On 17/02/07, Tim <ignored_mailbox@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Fri, 2007-02-16 at 14:32 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote: > I'd actually like to note that my music collection is in mp3 as I feel > it's slightly better sounding than ogg. Interesting, as you're the first person I've seen state things that way around. What bit rates do you encode things at?
Most of the collection is at 256bps, but I've a few 320's for the problematic stuff.
For my own purposes, I've always found ogg to sound better than MP3, even when the MP3s were encoded at higher bit rates than the oggs. I find strange squeaks, swooshing noises, wierd distortions in the bass, phase errors that sound like a cross between bad shortwave radio reception and playing a chewed compact audio cassette in most MP3s. Granted that some encoders are better than others, but I've not being able to find a good MP3 one (Windows or Linux). Seeing as the only non-computer devices around here that can play MP3s are my DVD players, I've never really bothered about improving it. I'll drag out the original CDs and play them. Or use one of the PCs as an ogg jukebox.
They were all ripped back in my windows days, I don't remember what the program was called but if you really want to know I can dig up an old backup.
My music tastes are varied, everything from classical, to jazz, to abstract, to 50's and 60's pop, but very little modern pop. I haven't found any particular type of music to be better or worse on one of the other encoding format. Even on cheap audio gear the deficiencies in most MP3s are noticable, and on moderately expensive audio gear oggs sound very close to the originals, and that's at the standard 128kbs rate. Comparatively speaking, MP3s need encoding well above 256kbs to get close.
Yes, that's why I encoded at a minimum of 256.
You mentioned guitars being a problem, I've listed to accoustic guitars played normally, and electric with heavy fuzz, I can't say that either has a problem with oggs, though anything with heavy distortion will need a high sampling rate to decently cover the higher harmonic frequences produced by clipping at the original source (heavy distortion, or square-waving of the guitar, means you need to record the odd harmonics above the fundamental note to quite some degree, unless you deliberately want a mellow sound). The only problem I've noticed with ogg is (sometime) audio clipping on playback if I've turned the player volume up high on the PC. For some strange reasons MP3s don't do that. Even when they've apparently got the same volume levels in the files. I was beginning to wonder if some audio players don't just play with the audio mixer, but do some bad number crunching on the digital audio.
If I ever get in the mood of reripping, I'm going to do it in flac. Then I'll be able to automate a conversion to whatever format is in style that particular decade.
I'm not a rich audiophile, just an audiophile. I work in audio/video production, I play musical instruments, I have moderately priced HiFi gear (gear that has some reasonable claim to the moniker, with things like 0.0001% THD, etc., not the 1% distortion that some just ordinary stereo gear has, and a reasonably nice set of Wharfedale bookshelf speakers), and I still have reel-to-reel gear (Revox A77). ;-) Distortions and other noises are still annoyingly obvious, even if my ears do have a brick wall filter at 16kHz.
My equiptment is nowhere near that level of quality. But my Sony headphones are quite enough for me. Dotan Cohen http://lyricslist.com/lyrics/lyrics/124/108/carey_mariah/emotions.html http://easy-answers.org
