I'd guess the majority of games (apart from those developed/published by Microsoft themsleves) are using .ogg files now. This also means the vast majority of these games install a DirectShow filter on the system to play back these files via the standard DirectX DirectSound method. This means probably millions have ogg-compatible players installed and they don't know about it. The reason for these installations is simple - computer games use a lot of sound and music and .ogg is free, .mp3 isn't - as you rightly say. Not only that, .ogg can sound as good as mp3 in smaller files, which means shorter demo downloads or more content on the CD/DVD.

One thing you failed to mention is that most of the device manufacturers pay absolutely no royalties, because they are based in mainland China and they simply can get away with not paying it. It's a similar story with the cheap DVD players you see on the market now - none of them pay any royalties to the DVD consortium. The Chinese government doesn't care.

I just wish Apple would include ogg support on the next range of iPods, since the chipset is more than capable to play it back (something that the first through third generations couldn't do). This would mean a huge shift in the balance of power for ogg and allow people like you to publish .ogg and not have to worry about it not playing on the most likely used device, the iPod. This is especially important with podcasting now where there could be huge bandwidth savings if ogg (or heck, even speex) was used instead of mp3.

I wonder if we could get Adam Curry onto Jobs about this?

I'm on board -- let's go for it!!

I personally prefer Option 3 with emphasis on Option 2 -- so, the default is Ogg Vorbis, but in small print below the main link, I'll put "Can't play this file? Here's how. Here's why. Here's an mp3 if you're feeling lazy right now."

So really push it into the market, but offer backward-compatible options. I personally have an iRiver, which plays Ogg and mp3, so I'm not in with the iPod crowd with hatin on the Ogg. I prefer it for quality and openness, so serve it up!

Catch-22 of software patents of the lack of them. ;)

Alternatively, Apple could license the AAC format so that it can be used free of charge by open source projects.

Or we could all wait until 2012 when the MP3 patent expires :)

Remember, we had to get to the current generation of iPods for the PortalPlayer chipset to have the horsepower to reproduce .ogg files (Though I have the suspicion that 3G iPods may have been able to do this too -- but I'm too busy now to look for that bookmark).

And then, we have the other DAP manufacturers: I remember reading a post in the Riovolution forums by a Rio Networks engineer mentioning this very thing: that Ogg Vorbis reproduction just creates a quite big 'load' in the player's processor. (To their credit, Rio Networks' Karma reproduces Ogg Vorbis files, but not their whole line, due to the aforementioned reason.)

Also, I'm not 100% sure when I say this, but at least a few months ago when I did a quick check, progress in the Ogg Vorbis development field had ceased/was inexistant.

But that still leaves out MP3, for which you need LAME. There are good instructions available for configuring this stuff on Ubuntu, but you *do* have to look for them.

For an article I'm writing, I had to encode a 40MB .wav file (1.5 hrs running time) of a conference call as MP3, and decided I'll provide Ogg as well -- with MP3 listed first. At 32kbps, the MP3 (encoded using LAME) came in at 20.2MB; the Ogg (at 28kbps) is 17.5MB.

Costs me nothing to provide both, and somebody might discover Ogg as a result. Doubt anybody will be confused.

LQ

It was thought that "iPod may not have the computational horsepower to play OGG Vorbis files in the first place. Turns out that might not be the case," and, even the "original iPod does indeed have the horsepower for Ogg".

Not to mention that Apple gets to sell more iPods if they only release it in the newest version.

I would like to publish in Ogg Vorbis format, but a lot of my potential listeners would have to jump through hoops to be able to play the show.

Another reason Ogg Vorbis can't take off: it's pretty resource intensive to process and reproduce in digital audio players.

All in all, OGG is probably not the absolute best lossy format, but it's for sure much better than MP3 or WMA. Check out Hydrogenaudio for comparisons, the guys there have many thorough tests.

Right, this is probably why iRiver has released OGG-capable players out of the box for a while now, and has even released firmware updates to allow older players to process OGG files... up to 500kbps (that would be max quality)...

Have you tried reproducing .ogg files with an iRiver to see how fast the battery drains? (A: Much faster than when reproducing only .mp3 files.)

