[lightkuragari]

Hi, my name is Marco Pérez, and though i've been an ocremix fan for a long time now, i had never registered into this forum until now.

And this is because i wanted to make the suggestion of using a free audio format like ogg as the default format for the great OC Remixes housed here. This, in order to support the campaign and to have a free and high quality audio format in which we can rely on, with no patent issues or particular owners.

For more info on this and a detailed explanation, read here.

I really believe making the effort of switching to a free open format, will make the OC Remix community a bit more independent. It would be great. Thanks for reading!

[Rozovian]

The main reason ocr doesn't use ogg is that most users don't have media players that support ogg, or don't find them convenient. It gets worse when you get to portable music players, because the average listener isn't gonna install rockbox just to get oggs to work, they'd rather just convert the files to mp3.

The ocr album Relics of the Chozo was released in ogg tho.

Dunno why the fsf campaign suggest ppl use VLC for music playback when Songbird is a more music-oriented alternative.

[Liontamer]

It's been brought up 6 or 7 years ago, and the case for it is less compelling now than it was back then. OGG doesn't have widespread support & acceptance as the de facto listening format. And no matter what the legalese says, MP3 is de facto free. Changing past files to OGG would require backups of lossless originals, which we definitely don't have and couldn't obtain.

Until any of that changes, which it likely won't, there's no reason to consider OGG. Hate to slap it down, as it's not an inherently terrible idea, but there's just no compelling reason to switch to it.

[lightkuragari]

Well, you're right about portable music players, it's a shame they not always support open formats. Regarding to songbird, it seems they're stopping it's linux version development. However you're right... VLC is a strange choice for a recommended music player.

I remember, i got Relics of the Chozo (great album) and there were ogg files in the package, i didn't remember that.

Well, it seems it is not such a good idea to change the file format, but i still feel like there should be a way. Well, we'll have to keep thinking.

[Fishy]

Some projects have wav/flac releases that you can convert to ogg. That's the closest you'll ever get to official OCR oggs.

[djpretzel]

Hmmm, where to begin.

Let me just make an ideological point that bears making: open formats, and open technology, are both "good things". However, they are not the ONLY things, nor do they outweigh real-world considerations and practicality. Open format zealots usually have good intentions, but I hate to break it to you: the world is full of patents. Not all of them are bad, not all of them are evil, and some of them actually protect & inspire innovation, as opposed to curtailing it.

But let me take another step back, re: MP3 specifically: the cat's out of the bag, the ship has sailed, and the fat lady has pretty much sung. Not in terms of MP3 being superior from a technical perspective - that's a whole different can of worms - but in terms of it being a format so widely-employed and easily accessible that it is, for all intents and purpose, "open". Maybe not on paper - although it's my understanding that it IS essentially open in terms of playing/decoding, just not encoding - but in practice. Practice makes all the difference in the world, as any site that focuses on fan arrangements of commercial game soundtracks can tell you...

[lightkuragari]

That's right, practical solutions are always the best suited alternative. The thought of being entirely independent is a tempting one, it's definitely a very cool idea, however it's not always the best thing to target.

OCRemix is very successful as it is now, and for what i can see there is no problem in using mp3 format... i think. Or... have you ever had some kind of limitation?

Anyway, i thought maybe ogg would be a solution to overcome any possible limitation with mp3, but it seems there's no such a barrier and moreover, the change would perhaps be a practically bad move.

Besides, i guess if at some point the limit existed, you guys would already had evaluated the possibility to change.

[Dafydd]

Switching from free phpbb to for-profit vBulletin for the sake of awesomeness, and then from for-free mp3 to really-free ogg for the sake of principle? When exactly does mp3 cost money? Does anyone know? If you create an application that encodes mp3 and charge people for using it? If you sell mp3 files? If you make a portable media player that plaus mp3s and charge people for it? Does it ever cost money if you doesn't make you any? I'm just curious. I figured I might as well ask before this thread falls off the edge to the next page...

[soulflay]

Wouldn't it be better to make the files available as a better lossy files, such as vorbis or at least aac/m4a? There is a lot of consensus that mp3 causes sound quality to suffer and should be retired. http://productionadvice.co.uk/why-mp3-sounds-bad/

[Meteo Xavier]

Well, MP3's been working pretty well for us for the last 10 years or so...