Thread: gstreamer with ogg vorbis support
View Single Post
Milhouse is offline Milhouse
2006-12-12 , 03:24
Posts: 3,401 | Thanked: 1,255 times | Joined on Nov 2005 @ London, UK
#43
From the vorbis.com FAQ

What is Ogg Vorbis?
Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format. It is roughly comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music, such as MP3, VQF, AAC, and other digital audio formats. It is different from these other formats because it is completely free, open, and unpatented.

What do all the names mean?
Ogg - Ogg is the name of Xiph.org's container format for audio, video, and metadata.
Vorbis - Vorbis is the name of a specific audio compression scheme that's designed to be contained in Ogg. Note that other formats are capable of being embedded in Ogg such as FLAC and Speex.
In essence, Ogg Vorbis is a direct competitor to the MP3 format. The latter is heavily patented by the Fraunhofer Institute requiring users to pay a licence fee to encode MP3 tracks, while Ogg Vorbis is patent-free and (subjectively) at least as good as MP3 in terms of audio quality. And of course, it's entirely free.

Ogg Vorbis support in commercial hardware players is growing slowly, leading to increased interest among users who want to encode their tracks in this format. Lack of Ogg Vorbis support on the 770 is annoying as the 770 is touted as an open-source device yet it lacks support for one of the few open-source audio formats! This lack of support means users will be forced to encode tracks in multiple formats - once for an Ogg Vorbis supporting player (eg. Slimdevices Squeezebox) and again in the proprietary mp3 format for the 770.

Or alternatively, users will just ignore the open source audio format and stick with the proprietary audio format because certain manufacturers pushing the open source mantra don't quite "get it".
Last edited by Milhouse; 2006-12-12 at 03:39.