StreamGuys To Stream With Ogg Opus Content Delivery

RADIO ONLINE | Monday, June 10, 2013

StreamGuys will give radio broadcasters more options for high-quality, low-latency audio streams through support of Ogg Opus, the new versatile, open-source audio codec standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Its royalty-free status eliminates licensing fees for broadcasters, minimizing costs while enhancing the online listening experience. Ogg Opus incorporates technology from the Skype-developed, speech-oriented SILK codec and the low-latency CELT, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation as a next-generation music codec. These diverse strengths enable Ogg Opus to scale seamlessly from 8kb/s lo-fi audio all the way to full-band, high-fidelity music and surround sound.

Ogg Opus delivers both exceptional audio quality and very low delay, distinguishing itself from audio codecs that excel in one category but lack in the other. For example, MP3 supports broadcast-quality audio but often lags noticeably behind real-time broadcasts. Ogg Opus also offers a natural transition to the similar Ogg Vorbis by delivering higher audio quality at a lower bitrate.

Eduardo Martinez, Director of Technology for StreamGuys, expects Ogg Opus will initially attract radio broadcasters interested in cutting-edge formats. He cites its ability to support a wide variety of bitrates as attractive for broadcasters concerned with bandwidth usage, while emphasizing the cost-free benefit. "Broadcasters don't have to pay for the encoder or decoder since they are royalty-free," said Martinez. "And broadcasters using open-source audio programming tools like Liquidsoap to generate live streams today can benefit from Ogg Opus immediately. It's a very compelling advanced audio option for broadcasters that want to improve the quality and delay of their online streams while keeping costs low."

StreamGuys is the first CDN to give broadcasters that option by efficiently transcoding live Icecast feeds into Ogg Opus streams. Monty Montgomery, Executive Director at the Xiph.Org Foundation, believes that StreamGuys will be instrumental in driving greater demand for Ogg Opus streams in the broadcast space, which he notes is currently split across many different, older codecs -- a splintering he views as a potential disadvantage to the broadcast industry.