Popularity of OGG

[scottuss]

Most of my music is MP3 purely to be compatible with just about everything else. My podcasts, however, are all downloaded in OGG because I listen to them primarily on my PC and Android phone.

[cascade9]

IMO, its a few things-

Confusion- See, its not '.ogg'. That is just a container format. 'vorbis' is what you mean.

Compatibility- not just for MP3 players, but also the standard media players in windows (WMP) and apple (iTunes) dont support vorbis out of the box.

Features- .ogg had pretty horrible album art support, etc. MP3 album art is still pretty much a 'hack' but it works better than artwork in vorbis comments.

Misinformation- I know lots of people who 'tried ogg vorbis and gave it up' because of what they had heard about it before they tried it. Most commonly, thats because it didnt sound as good as what they thought/wanted.
Mostly thats because they had heard that 'vorbis sounds better' and wanted to get away with using a far smaller bitrate than they would with MP3. Sorry, vorbis might be better sound quality, but when you compare 192k CBR MP3 with 128k vorbis, MP3 will normally win.

Lossless- .flac (and to a less extent .wv and .ape) have taken over a lot of the userbase that would have used vorbis. Helped along by the rise and rise of Hdd sizes. When you have 1TB+ Hdds around, ripping to flac looks far more attractive than any lossy codec.

[insane_alien]

all my media is in ogg formats.

is use flac and vorbis for ripping cd's and making my own recordings

i use theora when making videos usually for presentations.

i like the ogg formats. nothing wrong with them and they're ever improving.

[user1397]

I'd also like to mention,
(1) Most/many customers don't know about sound formats, they think "mp3" is the music just like the "windows" logo is the computer.
(2) Companies like Microsoft and Apple are interested (for known reasons) into keeping ogg/ogv/oga usage as low as possible and eventually displace it completely.

So, basically, put together the ignorance of the masses with the interest of the corporations and you get the answer.

This.

As for me, I have an ipod so I am stuck with mp3 and aac for now, though in the future I'll probably try to get an ogg-and/or-flac-compatible player.

I have thought about converting all of my music from proprietary to free formats, but I always think it's probably not worth the effort and I'll lose some quality regardless.

[Frak]

I can't tell the difference between Vorbis and Mpeg, so I just go with Mpeg. It works with all my crap, and the file sizes are roughly the same.

[infestor]

IMO, its a few things-

Confusion- See, its not '.ogg'. That is just a container format. 'vorbis' is what you mean.

Compatibility- not just for MP3 players, but also the standard media players in windows (WMP) and apple (iTunes) dont support vorbis out of the box.

Features- .ogg had pretty horrible album art support, etc. MP3 album art is still pretty much a 'hack' but it works better than artwork in vorbis comments.

Misinformation- I know lots of people who 'tried ogg vorbis and gave it up' because of what they had heard about it before they tried it. Most commonly, thats because it didnt sound as good as what they thought/wanted.
Mostly thats because they had heard that 'vorbis sounds better' and wanted to get away with using a far smaller bitrate than they would with MP3. Sorry, vorbis might be better sound quality, but when you compare 192k CBR MP3 with 128k vorbis, MP3 will normally win.

Lossless- .flac (and to a less extent .wv and .ape) have taken over a lot of the userbase that would have used vorbis. Helped along by the rise and rise of Hdd sizes. When you have 1TB+ Hdds around, ripping to flac looks far more attractive than any lossy codec.

agreed but how about downloading?
flac roughly takes thrice the size of ogg. i have ~100 mbps connection but it has its quota, for example.

[Shpongle]

I'd also like to mention,
(1) Most/many customers don't know about sound formats, they think "mp3" is the music just like the "windows" logo is the computer.
(2) Companies like Microsoft and Apple are interested (for known reasons) into keeping ogg/ogv/oga usage as low as possible and eventually displace it completely.

So, basically, put together the ignorance of the masses with the interest of the corporations and you get the answer.

this

the sound converter app in the repos is great , its the best app iv found to do the job perfectly , it converts all the formats , im unfortunately stuck with a 6th gen ipod so I cant even jailbreak it , but I wont be buying another one !!!

[pwnst*r]

agreed but how about downloading?
flac roughly takes thrice the size of ogg. i have ~100 mbps connection but it has its quota, for example.

aw, so no stealing? :\

[RPG Master]

Because I have a Fuze I take advantage of ogg's lower file size so I can squeeze more on it

[DeadSuperHero]

Whenever I record audio: my music, lines for internet radio serials, or voice acting for games, I always make a point to record to FLAC. OGG is great for media players and all that jazz, and sites like Jamendo have a great setup with that. You upload high-quality FLAC files, it's encoded to slightly lower-quality .MP3 and OGG Vorbis.

If I can afford a media player that plays OGG, I'll gladly make the switch. In fact, most Android phones support it. Perhaps I'll just get one of those.