MP3 vs. OGG Vorbis

Main Difference

MP3 and OGG Vorbis are the compressed audio file types and commonly known as lossy compression audio formats. Both of them are considered to be favorite for downloading, storing and copying. OGG Vorbis is not only free but also an open audio encoding format. MP3 is a proprietary media encoding format. It is claimed by the designers of the MP3 format that they may charge royalties for any kind of file or application using their MP3 format. Compression bit rate can be varied in OGG Vorbis according to the need but in MP3 the bit rate of compression can’t be varied and remains constant.

Difference Between MP3 and OGG Vorbis

What is MP3?

MP3 is a audio format and is the abbreviation for “MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3”. It was developed by Thompson Multimedia and Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in the late of 1980’s. Basically MP3 is an audio format that ground-breaks the digital audio format in to the smaller sizes maintaining the same sound quality. Even a 50MB WAV file can be compressed to smaller size of 3MB using this MP3 maintaining the same digital sound quality. Compression bit rate can’t be varied using MP3 compression format. MP3 supports two discrete channels and also a “Joint Stereo”which is used to minimize the amount of data for storing the audio stream.

What is OGG Vorbis?

OGG Vorbis is an audio format that ground-breaks the digital audio format in to a smaller size without scarifying the digital sound quality. OGG Vorbis was developed by Viph.Org Foundation and first released in 2002. It is also a lossy compression audio format. It is an open source and free to all for download and use. The bit rate for encoding can be varied in the OGG Vorbis depending on the need. It is an open source and gaining popularity among developers due to its superior sound quality. It is also making its place in game development industry. OGG Vorbis uses more than 2 channels.