Audio Codec Discussion Thread

[Event]

This thread will be for the discussion of audio codecs.

Here is the first question. Ogg Vorbis or LAME? I've been testing out these two codecs with high-quality headphones in my high-quality iRiver and It sounds like Ogg Vorbis has much better quality at the same bitrate as MP3. Should I convert all of my MP3s to Ogg Vorbis? I only plan on converting my own personal rips. Most of them are in 320kbps or VBR. I was going to convert them to a lower bitrate to save space, but get the same quality. I was thinking 320MP3-->256OGG. I haven't decided on the VBR ones, yet. Should I do this? Or should I just re-rip the CDs? I don't really want to do that, since I have a lot and ripping in Ogg Vorbis takes much longer than LAME.

 

[Shannon]

Ogg Vorbis is the highest quality lossy codec around, yes. 👍

No, you shouldn't encode straight from MP3 to Vorbis. When an MP3 is encoded, data is thrown away from the file to reduce the filesize. The lower the bitrate, the more data chucked away, the lower the quality of the file. This is where the 'lossy' term comes from. Vorbis works in the same way (chucking data away to reduce the filesize, so it is also a lossy codec), so by transcoding from an MP3 that has already lost data, to another lossy encoder, you're just losing more audio quality.

Personally, I just use the latest LAME MP3 compile with --alt-preset-standard. --alt-presets are LAME presets, and this particular one encodes in VBR with an average bitrate of around 224kbps.

 

[Event]

Is there really a reason to NOT use Ogg Vorbis over LAME? I have the correc codecs and plug-ins to play them in winAMP and my MP3 player plays them, so Is there really a problem? The only problem I can see is if you want to burn them to a CD. If you want an MP3 CD, you'd have to either re-rip the CDs, or convert OGG to MP3.

 

[Shannon]

The only reason not to use Vorbis is lack of support for it. Although, every day more and more hardware such as MP3 players, DVD players, Stereos, etc, etc are coming out with Vorbis support.

 

[toyomatt84]

.OGG - Ogg Vorbis, is probably one of the better codecs out there. Amongst the lossless types, like .FLAC. I would be for it, except for it's utterly MASSIVE size. .OGG's are huge files, taking up too much space in my opinion.

My favorite alternative, is LAME .MP3's in a Variable Bit Rate setup. Variable Bit Rate will be a self-adjusting bit rate that follows the compression of the song, and only allows a certain bit rate to be coded at certain points of a song. For instance, if you have only a single instrument, the compressioned bit rate will be lower than if you have a whole orchestra at full blast.

 

[Shannon]

.OGG - Ogg Vorbis, is probably one of the better codecs out there. Amongst the lossless types, like .FLAC. I would be for it, except for it's utterly MASSIVE size. .OGG's are huge files, taking up too much space in my opinion.

My favorite alternative, is LAME .MP3's in a Variable Bit Rate setup. Variable Bit Rate will be a self-adjusting bit rate that follows the compression of the song, and only allows a certain bit rate to be coded at certain points of a song. For instance, if you have only a single instrument, the compressioned bit rate will be lower than if you have a whole orchestra at full blast.

Yeah, but a true audiophile will take quality over filesize. Not that I've noticed much difference in filesize between LAME MP3 at --alt-preset-standard and Vorbis encoded at around the same quality level (around 224kbps).

One kudo I must give to LAME's VBR engine is that it encodes silence at 32kbps, unlike all the others (as far as I know) that will encode silence at whatever the minimum bitrate is set to. 👍

 

[ROAD_DOGG33J]

For one of the audio files I tested, I think the .mp3 had more bass.

 

[Stinky Chicken]

Should I convert all of my MP3s to Ogg Vorbis?

No. Even if you convert to a lower bitrate in Ogg than you had in mp3, you'll still lose quality, because you're going from one lossy codec directly to another.

It might be tedious, but re-rip all your albums if you're going to use Ogg. If you're a dedicated audiophile you'll do it though.

To save space on my hard drive I'm using various Alt Presets in mp3. At the moment that's good enough for me but I'm hanging out for a ZenTouch/ZenXtra or an iRiver so I can really go hammer and tongs and not have to worry about taking up to much space with my super-huge-quality files.

 

[Event]

.OGG - Ogg Vorbis, is probably one of the better codecs out there. Amongst the lossless types, like .FLAC. I would be for it, except for it's utterly MASSIVE size. .OGG's are huge files, taking up too much space in my opinion.

They seem to be the same size as MP3's though. I encoded a song in 192kbps MP3 and 192kbps OGG and they were the same size. I don't see the issue of size here. They should be saving you space.

Right now, I've got one album in VBR OGG with the quality at .7, which gives them a nominal bitrate of 224. They're much smaller than my high quality VBR MP3s and I like the sound of them more.

 

[Stinky Chicken]

They seem to be the same size as MP3's though. I encoded a song in 192kbps MP3 and 192kbps OGG and they were the same size. I don't see the issue of size here. They should be saving you space.

Right now, I've got one album in VBR OGG with the quality at .7, which gives them a nominal bitrate of 224. They're much smaller than my high quality VBR MP3s and I like the sound of them more.

You're right on both fronts.

Ogg is higher quality than mp3, as you've found out, but it gives relatively the same filesizes, which is cool.

I just realised something. I'm a stupid knob, I should've ripped all my albums to ogg in the first place, since it's a good space-saving size and sounds better.

I might actually do that you know, but that would require retagging all my files. That's the downside.