The OggSQUISH Beta Release Page

Last Updated: August 14, 1996

The beta releases have begun!

This lossless release for UNIX will soon be followed by releases for Windows and PowerMacintosh, as well as lossy-capable versions.

What is in this beta?

Application features

The application can efficiently handle samples from 4 bit mono to 24 bit quadraphonic. This application (ogg) currently supports uncompressed, losslessly compressed and quasi-losslessly compressed Ogg samples. Lossy and perceptual lossy compressions will apear in a later release (in September).

Libogg features

Performance

• Compression/decompression speed:
  Realtime decode/playback of stereo CD quality audio on Pentiums, mono CD quality on 486s. Everything else (with the exception of the 68k Mac) is even faster; SGI Indys, for example, can do stereo CD easily.

• Lossless compression ratios:
  • 8 bit speech: from 2.5:1 to 4:1
  • 16 bit speech: about 2-3:1 (depending on background noise)
  • 8 bit music and general purpose: 2.5-3:1
  • 16 bit music: 1.5-2:1

       Noisy input sound will not compress well when  compressing
       losslessly;  noise  is randomness in the sound signal that
       is, by its nature, losslessly incompressible.  This  means
       that  a 16 bit sound file with 8 bits of noise can be com-
       pressed at most 2:1  (realistically,  much  less).   Input
       from  the  highest  quality cassette tape or PC sound card
       will typically have 6-8 bits of noise or more.  Input from
       a  CD  will  still  likely  have 3 or 4 (even if it's read
       directly as data) from the original recording process!

       Even further complicating this is when the sound  is  sup-
       posed  to  be  noisy,  like a cymbal crash.  A loud cymbal
       crash will contain perhaps 14 or 15  bits  of  pure  noise
       which means that the signal is barely compressible at all.
       For this  reason,  lossless  compression  is  very  poorly
       suited to noisy samples.  Lossy compression does much bet-
       ter; it is allowed to lose information so long as it  pro-
       duces an output that sounds the same.

Note that OggSquish closely approaches the theoretical minimum file size for a file with a given amount of non-periodic 'noise'.

Announcements

Documentation

Downloads

READ THESE DISTRIBUTION TERMS BEFORE DOWNLOADING

Full Ogg/Libogg source (0.98 rev 8)

Ogg UNIX man page

Note: These precompiled binaries are for 0.98.7; they will be replaced with rev 8 (to match the source) soon.

Linux ELF binary (gzipped)
Linux a.out binary (gzipped)
Sun4m Solaris binary (gzipped)
SGI IRIX binary (gzipped)

New features in 0.98.8

• Improved stereo analysis (faster, mainly).
• Faster I/O code
• Workaround to a hardware bug affecting 16 bit playback in the ESS AudioDrives
• Direct playback on Silicon Graphics machines