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What Sounds Better, MP3 or Ogg?
I've never been able to make a clear decision on the subject. These days I rip all my CDs to MP3 at 160kbs which means about 80 megs for a longer album. With a 100g drive on order ($220. I remember paying more then that for .1% of that space) disk space isn't really the defining issue, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna rip everything at 300kbs just because I can. I'm curious what people think sounds better, and what bit rates they find to be acceptable for both casual listening, and more picky listening. Don't forget to mention what sort of equipment your listening on so we know where you are
coming from.
cassette-quality music has never let me down:)
LOL good one!
If you were an audiophile, you wouldn't be listening to compressed music at all..
I can't imagine that the RIAA would ever let someone make a hardware MP3 player that's reprogrammable. They were upset enough that you could download the MP3s back off the RIO device, even when it wasn't supported by RIO. Imagine what those Free Software wackos will do if they can reprogram the whole unit. It'd be anarchy.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
Bring back the 8-track!
I just saw a nice quote today: "audiophiles are people who listen to the audio equipment, not the music"
Well, I have a pair of Wolfenbackers SXT66716526 series 37B (the ones with the chrome laminate) hot-plugged to a IOSD YTT88992 amp - which goes up to 11; just like spinal tap. When I encode OV at 168kbps using my UltraSPARC Beowolf Cray 76222, and reroute the resulting data through my DENON 880000 over my local home T1, I then re-master the compressed image using a series7D AudioStar mixing desk in my personal studio whilst wanking furiously into my 70 foot sub-woofer.
/sarcasm
I have to agree that the variable bit rate sounds better than the constant. However, through my equipment, mp3s have a distinct lower quality than cds. There is a noticable improvement when they are burned to audio though, so it is not a lack in the mp3 format, just in my mp3 playing hardware. I have a very difficult time telling the difference between a song from a pressed cd and one that I have ripped, encoded and then burned back to cd audio format.
I have a Rotel amp and pre. My source is a Harman Kardon FL8550 cd changer. My speakers are JBL S38 "bookshelf" speakers (they're bookshelf only if you have a BIG bookshelf.)
My soundblaster live value card can't compete with the FL8550's dual 20 bit Burr-Brown digital to analog converters. My next equipment purchase is going to be an Onkyo SE-U55 USB sound processor. Hopefully, that should let me use mp3s for more than casual listening.
One last thing: if you think computer addictions can be expensive, just try getting hooked on audiophile quality hardware! The interconnects I'm going to buy are over a $100 each for the bottom end of the line. But you can hear the difference.
I like MP3. The "EM" is a nice hard sound to start with, and transitions nicely into the rhyming "pee" and "three" to lead into the next word.
"Ogg" just makes me feel like I'm choking on a donut.
:-)
sig fault
Isn't this MP3 vs Ogg thing sorta like the old VHS vs Betamax battle of the 60s/70s? Remember that Betamax was actually the higher-quality format of the two, but that VHS won out anyways. And then, a few decades later, DVD came along and is pretty swiftly crushing it.
Use your cheap MP3s now and when telepathic music comes along, remember the good old days when you had something to complain about