MP3 versus OGG

Recently I talked about FLAC, the free lossless audio codec. Although lossless is a good thing, me personally I couldn't hear a difference so I decided to go with the space savings of MP3 / OGG. But today I wanted to talk more about MP3 and OGG files.

Without a doubt the MP3 format is the de facto audio format. Everyone uses it, just about every device and piece of software reads that format. But that doesn't mean it's the best format. I recently took a closer look at the OGG format and was surprised by what I learned. Unfortunately I can't show you like I could with the picture samples in my post about image compression, so you'll just have to download some samples and judge for yourself.

Put simply the OGG format offers better compression for the same bitrate compared to MP3. So what this means is you can have smaller files than MP3 without sacrificing quality. Or you could have files of the same size but with better quality. At first I didn't believe these claims, I think part of me was hesitant to give up my trusty MP3 format. But listening to some samples and reading about the two formats it is true. Think of it this way, MP3 dates from the early 90s whereas OGG is from 2000. In that decade they improved upon the technique of compressing audio without losing quality. This is how OGG is able to compress more without loss of quality compared to the MP3 format.

So starting now I'm going to switch to the OGG format for all my furture audio needs.