ROUND 3

Freedom

Compressed music really came into its own with the popularity of MP3, despite a ton of other equally decent formats existing at the time. Blame WinAmp, the lousiness of WMA and RealAudio, and the fact that MP3 was easy to decode on the lesser processors of yesteryear. The problem is, MP3, for all its ubiquity, isn’t free. Or at least, it hasn’t been: The final patent is due to expire right about now, and Technicolor’s licensing program for the codec ended in April 2017. There’s now no need to illegally download the LAME encoder, no squabbles at trade shows, and the potential for MP3 to make a proper comeback. Not that it should.

The other two formats are both actually free. There’s a clue in FLAC’s name: It’s the Free Lossless Audio Codec. It’s free, as is Ogg. Both FLAC and Ogg Vorbis emerged from the open source community, and while they’re both venerable (the various technical aspects of Ogg’s bitstream format, for example, were frozen some 17 years ago), you’re free to chop either protocol up and create your own format if you’re a little bit crazy.

Tie: Ogg Vorbis and FLAC