Ogg Vorbis

Ogg Vorbis is a new audio compression format. It is roughly comparable to other formats used to store and play digital music, such as MP3, AAC, WMA and other digital audio formats. It is different from these other formats because it is completely free, open, and unpatented.

If an artist wants to distribute compressed digital audio or a developer wants to write software that encodes or decodes digital audio in a format such as MP3, they must pay the owner of the copyright of the compression format used. Not so with Ogg Vorbis as it is 'Open Source'; anyone is free to use the format to encode and decode audio in anyway they wish, and to even look at how the format works if they're clever enough! The creators of the format also claim it gives better sound for a given file size than MP3.

As a jukebox user you probably won't worry too much about the Open Source aspect but if you don't want your music to have any connection with a multi-national corporation but do want it to sound better than the ageing MP3 format for slightly less file size you should give Ogg Vorbis a try.

You can find out more at the Ogg Vorbis FAQ Page.

Currently only some players are Ogg Vorbis enabled. These are:

• iRiver iHP-120 (H120)
• Rio Karma
• iRiver iHP-140 (H140)
• iRiver H320
• iRiver H340