Popularity of OGG

[infestor]

i was wondering the reasons why still today OGG is not as popular as MP3.
me, being an "illegal" person, 99% of my archive consists of MP3s unfortunately (throughout time downloaded from torrent & rapidshare)

my biggest shot would be that the carelessness of uploaders/encoders or people think that MP3 is good enough, why bother change.

[madnessjack]

I rip my CDs to MP3 because they're compatible with most media players. Simple as that.

[gnomeuser]

for a long time you've had a lack of hardware support, it's even called an MP3 player after all. Now with Sansa's supporting Ogg Vorbis and FLAC as well as Android (FLAC only available using special firmware).

However as most mp3 players on the market are and will remain to be iPods the lowest common denominator is mp3. One could suspect though that as smartphones replace standalone portable players and with Androids projected growth this problem will go away rapidly.

[kahumba]

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.

[Psumi]

Even the PS3 doesn't recognize OGGs. To be honest, it'll always be like this, even after 2018, when the MP3 patent expires (I'm sure Microsoft or Apple will snatch up MP3 and file a new patent to make even more money.)

[FuturePilot]

The thing is MP3 is most compatible across devices. Just about anything can play MP3.

I don't really like OGG anymore. I just discovered FLAC \\:D/

[pwnst*r]

i rip my cd's to FLAC, then pick and choose which ones i'll compress to .mp3. no worries of compatibility for me.

[speedwell68]

I only use MP3 as is compatible with everything. Soon I am going to be ditching my iPod Shuffle in favour of a Sansa Fuze. Once I have made the switch I will be going over to OGG.

[RiceMonster]

I rip all my CDs in flac as well. My portable media player is a COWON D2 which supports flac, so I'm not concerned about compatibility. If someone else wants to listen on their own device or something, I'll just give them the CD.

[slakkie]

I rip everything to ogg. mp3 stuff I have is mostly from friends giving me their music. I give them 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 :D

[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.

[cascade9]

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.

I _almost_ said something about p2p, but then realised that there is plenty of free flacs around. If you know where to look ;)

x3 ogg vorbis? depends on the bitrate of the vorbis, the compression of the .flac and what music your compressing. I have flacs that go down to less than 500k/sec (-8 compression) That is smaller than -q 10 ogg vorbis. I would guess your normally getting -q 9 (320k) or -q 8 (256k) vorbis files, and most of the time flac is 800-900k, so that is true. Nice to see someone else that gets big bitrates :D

Still, I'd rather d/l .flac myself. I wouldnt get hem as 'test' tracks, but from an artist I like, .flac all the way. The integrated checksum is a great feature, it means you can check your files if you think/worry that you've got an error. (I wish they would put that into vorbis to be honest)

BTW, 12M/bit and 30GB/month (uploads included) quota here.


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.

Offhand, the Sansa clip, iriver e100 are cheap and support .ogg (and .flac, yay!) or rockbox some player-

http://www.rockbox.org/

[doorknob60]

I use OGG when I rip my CDs, but I buy most of my music from Amazon MP3 (a great service), so a good majority of my music is in MP3. I have a Sansa e260 though so it plays whatever I throw at it. I finally gave in to the apple curse though, and I'm getting an iTouch for Christmas. I'll be jailbreaking it though, and I know programs like VLC and Mplayer have been ported to iTouch, so I'll try my best to get that up and running :)

[SuperSonic4]

I rip all my CDs in flac as well. My portable media player is a COWON D2 which supports flac, so I'm not concerned about compatibility. If someone else wants to listen on their own device or something, I'll just give them the CD.

Do you have a massive D2 or something? Mine's only 4gb with a 16gb SD card in which is why I rip most of my music to ogg with flac reserved for the best songs

Mine are ogg because it's only ever me that uses them and if someone else wants to listen then they can deal with the compatibility issues :p

[Georgia boy]

Lets say that I want to burn a cd. Which format will provide better quality sound and not take up the most room. Or should I try and convert what I have to the best sounding and then burn using as data to obtain more songs to cd? Also, what do we have already that can be used with each? If this sounds confusing I'm sorry. I'm kind of confused myself while trying to follow this thread.

Thanks

Tom

[Paqman]

Which format will provide better quality sound and not take up the most room.

You always have to compromise. You can have either good quality or small files, not both.

Potted version:

WAV = Massive files, good quality
FLAC = Smaller files but still good quality
MP3/OGG/AAC = Really small files, but reduced quality.

For mobile devices MP3, OGG and AAC are all good, since they have good enough quality and are relatively small. For piping through a good system at home where storage is not an issue then FLAC is the way forward.

