Convert MOD to OGG — Free Online Converter

MOD files are the original tracker music format, created for the Commodore Amiga's Ultimate Soundtracker in 1987 by Karsten Obarski. The format encodes music as a combination of embedded instrument samples (8-bit PCM, with loop points and finetune values) and pattern-based note sequences across 4 channels (extended by ProTracker, OctaMED, and others). Each pattern row specifies which sample to play on each channel, at what pitch (via Amiga period values), and with what effects (portamento, vibrato, arpeggio, volume slides). This architecture was revolutionary — it meant a complete multi-instrument song could fit on a fraction of a floppy disk, traded freely across BBSes and demo parties.

OGG (Ogg Vorbis) is Xiph.org's open-source lossy audio codec, free from patents and licensing fees. Converting MOD to OGG renders the tracker data into a continuous audio stream and applies Vorbis compression — a codec that offers quality roughly comparable to AAC and superior to MP3 at equivalent bitrates. For the open-source community that shares cultural DNA with the demoscene (both driven by ideals of free creation and distribution), OGG is the natural format for distributing rendered tracker music.

The open-source and Linux communities have a strong affinity with the demoscene — both cultures value technical creativity, free distribution, and community-driven art. OGG Vorbis is the preferred audio format in these ecosystems: it's natively supported in Firefox, Chrome, Linux music players (Rhythmbox, Clementine, Audacious), game engines (Godot, SDL), and the entire Xiph.org stack. Converting MOD to OGG keeps tracker music within the free and open-source philosophy that the demoscene embodied.

Game developers using open-source engines frequently convert MOD files to OGG for their soundtracks. While some engines can play MOD natively, pre-rendering to OGG reduces CPU overhead during gameplay (no real-time synthesis needed), ensures consistent audio across all target platforms, and allows the music to be processed through the engine's standard audio pipeline with effects like reverb, spatial audio, and dynamic mixing without needing a specialized tracker decoder.

FFmpeg's module decoder renders the MOD file's pattern data and samples into stereo PCM audio, applying the full effect command set (ProTracker-compatible processing). The PCM output is then fed to the Vorbis encoder (libvorbis), which applies MDCT (Modified Discrete Cosine Transform) to convert time-domain samples into frequency-domain coefficients, uses a psychoacoustic model to determine masking thresholds per frequency band, quantizes the coefficients based on a target quality level, and entropy-codes the result. Vorbis uses a quality scale from -1 (roughly 45 kbps) to 10 (roughly 500 kbps), with quality 5 (~160 kbps) being the typical default. The Vorbis bitstream is encapsulated in an Ogg container — a page-based transport format with CRC checksums and sequence numbers for stream integrity.