Speex: Open-source, patent-free speech coding (fwd)

[Doug Lawlor]

On Sat, Mar 30, 2002 at 01:10:51PM +1000, Geoff Shang wrote:
> Hi al:
> 
> Here's a long-awaited development.  Definitely something to keep an eye on.

This sounds interesting.  It would be interesting to see if you could
get better than telephone quality speech, something like mono FM.  If
you could this could be really good for doing interviews over the net
if the right application was developed.  

Doug

> 
> Geoff.
> 
> From: Jean-Marc Valin <jean-marc.valin at hermes.usherb.ca>
> 
> Hi,
> 
> We would like to announce the first release of the Speex project. Speex
> (http://speex.sourceforge.net) is an open-source (LGPL), patent-free
> compression format allowing an alternative to expensive proprietary
> codecs. Unlike Ogg Vorbis which compresses general audio, Speex is
> designed especially for speech. For that reason, Speex is meant to be a
> complement to Vorbis. Since it is specialized for voice communications,
> it is possible to attain lower (compared to Ogg Vorbis/MP3) bit-rates in
> the 8-32 kbps/channel range. Possible applications include Voice over IP
> (VoIP) applications, Internet audio streaming at low bit-rate and
> archiving of speech data (e.g. voice mail).
> 
> This first version of Speex supports fixed bit-rate CELP coding at 14.5
> kbps for speech sampled at 8 kHz (narrowband) and at 28.5 kbps for 16
> kHz (wideband) speech. Future releases will likely provide a wider
> choice of bit-rates, better quality, as well as variable bit-rate (VBR)
> and discontinuous transmission (DTX).
> 
> Disclaimer:
> 
> Note that this is a preliminary release and that bit-rates, quality and
> bitstream definition will change in the future. This means that the
> format used in this release will not be compatible with future releases.
> Also note that this software has so far received only a minimum amount
> of testing, so it may break or do unexpected things.
> 
> -- 
> Jean-Marc Valin, M.Sc.A.
> LABORIUS (http://www.gel.usherb.ca/laborius)
> Université de Sherbrooke, Québec, Canada
> 
> 
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