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Topic: Opus 1.3 is out! (Read 62463 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #25
so... is 1.3 now the recommended version to use?
Why wouldn't the last version of anything be the recommended version to use?
You're kidding, right? Haven't heard about the OS Windows 10?
In today's age of crapware usually an older version is the most usable. (Sometimes a much older one)

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #26
I don't even know how to reply to that, comparing an OS to an open source audio codec.

Also, yes I've tried Windows 10 and it's their best, there is a little more to clean in the beginning but once setup properly it's the most compatible with all the new hardware and drivers, as expected, it's their latest.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #27
I don't even know how to reply to that, comparing an OS to an open source audio codec.
YOU did that comparison! Right now...
I responded to what I quoted "Why wouldn't the last version of anything be the recommended version to use".  And explained that the newest usually sucks.

Also, yes I've tried Windows 10 and it's their best, there is a little more to clean in the beginning but once setup properly it's the most compatible with all the new hardware and drivers, as expected, it's their latest.
And you came to this conclusion because fo the constant bugs, performance regressions to older windows versions and the crippling issues at every single major update. The last time (a week or two ago) they had to withdraw the update, because of data loss, users files got permanently erased...

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #28
so... is 1.3 now the recommended version to use?
Why wouldn't the last version of anything be the recommended version to use?
You're kidding, right? Haven't heard about the OS Windows 10?
In today's age of crapware usually an older version is the most usable. (Sometimes a much older one)

"Yeah, well, you know, that's just like, uh... your opinion, man!"

If you ask any DEVELOPER what their recommended version to use, it will typically be their latest. Except if you have a specific reason not to. I don't think speculation is a valid reason.

* Mainstream support for Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 has already ended.
* Any support for Windows 7 RTM without service packs ended on April 9, 2013. (and any older OS)
* Only extended support remains for Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8 and Windows 8.1

Meaning they will only fix security bugs on the old OS, and the less Critical they are the less likely they are to fix them. Forget about any non-security bug.

Then there's hardware and software support. For example DirectX 12 is only supported on Windows 10.

It's only a matter of time before you have to upgrade an old OS. And support for these OS is likely to expire before Windows 11 or whatever they call it comes out. For Windows 7 SP1: January 14, 2020

No developer wants to introduce new bugs. That's why they test, and release betas and release candidates. Even final releases are spread out slowly these days.

In the case of Opus, you may find the news here because it's an audio related forum. But It will take a while before it's announced in other news websites. And even more time for it to be actually incorporated in software. And last would be the point where you are getting the software pretty much automatically.

In the case of Windows, it's very similar. Microsoft has internal betas, then they have windows insider betas. And when they finally decide to release. Usually they let those explicitly looking for the update to get it first, Then they start pushing to a minor group, and gradually grow from there.

The bigger biannual updates are not even forced thru auto-updates until at least one month or more. They might nag you, but you still initially have the choice.

So my OPINION is, do get the latest updates, but you don't have to jump on the boat on release day. I give it a week and let others test the waters. Unless it's a non-critical piece of software in my day to day, then I can take the release day risk.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #29

"Yeah, well, you know, that's just like, uh... your opinion, man!"

No "just". Also wast amounts of negative experience. It's only ever worth updating after a significant time have passed so people can get screwed and complain about it on the internet which one can research. And after tasting the new version isolated from the old one. This is just the way of the world...

Quote
It's only a matter of time before you have to upgrade an old OS.

Perhaps. But it may be a lot of time. Which apparently win10 needs to become not such a horrible, buggy crap pile.

Quote
And support for these OS is likely to expire before Windows 11 or whatever they call it comes out.

Not necessarily. 10 has a Vista vibe to it, which also sucked, and I skipped it in its totality. Though 10 is supposed to be forever, constantly being updated. (It just gest worse all the time...)
Quote
No developer wants to introduce new bugs. That's why they test, and release betas and release candidates. Even final releases are spread out slowly these days.

