Software Update: Ogg Vorbis 1.0

ElemenTAL and Anonymous: 64293 informed us that version 1.0 of Ogg Vorbis is out. For the people who are not familiar with this piece of software, we find an explanation:

Ogg Vorbis is a sound compression algorithm, which you could roughly compare with the well-known MP3. However, Vorbis is capable of better sound quality at a lower bitrate and above all is completely patent-free, unlike MP3.

An Ogg Vorbis file at 128 kbit is qualitatively comparable to an MP3 sound file at 196 kbit, so that is a net space gain of one third. Hard disk space is cheap these days, but given the number of MP3s that the average PC user has in his hard disk, a space saving of a third should be very welcome. With the current version of Vorbis, compression takes about the same time as with MP3s.
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Ogg Vorbis is available in many different flavors, but it seems that only the 1.0 final is available for Windows. For the people with a different OS are here find the latest versions (1.0 RC3). People with Windows can here get the latest version.

Ogg Vorbis is distributed under a version of the BSD license.