#21 VQF support
TwinVQ is proprietary audio compression format
developed by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation
(NTT) and marketed by Yamaha under the name SoundVQ.
Its file extension is .vqf.
TwinVQ supports constant bitrate encoding at 80, 96,
112, 128, 160 and 192 kbit/s. It was claimed that
TwinVQ files are about 30 to 35% smaller than MP3 files
of adequate quality. For example, a 96 kbit/s TwinVQ
file has roughly the same quality as a 128 kbit/s MP3
file. The higher quality is achieved at the cost of
higher processor usage.
Yamaha marketed TwinVQ as an alternative to MP3, but
the format never became very popular. This could be
attributed to the proprietary nature of the format --
third party software was scarce and there was no
hardware support. Also the encoding was extremely slow
and there was not much music available in TwinVQ
format. As other MP3 alternatives emerged, TwinVQ
quickly became obsolete.
Some software still supports TwinVQ. NTT still
maintains a website which offers its own player and
encoder for download, Nero Burning ROM is able to
encode to TwinVQ, and Winamp supports TwinVQ playback
via a plugin. Some other software that supports TwinVQ
but no longer is maintained includes Yamaha's encoder
and player and K-Jöfol audio player.
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http://www.twinvq.org