MP3 forum

[Jr.]

Well, yeah, but that wasn't so about three months ago when the last post was made here.

Please refrain from bumping old threads unless you have something new to contribute.

Thanks!

[AF]

saturnss said:

Ogg is a compression format, like mp3. LC can correct me if I'm wrong but I believe ogg is a free format unlike mp3.

What do you mean MP3 format isn't "free"? are you saying companies have to pay someone/some company to make a program that uses MP3s? As I recall, Ogg format compresses the files about as much as AAC (.m4a), but I don't remember...I know that WMA files are smaller thanMP3s, but I don't know if they're smaller than AAC.

PS: iTunes' prefered file format is AAC, because of better compression, the fact that the Macintosh company owns the rights (I think) to the format, and iPods can use AACs...which is handy, because of the fact that AAC files are smaller than MP3s.

PPS: I think a music forum would be nice, but not exactly an MP3 forum.

[Saturn]

Well, this is an old topic...

LC was the one that did all this research for using mp3 as a file format for a game we were working on. It was to be a commercial game with profit, so he looked into the legality of using mp3 for the music in it. If you want to encode your own work into mp3 format legally then you have to pay a fee. If you plan on decoding an mp3 file you also need to pay a fee. From what I also gather, if you use the codec you need to pay a fee also.

I believe part of the issue was that he would have needed to make his own program to actually play the files...and they charge a more expensive fee for doing that. List of fees for using mp3 format.

OGG Vorbis does not have anything like this. Their format is free to use.

I'm pretty sure LC can answer this a lot better than myself, but that's most of it and what I remember from that whole issue.