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, it only works for 90 days and then expires.

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


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

Date: 2000-10-30
Version: 2.60b3 (encoder)
Interface: Graphical
Platform: Win32
Download: vqe260b3e.exe - 1.870kB

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

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

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

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