dBpoweramp Music Converter        { Help Index   >   Opus Codec } Opus is a lossy audio codec, designed by the Internet Engineering Task Force. It is a modern codec suited well to streaming (low latency). Supported by this Codec

• Encoding: Yes  [.opus]
• Decoding: Yes   [.opus]
• ID Tag Format:    [Vorbis Comments]
• Unicode Tagging: Yes
• Supports Album Art: Yes
• Gapless Encoding & Decoding: Yes

Compression Options

Opus offers three types of encoding:

• Variable Bit Rate (VBR) VBR files are made up from small audio chunks, called frames. Whilst encoding VBR, the encoder decides which bit rate to use for each frame. Bit rates can drop down to lower values when it is warranted (if there is not much sound complexity) and switch up to a higher bit rate when required. VBR files should be used when encoding unless there is a specific reason not to,
• Average Bit Rate (ABR) a little like VBR except constraints are placed on Bit Rate so that over time it averages out to the desired value,
• Constant Bit Rate (CBR) a constant bit rate is used throughout the encoding process.

Advanced Options dBpoweramp Control Center offers advanced options for this codec (dBpoweramp Control Centre >> Codecs >> Advanced Options):

Decoder Options

Output can set either 16 bit, or 32 bit floating point

Sample Rate, as Opus internally stores all samples as 48KHz this option controls how to decode audio.

Command Line dBpoweramp (Windows) allows compressions from the command-line, commands specific to this codec:

-bitrate [level]       set encoding bitrate

Example:   "c:\program files\illustrate\dBpoweramp\coreconverter.exe" -infile="c:\afile.wav" -outfile="c:\outfile.opus" -convert_to="Opus" -bitrate 128

Terminology Encoding:  compress and write audio track,
Decoding:  uncompress and read the track,
ID Tags:  meta data such as artist & album are embedded inside the audio file,
Lossless:  compression without audio quality loss,
Lossy:  audio quality is sacrificed (how much depends on bitrate and codec used) to achieve smaller files,
Gapless:  allows the decoder to decode audio stream without gaps (silence).

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