Head to Head Bet: OGG vs LAME
You probably won’t surprise anyone with the sound capabilities of modern computers. Keeping a music library on a computer, along with audio cassettes and CDs, has become commonplace for many. Today, even schoolchildren know the magic password that unites many people, in one way or another connected to computers. This password consists of only three characters: “M” “P” “3”. Consider how many memories you have with them.
Many people know what audio CDs are in terms of simplicity and ease of use. “Why?” – you ask. Yes, because the CD, as they say, is “and in Africa” the CD. If some characteristics of the reading are not taken into account, it is always and everywhere the same as it was created, that is, the same. It has the same rigidly defined format, and the sound quality is primarily dependent on the recording studio and is generally the best. Conveniently? I don’t argue!
What about the music on your computer? The PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) recording format used on CD-DA discs is not compact enough to store music on your computer, and completely unsuitable for sharing music over the Internet. Therefore, mathematically extremely complex algorithms for compressing audio data and its storage formats are constantly being developed and improved. These algorithms sometimes differ greatly from each other in sound quality. Many users are faced with a constant problem of choice: which program, with what algorithm and with what parameters to encode their favorite music?
Even though many different algorithms and formats have been created, only one of them is the absolute leader today. This is the MPEG 1.0 Audio Layer III compression format, popularly known as “MP3”. There are many encoding programs available to record music in this format. Each of these programs has its pros and cons; On the web you can find a large number of tests and comparisons of various MP3 encoders. The generally recognized leader today is LAME, a free open source project with no license restrictions.
We are used to thinking that MP3 is the best, MP3 is forever. However, it hasn’t been long since the prevailing audio compression format and encoder had a serious competitor: the all-new format and the Ogg Vorbis algorithm. After the beta 3 version of this encoder was released in late summer 2000, the public began to look closely at it and it became very difficult to choose the “best”. And at the beginning of 2001 two new versions were released at the same time: LAME 3.88 and Ogg Vorbis 1.0 Beta 4. Both versions differ significantly from the previous ones, so it is necessary to compare them, to make, so to speak, a “showdown” between both formats. That it was done. The result is in front of you.
