WMA MP3 or OGG?

[DragonBottles]

I use V0 MP3 over Ogg Vorbis, but when ripping CD's I use FLAC.

[ultrauber]

What's the question you're asking?
my 2c:

Ogg is for all out quality/size (efficiency)
mp3 is for compatibility and pretty good quality
wma is for idiots

Well, not entirely, wma is flexible in that it can support lossless codecs. But it does support drm, and in general I would stay away from any format that can be drmed. Also, I've never encountered a vbr wma, but they may be possible. imo cbr sucks.

As for what I use, lame v0 mp3. I do not rip to flac, I just keep the cds as a backup.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by ultrauber

What's the question you're asking?
my 2c:

Ogg is for all out quality/size (efficiency)
mp3 is for compatibility and pretty good quality
wma is for idiots

Well, not entirely, wma is flexible in that it can support lossless codecs. But it does support drm, and in general I would stay away from any format that can be drmed. Also, I've never encountered a vbr wma, but they may be possible. imo cbr sucks.

As for what I use, lame v0 mp3. I do not rip to flac, I just keep the cds as a backup.

I agree with you about cbr sucking....and yes, there are vbr wma files out there(and they don't have to come from WMP, thankfully). They're pretty close to Vorbis and AAC as far as quality/size efficiency, yet have much more hardware support than Vorbis files.

[Daanish]

Lads here is another follow up question I didn't want to start a whole new thread, but if I download a song from itunes, which I believe downloads at 256kbps AAC, does that convert directly to 256 kbps mp3 and OGG? Or is some quality lost in the process?

[dfkt]

AAC and Vorbis have more or less the same compression-to-quality efficiency ratio. MP3 is a bit technically lower, especially the "official" FhG codec. I very much doubt you can hear any difference with a LAME MP3 encode for most track, though, at the same bitrate as AAC or Vorbis, especially when you go over 192kbps. You can easily find that out in a double-blind ABX test.

Personally, I use LAME -v0 for my encodes, since it sounds as good as the original in pretty much all cases - and it plays everywhere, on every player, contrary to Vorbis or AAC.

[Daanish]

Originally Posted by dfkt

AAC and Vorbis have more or less the same compression-to-quality efficiency ratio. MP3 is a bit technically lower, especially the "official" FhG codec. I very much doubt you can hear any difference with a LAME MP3 encode for most track, though, at the same bitrate as AAC or Vorbis, especially when you go over 192kbps. You can easily find that out in a double-blind ABX test.

Personally, I use LAME -v0 for my encodes, since it sounds as good as the original in pretty much all cases - and it plays everywhere, on every player, contrary to Vorbis or AAC.

Cheers dfkt! I have a cowon j3 so I can play ogg vorbis. I converted some of my older itunes tracks and they ended up not sounding as good which is why I wanted to find out.

[skip252]

Unless you iTunes files were lossless (ALAC) it's not a good idea to transcode them. Lossy to lossy transcoding always introduces a quality drop. You may or may not hear the loss in quality but it occurs.

[dfkt]

You converted AAC to Vorbis? That's not a good thing to do - never convert lossy to lossy, you will lose quality. Only ever convert lossless to lossy. If your iTunes tracks weren't DRM-crippled/copy-protected, the J3 does play those AAC perfectly well (despite not being mentioned anywhere).

EDIT: Skip252 beat me.

[Daanish]

Originally Posted by skip252

Unless you iTunes files were lossless (ALAC) it's not a good idea to transcode them. Lossy to lossy transcoding always introduces a quality drop. You may or may not hear the loss in quality but it occurs.

Originally Posted by dfkt

You converted AAC to Vorbis? That's not a good thing to do - never convert lossy to lossy, you will lose quality. Only ever convert lossless to lossy. If your iTunes tracks weren't DRM-crippled/copy-protected, the J3 does play those AAC perfectly well (despite not being mentioned anywhere).

EDIT: Skip252 beat me.

Aaaaahh that makes sense, yea they were DRM protected since I bought them awhile ago which is why I had to convert. Nowadays I stick to cds so it isn't an issue

[skip252]

Shame. Hope you didn't have too much stuff trapped that way. At least you've broken out the DRM jail. It cost me a little bit to get away from that a few years ago but it was well worth it.

I really liked the things I had bought so I got the CDs after I found I could never make them sound any better once they were transcoded. Once I ripped and encoded them properly I found that I had never heard the fullness of them anyway. Good riddance to bad rubbish truly applied there.

[segafan2005]

I use Ogg Vorbis (and FLAC for a few tracks) and would never buy a player that doesn't support it. There really is no excuse not to since they're open standards, if a player wants to be deliberately restrictive for no obvious reason that's surely a sign it's not a good player.