music format

just a quick one to the devs , our tunes in .ogg , but what quality?

i suppose we should set the , er value/sample rate , so we dont screw everyone around.

also , is .ogg the best/most efficiant for the game?

ty

:^

I think Ogg is the best solution. It is free, open, good quality and not-so-big files. In comparison Mp3 vs. Ogg, Ogg is the winner of quality competition. But Mp3 is more popular.

The game was always using Ogg, and I don't think there is a need to change that.

As for the quality: 16bit/128kbps is my candidate

It really is just a matter of quality/filesize. A file should have a filesize in megabytes roughly as big as the length in minutes. Less than half as much MB is already low in quality, while more than twice as much is only useful when further processing the audio, since on-board soundcards, standard speakers and headphones only have a very limited frequency spectrum, anyway.

The highest OGG quality possible, I'd say. Progressive enhancement.

The highest OGG quality possible, I'd say. Progressive enhancement.

True that. I don't play with anything less than a real (as in no box kit BS like Logitech) 5.0 that I pieced together consisting of speakers with a high frequency range.

The highest OGG quality possible, I'd say. Progressive enhancement.

As for me - as a music artist I can deliver you even 24-bit FLACs, no problem.

This is something I was thinking about: multiple versions of packages.

I dunno if the game can play FLACs.

Never forget http://dev.xonotic.org/projects/xonotic/wiki/Music

The game cannot play FLACs, but submitting a FLAC allows us to later recompress into any format we may need at no extra loss. If enough musicians supply FLACs, I will personally add FLAC support to the engine.

MP3 will NOT happen, due to software patents in the USA.

However, as you need to provide "source code" (i.e. your project file of the music) anyway, we can at any time (at least make you) re-render the very same track to a different format (even if the "source code" requires expensive plugins only you have, it still serves for you as a backup [and for us as a documentation] and helps you recreate the very same version). So don't worry about the format yet - just give us a useful format (ANY format) at a high quality setting (if it has to be MP3, use 320kbps MP3 so we can recompress to what we need).

Therefore:

List of file formats for music in order of preference:

• FLAC and high-quality OggVorbis (-q 7 or above) on a common first place
  
• WAV
  
• Medium-quality OggVorbis (-q 4 or above)
  
• High-quality MP3 (320kbps)
  
• Weird high-quality formats: APE, MPC, Lossless WMA
  

DO NOT:

• Low-quality OggVorbis (-q 3 or below)
  
• Low-quality MP3 (less than 320kbps, including VBR)
  
• Weird low-quality formats: WMA, RM, M4A, AAC