Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source.
In normal English:
Ogg is a "new" kind of internet-audio-format that's FREE (officially you have to pay Fraunhofer IIS for using MP3) and it's smaller in filesize (MB) & better in soundquality as a MP3-file from the same bitrate!
In short: Ogg is way better then MP3.
How am I able to play an Ogg file?
Software Options [Microsoft Windows]
Rave-O-Lution advise you to use Winamp.
Download a free copy Winamp at their official website: http://www.winamp.com
It's userfriendly and runs on almost every Windows computer.
Other great options are:
- VLC Media Player, an open Source media player and streaming server that support virtually every video and audio format!
- Coolplayer, a nice small player
If you don't want to use Winamp, or the above mentioned players, but just want to stick to your default Microsoft Mediaplayer, click this.
Your Windows Media Player, or any other directshow application (like BSPlayer), will be able to play Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Speex, Ogg Theora, Ogg FLAC and native FLAC.
And if you're into divx movies and so on, maybe this is a nice package: K-litemegacodecpack.
With the K-Lite Codec Pack you're able to play almost every mediafile that exists!
Software Options [MAC/Apple]
For Apple iTunes users (and for the die-hards who use Itunes on a Microsoft Window desktop): we advise the following website:
http://www.xiph.org/quicktime
Xiph QuickTime Components (XiphQT) is, in short, the solution for Mac and Windows users who want to use Xiph formats in any QuickTime-based application, e.g. playing Ogg Vorbis in iTunes or producing Ogg Theora with iMovie.
Other softwareplayers (for example Apple, Nintendo, Linux, Symbian, other non-Windows-users and ofcourse the Microsoft headstrongs) can be found over here.
Hardware Options
Tremor, a version of the Vorbis decoder which uses fixed-point arithmetic (rather than floating point), was made available to the public on September 2, 2002 (also under a BSD-style license). Tremor, or platform specific versions based on it, is more suited to implementation on the limited facilities available in commercial portable players. A number of versions that make adjustments for specific platforms and include customized optimizations for given embedded microprocessors have been produced. Several hardware manufacturers have expressed an intention to produce Vorbis-compliant devices, and new Vorbis devices seem to be appearing at a steady rate.
* Digital audio players such as Cowon's D2,
* Samsung YP series of digital audio players and iAudio X5 ship with Ogg Vorbis support.
* the majority of iRiver devices provide Ogg Vorbis support up to Q10 bitrates.
* Sandisk Vorbis capability to the 1.01.29 firmware for the Sansa Clip player.
* Sandisk added Vorbis capability for the Sansa Fuze player in the 1.01.15 firmware update.
Apple's iPod does not natively support Vorbis but through the use of Rockbox, an open-source firmware project, is capable of decoding Vorbis files.
The Xiph.Org Foundation wiki has an up-to-date list of Vorbis-supporting hardware, such as portables, PDAs, and microchips
How do I burn an Ogg file to an audio CD?
More info will follow, but you can always Google.
Some handy Ogg info:
Homepage of the OGG project
Ogg Vorbis demo site download directory
More Ogg info:
http://ogg.pagina.nl
Voor de mensen die graag Ogg-informatie in het Nederlands willen lezen:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/hunting/luistertest.html (nuttig !)
(maakt onderdeel uit van http://ogg.pagina.nl)
