At some point in the late nineties Yamaha licensed the VQF technology from NTT and created their own encoder and player, for both Windows and Mac OS, under the name SoundVQ.

The encoder has features like batch encoding and recording from line-in and microphone. An unusual feature is a "Web Page Wizard" that creates a web page from a template, with an embedded VQF file to be played with the SoundVQ browser plugin - distributed with the SoundVQ player, available below.

I generated a web page with the wizard using a public domain song and placed it here (keeping the template texts and ugly design intact). But you will have to find a browser that a) loads the plugin and b) supports modern HTTPS.

Quality in "high quality" mode is good, but encoding is very slow. Also, the encoder only works for 90 days and then expires.

Yamaha stopped offering their SoundVQ software line in mid-2003 after the obvious failure of the format becoming popular (in no small part thanks to Yamaha behaving like asshats - file provided by Zachary Jelesoff). A mirror of the official page can still be visited at the Internet Archive.


Date: 2002-06-24
Version: 2.60b9
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Win32
Download: vqe260b9e.exe - 1.874kB

Date: 2000-10-30
Version: 2.60b3
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Win32
Download: vqe260b3e.exe - 1.870kB
Time limit patch: VQenc-patch.exe - 18kB

Date: 2000-05-07
Version: 2.60b1
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Win32
Download: vqe260b1e.exe - 1.871kB
Kindly contributed by Sebastian Knop.

Date: 2000-12-19
Version: 2.52b7
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Mac OS Classic (PPC)
Download: vqencoder-252b7e.sit - 1.003kB

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The player, by its turn, is very basic. It is a little more featureful and prettier than NTT's, but again, no playlist editor, no equalizer, no formats supported other than VQF - not even WAV.


Date: 2000-03-20
Version: 2.52b1
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Win32
Download: vqp252b1e.exe - 1.458kB

Date: 2000-12-19
Version: 2.50b2
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Mac OS Classic (PPC)
Download: vqplayer-250b2e.sit - 1.775kB