Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph. Org Foundation; the project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most used in conjunction with the Ogg container format and it is therefore referred to as Ogg Vorbis. Vorbis is a continuation of audio compression development started in 1993 by Chris Montgomery. Intensive development began following a September 1998 letter from the Fraunhofer Society announcing plans to charge licensing fees for the MP3 audio format; the Vorbis project started as part of the Xiphophorus company's Ogg project. Chris Montgomery was assisted by a growing number of other developers, they continued refining the source code until the Vorbis file format was frozen for 1.0 in May 2000. Licensed as LGPL, in 2001 the Vorbis license was changed to the BSD license to encourage adoption with endorsement of Richard Stallman. A stable version of the reference software was released on July 19, 2002.

The Xiph. Org Foundation maintains libvorbis. There are some fine-tuned forks, most notably aoTuV, that offer better audio quality at low bitrates; these improvements are periodically merged back into the reference codebase. Vorbis is named after a Discworld character Exquisitor Vorbis in Small Gods by Terry Pratchett; the Ogg format, however, is not named after another Discworld character. The Vorbis format has proven popular among supporters of free software, they argue that its higher fidelity and free nature, unencumbered by patents, make it a well-suited replacement for patented and restricted formats. Vorbis has different uses for consumer products. Many video games store in-game audio as Vorbis, including Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Halo: Combat Evolved and World of Warcraft, among others. Popular software players support Vorbis playback either natively or through an external plugin. A number of websites, including Wikipedia, use it. Others include Jamendo and Mindawn, as well as several national radio stations like JazzRadio, Absolute Radio, NPR, Radio New Zealand and Deutschlandradio.

The Spotify audio streaming service uses Vorbis for its audio streams. The French music site Qobuz offers its customers the possibility to download their purchased songs in Vorbis format, as does the American music site Bandcamp. Listening tests conducted through 2014 showed Vorbis performed better than many other lossy audio formats in that it produced smaller files at equivalent or higher quality while retaining computational complexity comparable to other MDCT formats such as AAC and Windows Media Audio. Listening tests have attempted to find the best-quality lossy audio codecs at certain bitrates; some conclusions made by listening tests: Low bitrate: the most recent public multiformat test at 48 kbit/s showed that aoTuV Vorbis had a better quality than WMA and LC-AAC, the same quality as WMA Professional, a lower quality than HE-AAC. Mid to low bitrates: private tests in 2005 at 80 kbit/s and 96 kbit/s showed that aoTuV Vorbis had a better quality than other lossy audio formats. High bitrates: most people do not hear significant differences.

However, trained listeners can hear significant differences between codecs at identical bitrates, aoTuV Vorbis performed better than LC-AAC, MP3, MPC. Due to the ever-evolving nature of audio codecs, the results of many of these tests have become outdated. Listening tests are carried out as ABX tests, i.e. the listener has to identify an unknown sample X as being A or B, with A and B available for reference. The outcome of a test must be statistically significant; this setup ensures that the listener is not biased by his/her expectations, that the outcome is unlikely to be the result of chance. If sample X can be identified reliably, the listener can assign a score as a subjective judgment of the quality. Otherwise, the encoded version is considered to be transparent. Below are links to several listening test results. 2005, July comparison AAC vs MP3 vs Vorbis vs WMA at 80 kbit/s. States that Vorbis aoTuV beta 4 is the best encoder for either classical or various music in this bitrate, that its quality is comparable to the LAME ABR MP3 at 128 kbit/s.

