MP3 vs Ogg Vorbis
From WikiVS, the open comparison website
Contents |
[edit] Features
[edit] Lossy
Both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis are lossy formats.
[edit] Variable Bit Rate
Both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis support variable bit rate encoding.
[edit] Channel Support
Ogg supports more than 2 channels - up to 256. Mp3 supports 2 discrete channels, as well as "Joint Stereo" which, briefly stated, seeks to use commonalities of the two stereo channels to reduce the amount of data needed to store the audio stream.
[edit] License
Ogg Vorbis is a free and open audio encoding format.
MP3 is a proprietary media encoding format. The designers of the MP3 format claim that they can charge royalties for any software or file that uses their format.In the US, the last patent will expire in 2017.
[edit] Sound Quality
I actually just did a pretty vigorous test of this the other day. I tested 128, 160, 192, and 256 bitrate mp3s and oggs against the source wav file. At 128 they both sounded similar, but the ogg file did seem a little brighter and clearer than the mp3, and the wav file of course blew them both away. At 160 ogg vorbis really shines... the mp3 remains kind of dull, muddy, and the high end is very "sizzly" compared to the ogg file which sounds brilliant and clear. I barely noticed a difference between the wav file and the ogg at this bitrate. Going up to 192 I found the difference between the ogg and the wav indistinguishable while the mp3 STILL retained some of that annoying high-end sizzle and midrange mud. If you've got the space... 192 oggs amazing... I'm doing mine at 160 because while disc space is cheap, the difference between 160 and 192 is negligible. As for 256... don't bother doing oggs at this level... it's just a waste of disk space. As far as mp3s go... IMO you'd have to encode them at 256 to get the same fidelity as a 160 bitrate ogg vorbis file.(your milage may very... i have been an audio engineer for a while and have picky picky ears.)
Many claim that the 128bps encoding for MP3 and Ogg Vorbis are similar in quality while Ogg Vorbis is better than MP3 at 192bps. [1]
Ogg Vorbis is much better than MP3 at very low bitrates (64bps, etc).
[edit] Popularity
MP3, because of its early entry into the file sharing world, became and is immensely popular. Its popularity is marked by the fact that the term MP3 was synonymous with Compressed audio. Some people use the term MP3 to mean any audio file.
Ogg Vorbis is steadily gaining ground among developers because of its superior sound quality and open source code base. Notably, toys and hardware manufacturers are using Ogg Vorbis to encode their audio files to achieve efficient compression and avoid patent issues with MP3. However, the vast majority of portable music players (commonly referred to as "MP3 players" by many people) still do not support the Ogg Vorbis format. Ogg Vorbis is very popular in the game development industry and is featured prominently in Doom3 and the idTech4 engine.
[edit] Links
- What Sounds Better, MP3 or Ogg?
- Licensing issues
- http://www.patheticcockroach.com/mpam4/index.php?p=16
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