Damocles
Hi guys,
it's been a while since I last came here. I am not sure whether this document has already been brought to your attention. It shows a huge superiority of Ogg Vorbis over MP3 at all the bitrates commonly used (only up to 256 though). It's in French but easily understandable.
The frequency sweeps were calculated using Audacity.
http://cf2mweb.phpnet.org/comparatif_audio/index.php
You can browse through the study and the different bitrates using the numbers at the top of the page.
edit : some more translations : "poids"=size, "réduction"=reduction, "fichier en écoute"=listen to file
it's been a while since I last came here. I am not sure whether this document has already been brought to your attention. It shows a huge superiority of Ogg Vorbis over MP3 at all the bitrates commonly used (only up to 256 though). It's in French but easily understandable.
The frequency sweeps were calculated using Audacity.
http://cf2mweb.phpnet.org/comparatif_audio/index.php
You can browse through the study and the different bitrates using the numbers at the top of the page.
edit : some more translations : "poids"=size, "réduction"=reduction, "fichier en écoute"=listen to file
Posted Wed 24 Jan 07 @ 5:49 pm
anewsome
it's no secret that ogg is better than mp3 at the same bitrate. it's newer technology by about 10 years.
it's also no secret that ogg support is pretty poor as soon as you leave a computer. of the 30 or so devices i own that will play mp3s,. the only devices i have that will play ogg, have a keyboard, an operating system and a monitor.
it's also no secret that ogg support is pretty poor as soon as you leave a computer. of the 30 or so devices i own that will play mp3s,. the only devices i have that will play ogg, have a keyboard, an operating system and a monitor.
Posted Wed 24 Jan 07 @ 6:55 pm
Damocles
Thanks for your input, that's indeed an important factor to take into account.
Posted Wed 24 Jan 07 @ 7:08 pm
Andrew87
People concerned about quality should really use a lossless format such as flac. People with portable devices generally tend to use mp3 as it's the most supported and also requires significantly less processing power to decode than ogg, therefore people get better battery life. For web distribution, ogg seems a good format but I find myself either only using mp3 (compatibility) and aac (multichannel, good quality at low bitrates and decent compatibility) recently.
Just a side note, that link isn't too family safe there's a rather explicit banner at the bottom, maybe a moderator could edit the results into a new post.
PS, anyone interested in ogg with an ipod should google rockbox and/or ipod linux, rockbox also supports gapless playback for older ipods and some other cool stuff; note, that linux on ipod really severely decreases your battery life although you can always boot into the apple firmware at any time.
Just a side note, that link isn't too family safe there's a rather explicit banner at the bottom, maybe a moderator could edit the results into a new post.
PS, anyone interested in ogg with an ipod should google rockbox and/or ipod linux, rockbox also supports gapless playback for older ipods and some other cool stuff; note, that linux on ipod really severely decreases your battery life although you can always boot into the apple firmware at any time.
Posted Wed 24 Jan 07 @ 8:10 pm
anewsome
Andrew87 wrote :
People concerned about quality should really use a lossless format such as flac. People with portable devices generally tend to use mp3 as it's the most supported and also requires significantly less processing power to decode than ogg, therefore people get better battery life. For web distribution, ogg seems a good format but I find myself either only using mp3 (compatibility) and aac (multichannel, good quality at low bitrates and decent compatibility) recently.
Just a side note, that link isn't too family safe there's a rather explicit banner at the bottom, maybe a moderator could edit the results into a new post.
PS, anyone interested in ogg with an ipod should google rockbox and/or ipod linux, rockbox also supports gapless playback for older ipods and some other cool stuff; note, that linux on ipod really severely decreases your battery life although you can always boot into the apple firmware at any time.
Just a side note, that link isn't too family safe there's a rather explicit banner at the bottom, maybe a moderator could edit the results into a new post.
PS, anyone interested in ogg with an ipod should google rockbox and/or ipod linux, rockbox also supports gapless playback for older ipods and some other cool stuff; note, that linux on ipod really severely decreases your battery life although you can always boot into the apple firmware at any time.
unforntunately i have waaaay more devices than just my old ipod to worry about. i have vdj, serato, a diamond rio car stereo with dual 30GB hard drives (formerly known as the empeg car player), xboxmediacenter, numerous portable players like my treo650, HTC 8125, psp, ipod gen1 20GB, and the list could go on for days.
there is exactly ONE format that works on all devices and all applications. mp3. period.
ogg, flac, shn, aac, whatever is fine for people who need to play with one or two devices that happen to support that format. but for people who need thier stuff to work *everywhere* mp3 is the way to go.
it would be absolutely senseless for me to keep ogg copies for computer playback, since they *sound* better, and mp3 copies hanging around for everything else? ridiculous. i can't remember the last time i used my desktop pc to even play a sound file.
Posted Wed 24 Jan 07 @ 8:34 pm
Andrew87
I wasn't saying to use ogg over mp3, I prefer mp3 too for the compatibility. However, XBMC plays ogg doesn't it? It's played just about everything I've ever thrown at it, including x.264 and 5.1 channel he-aac muxed mkv/mp4s ;-)
In terms of disc space and processor time to transcode, it perhaps wouldn't be a bad idea for flac to become some sort of standard for most software rippers which could then have an export to mp3 (or format of choice) when moving to a portable device - however, this is unlikely.
In terms of disc space and processor time to transcode, it perhaps wouldn't be a bad idea for flac to become some sort of standard for most software rippers which could then have an export to mp3 (or format of choice) when moving to a portable device - however, this is unlikely.
Posted Wed 24 Jan 07 @ 8:44 pm
bagpuss
The point being that MP3 at 320kbps and a good encoder (Fraunhofer or Lame) can potentially sound as good as WAV to the Human ear.
Posted Wed 24 Jan 07 @ 8:52 pm
Andrew87
True, infact there are even cases where people prefer the sound of the mp3. Mp3 does change sounds and sometimes they are nicer sounding to the human ear, depending on how an individual perceives the sound. I'm happy to use -V 1 --vbr-new with lame 3.97 which is ~225kbps.
Posted Wed 24 Jan 07 @ 9:16 pm
anewsome
Bagpuss wrote :
The point being that MP3 at 320kbps and a good encoder (Fraunhofer or Lame) can potentially sound as good as WAV to the Human ear.
Precisely. And they work EVERYWHERE.
Posted Wed 24 Jan 07 @ 11:23 pm