But they might don't give a sh*t about it. Seeing as MS demolished its testing team completely, it certainly belongs into this category.

Quote
In the case of Opus, you may find the news here because it's an audio related forum. But It will take a while before it's announced in other news websites. And even more time for it to be actually incorporated in software. And last would be the point where you are getting the software pretty much automatically.

Unlike Windows it will probably work out well, for Opus. (It's also nowhere near as complex)

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #30
as far as i remember there were some "problems" during the beta test. means, some people reported it actually sounded *worse* on some samples than 1.2.1
That's why it's called "beta". Regressions are there for sure.
Later all founded audible issues were fixed. RC1 was already excellent.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #31
Not necessarily. 10 has a Vista vibe to it, which also sucked, and I skipped it in its totality. Though 10 is supposed to be forever, constantly being updated. (It just gest worse all the time...)
I liked Vista. On 1GB of RAM.

... Now I'm running Kubuntu 18.04.1 on 32GB of RAM. *shrug*

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #32
I tend to agree with @Makaki as Windows 10 is generally all around better than Windows 7 as long as your hardware supports it. plus, with Windows 7 support ending in Jan 2020 it makes it all that more important one changes to a newer version of Windows. so even those die hard Windows 7 users will inevitably be forced to change over to Windows 10 at some point unless of course they dump Windows entirely which is not much of a option for most people because Windows is the standard.

but as a general safety buffer.... avoid those major updates that happen twice a year until the general public has had a chance to test them because it seems like with each major release in March/September of each year there is some semi-major/major issues and after maybe a handful of updates things start to stable out again. I tend to adopt each major update a bit before the official release which is usually once the tech sites pretty much confirm the build is the final version which will be released to the general public soon. but before I do upgrade from the previous version of Windows 10 to the current one, I use Clonezilla (free hard drive imaging software) and make a image of my boot drive (to a image file on another hard drive I got) just in case all hell brakes loose I can always revert like the upgrade never happened.

also, at least for us USA users I think one can still obtain Windows 10 for free if you got a valid Windows 7 etc license by using the official tool from Microsoft (i.e. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 ) and selecting the 'upgrade' option as there was a article from July 2018 of this year saying that still works (i.e. https://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-you-can-still-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade/ ). I did it back in Dec 2017, on a 10 year old laptop I got used that same month, and I could still obtain a free Windows 10 license at that point by upgrading from Win7 to Win10 (then I simply used the ISO and wiped the drive and installed Win10 from scratch after I confirmed it activated). but I currently have Linux Mint v19 on that laptop (HP DV5-1002nr) and put in a Intel 545s 128GB SSD (I got that SSD for only $31.99 a bit earlier this year which is the best SSD I have seen for around $30 so far) as it's decent enough for a basic internet machine as I think if that was my main computer I would likely put Windows 10 back on it and connect a actual mouse to it as using a computer for any length of time a mouse is far easier on your hand than using that crappy touchpad which is slow/clunky to navigate stuff. but one area Linux Mint is better than Windows 10 on that old laptop is the right side of the touchpad, the one that's used to scroll webpages, does not work on Windows 10 as there is apparently no drivers for it where as with Linux Mint it works perfectly fine.

@mzso

You said, "Which apparently win10 needs to become not such a horrible, buggy crap pile."

It's not as bad as some claim it is as it's been solid on my main computer (i3-2120 CPU etc). sure, for some people it can be a clear problem at times but for the vast majority it's a solid upgrade from Windows 7 overall. I have been on Windows 10 since Dec 1st 2015 and while I did have some issues here and there it's generally been solid enough. I remember it had a big problem back in Jan 2018 (I think it was build 16299.192) with my 10 year old laptop causing it to basically get stuck in a upgrade and revert loop as it happened to have one of the CPU's effected by that. like it would boot up fine, attempt the 16299.192 update, it would install fine, and upon reboot it would hang at Windows loading screen and I would have to hard power off etc and eventually it would revert (after it goes into repair mode etc) to the previous build and things would be fine again but then Windows Update would attempt to install 16299.192 again and that process started all over again. that's pretty much the biggest problem I had on Windows 10 and, like I say, this was just on a backup laptop computer as my main PC was fine.

