Convert OGG to MP3
Convert an Ogg Vorbis file to MP3 so it plays on hardware that never supported Ogg. Vorbis is a good codec with an unusual history — it exists because MP3 was patented and Ogg was not, and by the time those patents expired in 2017 the compatibility gap had already been set. Converting closes it.
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Up to 50 MB. Deleted automatically after 30 minutes.
What it does
- Reads Ogg Vorbis audio
- Encoded at a high variable-bitrate setting
- Plays on hardware that never adopted Ogg
- No watermark and no sign-up
How to use OGG to MP3
- 1
Add the OGG
Drop the file in or choose it from your computer, up to 50 MB, no account needed.
- 2
Convert
The Vorbis audio is decoded and re-encoded as MP3 at a high variable-bitrate setting.
- 3
Play it anywhere
The MP3 works on car stereos, older players and every piece of audio software.
A format that existed because of patents
Ogg Vorbis was released in 2000 by the Xiph.Org Foundation for a reason that had little to do with sound quality. MP3 was covered by patents held by Fraunhofer and Thomson, and those patents were enforced: writing software that encoded MP3 meant paying license fees, which was an obstacle for free software, small developers and anyone distributing an encoder.
Vorbis was designed to be a technically comparable codec with no patent obligations attached. It worked. Games adopted it heavily, open-source software standardized on it, Wikipedia used it, and a great deal of freely licensed music was distributed in it.
What it never got was hardware. Chip makers had already licensed MP3 and built decoders for it, and there was no commercial reason to add a second one. That asymmetry is the whole reason this conversion is needed: an excellent codec that software plays and devices do not.
The patents expired in 2017. By then the shape of the world was set.
How it works
The Vorbis audio is decoded to samples and encoded to MP3 at a high variable-bitrate setting, which gives complicated passages more data and simple ones less.
Vorbis is lossy, so this is a second generation of loss — the first encoder discarded what it judged inaudible, and the MP3 encoder now works from what remains and makes its own, different judgments. That disagreement is where the additional damage comes from, and it is small at high bitrates.
Where you meet Ogg files
Games are the commonest source. Extracting audio from a game's assets very often produces Ogg files, because it was the obvious choice for a developer who did not want to pay to ship an encoder.
After that: open-source applications, freely licensed music archives, some Linux distributions' sound files, and older Wikipedia media. Spotify used Vorbis internally for years, though not in a form anybody could extract.
When to leave it alone
If the destination reads Ogg — VLC, foobar2000, most Linux players, modern Android, any browser — leave it as it is. Converting costs quality and gains nothing. Convert when the destination is a car, a piece of hardware with a fixed decoder, or software that lists its formats and does not include this one.
Examples
Game or application audio
Ogg is common in games and open-source software because it was free of patent obligations. Extracted files often need converting to be used anywhere else.
A download from an open-source music site
Sites that distribute freely licensed music frequently offer Ogg first, and a car stereo or older player will not read it.
Frequently asked questions
Why does so little hardware play Ogg?
Because hardware support follows what manufacturers expect to need, and by the time Vorbis existed MP3 was already the format everyone shipped. Ogg's advantage was legal rather than technical — it avoided patent licensing — and that mattered enormously to software authors and not at all to a chip designer who had already licensed MP3.
Is Vorbis worse than MP3?
No, it is generally better at the same bitrate, particularly at lower ones. This conversion is a compatibility trade in the same way AAC to MP3 is: you are accepting a slightly worse file in exchange for one that plays on anything. The quality question and the support question have different answers here.
What is the difference between OGG and Opus?
Ogg is a container and Vorbis is the codec usually inside it, which is why 'Ogg Vorbis' is the full name. Opus is a newer codec that also travels in an Ogg container, and it is better than Vorbis at essentially everything. A file ending `.ogg` is almost always Vorbis; one ending `.opus` is Opus.
Will I hear the loss?
For speech, no. For music it is a second lossy encode — Vorbis discarded what it judged inaudible and the MP3 encoder now discards what it judges inaudible from that reduced version, and they disagree slightly. At a high variable-bitrate setting the result is close enough that a fair comparison is difficult without good headphones and the original to hand.