The LEAD Vorbis Audio Codec is a DirectShowВ® filter for compressing and decompressing audio data using the Vorbis compression algorithm. Vorbis is an audio compression method used to store digital music or any audio data. The compressed audio data can be stored inside AVI or Ogg files.

Compared to MP3 compressed audio files, Vorbis based compression produces audio files that maintain a higher sound quality and/or a smaller compressed size, depending on the needs of the user. For example, the user has the option of keeping their digital music collection at the same sound quality level as MP3, but requiring significantly less disk space. Or, a user can commit the same amount of storage (disk space) as their MP3 based files, however their digital music will have higher quality sound.