but I will say that bug recently, which only effected a small amount of users, with Win10 17763.1 (i.e. 1809) which was released on Oct 2nd and I think they pulled it on Oct 5th (I had 17763.1 installed late September) that took out the Documents etc folders was obviously a major screw up on Microsoft's part. but I did not have the issue as it appears that bug either takes out everything or nothing and I still had the small amount of Documents still intact so I was good. but in general I avoid storing files in their default locations and generally save them to different hard drives so even if I did get effected the damage would be minimal. but currently there is a problem with .zip files on 1809 (even the newest 17763.104) but only if you use the built in .zip manager which I don't use as I always use 7-zip and that appears to be fine along with other programs besides the default Windows 10 one.

with that said... if one wants to play it a bit safer, just avoid installing the major upgrades, which happen twice a year, until they have been tested by a decent portion of the general public. that should keep your chances of any major bugs to a minimum since that's usually what happens as on initial release they have some decent screw ups but after a handful of updates or so things stable out again until the next major release.

You said, "10 has a Vista vibe to it, which also sucked, and I skipped it in its totality."

The only Microsoft OS I skipped completely, as in never had it installed on my main PC, was Windows 8 because upon release it's interface was horrible for Desktop/Laptop users and after that it got a bad image and never recovered. because I temporarily tried it in a virtual machine and instantly hated it due to the interface as it made basic tasks a chore to do and changed things too much from what we have been all used to for ages now. it's pretty much the only OS from Microsoft I never had on my main computer at some point or another and I have been using PC's since the mid-1990's basically. so basically in my case I have been using Windows since Windows v3.11/Windows 95 era to date.

but from what I have noticed with Microsoft is they tend to have a pattern which held true since Windows 98 to date (which is pretty much when computers went mainstream).... Win98(good)/WinME(bad)/WinXP(good)/WinVista(bad)/Win7(good)/Win8(bad)/Win10(good). NOTE: I left off Win2k as while that was basically the first stable OS from Microsoft that the average user could use (I used it at one point back in the day), it was not marketed towards the common person so I did not count it.
For music I suggest (using Foobar2000)... MP3 (LAME) @ V5 (130kbps). NOTE: using on AGPTEK-U3 as of Mar 18th 2021. I use 'fatsort' (on Linux) so MP3's are listed in proper order on AGPTEK-U3.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #33
Win98(good)/WinME(bad)/WinXP(good)/WinVista(bad)/Win7(good)/Win8(bad)/Win10(good).
I think that pattern broke because eight is good and 10 sucks. You only need to replace the start menu and it's much like 7, only more efficient. Meanwhile 10 brings perpetual performance issues, severe bugs, pointlessly removed features

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #34
8 was insanely bad, 8.1 was one of their best but we are OT.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #35
jmvalin:  Have there been any improvements on the decoding side of Opus 1.3?  I read through the changes since 1.2.1 on the Opus site but it's not clear to me if the changes were all on the encoding vs. the decoding performance.  Thanks for any info.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #36
jmvalin:  Have there been any improvements on the decoding side of Opus 1.3?  I read through the changes since 1.2.1 on the Opus site but it's not clear to me if the changes were all on the encoding vs. the decoding performance.  Thanks for any info.

On the decoder side, only two things have changed since 1.2:
  • The minor spec changes in RFC 8251 are now enabled by default (they were there but disabled by default in 1.2), which slightly improves voice quality around 16 kb/s and makes mono decodes default to disabling phase inversions.
  • There's been security hardening improvements, which makes it even harder for someone to cause problems with malicious files. No change in quality.