[SuperSonic4]

Lets say that I want to burn a cd. Which format will provide better quality sound and not take up the most room. Or should I try and convert what I have to the best sounding and then burn using as data to obtain more songs to cd? Also, what do we have already that can be used with each? If this sounds confusing I'm sorry. I'm kind of confused myself while trying to follow this thread.

Thanks

Tom

Do you mean rip a CD? Standard Audio CDs are measured in time now - usually 80mins. This means you can fit an equal number of flac or ogg or mp3 on there

[alphaniner]

Standard Audio CDs are measured in time now - usually 80mins.

But in that case you are burning an audio CD, to be played in any stereo CD player. This if different from burning a data CD containing files such as ogg, mp3, etc. Just want to make sure things are clear.

[Georgia boy]

What I would like to do is put songs on cds from the collection I have in my folder so I can listen to them while driving. So, while reading this thread I got to wondering what is the best way to go. Some of the songs I've got in the folder are mp3s that I've downloaded from Cnet and also some songs in the ogg format. Just was wondering if I should just let the cd maker burn as is or should they be converted to FLAC.I remember that someone had told me about doing a data burn so they could get quite a few songs on their cd. Remembering that and reading this thread got me to wondering what would be the best way to do so.

Thanks
Tom

[RiceMonster]

Do you have a massive D2 or something? Mine's only 4gb with a 16gb SD card in which is why I rip most of my music to ogg with flac reserved for the best songs

Mine are ogg because it's only ever me that uses them and if someone else wants to listen then they can deal with the compatibility issues :p

It's 8GB, but I don't keep all my music on there all the time. Just the albums I've been listening to lately.

[CbrPad]

50/50 here, and it's all been ogg since I first learned about it years back. I refuse to buy any mp3 player that doesn't support it.

[pwnst*r]

What I would like to do is put songs on cds from the collection I have in my folder so I can listen to them while driving. So, while reading this thread I got to wondering what is the best way to go. Some of the songs I've got in the folder are mp3s that I've downloaded from Cnet and also some songs in the ogg format. Just was wondering if I should just let the cd maker burn as is or should they be converted to FLAC.I remember that someone had told me about doing a data burn so they could get quite a few songs on their cd. Remembering that and reading this thread got me to wondering what would be the best way to do so.

Thanks
Tom

your car CD player needs to be compatible with .mp3's first (it won't be compatible with .ogg, i can assure you) - only then can you burn as data.

otherwise, you burn as CD Audio as was pointed out earlier - this is limited to 80 mins as opposed to 700MB + of compressed music.

[Paqman]

What I would like to do is put songs on cds from the collection I have in my folder so I can listen to them while driving.

Then it all depends on what formats you car stereo can play. Some can play MP3s, but it probably just plays CDs, so that would be the safest bet. Just fire up Brasero and burn them as audio CDs.

[cascade9]

Lets say that I want to burn a cd. Which format will provide better quality sound and not take up the most room. Or should I try and convert what I have to the best sounding and then burn using as data to obtain more songs to cd? Also, what do we have already that can be used with each? If this sounds confusing I'm sorry. I'm kind of confused myself while trying to follow this thread.

Thanks

Tom

Short version- there are 2 different types of audio compression.

Lossless- meaning that no data has been discarded in the compression process.

Flac- .flac, .fla- Free LOSSLESS audio codec.
Wavpack- .wv- this and flac are the most common. There is also
Monkeys Audio- .ape- not bad but has less features than wavpack or flac, very lame license.
Shorten- .shn- old, obsolete.
ALAC- .m4a- Apple lossless audio codec. Proprietary, avoid.
WMA 'lossless'- .wma- proprietary, junk, dont touch with a bargepole.

Lossy- Meaning that data has been discarded in the compression process.

There is lots lossy formats (MP3, ogg vorbis, wma, aac, etc). In general, the bigger the bitrate the better the sound. But...to be honest, exactly what audio format sounds better has no definitive answer. Generally, ogg vorbis does better than MP3 for any given bitrate. But a larger bitrate will normally give better results (e.g. a 320K MP3 will almost always sound better than a 224K .ogg vorbis)

BTW, dont try 'converting to a better quality bitrate and/or format' with lossy files. Once you have a given bitrate lossy file, converting to a bigger bitrate or a 'superiour' lossy format will reduce quality.


You always have to compromise. You can have either good quality or small files, not both.

Potted version:

WAV = Massive files, good quality
FLAC = Smaller files but still good quality
MP3/OGG/AAC = Really small files, but reduced quality.

For mobile devices MP3, OGG and AAC are all good, since they have good enough quality and are relatively small. For piping through a good system at home where storage is not an issue then FLAC is the way forward.

