audio format converter

[Brian Norman Wootton]

>
> Even to my 'lossy' hearing, .ogg sounds better than .mp3(or.wma for that
>   
> matter). If any of my vista/XP email friends want a particular track I can
> always convert before sending so they can play it.
>
> No need for that, ogg should be playable also by windows players,
> after all, it is a free format not difficult to implement as it is
> well documented.
>

Miriam
I emailed a .ogg file to 5 of my acquaintances and not one of them's machines
would play it. Of the two with Macs, one of them volunteered to convert it to .mp3,
other just put up the glad hand. Of the 2 Vista machines and one XP, the 3 users
just gave up when WMP gave them an error message. I have a vista laptop and an XP
desktop - neither of them would play the .ogg file directly, I had to download 
and install the oggcodecs plugin first. My point being that there are an awful lot of
MS customers out there who wouldn't know an ogg from an egg-cup and wouldn't
thank you for trying to tell them.
brian

> Your plan sounds good.  One thing to consider is the quality of your current
> and possible future playback equipment.  Test your files with various
> settings and see if you can hear a difference.  on typical "ear buds" you
> can get by with very lossy formats but on solid midrange equipment the
> difference is not trivial.

My wife has a tin ear, so I got rid of my power audio equipment, alas. I do
use 'earbuds'. But I take your point, I have a large pair of expensive 
Sony ear-phones and I can hear the difference from earbuds  using these.
brian