OGG instead of MP3

RD100 · 11-29-04, 11:39 PM

I decided to give the Ogg audio format a try to see how it compared to MP3, and I am very impressed !!!

The sound quality seems just as good as MP3, even though the Ogg file only takes up half the size, or less, than the MP3.

I also found a good freeware MP3 to Ogg converter called MP3 2 Ogg Lab.

The program has a quality slider under options, for selecting the quality of the Ogg output file. I used the minimum quality setting, and the Ogg file output still sounded great.

And GSPlayer is a great freeware program for listening to Ogg files on your PPC.

mingkee · 12-01-04, 07:54 PM

if you have the source CD, I suggest encode from CD
if you don't care about size, try to encode at least 160k
it's hard to tell the difference between CD and 160k ogg
use cdex http://cdexos.sourceforge.net

rob1303 · 12-01-04, 09:53 PM

For the best quality I agree with mingkee you should re-encode from the original source it will sound even better than encoding from an MP3 as by converting from an MP3 you can't regain the information removed when it was initially encoded.

The analogy I like (not mine) is that by encoding MP3 to OGG it is like photocopying a photocopy - much better to photocopy the original

RD100 · 12-02-04, 11:20 PM

Thanks for the information.

At present, my entire CD collection is already converted to 128k MP3, and I have an MP3 CD player in my car, and a portable MP3 CD player. So I plan to continue to use MP3 for the most part. It would be a huge effort to start converting my CDs again.

So I just plan to convert some of my favorite MP3's to Ogg on an as needed basis, whenever I want to play them on my PDA.
And that's what makes the above MP3_2_Ogg_Labs program great for my use. I don't need to load from the original CD. I just convert the MP3 files on my PC into Ogg format, and then transfer the Ogg files to my SD storage card.

And even though I am converting directly from the MP3, I can barely tell the difference between the Ogg and the original MP3. There doesn't seem to be any real loss of sound quality.

Also worth mentioning .... is I plan to start using my USB 2.0 8-1 card reader/writer for tranfering Ogg files to my SD card. It's much faster than doing it with ActiveSync.