OGG Vorbis - Open source audio

For those that don't know what OGG vorbis is or have never heard of it, i thought i would write a short, easy to understand article about how awesome it is.

Vorbis is an audio format, while OGG is a container format. You know what audio is (unless your deaf like me) and you can think of a 'container format' kinda like a file bucket, sorta like a zip file. Depending on the format, you have the options to add in whatever you want into this 'virtual bucket' -- video, audio... Multiple video tracks and audio tracks... even some fancy container formats let you put subtitles in them. AVI is a common contianer... but im not going to talk about containers, im going to talk about OGG... i mean Vorbis... whatever.

Simply Vorbis audio, is inside the OGG container...

OGG brings some serious advantages that the MP3 lacks. For starters, OGG is free, where MP3 isn't (for big companies to produce or encode, not for the little guys). Because OGG is free, it could mean in theory, that if songs sold on iTunes (lol, buying songs on iTunes -- thats a later post) were in OGG format, they should be cheaper (but they probably wouldn't so apple could get some better profits). There are no licensing fees for OGG so if your producing a game? you could use OGG... selling songs?... yup, you can use OGG. Its cheap.

OGG is also open source. While open source doesn't seem like a real clear advantage, it is. Because the source is free to modify, it means it can be worked on and improved by any/everyone interested. Now some critics my say "well, that depends on how much support it has, and who ever modifies these things anyway." But truth be know, OGG/vorbis is worked on and updated quiet frequently, and there are different 'tuned' versions ('forked' versions) of it like AoTuV. OGG/vorbis encoders are worked on as regularly as say firefox or IE and are maintained by the Xiph foundation.

OGG is superior. I was a sonar technician onboard a nuclear submarine for 5 years... when i was underway, my job description could be summed in a few words.... listen carefully. I spent from 9-12 hours a day simply listening to audio while monitoring screens to detect various sounds... anything from Ocean waves... helicopters & planes (jets & props)... shrimp... whales... fishing ships... warships... other people's warships... and other super secret things i can't talk about. When you compare OGG to MP3 at the same file size and bit-rate, ogg is typically superior... You can visit soundexperts.info where normal folk judge audio (you can easily participate too)... or professional listening tests found OGG to be even more superior... at different bitrates.

Compact. Comparing a lossless audio source to OGG Vorbis encoded at the highest quality is like trying to figure out if the mona lisa at the Lourve, Paris is a fake; even if someone told you, you'd never would have been the wiser. But the file size difference is typically 50% smaller than FLAC - another free, open-source, lossless audio codec.

OGG Vorbis is now the new standard for web-based audio in HTML5. Just like JPEG images and GIF's can be embedded and read natively, so now can audio. Most browsers (Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera) support this audio natively while others (IE6, IE7, IE8) don't with out some plug-in or work around.

In summary, OGG is a audio format, compatible to MP3, but free to encode, has typically higher audio quality for files at same size/bit rate, is open source and is also free to distribute. OGG is well maintained, and can now embedded directly in web pages (using HTML) natively without the use of a plug-in (such as adobe flash, another non-free license based application). OGG is a great competitor against MP3 and other proprietary, closed sourced codecs. Goo OGG!