Ogg Vorbis is a way of storing music that is similar, but better, than mp3 or other alternatives in the market. Here is a great article on it that is well worth a read; whether you have no idea or think that you do ;)!
An Introduction to Compressed Audio with Ogg Vorbis - Graham Mitchell
The key advantages of using Ogg Vorbis are:
- Better compression than other music formats - so you can have higher quality, smaller files, or both!
- Patent Free - mp3, for example, was free until it was popular and now charges the makers of all mp3 players and encoders to use the format. Wmv and AAC are other formats which are owned by companies aiming to profit. Why use those when Ogg Vorbis provides a patent-free format and better sound?? This alone is leading computer game manufacturers and others to the format along with those who want to give away there products for free. Don't lock yourself into an inferior format and then find yourself being charged to listen to it!
- Flexible - the format is new and innovative, putting you in control. The description tags for your music include all the standard information, but let you add whatever else you like to them; perhaps a reference as to where you keep the CD or a link to some database! With this format you are limited by your imagination and mixing songs, managing songs and more is easier than ever before.
- It just sounds better - you will have to find this out for yourself, but I would never go back. To me the sound is clearer, the definition is better and even on laptop speakers the difference is obvious.
The disadvantages, as I see them are:
- Support for the format is still in its infancy. More and more players are adding support but the market leader, iPod, is still are lacking. The format was designed to allow manufacturers to easily add the feature to their product and many helpful things are available from the creators with no cost and no restriction. While Apple may have a vested interest in providing as few alternatives to their format as possible, I wouldn't buy a player which didn't support the best format. Customers are learning more and more about personal music players and, as they educate themselves about the best formats, market pressure will pull the other manufacturers into line. The Rio Karma, iAudio M3 series, the new iAudio X5 (advertising its support for Linux and FLAC, as well) and the top-end iRivers offer great support for Ogg Vorbis and it should definitely be a part of your decision between players.
I am not a salesperson for Ogg Vorbis but I would wholeheartedly recommend it over all of the alternatives. However, it is a new format and support for it is growing, so check that your player supports it before you encode; most good players do 'out-of-the-box', e.g. Winamp for windows or Xmms (and virtually all others) for Linux. CDs are far better than floppy disks, but there isn't much point in writing your data to them if you don't have a CD-Rom. What you should do, however, is make sure that you future-proof your purchases and make sure that any 'mp3 player' (whether one you carry, in a stereo or for your car) supports Ogg Vorbis as well.
