Software update: Speex 1.0

May we introduce you to Speex: an audio codec specially made for applications where speech needs to be transported. Speex has reached version 1.0 the day before yesterday, which means that the codec is officially mature after a year of development.

That sounds nice, but what does it actually do? Speex is not just a standalone program but a kind of technology that can be used in other programs to convert different media (in this case sound) into ones and zeros; it is a so-called codec. The makers of Speex have completely developed their codec to transport speech quickly and clearly. The technology has already found its place in programs such as Voice over IP applications LinPhone and tkPhone† Several graphical frontends of the encoder are already available for both Linux and Windows. The codec can handle bitrates between 2 and 44 kbps with a range of up to 32kHz. This doesn’t seem like much when you think of MP3, for example, but it is more than sufficient for the intended purpose; competing codecs often go no further than about 15 kbps and 16 kHz.

Speex is being built by the non-profit organization Xiph.Org. They distribute the program under a modified version of the BSD license that allows anyone to do whatever they want with the code, as long as three little rules are followed:

• Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
• Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
• Neither the name of the Xiph.org Foundation nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

[break]The makers are quite short about the release of version 1.0 of the program:[/break]It’s official; Speex has reached the 1.0 milestone. In addition to some minor cosmetic fixes, the bitstream format has been frozen.[break]The Speex codec for Linux is here as RPM. Windows binaries are here to get. Would you rather compile yourself or just view the source code? here get a tarball of sources. For a list of programs that use Speex you need here to be. If you want to know what such a Speex sound sounds like, you should here let me see.