OGG vs MP3
OGG Vorbis sounds a little better than MP3 at the same bitrate, and is used in games and on Android. MP3 plays on absolutely everything. For compatibility use MP3; inside your own app or game, OGG is fine.
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Choose OGG when
- Game audio and apps, where it is free of licensing and widely supported by engines.
- Lower bitrates, where Vorbis holds up better than MP3.
Choose MP3 when
- Car stereos, older players and anything Apple.
- Sharing audio when you cannot check what the other end supports.
What OGG actually is
Ogg Vorbis was the free software world's answer to MP3, and it beat it comfortably on quality per byte. It became the audio format of choice in games, in Wikipedia, and in Spotify's streaming, and it remains in wide use even though Opus has largely replaced it for new work.
Ogg is the container, Vorbis is the codec, and an .ogg file can also contain Opus or FLAC. That is why one .ogg plays somewhere another will not.
What MP3 actually is
MP3 discards the parts of a sound that psychoacoustic models say you are least likely to hear, then compresses the rest. It was the format that made digital music portable, and while newer codecs beat it at every bitrate, nothing matches its compatibility.
Converting an MP3 to another lossy format compounds the damage, because the second encoder is guessing at audio the first one already threw away.
OGG and MP3 side by side
| OGG | MP3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Extension | .ogg | .mp3 |
| Media type | audio/ogg | audio/mpeg |
| Inside the file | Vorbis | MPEG-1 Layer III |
| Compression | Lossy | Lossy |
| One minute of stereo | 0.7 to 1.5 MB | 1 to 2.4 MB |
| Plays on | Android, Firefox, Chrome and games, but not Apple Music or older players | everything, including car stereos and hardware twenty years old |
| We can write it | Yes | Yes |
Questions
Why will my OGG file not play on an iPhone?
Apple's apps do not support Ogg Vorbis. Converting to MP3 or M4A fixes it.
Is OGG lossless?
No. Ogg Vorbis is lossy, like MP3.