encode several different formats to Ogg.
e.. When shopping for a portable media player (PMP), MAKE SURE you
send the vendor a email or call to marketing asking them if the support
Ogg. Do it even if you know they don't and remind them that it is license
free. The pressure from Microshaft/Crapple (virtually the same company),
to attempt to kill of any open source software would be the reason that
they won't have decoders for Ogg and most likely the lossless open source
Flac and Ape. ALWAYS ask when shopping on the web or in retail stores
and let it be known that you will not purchase a unit that DOES NOT
support the superior open source formats like Ogg, Flac, etc.
f.. There is enormous pressure put on companies to follow the "greedy
brick road", and do what Microshaft/Crapple want then to do. For example,
to support only the "W" formats and MP3 formats that are customized to
include the DRM virus. Fortunately DRM is dying a slow but steady death.
For example, Amazon.com proudly displays that their audio downloads DO
NOT contain DRM. All DRM does is hassle the customer and limit exposure
of artists. I have wrote to Amazon about including some superior open
source formats to give their customers a choice.
g.. I personally have two Portable Audio Players made by a South Korean
company, Cowon/IAudio. I have the IAudio U3 and the rather spectacular
Cowon D2.
Both of these players natively support Ogg and Flac as well as the
usual suspects. Also they can be connect generically to Linux boxes to
upload and download their media.
While Cowon is not sold in retail stores, at lease not in the U.S., the
are available from the Cowon web site, Amazon.com, newegg.com (where I
have purchased both of my units) and loads of other large online stores.
The D2 is a few years news and blows out audio at 74watts and my little
U3's amp outputs at 64watts. My recommendations would be to look at their
D2 or their IAudio 7 line. I will plug in my D2 in my standalone, $58
Philips DVD player to play videos, audio and photos. IT can connect to
about anything and with its power, it works great on other systems and of
course at a personal player. I am sure that there are other Portable
Media Players that support open source formats, it is just that overall,
I like Cowon the best for audio quality and flexibility.
h.. We CAN create customer pressure to create changes with how we spend
out dollars. Make sure you let other vendors know that you want Ogg
support . That is on stand alone DVD players as well.
i.. Last little editorial . When encoding my files to Ogg, it is
important to understand that Ogg works with quality settings as opposed
to how MP3 works with bitrate settings. There are three Quality (or Q)
settings that I use. If the source audio is of low fidelity quality, like
a podcast and contains speech, OR size of the audio file is of
importance, I use Q2.
If I am posting some music on my web site or for general purpose use,
then Q4 is what I would use.
Most of my encoding is done using Q6. That is what I use the most for
music that I listen to on my Cowon portable media players and PC. To be
honest, I have not been able to hear the difference between the original
source or a lossless format like FLAC while using Q6 and the size of the
files come out at a very reasonable size.
Jon
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