[disturbed]

As the title says, should I encode my CD's to Ogg or Mp3?

Does Ogg offer any significant advantages? How's the average file size?

Or should I stick to Mp3?

I am trying to achieve fidelity as I have Etymotics but I don't want to go overboard with extra large file sizes. After all, I bought it to carry my 100 cd collection.

 

[ProFingerSk8er]

try to encocde both and listen for yourself..

i personally use both, but more OGGs, i really like OGG GT3 at q6
lame alt-preset-standard is good too, but i feel OGG has better sound at same filesize

btw, are you enjoying your iHP?

 

[disturbed]

How is the ihp?

OMG it is one helluva player. Expect an indepth review soon once I get all the encoding figured.

What is the best program to encode ogg files?

Also, what is "GT3 at q6"?

So few replies? Comon someone help this newbie

 

[ProFingerSk8er]

OGGdropXP is the offical ogg encoder.
GT3 is a tuned verson of OGG that improves overall sound above quality 5
http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org/ogg.html

 

[andrzejpw]

Personally, I'd stick to one of the lame alt-presets, simply for the matter of portability. MP3 has become quite ubiquitous and well supported. Sure, your new mp3 player supports ogg. What if you get a new player in 2 or 3 years? What if it doesn't support ogg? I bet that it'll support mp3. The small gain in sound quality isn't worth the risk, in my opinion.

 

[terrymx]

if this player support ogg, it is unlikely a new player made 3 years later does not.

 

[andrzejpw]

sure, maybe we'll get lucky and iriver will continue to support ogg. But let's be honest: ogg isn't really a mainstream format, is it? I don't see manufacturers/online stores jumping on the ogg format.

 

[ProFingerSk8er]

we'll havta see in the future, but i believe OGG wont be gone too soon, because it's a open source code and its free

 

[IpaqMan]

Since you purchased an IHP-120, it would be useful to know that for the equivalent music file sizes between Ogg and MP3 files, there seems to be a significant increase in battery consumption for Ogg files. In the Iriver forum, there was a graph showing Oggs getting a max of 12 hours and MP3s getting a max of 19 hours of battery life. Ogg music files require more CPU processing for decoding and thus the increase in battery consumption.

Since VBR MP3s are not much worse in battery usage compared to CBR MP3s and since VBR MP3s (alt-preset standard) are close in quality to Oggs, you would get good quality and good battery life encoding to LAME VBR MP3s.

 

[waffenschmidt]

From what I've read, Ogg's primary advantage over MP3 is that it provides better quality at lower bit rates. Again, from what I've read, at higher bit rates the two formats still sound different, but neither holds a clear quality advantage.

Personally, I've been using LAME --alt-preset extreme. From what I've read, I wouldn't expect to see any improvement by switching to Ogg for comparable file sizes. Plus, as has been pointed out, at this time MP3 has wider support, and I'd expect that to continue for the foreseeable future.

Edit:

OTOH, if you're considering going to much smaller file sizes for some reason (i.e. 160 or lower), Ogg would certainly deserve consideration.

 

[blessingx]

If smaller file sizes and the necessary q setting is the question, another pointer to this example.

 

[aeowap]

Quote:

Originally posted by IpaqMan Since you purchased an IHP-120, it would be useful to know that for the equivalent music file sizes between Ogg and MP3 files, there seems to be a significant increase in battery consumption for Ogg files. In the Iriver forum, there was a graph showing Oggs getting a max of 12 hours and MP3s getting a max of 19 hours of battery life. Ogg music files require more CPU processing for decoding and thus the increase in battery consumption. Since VBR MP3s are not much worse in battery usage compared to CBR MP3s and since VBR MP3s (alt-preset standard) are close in quality to Oggs, you would get good quality and good battery life encoding to LAME VBR MP3s.

Sorry to hijack the conversation temporarily but I thought it better to ask this here in this thread than to start a new one. I've seen VBR mentioned before. What is the diiference between a VBR MP3 and a normal MP3? Also, is CBR MP3 a normal MP3, just with a different name, or is there a difference there, too?

 

[ProFingerSk8er]

CBR = same bitrate throughtout the whole song.
VBR = bitrate changes depens on sonic needs, which provides better sound usually at same/small file size

 

[blessingx]

VBR - variable bitrate
ABR - average bitrate (often referred to as VBR)
CBR - constant bitrate

A CBR and ABR file will be nearly the same size, but with ABR the bitrates will be used more efficiently as higher bitrates will be used in more complex areas and lower in less complex ones. A true VBR will use whatever bitrates are necessary (so resulting file size is unpredictable) based on musical complexity.

Basically for sound quality, the general rule is: VBR>ABR>CBR.

For more info see Hydrogen Audio.

EDIT: Too slow typing. What ProFingerSk8er says.

 

[PAC]

Another thing to consider is that the iRiver Database creator program does not recognize tags in OGG files. If you use the Artist/Album/Genre/Title features on your iHP-120, none of your OGG files will show up here. Yes, the iHP will play OGG files beautifully, but they won't be found in the database.

To get OGG (or WMA) support in the iRiver DB you will need to get a third-party software program called iRipDB or iHPDB, both can be found on iRiver's discussion board, but there are a few reports of the tools hosing the iHP's bootup requiring it to be sent in for replacement (!). www.iriver.com/community.

They will, of course, show up in the standard file-tree navigation mode, if that's the way you find your music.

Personally, I've stuck with 160-192kbs MP3's and have most of my 200 CD colleciton on my iHP-120 and still have 8GB free.