OGG Vorbis
I have decided to take on the time consuming task of re-encoding my audio library. It is currently in MP3 format, but I would prefer to have them in Vorbis OGG. I have 15.7GB and 4447 files. I should probably be getting some sun today, but I feel more motivated to do this. I will make another post when I finish the job (likely in a few days).
(note: I am using the original CD to re-encode from I am not converting MP3s)
why do you switch to ogg?
I have two reasons – #1 = better quality, #2 = Freedom.
#1 but if you re-encode your mp3s now to ogg, you will have a quality loss, instead of win.
i would switch to ogg, if my friends (mac-users) would be able to play them in itunes. but thats not working at the moment
Sorry to be nitpicking, but shouldn’t it be ‘Ogg Vorbis’?
Yes… thanks… I will make the correction.
Re-encoding MP3 to Vorbis is something I considered for a long time, then ultimately decided against.
Instead, I’ve just re-ripped all my CDs as Vorbis or, in many cases, FLAC. I’ve then encoded anything I already had stored as uncompressed WAV to FLAC.
As for the rest… as much as I hate it, I’m not strong enough to deny myself MP3 playback capabilities on my primary machine anyway, so for the remaining MP3s (and, I must admit, the occasional WMA if that’s how I was given it) I’m just leaving them as is. I just can’t justify the quality I’d lose by re-encoding from one lossy format to another.
When I say re-encoding I am re-extracting them from the original CD, not doing a conversion of the MP3.
I would highly recommend, if you have the CDs, re-ripping them in FLAC instead. Lossless audio sounds so, so good. And the codec is open source.
I wonder what the size would be… Yes, I have the original CDs. I sense I must do a test rip to compare the size.
In reguards to no 1. You won’t gain quality by reencoding. You’ll more than likely lose some. Making the highs sound tinny and distorted.
Apparently I have made a huge mistake in describing my process… I am re-encoding the music using the original CD content not converting the MP3 versions.
wow. 4 new comments while I was writing. Please ignore the slow guy on the mobile. Nothing to see here.
LOL. Yes, this topic appears to be a ‘hot button’ with a few people.
It would be nice if your CD collection is creative commons music, else I don’t see sense to the ogg stuff. If you has a free format containing privative music…
An honest thought… but I like the quality of OGG as well. Though I am looking at FLAC right now as was suggested earlier.
Here’s for friends jailed by iTunes:
http://www.vorbis.com/setup_osx/
Hmm, I’m in a similar situation, but was thinking of reencoding the mp3s….. meh…
And now it should be “OGA” as far as i know for audio files, and “OGV” for video ones.
The idea would be to save a bit of disk space…
I have also decided to re-encode my audio library and from now only to use ogg format for my new audio encoding
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OGG Vorbis « Free Trader Beowulf | AudioCDArea.Com said this on May 18, 2009 at 3:03 am |
Hey! Some people already suggested you use FLAC. I absolutely insist that you do!
Do you really want to face re-ripping the CD:s yet another time when the current OGG format has become obsolete, or does not suit your needs? Do you really need to accept generation loss if you want to re-encode the files to, say, a more highly compressed format to carry in your cell phone or for a device that does not support OGG?
No. You already made this mistake once. Buy a big disk (they are cheap), go lossless, then batch re-encode the FLACs to the (OGG) format(s) that suit(s) you best at the moment.
I recommend FLAC too. It generally compresses a CD down to about 300MB.
I then occasionally run a batch job to convert from FLAC to something smaller to go onto a portable device. But, I know that I’ll never have to re-rip everything. If you don’t have the space, then seriously consider buying a portable hard drive for it all.
What’s more, you can be smug, and pretend you can hear the difference
I did that once too, but ended up just going with flac in the end. Just the thought of having a “master cd” in flac with no loss of audio quality made me more happy and I could finally get rid of the original cds. Just a thought.