Recommended Ogg Vorbis

Vorbis, being a continuously developed standard, improves all the time. Plus, being an open (i.e. patent-free) standard, it has many 'third-parties' that produces, and most of the time, improves, its utilities.

Here you can find some guidelines on which utilities to use, and what settings will provide you with the best quality.

History

(For a highly detailed description of Vorbis history, check out OggZealot's Ogg Vorbis Historic where Monty also adds a few more details too). Ogg Vorbis reached version 1.0 in July 2002. It is the official Xiph.org encoder (the one you get from vorbis.com). HA codec developer, Garf, did his own tunings, based on version 1.0 to produce GT3b1 and GT3b2. Both encoders showed improved pre echo handling for q values of 5 to 10. It was later judged in an internal listening test that GT3b1 was the better of the two. There was a minor bugfix update earlier that year in March, which only appeared in the CVS at Xiph.org. This consisted of very minor bug fixes, which do more to correct odd problems that may occur rather than improving quality, including (garbled noise output and gaps in streams). This was referred to as Post 1.0 CVS. Quality problems that mainly affected low bitrates were later addressed in a new bugfix (1.0.1) that was released.

Post 1.0.1 CVS was released late December 2003 by Monty at Xiph, and includes a true CBR template. In order to simplify the situation where we had two encoders (1.0.1 and GT3b1), OggDropXP developer John33 merged the sources to give us GT3b2. Once the 128 kbps multiformat test was completed, Aoyumi's aoTuV Vorbis tuning was determined to be the best Vorbis encoder. After the success of aoTuV beta 2 encoder, Xiph.Org merged their tunings into the official CVS branch to produce the long-awaited Vorbis 1.1. Aoyumi's later release of aoTuV beta 4 encoder as of November 2005 significantly improves Vorbis' quality while enhancing the compression. It is now the recommended encoder by 3rd party developers at Hydrogenaudio.

Aoyumi's latest release is aoTuV beta 4.51, released in December 2005, which improves low bit-rate quality even more. However, it is still undergoing peer review before it becomes the recommended encoder.

Near the end of 2005, after aoTuV beta 4.51 is released, Xiph.org releases Vorbis 1.1.2 which only provides bugfixes on Vorbis 1.1.1 (a merging of Vorbis 1.1 with aoTuV beta 3). So, although this is the 'official' version, it is not recommended.

Recommended Vorbis Encoders

(adapted from Recommended Encoder and Settings post compiled by QuantumKnot)

Windows binaries

John33's oggenc2.8 is a special version of the Ogg Vorbis encoder. "Features include compression from lossless files (Monkeys Audio, LPAC, FLAC, OptimFROG, WavPack and Shorten - requires presence of decoders), and the ability to specify 'padding' in the headers for subsequent insertion of Tags." (from Ogg Vorbis page at rarewares)

• aoTuV beta 4.51 (MSVC compile)
• aoTuV beta 4.51 (ICL compile for P3/AMD Athlon)
• aoTuV beta 4.51 (ICL compile for P4/AMD Sempron, Athlon 64))

If you prefer a nice drag-and-drop interface, then you can try John33's OggDropXPd (Windows only). "Features include compression from lossless files (Monkeys Audio, LPAC, FLAC and OptimFROG), auto-tagging, renaming of encoded files, setting of advanced encoder parameters, use of VorbisGain tags on decode, Playlist (.m3u) creation, and others." (from Ogg Vorbis page at rarewares)

• OggDropXPd aoTuV beta 4.51 (MSVC compile)
• OggDropXPd aoTuV beta 4.51 (ICL compile for P3/AMD Athlon)
• OggDropXPd aoTuV beta 4.51 (ICL compile for P4/AMD Sempron, Athlon 64)

(work in progress, guide will be completed soon)

Linux binaries

• oggenc aoTuV beta 4.51 and libogg 1.1.3 (static gcc 4 compile) with impulse_trigger_profile

The static GCC 4 binary was compiled by QuantumKnot.

3rd party source code

• aoTuV Homepage (contains modified source code 'written in C' and downloads of oggenc)

The source-code contains modifications mostly to the psychacoustics model and bitrate allocation, i.e (psy.c and bitrate.c)

These are other Ogg Vorbis encoders that were tuned by 3rd party developers (outside of Xiph.Org).

aoTuV beta 4 Now the recommended encoder

Developed by Aoyumi and based on libvorbis 1.1.1, many people have reported this encoder to give better quality at low to medium bitrates. It includes a -q -2 option for the lowest bitrate. According to guruboolez' latest listening test on classical music, aoTuV beta 4 performed magnificently well at -q 6!! (see Aoyumi's website for information above)

aoTuV beta 4.51 The latest encoder

Many HydrogenAudio enthusiasts report that this version gives even better quality for low bit-rates. -q 1.5 becomes acceptable, even good enough, and -q 4 is now near-transparent! However, more peer review is needed before this version becomes the recommended encoder.

Optimized binaries

These are highly optimized encoders developed by the Ogg Vorbis Acceleration Project that are much faster than the standard binary builds with negligible to nearly no effects on audio quality, including speed up routines, i.e (mdct.c)

• oggenc2.6 aoTuV beta 4 (Lancer 20050709) (Win32 Build)
• oggenc2.6 aoTuV beta 4.51 (Lancer 20051121) (Win32 Build) -- Latest version

See Lancer Information and downloads page above

Recommended Encoder Settings

Refer to the table below. For best results, use -q 6 or higher.
Ultimately, the best -q setting will depend on your demand. Feel free to experiment.

General Command Line Usage:

oggenc -q n inputfile.wav

(where n is a number from -1 to 10)

e.g. oggenc -q 5 inputfile.wav

It should also be noted that due to it's inherent VBR nature, Vorbis supports fractional numbers, e.g. 5.50 or 5,50, depending on where the tool is compiled.

Switch	VBR target (kbit/s)	VBR range (kbit/s)	Channel Coupling	Noise Normalization	Note
-q -2	~32	~32 - ~64	yes	yes	(1)
-q -1	~45	~45 - ~64	yes	yes
-q 0	~64	~64 - ~80	yes	yes
-q 1	~80	~80 - ~96	yes	yes	(2)
-q 2	~96	~96 - ~112	yes	yes
-q 3	~112	~112 - ~128	yes	yes
-q 4	~128	~128 - ~160	yes	yes	(3)
-q 5	~160	~160 - ~192	yes	yes
-q 6	~192	~192 - ~224	no	yes	(4)
-q 7	~224	~224 - ~256	no	no
-q 8	~256	~256 - ~320	no	no
-q 9	~320	~320 - ~500	no	no
-q 10	~500	~500 - ~1000	no	no

(1) Only supported on aoTuVb4 and newer
(2) Reports seem to indicate that aoTuVb4.51 provides acceptable quality at -q 1.5
(3) Reports seem to indicate that aoTuVb4.51 provides near-transparency at -q 4
(4) Most people agree -q 6 achieves transparency