
Opus 1.3 Released - remir
https://people.xiph.org/~jm/opus/opus-1.3/
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shabbyrobe
Anecdata alert!

The new Opus encoder is incredible. We used the beta of 1.3 in a bandwidth
constrained environment recently and found that in our testing (and for our
very specific set of audio, YMMV, past performance not indicative of future
blah blah blah), nobody could reliably distinguish between an AAC at 128kbps
and an Opus file at 64kbps. If we tried really hard, we thought we could
identify some extra aliasing in the top end, but this was not practically
relevant and never picked up by our user testing. The audio in question was a
mixture of speech and quiet music; of course the different encoders were
easily identified when using regular high-density pop music!

The files were fully supported by every Android device we had available for
testing.

Very impressive work, thank you Xiph!

~~~
microcolonel
Yeah, I've been testing 1.3 and my experience lines up.

All of the comparisons are amazing, but I'm most impressed by the SILK
improvements at 9kb/s. The sample is just barely noticeably worse than the
reference with 1.3, and artifact-ridden with 1.2 and prior.

Opus 1.3 at 9kb/s and above is perfectly readable, and unnoticeable aside from
some sibilants for voice, that's spectacular.

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kbumsik
I remember Jean-Marc Valin, the guy from Xiph published a noise suppression
algorithm using RNN a year ago [1]. I thought it was just an experimental
project that will be abandoned soon. But they really integrated RNN to the
codec.

Great job Xiph!

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15362982](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15362982)

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bscphil
This is really amazing and deserves more attention. Audio codec work has been
kind of neglected lately, with the increases in bandwidth and storage making
near-transparent lame v0 mp3s the obvious choice for many applications, but
almost unnoticed except to codec nerds like myself, Opus kept improving and
was already head and shoulders above any other codec. That includes Vorbis and
AAC.

We're now at the stage where 96 kb/s stereo audio is reliably transparent,
with the occasional quirky sample that might require 128 kb/s or 140 kb/s for
full transparency. That's a remarkable achievement. I applaud the Opus team
for their hard work.

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streamer45
An amazing work from the Xiph team as usual. Their explanations of complex
subjects always feels so clear and simple. Long live Opus!

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StavrosK
I love Opus, it's so much better than anything else that I can't wait for it
to be in everything and for everything to be in it. Fantastic work.

~~~
qwerty456127
I feel the same.

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jagger27
The Opus project is one of those Arthur C. Clarke technologies.

> Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

~~~
ahartmetz
I was thinking of "alien technology from the future" (an expression
incidentally coined by Xiph's Tim Terriberry) when I read that they somehow
managed to improve Opus.

[https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/daala/update1.shtml](https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/daala/update1.shtml)

~~~
derf_
Technically, the linked article is correct that it is something that I like to
say, but I stole the phrase from David Schleef (one of the Dirac developers).

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jug
If the reports are true, sounds like they should just have been bold and
called it Opus 2. Sounds like true next gen codec performance. I need to get
hold of some FLAC’s now and have a listen...

~~~
jmvalin
The reason we are not calling it Opus 2 is that it could confuse some people
into thinking we broke compatibility. Opus 1.3 is perfectly compatible with
Opus 1.0, and all future releases will keep that compatibility.

~~~
sitkack
What design decisions went into the spec that has allowed you to maintain
compatibility for so long?

If you could break compatibility, what would you change and why?

~~~
jmvalin
Like many other audio codecs, Opus lets the encoder decide how to spend the
bits is has -- on what frame and on what frequency bands. On top of that is
has a few special features that also require decisions from the encoder. So
while the decoder doesn't change, the encoder can be improved to make better
decisions. While the format itself is not perfect, I have not come across any
particular thing that would be worth breaking compatibility over. I prefer
working within the constraints of the bitstream to keep improving the quality.

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sandov
If there is any site admin reading:

Clicking on the "xiph.org" image at the top directs to a 404.

~~~
jmvalin
Thanks for reporting that. It's fixed now.

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qalmakka
I'm always amazed by how Opus manages to utterly crush each one of its
competing codecs. I'm also amazed by the fact that finally we have a widely
supported free codec no MPEG-LA covered codec can compete with. Combined with
AV1 and Matroska, this is an amazing victory open formats.

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brian_herman__
Awesome work!

