[vorbis] OGG --> MP3 conversion app?

[gtgbr at gmx.net]

Chris wrote:
> I know, thou just how bad is it? if your starting with a file that upon
> playback sounds exactly like the CD will not a reencoded version at a
> similar quality sound nearly the same?

There are always differences between the original and the encoded
version. So if you re-encode, the encoder tries hard to keep those
differences in its output (because it thinks they belong to the original
- no encoder can guess what prior encoders threw away or discern between
music and artifacts). While wasting bits on reproducing the already
encoded audio's differences, it will spend less bits on the actual music
and add its own 'faults', too. That's not only a waste of time and
space, the quality will be noticeable degraded (if not for your ears on
the first re-encoding run, for others it'll be noticeable).

> And thats exactly the reason i'm doing it, unfortunaly i only have a
> sony MP3 discman that doesn't play ogg and i have everything on my
> computer in ogg,  so rather then have everything encoded as OGG and MP3
> at the same time, i'd rather just covert what i want for my player, burn
> to CD and then delete the mp3. And the oggs are a nice and high quality
> (6) so the quality should be fine.

You don't have to, and should not re-encode the .ogg files to MP3 in
order to burn them to CD. Just decode them to .wav and then burn those
.wav files. With time, when more nice and useful burning applications
support burning .ogg directly, this step isn't necessary any more. By
re-encoding to MP3 just in order to burn CDs, you're shooting yourself
in the foot.

If you have MP3s that you can't re-rip from CD, in order to encode them
to Vorbis, just leave 'em be. Having a Vorbis-only music collection
might be nice, but what use are those .ogg files if they don't sound
better than MP3 (maybe even worse!)? You'd really have to be a die-hard
proprietary-software-hater to make this re-encoding to Ogg "reasonable".

<p>Moritz
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