AA Posted January 28, 2003 Report Share Posted January 28, 2003 I did a test. I ripped "Girls Under Glass - When I think About You" as an ogg file and as an mp3 file. Bitrate was VBR averaging 256 Kbit/s. When I played them back the mp3 sounded like it was ripped at 256, but the ogg sounded like it was ripped at 64. (it wasn't) The quality of ogg files blows. A couple of people have been ranting and raving about it, but honestly I can't understand why because the sound quality is just so poor in the ogg files. What do the rest of you think...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted January 28, 2003 Report Share Posted January 28, 2003 i notice no difference between ogg files and mp3 files. honestly, none. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted January 28, 2003 Report Share Posted January 28, 2003 How did you rip and encode to ogg anyway, what software? I mean.. I made some oggs at CR 160 kbps and it actually sounded a bit better than mp3 ripped via lame using CR 160 kbps, all using grip ripper. Maybe it's the player itself that have trouble decoding the ogg files? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnyv Posted January 28, 2003 Report Share Posted January 28, 2003 strange i myself have ripped 196 for ogg and mp3 and to me the ogg sounds better IMO, but then thats just my opinion. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hugerobot Posted January 29, 2003 Report Share Posted January 29, 2003 It's your problem, not ogg... In fact, I hesitated to even respond to your message it's so absurd. Ogg files are consistantly better quality than mp3s of the same bitrate. I recommend you do a little investigation as to why your ogg file sounded bad, rather than just coming on here and spouting off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
illogic-al Posted January 29, 2003 Report Share Posted January 29, 2003 Not only does ogg sound better at the same bitrate IT EVEN SOUNDS BETTER AT A LOWER BITRATE. A 54 kbps ogg sounds about the same as a 128 bit mp3. a 64 kbps ogg sounds BETTER than a 128 kbps. By the time we get up to a 128 kbps ogg it sounds waaaaaaaaaaaayy better than a 256 mb mp3. Ok that last one was a gross exageration. I actually can't tell the difference, but the file is MUCH smaller and to me sounds like the original wave (as does the mp3 at 256 kbps just bigger size.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AA Posted January 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted January 29, 2003 I used grip to rip both the ogg and the mp3 and xmms to play back both the ogg and the mp3...!! What encoder do you all use... maybe I should try all the other ogg encoders, but honestly, the ogg was really bad. I also don't care about size, I care about quality. I also like to think I know what quality is, after all I work in a radio station where quality is what we're after....!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted January 29, 2003 Report Share Posted January 29, 2003 If your running kde, try ripping the ogg file with konqueror. It's actually a pretty nice feature. Open konqueror and note the series of small buttons which separate the left pane from the right window. On my system there are six going from top to bottom as follows: Bookmarks, History, Home Directory, Root Directory, Services. Click on the last button called "Services". On my system it has a little gear icon. When you do so, the left pane will change and the top entry will be Audio CD Browser. Click on it to expand the entry and go down to Ogg Vorbis and click on it. In the right window you will see all the tracks listed with the .ogg file extension. Right click on the track(s) you want and click copy then navigate to the location you want and right click, click paste and the selected files will be automatically ripped to ogg and placed there. Also, you say you are using grip to rip to ogg. The default configuration I got for grip with Md 9.0 has grip set to rip mp3. The program seems pretty configurable and I'm sure there are ways to get it to rip to ogg but I would be curious as to how you did it. It's not immediatlely apparent to me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted January 29, 2003 Report Share Posted January 29, 2003 My Oggs have always sounded very rich, especially on the bass which mp3 encoders seem to wangle out. I would guess that whatever you are using as output in XMMS is screwed. Maybe try re-installing the OggVorbis encoder as well? But then, my ears are ****ed from working at the very same radio station.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AA Posted January 30, 2003 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2003 I figured it all out. mp3's are better than ogg's for one reason and one reason only. The equalizer in xmms does not work on ogg files, no matter what you do to the equalizer the sound does not change. mp3's however are affected by the equalizer. Try it for yourself !! The reason my ogg files sounded bad was because I had the equalizer enabled and when I played the mp3 the bass and trebble were boosted/emphasized nicely, when I played the ogg it was not boosted/emphasized. The ogg file therefor in comparison to the mp3 sounded flat and as if it were playing through a pillow...!! And ogg files are not that much smaller BTW. ripped at average 256 a 5 minute song and the ogg was a whole half a MB smaller !!