In general, all quality improvements have to be in the encoder since decoders can't change for compatibility reasons. To give you an idea, the very minor changes I mentioned to the decoder output are the only ones we made since 2012 and required years of standardization work.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #37
8 was insanely bad, 8.1 was one of their best but we are OT.
Indeed we're off topic.  (I blame your naive "why wouldn't the latest version be recommended" question  :P )
Anyway, 8.1 is not really a separate OS, only an update of the 8 (regardless of marketing BS). (Naturally I don't use a pre-8.1 version)

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #38
OT: still 10 is better than any <10. It's not personal here, I don't care about MS, Apple, Linux, BSD or any other, I just use what's usable for my life and work. I use all of them in different areas.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #39
On the decoder side, only two things have changed since 1.2:
  • The minor spec changes in RFC 8251 are now enabled by default (they were there but disabled by default in 1.2), which slightly improves voice quality around 16 kb/s and makes mono decodes default to disabling phase inversions.
  • There's been security hardening improvements, which makes it even harder for someone to cause problems with malicious files. No change in quality.

Thanks very much for the information jmvalin and all your hard work on this terrific codec.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #40
Changes since 1.2.x include:
  • Improvements to the VAD and speech/music classification using an RNN
  • Support for ambisonics coding using channel mapping families 2 and 3
  • Improvements to stereo speech coding at low bitrate
  • Using wideband encoding down to 9 kb/s
  • Making it possible to use SILK down to bitrates around 5 kb/s
  • Minor quality improvement on tones
  • Enabling the spec fixes in RFC 8251 by default
  • Security/hardening improvements

So no improvements whatsoever for high fidelity >100kb/s stuff?

I wonder where even <20kbps audio is even relevant in this day and age.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #41
Changes since 1.2.x include:
  • Improvements to the VAD and speech/music classification using an RNN
  • Support for ambisonics coding using channel mapping families 2 and 3
  • Improvements to stereo speech coding at low bitrate
  • Using wideband encoding down to 9 kb/s
  • Making it possible to use SILK down to bitrates around 5 kb/s
  • Minor quality improvement on tones
  • Enabling the spec fixes in RFC 8251 by default
  • Security/hardening improvements

So no improvements whatsoever for high fidelity >100kb/s stuff?

I wonder where even <20kbps audio is even relevant in this day and age.

Mobile connections in the states.
Mobile and home internet for many developing countries, especially satellite and DSL.
Maintaining call integrity for VOIP.
Recordings of lectures, speeches, anything long.

Opus has never prioritized complete transparency at higher bitrates. We have AAC and MP3 that do a great job. Opus sounds very good as well.
Like all codecs, I'm sure they will wring out as much performance as possible over time. But high bitrate is the land of diminishing returns and there is so much room for improvement/much to be gained at lower bitrates.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #42
Opus has never prioritized complete transparency at higher bitrates. We have AAC and MP3 that do a great job. Opus sounds very good as well.
Like all codecs, I'm sure they will wring out as much performance as possible over time. But high bitrate is the land of diminishing returns and there is so much room for improvement/much to be gained at lower bitrates.

Mostly, high bitrate is the first thing that got done because in some ways it's easier. It's once you start lowering the bitrate that things start to fall apart and you have to be increasingly creative to make audio sound decent despite being really short on bits, and that's why Opus has been consistently pushing the frontier on the low end. At high bit-rate things are already pretty good, so even small improvements are really hard. That's in part because you're mostly constrained by the laws of information theory (you're not going to get any better than a 6 dB improvement per extra per bit), but also because any small improvement you might come up with will be nearly impossible to verify when almost all your material is already transparent (or very close to transparent). There's a good reason we haven't seen 128 kb/s AAC/Opus listening tests. It's because everything's so close to transparent you'd need hundreds of samples and hundreds of listeners to get anything statistically significant (as opposed to everything being transparent except for one codec randomly hitting a killer sample). Even the last 96 kb/s test was pushing it.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #43
There's a good reason we haven't seen 128 kb/s AAC/Opus listening tests. It's because everything's so close to transparent you'd need hundreds of samples and hundreds of listeners to get anything statistically significant (as opposed to everything being transparent except for one codec randomly hitting a killer sample). Even the last 96 kb/s test was pushing it.
It’s true. I can explain in which exactly way the last two 96 kbps tests were pushing it.