2005, August comparison AAC vs MP3 vs Vorbis vs WMA at 96 kbit/s. States that Vorbis aoTuV beta 4 and AAC are tied as the best encoders for classical music in this bitrate, while aoTuV beta 4 is the best encoder for pop music better than LAME at 128 kbit/s. 2005, August comparison MPC vs Vorbis vs MP3 vs AAC at 180 kbit/s. An audiophile listening test, which states that, for classical music, Vorbis aoTuV beta 4 has 93% percent probability of being the best encoder, tied with MPC. MPC is tied with both Vorbis, in the first place, LAME in the second. 2011, April comparison by Hydrogenaudio Vorbis vs HE-AAC vs Opus at 64 kbit/s. Vorbis was on average between the LC-AAC low anchor and Nero HE-AAC, while the upcoming Opus was best; as with most modern formats, the most cited problem with Vorbis is pre-echo, a faint copy of a sharp attack that occurs just before the actual sound. When the bitrate is too low to encode the audio without perceptible loss, Vorbis exhibits an analog noise-like failure mode, which can be described as reverberations in a room or amphitheater.

Vorbis's behavior

Arnold M. Silver was a senior CIA operations officer. A Boston native, he died of multiple myeloma on December 16, 1993 in the age of 74 at his home in Luxembourg City. During his years of service he worked in Austria, Germany and the US. Silver graduated at Tufts University and received a master's degree in German philology from Harvard University in 1942. During the second world war he participated in the Normandy landings and became a prisoner-of-war interrogator, first in the IPW team of the 66th Infantry Division. In September 1945 he joined the IPW team in Oberursel, near Frankfurt-am-Main, at the 7707th European Intelligence Center referred to as Camp King. "Oberursel", as the camp was most called, became the Army's center for detailed interrogation of former Nazi military personnel, émigré personalities and potential Sovjet informants. Many of the Paperclip scientists were recruited there and it was Silver's task to interrogate persons such as Otto Skorzeny, Walter Schellenberg and Richard Kauder.

After Skorzeny was acquitted of war crimes by a military court in Dachau in 1946, he was sent to Oberursel until a decision would be made what to do with him. After several interrogations by Silver, it was decided that he resettled to Spain: G-2 and USFET in Frankfurt concurred in my recommendation that he be resettled there, he became a rather successful entrepreneur in Madrid, but for years afterwards - I think I last heard about him in 1961 - he approached each succeeding US Air Force attaché in Madrid with an offer to build a network of agents in the USSR for the United States. What surprised me was the fact that each succeeding Air Force attaché recommened to the Pentagon that Skorzeny be taken up on his offer, although there was not the slightest shred of evidence that he had the capability of the know-how to implement his proposal; the Pentagon rejected each of the recommendations from Madrid. About his time at Oberursel, Silver writes: As a result of their interrogations of defectors from the Soviet and East European intelligence services, as well as arrested agents of these services, the interrogators in the counterintelligence section of Oberursel became experts on the services the Soviet state security service ad, to a much lesser extent, the Soviet Military intelligence Service.

In 1948, he retired from the Army as a technical sergeant and joined the CIA, founded one year before. Silver became CIA Chief of Station in Luxembourg from 1957-1960, he retired from the CIA in 1978 and settled in Luxembourg, but continued publishing articles on European and Soviet affairs in newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and the Herald Tribune. He died on December 1993, of multiple myeloma at his home in Luxembourg City, he was survived by this wife, the former Annemarie Rassbach

Troy David Chaplin is a former professional Australian rules footballer who played for the Port Adelaide Football Club and Richmond Football Club in the Australian Football League. He has served as the offensive coordinator at the Melbourne Football Club since October 2016. Chaplin played for the Maryborough Rovers Football Club and was drafted by Port Adelaide from North Ballarat Rebels at selection 15 in the 2003 AFL Draft; the 18-year-old left footer debuted in 2004 in Round 4 against Melbourne and played eight matches in 2005. He suffered a fractured left eye socket in round one of 2006, but found consistency and collected 20 or more possessions four times that season. Standing 196 cm tall, Troy was a champion basketballer and was a member of the Victorian Under 18 basketball team, he was nominated for the 2006 NAB Rising Star award in Round 16 of that season. A restricted free agent at the completion of the 2012 season, Chaplin was made a four year offer by the Richmond Football Club, one which Port Adelaide chose not be match.

In July 2016, Chaplin announced his immediate retirement from the AFL. Troy Chaplin's profile on the official website of the Richmond Football Club Troy Chaplin's playing statistics from AFL Tables