Next question - mp3 to ogg

[marc]

Matthew Flaschen said...
> marc wrote:
> > Chris said...
> >> Now that I have all but 20 CD's ripped, is there something out there
> >> that will mass convert the mp3 (192 bit) files to ogg?
> > Worse, MP3 applies "sound shaping" (my term, but
> > xref the usual sources for more info), so it has removed data, which you 
> > can't get back, obviously.
> 
> Ogg removes data too, just different data (which is one reason encoding
> to both is bad)

The point is that apply two lossy transformations is exponentially bad. 
I don't think that encoding is inherently 'bad'; it depends what the 
result sounds like. MP3 is awful, imo (and varies in awfulness depending 
on the CODEC and algorithm), while ogg is pretty good considering the 
amount of data removed.
 
> > It will sound terrible.
> 
> I ran it on all my mp3's (none of which I had source CDs/WAVs for), and
> it really is barely noticeable.  I am a bit tone-deaf, so there you go.
 
Fine, if it works for you. But be aware that advising folk that the 
results are 'barely noticeable' is misinformation. It simply isn't true. 
That said, if you are listening to the results through some bits of 
string and an old tin can, then you aren't likely to notice. It might 
even sound better :-)

-- 
Cheers,
Marc