Ogg Vorbis
 

Their website is at http://www.vorbis.com. Check it out people, I'm using quality level 4.99 the it is excellent at an average ~156 bitrate.

Here are some of its advantages:

* Promotes VBR (Variable Bitrate). This is obviously the way forward, e.g. it's a waste of space to have silence being given 128Kb/s, as is the case in WMA (M$-Technology) and MP3, and in the finales give it the same rate as less complicated parts
* It's free and open. MP3 is not (Google for some further info, if you are so inclined). WMA is definately not (and see the next point)
* No DRM. It's an audio codec, not some virtual law enforement technology
* Superior tagging system, have a tag for anything you like. The artist and title etc. information could in future be used for metadata generation (watch this space)
* Integration with Ogg framework. The Ogg framework developed by Xiph.org is to be used for their audio, video, and audio/video technologies, as well as support for other technologies. Already the OGM (Ogg Audio/Video Container) performs much better than AVI for what I've used it for, MPEG4 (DivX)
* Multiplatform, multi-OS. Run it on Linux, BSD, Mac, WindowS, whatever you like! That's the great advantage with free, open software

Go and visit the site, encode some file, and see what you think. We should be trying to convert people to using open, free technologies; be it for office applications, operating systems or multimedia applications.

AnonE9

Ogg Vorbis rocks!!

Been using it for the last year... :)

can i use it in Windows? On winamp?

Oh i just tried to get xmms for windows and they don't have it. :( Anyone here know where to get it if it's not on the developers site?

Yes, OGGs can be played in Windows. It's just a media format, like HTML or TXT. As long as you have a player that can read them, you're good to go.

And, yes, Winamp says they are able to play OGGs.

Oh and its not "OGG", Ogg is the framework Xiph.com have developed for audio/video codecs. They have other technologies such as Tarkin (Lossless video?) and Theora (MPEG-4 type video compression). I don't know why they used the extension ".ogg" for Vorbis files, because there are other Ogg-based technologies.. suppose they didn't expect to be developing video codecs then. Or maybe that modern environments/GUIs, such as KDE, GNOME or Mac identify files by MIME types, so extensions don't matter.

I know when you see the extension .ogg you would be inclinded to refer to it as OGG, like MP3 or (shiver) WMA. But don't! Refer to it as Ogg Vorbis or simply Vorbis.

BTW, Winamp 2.80+ standard for windowS can play Vorbis files!