Agreed on 'good quality or small files', but as far as flac goes, sorry, slightly wrong.

Flac = WAV. Not quite, WAV is complex but if you mean CDDA (compact disc digital audio), then flac does it at 100%quality (provided that its not a transcode from a lossy source of course.) Flac can even go beyond CD-DA quality (CDDA is stereo, 16bit, 44100hz. Flac can go to 5.1, 24bit, 192Khz last I checked)

[Paqman]

Flac = WAV.

Not what I meant at all. I was just mentioning some of the more common formats you'd bump into.

[tom66]

When people talk about Ogg, they can mean anything. Ogg is just a container format. It can carry the Vorbis lossy format, the FLAC lossless format, or PCM uncompressed audio, and possibly others, because it is open to expansion. It can even carry video and text data. So I guess a problem with adoption is it is too general to say a music player supports "Ogg" because you could mean anything. You might say "Ogg Vorbis", gg FLAC" or "Ogg PCM" but then people don't know what all these "Ogg" things are.

"MP3" is simple to remember. It's become a "standard", if you could call it that. It's also quite easy to implement; there are documents widely available and one format (plus or minus IDv3 tags, but these can be stripped easily) works for all files. It is implemented in hardware chips/DSPs and in software. That is (probably) why it is so popular. The industry wouldn't be shelling out money for the patents if it didn't have a good reason to...

Additionally, more of a video thing, Theora has only recently become par with MPEG and other formats with the improvements in the encoder. Much better quality now for the same size. It will be interesting to see where it goes from now.

[cascade9]

Not what I meant at all. I was just mentioning some of the more common formats you'd bump into.

Fair enough, but flac is lossless. Its the same quality as the source track. Not 'still good', its 100% the same.

[Paqman]

Fair enough, but flac is lossless. Its the same quality as the source track. Not 'still good', its 100% the same.

Indeed. Hence why I recommended it for use on your nice system at home.

[MaxIBoy]

The patents for MP3 will expire in a few years, and all the sudden MP3 will be "uncool."

[SuperSonic4]

The patents for MP3 will expire in a few years, and all the sudden MP3 will be "uncool."

Nah, one of the big companies will make an insignificant tweak and get another long patent for it. If apple get it then that spells good news for ogg

[tom66]

What if OIN try and get it?

[Georgia boy]

I know that the car will play MP3s. I had created one cd before with them on it. I was just reading this thread and trying to learn what was the best format etc.

Thanks everyone.

Tom

[pwnst*r]

I know that the car will play MP3s. I had created one cd before with them on it. I was just reading this thread and trying to learn what was the best format etc.

Thanks everyone.

Tom

then your best format will be mp3 for your situation.

[A_T]

i rip my cd's to FLAC, then pick and choose which ones i'll compress to .mp3. no worries of compatibility for me.

As you're doing 2 conversions there really shouldn't be either.

[pwnst*r]

As you're doing 2 conversions there really shouldn't be either.

flac = archiving and home playback

mp3 = mobile


and your problem is...

[Chronon]

There is lots lossy formats (MP3, ogg vorbis, wma, aac, etc). In general, the bigger the bitrate the better the sound. But...to be honest, exactly what audio format sounds better has no definitive answer. Generally, ogg vorbis does better than MP3 for any given bitrate. But a larger bitrate will normally give better results (e.g. a 320K MP3 will almost always sound better than a 224K .ogg vorbis)

Most people reach transparency before 220kbps anyway. Transparency is a totally personal, subjective assessment. People should decide where this lies for themselves.

[spoons]

I only use MP3 as is compatible with everything. Soon I am going to be ditching my iPod Shuffle in favour of a Sansa Fuze. Once I have made the switch I will be going over to OGG.

I have a Sansa Fuze, it's a really nice player. I updated the firmware when I got it, I don't know if you HAVE to do that to play OGG though. But it plays just fine, along with FLAC.

My only gripe is the headphones are a bit weak so I'd advise to get some decent ones.

[Chronon]

I have a Sansa Fuze, it's a really nice player. I updated the firmware when I got it, I don't know if you HAVE to do that to play OGG though. But it plays just fine, along with FLAC.

My only gripe is the headphones are a bit weak so I'd advise to get some decent ones.

SanDisk has been pretty good about Ogg support, actually. I doubt that a firmware upgrade is necessary to listen to Ogg Vorbis on it.

First generation Fuze has a Rockbox port for those interested.

[pwnst*r]

SanDisk has been pretty good about Ogg support, actually. I doubt that a firmware upgrade is necessary to listen to Ogg Vorbis on it.

First generation Fuze has a Rockbox port for those interested.

fairly correct - anything post Oct. 2008 should have .ogg and .flac support by default.