Guess why that is?

Now, instead of just downloading and listening, he has to choose between two formats. He doesn’t care, he just wants to rawk. Also, much of the benefit of publishing in Ogg Vorbis is now lost, since only those who are already familiar with it and using it will bother choosing it as a format.

You could design the AOVR area in such a way that the OGG file receives most attention, making Johnny Q's choice easier, while the mp3 link looks more like a 'backup' link, and you could include a link to a player/codec that can digest OGG.

I know that it sounds as though with that, the AOVR design becomes terribly complex, but proper layout can provide a decent compromise between offering only MP3, and offering both formats. I'm sure Steve's capable of cleanly designing a rectangle with a couple links. :)

With ogg you can encode 5.1, for mp3 is a very bleeding edge feature. Bass sounds better... I prefer much more ogg than mp3, but specially for streaming.

I hate to encode my music to mp3 because of the compatibility, but I must do it because of friends...

I encode all my music in Ogg Vorbis, and use Rhythmbox to play it back on Fedora Core.

The only open format for music that interests me is flac. I am surprised you didn't mention it.

(business idea: an online service that allows any Linux user to download a licenced copy of the mp3 codec for 'free' just by sitting through some music focused advertising. Anyone got the numbers on how feasible that would be? Might make some money and slightly increase Linux usability but won't help vorbis in the long term)

The other point that is worth mentioning is that AAC and WMP (never mind ATRAC and other proprietary codecs) are struggling with the massive install base of mp3 and the lack of a compelling end-user USP (allowing multinationals to lock you out of your own content doesn't count). If the massive success of the iPod hasn't allowed Apple to displace mp3, and MSFT's usual bully-boy monopoly tactics haven't stolen the market for WMA then what makes you think that Ogg Vorbis is failing because it is open? It seems to be doing surprisingly well to me, all things considered.

Why doesn't someone come up with a killer feature for Firefox that needs vorbis? If people are prepared to fight through the Real Player download screen to get content from the likes of the BBC then an open source install *should* be (though sadly probably isn't) a piece of cake.

Hey zealots can be annoying, it's other people's choice which they use, and that I have always respected. But needless to say, most of my friends - who are not technical - encode to Ogg, and write valid HTML. These are tweo successes I've had (along with a few Linux converts) by stciking to the above. I find the ranting of RMS and ESR to be quite offensive and off-putting most of the time, but there are other ways of talking.

I've generally encorouaged all the companies I've work for to be more suspicious of the interchange formats that companies push on them. This is not by talking about some abstract sense of liberty, but merely educating about vendor lock-in, something they've often felt elsewhere, and how this can effect their business.

I dunno, it's a slow battle, maybe lost, but you've got to do what you can.

mp3 became a household term because it was really the very first easily distributable music format, and that's what people held on to. Maybe they should have called it mpx (the x is for eXtreme!) and it would have caught some peoples attention.

But unfortunately as it stands now, a lot of people know firefox is a browser, some people know they can use Linux instead of windows (and give up after they find out that there are many different types of "linux") and barely anyone but developers know that ogg vorbis is synonomous with compressed audio. I even doubt a viral ad campaign like firefox had could convert anyone in this case, unless the users are told that ogg's can't be renamed viruses like mp3 files can be...

Anyway, Ogg was a great idea/alternative when compressed audio formats were necessary (and it was written about ad nauseam 3-4 years ago). However, it will become come nothing more that a footnote in the history of digital audio formats now that bandwidth, storage, and computer power are all so incredibly fast, cheap, and powerful. A true lossless format will rise up soon and become the standard, dethroning the MP3 and disappearing OGG, WMA, and Real into the night. What will it be? ... AAC, FLAC, something completely different? Who knows, but now would be the time for the open source community to look down the road a bit, take the initiative and establish that new lossless audio standard and sell it to the world. Instead of writing about the past and what could have been.

P.S. Steven you are so unoriginal it makes me sleepy.

The bonus is crystal clear audio using about the same disk space as maximum compression with MP3 encoding and if some new super fractal null point over the horizon compression scheme comes along one day, I can recompress without any generational loss.

http://harveydanger.com/downloads/