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Advantages and disadvantages of the ogg format compared to mp3

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Advantages and disadvantages of the ogg format compared to mp3

There are many occasions when users of free software talk about the ogg format. Also a fairly recurring question is:

Which audio format is better? Mp3 or ogg?

After doing a little research and testing I have come to the conclusion that the ogg format is technically superior to mp3.

Furthermore .ogg files are capable of providing superior audio quality with a smaller size.

However, both file formats have advantages and disadvantages that we will detail below.

TECHNICAL ADVANTAGES OF THE OGG FORMAT REGARDING MP3

Some of the advantages of the ogg format over mp3 are the following:

Allows you to store more audio channels

The mp3 audio files only allow to store 2 audio channels. In return, ogg files allow the use of up to 255 channels.

Thus, the .mp3 format does not allow storing 5.1 Stereo surround sound (6 channels), while an .ogg file does.

The .ogg container allows storing audio and video

The .ogg container format is capable of storing both audio and video. Instead the .mp3 container can only store audio.

However in 2007 Xiph.org created the .ogv container and the Theora codec, both specific for video. Since then .ogg containers are only recommended for storing audio.

At equal file size the quality of the ogg format is superior

The Ogg Vorbis compression format is better than mp3 because it is capable of obtaining audio qualities equal to or greater than mp3, with a lower file weight.

Some of the reasons that justify what I have just commented are the following:

Ogg Vorbis is a more current audio compression format than mp3.
Ogg vorbis is free and open so that the community can continue to improve it continuously.
The quality of an .ogg file can be much higher than that of an mp3

In the case that we care a lot about the sound quality, it is better to use the ogg format:

After carrying out several tests I have reached the following conclusions:

A compressed audio to mp3 with lame at maximum quality offers a similar quality to a compressed audio with oggenc at quality 7 or 8.
The highest quality of the ogg format is 10. Quality 10 provides excellent sound quality with an average sampling rate of 520 kbps.
The maximum quality of an .mp3 file corresponds to a file with an approximate average sampling rate of 260 kbps.
Ogg Vorbis is open and patent free

The .ogg container and the vorbis codec are completely open, free, and patent-free.

Instead the .mp3 compression format is proprietary. If someone decides to encode audio files into mp3 for example to include them in a software, they will have to pay royalties to the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft.

Labeling system is better at ogg

The ogg Vorbis labeling system is better and more flexible than the mp3 labeling system.

For example, the Vorbis labeling system allows us the following:

Edit the labels at the same time that we compress the audio files.
We can duplicate labels. In this way, if we have more than one artist, we can have 2 artist labels.
Like ID3v2 we can create custom labels. Therefore, they allow us to add practically all the information that we want.
Use a virtually unlimited number of labels.
We can use a practically unlimited number of characters to describe each of the labels.
DISADVANTAGES OF THE OGG AUDIO FORMAT

Technically .ogg audio files are better than .mp3, but currently have the following problems:

There are audio players that do not play .ogg

There are audio players that cannot play audio in the ogg format. As an example we can find the following cases:

IPods are not yet capable of playing ogg files.
Windows 10 is also not capable of playing .ogg audio by default. If we want to reproduce ogg audio we will have to install additional codecs or download some software that is capable of reproducing them.
In Mac OS the situation is similar to that of Windows. The iTunes player is not capable of playing the .ogg file format.
There are many video players that are not capable of playing the .ogg, .ogv, .ogm, etc. file formats.
My car audio CD is not capable of playing .ogg files. Instead if you can play .mp3 files.
Despite this, in many cases we can find a solution such as installing codecs or software capable of playing .ogg files

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Ogg Vorbis The sound of the future?

We all know that MP3 is the standard in audio compression, but there is a solution that, according to many, has a future: the Ogg format.

Ogg Vorbis unlike the rest has no limit of use and its developers do not charge anyone for their use and much less impose their patent. In this article you will immerse yourself in the new revolution of sound for computers.

” A little history

We all know the MP3 music format which allows you to take music on the Internet with a quality similar to that of music CDs, exchange it with others, store it on your computer, store music CDs on your hard drive, listen to music on a small portable device Without moving parts.

The future of MP3 is at stake. And now they are not the lawyers, it turns out that the format itself is patented from the beginning and they will ask for a commission for use soon, so for a long time the one that will be the most advanced successor has been perfected: the OGG.

Programmers have used the MP3 freely without problems since it was born, but the fact is that the institute has the intellectual property of the format.

In September 1998, Fraunhofer began sending letters to software developers saying they plan to start charging for MP3 use licenses. Fraunhofer and the other members of the MPEG Consortium say it is impossible to create an mp3 encoder without infringing their patents.

Ogg Vorbis is a compressed audio format of high quality and general purpose (44.1-48.0kHz, 16+ bit and polyphonic, it supports up to 255 independent audio channels), which places Vorbis in the same category as MPEG-1 audio Layer 3, MPEG-4 audio (AAC and TwinVQ), and PAC.

To create or use an encoder, the law says that royalties must be paid both to the institute and to the other members of the consortium. In other words, you can listen to MP3, but you cannot contribute by recording anything in mp3.

It is a problem, the patent can limit the growth and make only those who can afford it use the mp3. They say there is no problem without a solution and OGG Vorbis is the technological solution to the challenge of MP3 patents.

In fact we can talk about Ogg Vorbis as an MPEG-4 compressor, which is trying to get ahead of the rest of competitors that exist in this format, specifically we talk about AAC and TwinVQ.

