Ogg Vorbis - technical definition

A patent and royalty-free, lossy audio compression technology from the Xiph.Org Foundation (www.xiph.org), which is dedicated to open source multimedia standards for the Internet. Ogg is the project name and container format. Vorbis is an audio codec that generates 16 bit samples at 16 KHz to 48 KHz, providing variable bit rates from 16 to 128 Kbps per channel. Ogg Vorbis is considered comparable to AAC and better than MP3 in sound quality as well as providing lower bit rates and smaller file sizes.

Other Ogg projects include Theora for video, Speex for speech and FLAC for high-fidelity audio. Developed by Christopher Montgomery at MIT, the name Ogg comes from Netrek, a game in which an "ogg" is a forceful move. Vorbis is a demented deacon in "Small Gods" by Terry Pratchett. See FLAC.