Physics and the nature of the internet introduce some inherent latencies, so ideally your codec does not add a lot of latency on top of that during the process of encoding and decoding. Low latency is generally always better and it is especially critical when you need real-time interactivity between parties. The lag between when a user speaks and when someone else on the other side of the internet hears it is known as audio latency. How does it have such great performance? A robust set of features help to make this performance possible. Comprehensive Combination of Performance Features How Opus compares to other popular codecs across a range of bitrates and qualitiesĪs you can see, Opus provides better quality than other popular internet audio codecs at the lowest bitrates. The following chart from clearly illustrates Opus’ performance advantage:įigure 1. One of the main reasons Opus has been so successful is that it has excellent performance in a variety of environments. Internet codecs need to provide compression to minimize bandwidth, but that compression ratio has to be balanced with the output audio quality and processing needed to code and decode that audio information. QualityĪ codec that doesn’t perform won’t last long. The fact that it is an internet standard certainly helps with its popularity, but it became a standard in the first place because of its performance, unique features, lack of royalties, and many open-source references. Opus is an uncontentious jack of all trades when it comes to audio codecs, bringing together a modern set of features designed to work across a range of environments. Opus’ place as the de facto codec for real-time communications was later cemented when its use was mandated as part of WebRTC. As an internet standard, it was then adopted widely by browsers, operating systems, and popular audio/video software. The Opus spec was submitted in 2010 and standardized as RFC 6716 in 2012. Opus actually includes major pieces of these codecs, which we will get into in a moment. Some of the precursor projects to Opus included the CELT codec, Speex from, and SILK from Skype. Back nearly a decade ago, the IETF recognized the internet needed a single, robust audio codec that could be used for all the various use cases of audio transmission over the Internet - from voice calls to live music distribution. Opus formed through the intersections of several other codec projects and efforts made by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) to create a universal audio codec for the internet. Let’s take a look at the Opus codec: where it came from, what’s so special about it, how it is commonly used, and what we can expect from audio codecs in the future. Major communications systems like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and most of the world’s video conferencing apps use Opus - among many, many others. ![]() In addition, since Opus is a mandatory part of the WebRTC standard for real-time communications by browsers and beyond, every modern web browser has support for Opus. The codec has native support in Windows 10, macOS, iOS, Android, and is part of the major Unix multimedia frameworks. ![]() Opus is used regularly by billions of users. While it is not as common a term as MP3, Opus is one of the most popular codecs for audio on the internet. Audio codecs operate silently in the background, compressing and decompressing information.
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