neddie Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 I'm curious what you mubbles use as a music format - I'm guessing it's either ogg or mp3. And I'm curious if your choice is based on necessity, technical reasons, or more philosophical grounds. I'm still surprised how few portable music players (they're even called mp3 players!!) can't play oggs, and how few people have even heard of them. Then because there is no demand for ogg support, the players don't provide it which means even less incentive for people to use that format. I'd have thought that providing mp3 support would require them to pay a license fee, whereas providing ogg support would just require using a freely-available library, right? So is it just the extra development cost of coding and testing the ogg support that stops most (?) manufacturers from adding it? One argument for oggs could be that the format is open so code will always be around to decode it. However the mp3 decoding code is also "out there", so doesn't that mean that mp3 support will also always be available, or at least conversion tools? And given that big companies have invested so heavily in mp3 (portable players, car stereos, DVD players, mobile phones ...) won't there be even more pressure for mp3 to survive longer than ogg? Noone wants two copies of everything, and conversion between the two lossy formats is obviously bad, so what's a good long-term strategy? Which format is likely to be more useful for longer? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 I prefer ogg, the quality of the sound is often less...murky. Unfortunately, my little black iPod only plays mp3 format...and so, I was forced to convert various ogg files to mp3. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 (edited) Always ogg fo me. Better sound quality for similar size, completely open and nicer sounding at low bitrates. Using binaries compiled from the aoTuV sourcecode: http://www.geocities.jp/aoyoume/aotuv/ ogg Q 6 is similarly sized to mp3 with 192cbr bitrate, while passing ABX tests at 99% of the cases. Edited August 25, 2006 by scarecrow Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavaeolus Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 afaik thomson holds the mp3 patent but they don't charge license fees ogg files tend to be larger than mp3 files when using the same bitrate, but in a test in a german computer-magazine (c't) ogg was considered to sound better, the testers said an ogg file with 64 kbps had the same quality like a 128 kbps mp3 file personally I prefer ogg, so I don't run into problems if the next of my favourite linux distro drops mp3-support, and since winamp supports ogg and I don't need a mp3-player there is no need for mp3 for me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AussieJohn Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 When I have the choice of OGG or MP3 from my favourite music sites such as KAHVI, I always select OGG. Whenever I rip I use OGG. The rest of the time I am happy to use MP3 if that is the only form that the music is in. I would say that almost half of my saved music is now OGG. Technical reason ? just as scarecrow says. Actually a lot of MP3 player devices from the big brands also are OGG compatible from what I have read. Cheers. John. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 (edited) Same here... plus most 'fair' music download services (independent artists etc.) use mp3. I'd use OGG if I could, but at the moment it's just not practical. Ipod4Linux I'd rather avoid ATM... too risky. If anyone knows the adventure game 'Paradise' though (from creator of Syberia games), I saw that the sound (voice) files were in .ogg format, probably in major part because it's royalty free. I prefer ogg, the quality of the sound is often less...murky. Unfortunately, my little black iPod only plays mp3 format...and so, I was forced to convert various ogg files to mp3. Edited August 25, 2006 by Darkelve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scarecrow Posted August 25, 2006 Report Share Posted August 25, 2006 Comparing .ogg and .mp3 based on bitrate isn't an option at all. Reason: ogg is by design variable bitrate, not constant. So, there's no such thing as "ogg 192 kbps", this is just a VERY crude way to make mp3 users to understand the approximate sound quality of an ogg file. For rips of the same sound quality, ogg is MUCH better than the best mp3 encoder (which ought to be Lame .97 beta2 ATM), and more or less of the same quality (always size taken in mind) with Musepack (mpc) audio compression. But then, Musepack has much worse hardware support, and for some odd reasons, the project seems not being developed anymore (all main developers have lost interest in the format, it seems). The only worthwhile alternative is audioformats that support "hybrid" mode: Lossy, "small" files, which can be backed with complementary files, if the user wishes so, to create lossless output. To my knowledge, the only audioformats that support hybrid are ATM OptimFrog and Wavpack. OptimForg has no proper Linux support, and even under Windows encoding/decoding is very slow, but Wavpack is an extremely promising format, and it works just great under Linux (factly: it's speedier than under Windows). The only trouble is that the only Linux player that can turn wavpack files to sound ATM is currently xmms and its direct clones (not ALL of its clones). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lexicon Posted August 26, 2006 Report Share Posted August 26, 2006 I have movie file i format OGG, audio and video. ....Lex Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neddie Posted August 26, 2006 Author Report Share Posted August 26, 2006 So there are good technical reasons for preferring ogg in that it's "better" quality for a given file size - which in real terms just means smaller file size for the quality that you want. But storage is cheap, memory cards are vast and it's becoming a struggle to fill the hard drives on those media players now. So what about longevity of the format - given that your average Joe has never heard of ogg, what are the chances that the ogg format will outlive mp3 (with its massive industry support)? Which way is the wind blowing, if at all? I have been playing with a Xubuntu live cd, and that can handle oggs out of the box, but doesn't even play mp3s. Don't the player manufacturers care about the freeness of the format, or as I speculated earlier, is it just the case that the demand (or perceived demand) doesn't justify the extra effort? Interesting that winamp now supports ogg, last time I tried (a while ago) it didn't and the plugin didn't work either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lavaeolus Posted August 26, 2006 Report Share Posted August 26, 2006 (edited) another interesting thing is that ut 2003 and later use ogg for the ingame music, so at least some big game manufacturers seem to be interested in the format admitted the comparison was very very crude, at least the test showed that average joes could not really distinguish the quality of a 128+ kbps mp3 and ogg but with mp3 at lower bitrates ogg was always considered to be of better quality winamp can play ogg since version 2.81 or so, I had never problems with it, there were ogg encoders for winamp 3 and 5, which I used both without problems btw happy birthday to scarecrow Edited August 26, 2006 by lavaeolus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted August 26, 2006 Report Share Posted August 26, 2006 Always ogg fo me. Better sound quality for similar size, completely open and nicer sounding at low bitrates.Same thing here. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted August 28, 2006 Report Share Posted August 28, 2006 read this Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted August 28, 2006 Report Share Posted August 28, 2006 read this I did and I support the idea but my mp3/avi/jpg player doesn't support ogg.... :o if ogg is still around when I buy a new one then I'll buy one that supports both and prefer ogg but until then ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted August 28, 2006 Report Share Posted August 28, 2006 I did and I support the idea but my mp3/avi/jpg player doesn't support ogg.... :o neither does mine...though i imagine if i installed ipodlinux it would... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkelve Posted August 28, 2006 Report Share Posted August 28, 2006 Does RockBox support Ogg? I heard that it's the 'safer' project of the two... though you can't make your Nano play videos with that... :) I did and I support the idea but my mp3/avi/jpg player doesn't support ogg.... :o neither does mine...though i imagine if i installed ipodlinux it would... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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