Ogg Vorbis isn't just a pretty name. The "Ogg" part refers to the Ogg Project, an Open Source multimedia initiative; "Vorbis" is the name of the actual audio compression format. Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format that sounds better than MP3, and, you guessed it, it's Open Source. We'll get to the significance of a freely developed audio format in a moment. For now suffice it to say that Ogg Vorbis is comparable to compression formats such as AAC, TwinVQ, PAC and MPEG-4.
The timing might be excellent since the organization that developed the MP3 format will soon begin to charge licensing fees. The Fraunhofer Institute, a semi-governmental German research and development institute, created the MP3 compression codec. Fraunhofer didn't count on individuals rather than corporations encoding and listening to music on the Web, and in Fall of 1999, Fraunhofer announced that in beginning in 2001 the Institute would demand royalty payments for the use of any MP3 technology product or streamed MP3 service (like Internet radio) that uses the MP3 compression format. And that was before the Napster v. RIAA case hit the frontpage of every major daily in the world.
Fraunhofer's attempt to stem the unforeseen storm surge of their royalty-free technology has motivated people to develop alternatives to the MP3 format. This is the challenge taken up by the Ogg Vorbis team, a group of volunteer audio compression code warriors, and third party developers, of course led by the good 'ol folks at Xiphophorus. Remember, "Open Source" means "no licensing fees," so the goal is to create an Open Source audio compression format that can do at least anything that MP3 can do. In its inimitably groovy way, cooperation and support is a key ingredient to the Ogg Vorbis stew. In this tutorial we'll try to show you a bunch of ways to implement the nascent format.
Until recently, Ogg Vorbis was just a MP3 player plug-in for WINamp, Sonique, and LINUX players. And rough beta-like encoders for the Windows, LINUX, and BeOS operating systems were available also. Now, as you can see below in the Angry Coffee Vorbis Toolbox that many developers have taken advantage of the open source, royalty free codec, and now you can find a multitude of players and encoders that use Ogg Vorbis. Ogg Vorbis can be encoded in bitrates from sub-16kbps to 256kbps, and in stereo, mono, or 5.1 surround sound.
Angry Coffee will not be covering the LINUX side of things in this tutorial, so if that's why you're here go to Vorbis.com to download the LINUX player plug-in. Then download the LINUX encoder.
