Wikipedia:Tip of the day/January 9, 2007

Digital audio editors

There are several free and commercial digital audio editors available to assist editors in preparing audio samples for upload to Wikipedia. Please remember to follow the appropriate rules and guidelines. Wikipedia uses Ogg Vorbis for sound. The Ogg Vorbis format is not encumbered by patents, and has been found to offer higher audio fidelity than the MP3 format. It is competitive even at low bitrates for encoding speech, comparable with even HE-AAC. A decision has been made that MP3 files will not be hosted at Wikipedia.

Software supporting Vorbis exists for many platforms. Although Apple iTunes does not natively support Vorbis, Xiph.org provides a QuickTime component which can be used in iTunes and QuickTime on both Windows and Mac OS. On Microsoft Windows, DirectShow filters exist to decode Vorbis in multimedia players like Windows Media Player and others which support DirectShow.

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