Ogg (or Ogg Vorbis) is a fully open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free, general-purpose compressed audio format for mid to high quality (8kHz-48.0kHz, 16+ bit, polyphonic) audio and music at fixed and variable bitrates from 16 to 128 kbps/channel.
The Vorbis format has proven popular among supporters of free software. They argue that its higher fidelity and completely free nature, unencumbered by patents, make it a well-suited replacement for patented and restricted formats like MP3.
Vorbis has different uses for consumer products. Many video game titles store in-game audio as Vorbis, including Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Halo: Combat Evolved, Minecraft, and World of Warcraft, among others.[citation needed] Popular software players support Vorbis playback either natively or through an external plugin. A number of websites, including Wikipedia, use it. The Spotify audio streaming service uses Vorbis for its audio streams. Also, the French music site Qobuz offers its customers the possibility to download their purchased songs in Vorbis format.
While MP3 does allow for variable bit rate encoding, generally speaking, OGG provides the same quality for a lower file size compared to MP3, or looked at another way, higher quality for the same file size.
Here's a reason why we shouldn't use MP3:
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From Xihp.org
"Why do I need open source? I'm not a hacker."
Closed source software is not evil, nor is it necessarily inferior in quality to open source. What is certain, however, is that closed source and closed protocols do not serve the public interest; they exist by definition to serve the bottom line of a corporation. The foundations of the Internet today are built of a long, hardy history of open development, free exchange of ideas and unprecedented levels of intellectual cooperation. These foundations continue to weather the storm caused by the corporate world's rush to cash in.
"Why does multimedia specifically need open source?"
Example: An 'open' standard closes
In September of 1998, the world of Internet media took an unexpected (but long dreaded) turn when Fraunhofer IIS sent a "letter of infringement" to several small commercial and open source MPEG audio layer 3 development projects.
In the letter, [Fraunhofer claims] that due to patents they hold related to MP3, they are entitled to royalties for any commercial players, all encoders (whether sold or given away), and also works of art sold in MP3 format.
The letter of infringement had an immediate effect on the free encoder programs with many being removed from their official web site. Affected encoders include Plugger, CDEX, soloH, 8Hz, Blade, Canna, and others. [...] Fraunhofer is demanding a royalty payment beginning at $25 per encoder. Additionally, a 1% or .01 per file royalty is also put forth as being required.
—mp3.com article by Michael Robertson
The projects affected had based their work on code long freely available in the ISO MPEG audio standard. The debate about whether or not Fraunhofer was within their rights or not is beside the point; this is an illustration of the amount of control commercial entities will attempt to exert over commodity standards; this meddling is detrimental to open efforts and deadly to business (except for members of the MPEG consortium that is). Keep in mind that MPEG is considered among the most open multimedia standards (at least until the 800-lb. gorilla members of MPEG manage to sue the smaller encoder efforts out of existence); there are few or no cutting-edge open standards for streamed audio or video on the Internet today. Closed competition has just made matters worse; now there are several dominant and entirely incompatible closed 'standards'.
Our purpose is to open the field up a bit. Unfortunately we're not fighting on this front alone. Music and media on the net today also face corporate domination of the content itself ...
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Ogg Vorbis is supported by several large digital audio player manufacturers such as Samsung, SanDisk, Rio, Neuros Technology, Cowon, and iriver.
Software supporting Ogg Vorbis exists for many platforms. The multi-platform open-source VLC media player and MPlayer can play Ogg Vorbis files, as can Winamp and foobar2000.
Not all but many Blu-ray/DVD players will play Ogg files from USB, Ogg CDs or a disc such as Poineer, Oppo, Sony, Samsung and LG. Apple Itunes and Windows Media player does not support Ogg nativly.
Most Android devices support Ogg.
As originally recommended by HTML 5, these web browsers natively support Vorbis Ogg audio (without a plug-in) using the <audio> element: Firefox, Chrome, Brave, Dissenter, SeaMonkey and Opera.
Despite having the vast majority of MP3 patents expired including the last US Patent No. 5703999, held by the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaf. There have been many companies claiming patents and wanting control over the format.
Here's a list of the MP3 expired patents written in 2007. Everyone in the comments waited 10 ears and returned to comment.
https://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/
About "mp3 dying", there are some format like AAC that should be better all around (and push by apple), but as mp3 is becoming patent free it will remain popular as producer won't have to pay fee.
It good that all of the patent did expired in 2017, thus making MP3 free. Does that mean programs like Audacity can finally include support for it when you download it, rather than you having to install LAME with it for every single Audacity installation?
Yep, they can develop their own and they don't have to pay for licensing to do it. Fedora's doing that and providing MP3 support in the OS, just a matter of Audacity developing a MP3 codec.
MP3 is the most used and adopted sound format, but there are people that are still worried about the patent and legal issues on commercial use. Many consider Ogg a better alternative to MP3 in terms of quality and open source. If your planning to make an MP3 CD, but worried about the patent/legal stuff, make an Ogg CD.
That being said, they're both good codecs, but Ogg is more free, open source, lower bitrate, same file size and higher sound quality than MP3. The choice of choosing which codec is up to you.
I do wish the world would pick up Ogg. Better sounding, especially at low bitrates, supports 255 channels (most people enjoy 2), and most importantly the spec and reference software are free and open.
Games everywhere use it because of this, but you hardly find music in it.
More Information about Ogg
https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/OGG
http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php?title=OGG
https://infogalactic.com/info/Vorbis
Article by John Doe
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