Does anyone know if there are plans for the Car Empeg to support the Ogg Vorbis encoding format (http://www.vorbis.com)? I plan on migrating towards using this format when the final release is available, and it's important to know if I have a reasonable expectation of seeing support for this in the Car Empeg. Since there are no license fees of any sort, I would expect this to be a no-brainer...

Does anyone know if there are plans for the Car Empeg to support (insert audio file format du jour here)?

Empeg will support whichever file formats are most popular. They must do this in order to sell players. The beauty of the Empeg Car is that it's software-upgradeable and can support whatever formats they decide to code in there.

However, it takes work to add a new format. Any new formats and fringe formats probably won't be added in unless:

a) The format becomes popular enough to reach critical mass, or
b) it doesn't take any of their time or money to add it.

For example, if a given format gets popular enough that everyone (or at least a large number of people) starts to use it, they'll add it whether or not it requires a license fee. If it's a fringe format that doesn't have much user support, but there's a license-free player codec for the format that compiles easily under Debian for ARM, and all they have to do is drop it in, then you might see it in there, too.

At the time of this writing, though, the only formats that are supported are MP2 and MP3, with WAV and WMA promised soon.

___________
Tony Fabris

Official answer:

We believe that the Vorbis algorithm is currently on implemented in floating point since that is the most efficient on x86 based PCs. Unfortunately, there is no floating point hardware in an empeg so it would not have the necessary
performance.

Should an integer implementation appear in the future then we will consider
implementing it then.



--
David
// I'm probably not speaking on behalf of empeg here...

Boy i hope someone comes up with an integer implementation. I'm planning to switch my music collection to ogg vorbis shortly. I'd hate to have to rip my stuff twice, once in mp3 for the empeg and once in vorbis for home and office

There are 2 or 3 independent groups working on an integer implementation.

Sean

However, it takes work to add a new format. Any new formats and fringe formats probably won't be added in unless:

a) The format becomes popular enough to reach critical mass, or
b) it doesn't take any of their time or money to add it.

How about a published API for plugin codecs, similarly to what is planned for the visuals? This way interested parties can do the porting work themselves.

Regards,
Borislav

This may happen, though the audio architecture is changing in the next release anyway (hopefully) - ie, away from xaudio to things we know more about the internals of. It's a non-trivial task, though, both for us and for people wanting to do audio modules.

Hugo

Hugo had a chat with one of them today.

From a commercial perspective I'd have to say that this isn't top priority right now - demand is very small! Maybe that will change with time, although I see AAC as a higher priority (and less of a problem - we have the decoder, all we need is the licence!).

Rob

Speaking of AAC, does anyone actually use this or have an encoder that they'd like to comment on?

I'm keen to give it a whirl but don't want to fork out $ just to decide that It doesn't offer me anything over mp3.

Is there a specific reason why you are planning on migrating to the vorbis format?

Just curious... In my very limited experience I couldn't find any benefit over MP3 other than open source?

I've got two reasons, about equal in weighting.

1) It's better, for a given quality level it requires less storage space, and the haven't even implemented joint stereo yet. (of course quality is hard to measure etc etc)
2) It's patent free, so if anyone wants to take the source and make it better they don't have to worry about receiving cease and desist letters from corporate lawyers.