Most of average listeners hear artifacts at 48-64 kbps for HE-AAC and Opus encoders.
The listeners who have participated in 64 kbps have commented that they couldn’t submit a high number of results if any for 96k tests (because they hardly could ABX it).
During 96k tests a number of submitted results per each week drop to less than 50% than during 64 kbps test!

48-64 kbps tests- average listeners prevail.
96 kbps tests - average listeners + experienced listeners (roughly ~50%/50%) 
128 kbps test - highly experienced and trained listeners mainly (hence not representative as a real-life scenario)


The results of public test 96k https://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm

Opus - 4.65
Apple AAC -  4.40
MP3@128, Vorbis - 4.24



If those average listeners who participated in low 64k test could have submitted their results for 96k test as well then the scores would look like this for 96k test:

Opus - 4.80
Apple AAC - 4.70
MP3@128, Vorbis - 4.5-4.6 

(and yes, I can calculate it with a pretty acceptable precision of +/- 0.1)

Looking at these numbers it’s pretty clear that there is no reason to test 128k as Opus and Apple AAC would be clipping near transparent score 5.0 (at 4.8-4.9 scores).

If somebody uses Opus or AAC at 128k or higher that's fine to stay on safe side. But asking for tuning at >100 kbps hasn't any sense as both Opus and AAC already reached limits of transparency at those rates.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #44
Congratulations for the new release, updated :)

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #45
jmvalin:  Have there been any improvements on the decoding side of Opus 1.3?  I read through the changes since 1.2.1 on the Opus site but it's not clear to me if the changes were all on the encoding vs. the decoding performance.  Thanks for any info.
Nowadays a vast majority of mobile devices will decode mp3, he/aac, opus or vorbis with the same impact on battery life.

Last time I've checked Opus decoder consumed 20-25 MHz (Cortex A7 or A53) which is very small amount considering that at least one core will still run at ~200-600 MHz even in idle mode.  :P

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #46
At 13.2 kbps with cvbr or vbr, specifying --speech switches from fullband to wideband even though by default fullband audio is always used at this bitrate with cvbr or vbr. Also music mode never seems to be used unless --music is specified. Is this intentional behavior?

At 16.4 kbps cbr I found a song that is classified as speech during the first second. It is a really inconsequential but the difference is audible as some noise during the first second before music mode is enabled. The mistake doesn't exist with cvbr or vbr. The song is Uncharted Worlds from the game Mass Effect. I attached a flac with a portion of the beginning as well as some opus encodes if anyone cares.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #47
Opus-tools v0.2-3-gf5f571b (using libopus 1.3-7-g054acff3)
Built on November 06, 2018, GCC 7.3.0(32bit)/8.2.0(64bit)

https://git.xiph.org/?p=opus-tools.git;a=summary
https://git.xiph.org/?p=libopusenc.git;a=summary
https://git.xiph.org/?p=opus.git;a=summary
https://git.xiph.org/?p=opusfile.git;a=summary

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #48
opusdec.exe was 206KB in the previous release, and now it is 1264KB. What is the cause of this significant increase of size?
The default is now Release-HTTP for streaming, which requires OpenSSL, which is frickin' gigantic. That's the real reason; the HTTP code is relatively tiny. I don't build my personal binaries with it, but in the grans scheme of things a megabyte isn't the end of the world.

Re: Opus 1.3 is out!

Reply #49
opusdec.exe was 206KB in the previous release, and now it is 1264KB. What is the cause of this significant increase of size?
The default is now Release-HTTP for streaming, which requires OpenSSL, which is frickin' gigantic. That's the real reason; the HTTP code is relatively tiny. I don't build my personal binaries with it, but in the grans scheme of things a megabyte isn't the end of the world.

It also depends whether it's compiled Static or Shared. My builds are shared and so the binary ends up being a little more than 400kb :)