Ogg Vorbis files have the ogg extension and are only the beginning of a family of multimedia products that OggSquish is developing as part of the Xiphophorus project.

»OGG Vorbis the solution to the problem

It is an open format, that is, without an owner and without the possibility of being patented, created by volunteers in the style of free software and therefore, more technologically advanced when receiving contributions and ideas from a huge community of programmers.

It supports high quality audio, in variable bitrates, several channels and for now up to 128kb / channel. This puts OGG at the same height currently as MP3, MP4 (AAC and TwhinVQ) and PAC.

The project leader’s name is Christopher Montgomery and he started coding ogg from the moment he got the news of the patent collection threats of the German institute. Since then, there are many volunteers who have joined Montgomery while still providing ideas and lines of code, making the average OGG files 25% lower than mp3s of the same quality.

OGG Vorbis has been designed for final use, that is, you can encode everything in OGG without paying patents and never have to go back to MP3, so you can also share the OGG format on P2P networks. The most popular players already support OGG with or without extensions, as well as many reprogrammable hardware players.

The license is the GPL, it is the seed of the entire free software movement, and which allows no one to take advantage and appropriate the code that volunteers provide selflessly.

The fact that it is an open format guarantees that OGG grows and improves. MP3 is defined from the beginning, and it will never have more quality than it deserves, nor will it be smaller or more compressed, because it is closed.

OGG, however, will benefit from the improvements that the research brings and will gradually be more compressed, more optimized and sound better than it already sounds.

Live audio streaming is an important component of Vorbis. The format has been designed to be easily transmitted live.

Vorbis designers are working hand in hand with the creators of Icecast (a program for live broadcasts) to make Icecast compatible with Vorbis.

They are also working on a player that supports live ogg files. In addition, these components will soon be available from the ogg website as accessories for current players. This will be when Vorbis version 1.0 comes out.

»Unique features of Ogg Vorbis

Vorbis has a very well defined header for comments, which is extensible and easy to use, without having to use ID3 tags. Vorbis has a sampling scale, a function that allows you to change the sample amount of a file or transmission without having to recode; Simply shorten packages to the desired size.

Vorbis files can be cut and then edited with extraordinary fine sampling. Vorbis can implement multiple channels, not just one or two. In addition, files in Vorbis can be logically chained.

What is the best audio format? MP3? ¿OGG?

We have always used the lifelong MP3 format to store and share music, at least the vast majority. MP3 as we all know in a lossy audio compression format that saves a lot of space compared to uncompressed PCM audio (As in audio CDs).

But MP3 is not the only one, in fact, it is I think, the oldest format that is currently used today, as good audio formats with loss.

Other formats that came out later are:
* .WMA, * .AAC and * .OGG.

Recently the team xiph.org creator of OGG Vorbis has developed another audio format that I will also briefly talk about: * .OPUS

MP3 was developed by the MPEG foundation in 1994, and the biggest problem it presented was that this format had a patent for which MPEG should be paid for its use (or something like that). This was the reason why for example later the Xiph.org Foundation created the OGG Vorbis open audio format.

Today, the problem of MP3 is no longer the patent (Nowadays people use MP3 with total freedom) but since it is the oldest audio format of those in the comparison, it is the one that generally has the lowest effectiveness.

The effectiveness of one format or another also depends on bitrate among others. For example. The AAC format that uses iTunes at 192 kbps is the best compression format at this bitrate, above MP3 and OGG, but only from this bitrate.

In general, and in my opinion, at 128 kbps which is the most used bit rate and below, the best format is OGG.

The advantage of AAC (In addition to its effectiveness from 192 kbps) for what it uses itunes, is the possibility of including copyright data protection (copying).
However, at low bitrates it can be even worse than MP3.

MP3 and WMA, are in general and for my taste the worst. WMA, which seems to be a little better than MP3, was the second most used audio format in the previous decade (2000-2009). Many discmans and MP3 players were compatible with WMA, today this format is almost never used, it could be said that it has been replaced by AAC (Thanks to the popularity of Itunes).

OGG Vorbis, despite its very low popularity among people, is a very good compression format, and best of all, it is open.
Its high compression quality and open format makes it one of the favorite formats in video game developers, for example: OGG is the format chosen for the music of the GTA videogame saga, including GTA San Andreas.
OGG is also the audio format used in Spotify.

OPUS is the new audio format developed by Xiph.org as a format designed for streaming audio. It is an audio format that combines SILK (skype) codecs for spoken audio and CELT for music (CELT was the audio codec that Xiph.org was developing as a successor to Vorbis). This format is barely a couple of years old, and although it has great efficiency, it is totally focused on streaming and low latency. A great disadvantage of this format despite its effectiveness, is that the sample rate is fixed at 48000 Hz, making if for example we want to convert an audio file to 44100 hz (As in an audio CD and most MP3s) at this new frequency rate, it would have to be rescaled.

I know that it is very difficult to distinguish the quality in songs at 128 kbps, so as proof to compare the effectiveness of the different formats, I attach the song of Bon Jovi – Living on a prayer at 64 kbps in MP3, AAC, OGG formats and OPUS. All occupy almost the same, about 1.80 Mb.
To do this I will convert an original MP3 file at 160 kbps also attached, so the final quality if we converted directly from CD would be a little better maybe.
You can see the comparison yourself. In my opinion the best formats to this bitrate are in order: OPUS, OGG, MP3, AAC. Download at the top.
Did you expect this sound quality from OGG and OPUS in a file of only 1.80 mb?