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Who'll Be Using Ogg Vorbis Instead Of MP3?
An anonymous reader asks: "Ogg Vorbis is hitting stable and hopefully will release 1.0 soon. But I'm wondering, who is going to use it? MP3 is very popular on the net and beyond, but it's based on patents. Software patents aren't legal in Europe, but are in other parts of the world. Is Ogg Vorbis making a chance to become the next music-standard for the net and beyond. This mainly because there are no patents broken by this standard. Will it be a standard for the world or one for the books?"
Never having bothered to do it before with MP3, I've recently started ripping my CD collection to .ogg files, and the quality is good to my (tin) ears. Someone with an entrepreneurial bent needs to sell a dedicated hardware player that takes CD-Rs, so I can play back 10 hours of books on tape from a single disk. I'm not the only one slow on the MP3 curve, basically starting from scratch with Vorbis, am I?
First of all, Slashdot is the last place I thought I'd see attitudes like this. "MP3 equals GIF", "MP3 is mainstream, so I stick with it", etc.. What the hell? Where's your spine and guts?!
You're sticking with MP3s because you're too afraid that it won't make it to the mainstream?? As if you would be considering to buy that portable Ogg/MP3 player anyway.. How many of you even own such a device? Not many - surprise surprise. Afraid of change? Oh please..
What Ogg-Vorbis really needs now is support. People who are willing to try it out, and start using it. Preferably make some noise while doing it. What it doesn't need is unjustified suspicions about it's technical quality.
I've been using Ogg as a substitute for MP3s for some time now. And I can say the sound quality is much more better than in most crappy MP3 encoders. Those who say that Ogg's quality is below of MP3, I challenge you to proove your words. I bet most of you are just repeating hearsay, without any actual, first-hand evidence.
Think about MP3's early days. The industry didn't just accept it as a standard, it took time and a user base in the Internet to create market for every kinds of MP3 devices. We will need to make that user base in order to overcome the MP3 format.
What do you think would happen, if industry was offered a format where they wouldn't have to pay any license fees? Would they just reject it, because MP3 is already a self-proclaimed standard? I don't think so.
Ogg Vorbis can only have a positive impact on the current situation.
I was involved in one of those blind taste tests of Pepsi's. I know what Coke tastes like and it tastes nothing like Pepsi(which tastes like medicine to me). When I chose the Coke instead of the Pepsi, the guy was like "ummm...well Pepsi isn't for everyone, you must really love Coke!" Then I said I don't drink Coke that often. Subsequently, I got hurried off the stage and given a coupon for a free Pepsi. I think I was the only person there (I was there for 15minutes) who chose the Coke.