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The difference in music codecs

JC123	Date: January 15, 2004 @ 4:43 PM I keep hearing that there's a difference in audio codecs for mp3 type files. Can anyone help me?
Thaspian	Date: January 15, 2004 @ 4:51 PM Can you explain a bit more what you're asking? MP3 _is_ an audio codec.... the only difference I can think of is the encoder used.
mawcs	Date: January 15, 2004 @ 5:07 PM Maybe he's thinking mp3 is synonymous with "music file"?
mawcs	Date: January 15, 2004 @ 5:09 PM (ouch. Tab + Enter = post... ) In which case there's WMA, MP3, WAV, OGG, AIFF, Blah, Blah. I agree with Thaspian, can you clarify your question
JC123	Date: January 15, 2004 @ 11:57 PM I know that there's other codecs other than mp3 files. Thing that I don't know is how you're supposed to hear the difference between them. When I read a story on Microsoft's WMA file or how Ogg is supposedly better I get confused since for the most part I can't really hear the difference. I mainly have mp3s on my computer of all sorts. But I want to learn about other types of audio codecs out there. If there's a better one that is better than mp3 I'd love to hear about it. Mainly why everyone totes ogg or Vorbis over WAV and mp3.
JC123	Date: January 15, 2004 @ 11:57 PM I know that there's other codecs other than mp3 files. Thing that I don't know is how you're supposed to hear the difference between them. When I read a story on Microsoft's WMA file or how Ogg is supposedly better I get confused since for the most part I can't really hear the difference. I mainly have mp3s on my computer of all sorts. But I want to learn about other types of audio codecs out there. If there's a better one that is better than mp3 I'd love to hear about it. Mainly why everyone totes ogg or Vorbis over WAV and mp3.
withering	Date: January 16, 2004 @ 3:12 AM WAV are in kind of a different league than the others here, most often WAVs are uncompressed audio, and therefore to big to carry around in a handbag. But there's no question that WAVs are the highest audio quality, since the others use lossy compression algorithms, which means that they sacrifice audio quality to get a smaller file size. About the others, WMA, MP3 and OGG: For most people, there's No audible difference, unless you listen really really hard. They're simply three different approaches to the same solution, and the results vary only in degree. Some are better than others for certain types of audio, but many people mean that OGG/Vorbis is the overall best contender. People get very upset over this thing for mainly political/ethical reasons. And here there are major differences: WMA is a closed, proprietary format. Owned by one company, Microsoft, you even have to get approved by them in order to be allowed to make a program or player that can playback WMA files. MP3 is a patented format. Which means that whoever creates an MP3 player/creator have to pay licensing cost to the patent holder(s). OGG/Vorbis is a free, open and unpatented format. Which means that anyone with the skills may freely make a OGG player or encoder, without ever worrying about licensing or patents. As an end user, you may think that none of these things really matter, as long as you are able to listen to music on your computer. But in the long term, it does matter - much! Anyone that wants to keep their computer open (that is, you as the rightful owner may do whatever you please with it as long it's legal), should avoid WMA at all cost and choose OGG over MP3 whenever possible. For more info, check out: http://www.vorbis.com/ http://www.mp3licensing.com/royalty/software.html http://www.gnu.org/
mawcs	Date: January 16, 2004 @ 11:16 AM One note on OGG, most times, I see a better compression to quality ratio than mp3.

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