Anyone used Ogg Vorbis or FLAC?

PickledGecko

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I first encoded my CDs to 96kbs .mp3 back when a 20GB HD was huge and have been doing it ever since. I just bought a decent stereo and you can really hear the poor quality of the .mp3s.

So, I was thinking about reincoding all my CDs to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) to use with my stereo and Ogg Vorbis for my flash RAM player.

Anyone ever tried these? I've had some bad experiences in the past with open source betas.

Would I be better off using .wav and .wma?
 
ogg vorbis is ok, good quality but i've noticed its not very well supported compared to mp3's.. But that only really applies when using things for editing n such and wanting to avoid uncompressed data.

Never used the other one though.

If you want better mp3's though, encode them at a higher bitrate.
 
It's a crying shame that OGG Vorbis is not supported on my car's CD/MP3CD player - if it were I would have already converted my collection. dBPowerAmp (back in the old 8x versions) does a good job converting music from misc formats to vorbis format. However, recent updates (which I have NOT installed) take away the ability to convert to mp3 format.
 
Ogg Vorbis has excellent quality, but needs a hell of a lot of power to run - a bad idea for mp3 players (not that many mp3 players actually support Ogg, anyway). Honestly, as TDE says, just use 192+ bitrate for mp3s.
 
I've been told that .wma and Ogg Vorbis has better sound quality for smaller files. So I thought it would make sense to use something like that for a small capacity flash player. I wasn’t planning on buying one of these HD players; I don’t see the need to have ALL of my music with me ALL of the time. If I encode at a higher bit rate .mp3, then I'm not going to fit as much on the player as I'm used to having.

As for the other format, I see Windows media player can also encode using a lossless format. Then there's always the .wav format.

I remember reading and article about how support for formats change, and that the only way you can avoid a situation, like a lot of digital photo users are in, like when their camera's company use a proprietary file type and then goes bust, is to use raw formats like .wav.

Alternatively, I was thinking maybe Open Source would be the way to go, as there will always be some software to support it, or at least software that will help the transition to a newer, better Open Source format.

So, I suppose what I’m asking is, should I let Windows Media Player rule my audio life, and use its lossless format for home use and its lossy format for portable use, or, use Open Source formats?

DeVry Student said:
However, recent updates (which I have NOT installed) take away the ability to convert to mp3 format.
I believe that has to do with the company behind the mp3 format deciding it was popular enough to start charging software writers for the right to support the mp3 format. This is my main consideration for using an Open Source format. They claim that if Ogg Vorbis gets popular, it will remain free.

However, I can’t say I have many complaints about Windows Media Player, but I just don’t know if I can trust Microsoft. What if they withdraw support for their formats because it’s not profitable? Also, I constantly reinstall Windows. I’m one of those people who can’t leave well alone and end up screwing stuff up. This stops you from listening to copy protected music, even though it’s your own music. I know you can turn this “feature” off in the record options, but it’s still a concern. What if there’s still some underlying “protection” ready to screw up my collection if I do something Windows doesn’t like.

I have a lot of CDs, and I don’t want to have to go through this every few years.

Edit: A lot of my CDs have anoying hidden tracks. So I'm looking for a format that has plenty of free editing support that I can use to split the last track and the hidden track and delete the silent bits.
 
For the record: .wma also consumes more energy to operate.

So to sum up your options:
- Listen to crappy quality
- Record to 192+ kbit/s MP3 and fit less songs on your MP3 player
- Record to 64/96 kbit WMA and get shorter battery life

All great options... :laugh:
 
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