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AA Posted January 30, 2003 Author Report Share Posted January 30, 2003 pmpatrick... under the configuration section of grip under the mp3 tab you'll see a place where you can select the encoder. There is only one ogg encoder that comes with it!!, you'll have to install others if you want others. I think the standard one is "oggenc" if I'm not mistaken...!! Also go through the help files. THEY ARE EXCELLENT !!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aRTee Posted January 30, 2003 Report Share Posted January 30, 2003 And ogg files are not that much smaller BTW. ripped at average 256 a 5 minute song and the ogg was a whole half a MB smaller !!! Of course with the same average bit rate, the file will be about the same size!!! Think! The same average number of bits per second, with the same duration (same song, or also entirely different song), of course the size is about the same. On the whole quality thing, I did a full blind test on mp3 vs. ogg vs. cd-audio/uncompressed wav (could have been .flac for all purposes). Meaning: my girlfriend selected a track she knows well (Barbra Steisand, like it or not, excellent voice/music to test clarity and quality of any audio system), I chopped it in 30sec parts and encoded those into: 96kb/s, 128, 192, 256 kb/s and vbr highest quality, both mp3 and ogg, using lame (and oggenc? standard mdk encoders; have been told the paid Frauenhofer encoder could give better results with mp3). The test person (my girlfriend) sat on the couch listening, I controlled the computer (from a different room, she didn't even see the screen or so) to play the whole track from 30 second parts encoded with different codecs and nonencoded parts. Then my girlfriend would say whether she found the section we listened to 'real' or 'good (better) sounding'. Oh, btw this was by playing back the audio from the computersoundcard SB32-awe through the denon hifi and my selfbuilt Vifa Vivace speakers. I don't care if ogg sounds better at 80kb/s than mp3 at 128. They are both not very good; at 256kb/s mp3s the test person still had about a 70% hitrate on naming the uncompressed/lossless audio file the better one. Note that often I had to check to see what the order was after listening. (meaning I couldn't really influence her on whether is was .wav or .mp3/.ogg) For ogg it was slightly better, only a 60% hitrate. Note that with a 50% hitrate, the perceived quality of the original and the lossy encoded file would be the same. With vbr highest quality, there was maybe this 50% hitrate, but at 400+ kb/s this doesn't matter, it's too large to become portable (I'd rather use flac - fully lossless audio coding, that gets 50% compression ratios at times, and be sure I didn't lose anything) and those kinds of files can't be downloaded anyway. I don't believe that the Frauenhofer mp3 codec would have given much different results, again, probably in the low bit rates it may have done much better, but not likely in the high bitrates. So I stopped downloading any kind of mp3/compressed audio from the net. The quality is not acceptable for home use, and that was what I would use it for. Back to borrowing and copying cd's (which is btw perfectly legal) (as is downloading music, it's the uploading which is not legal around here). If you love music, you don't do mp3 or ogg at low rates. I can understand that you want to carry music around, and then it doesn't matter so much. So then I would prefer: .ogg at 256kb/s, .mp3 at 256kb/s, .ogg at 192, mp3 at 192, ogg at 160, mp3 at 160, ogg at 128 (no mp3 at 128, too bad) in this order. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted January 30, 2003 Report Share Posted January 30, 2003 Thanks AA. Found what you were talking about. The encoder is set to ogg by default!! Now why did they put the ogg encoder under the mp3 tab?? I guess I've been ripping to ogg for some time. As for your xmms problem, I noticed a similar issue in Md 8.2, i.e. the equalizer would not work playing certain types of files. I could manually change the output plugin, I beleive from arts to oss and get the equalizer to work. In md 9, I can't get the equalizer to work at all but the sound quality has greatly improved over 8.2 so I haven't felt the need to mess with it. In 8.2 I had to continually mess with the equalizer to get decent sound out of xmms.The sound is great without the equalizer in 9.0. All that being said, I've been unable to find any bitrate or format under which Streisand sounds good or even bearable for that matter. :lol: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnyv Posted January 30, 2003 Report Share Posted January 30, 2003 All that being said, I've been unable to find any bitrate or format under which Streisand sounds good or even bearable for that matter. :lol: Yes there is a good bitrate for Streisand 0kbit/s is an acceptable bitrate :wink: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AA Posted January 31, 2003 Author Report Share Posted January 31, 2003 At the end of the day the only way you're gonna get 100% CD quality is if you save everything onto your hard drive as a .wav Maybe one day though.... :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.