Fear Installing RockBox

[AC92629]

I can understand that. You guys have done great work here; I look forward to being able to try out Rockbox for myself one day. I have this string setup to notify me of responses via email so if anybody adds a post, I'll know. Thanks again for all your efforts; I for one, sure appreciate them!

[ThaCrip]

OP said, "2. I've heard OGG formatted audio and it seems to me to be superior to MP3, when using the same bitrate. Is there any advantage to converting my music library from MP3 to OGG or will the fact that they are both lossy formats negate the advantage or even degrade the quality? For what it's worth, many of my songs are at significantly higher bitrates than 128Kbps."

in my opinion Rockbox is worth using alone for .OGG support! (which is one of the primary reasons im using rockbox! )

but anyways about your question... as pondlife said, "converting from MP3 to OGG will degrade the sound further - you'd need to go back to the an original/lossless source to make the OGG conversion worthwhile IMHO." ... he's pretty much right... BUT, i still think it's worth converting even 128kbps mp3's to 45kbps .ogg format just for the massive space savings alone

http://www.rarewares.org/ogg-oggdropxpd.php (download your copy there) , here is the one i used myself... http://audio.ciara.us/rarewares/oggdropXPdV1.9.0-1.2.0-P4.zip (requires a P4 or Athlon 64 CPU i believe) and once u start up the program right click the main program window and select 'encoding options' and under the 'use standard quality mode' slide the slider all the way to the left (i.e. to -1) then select 'accept' and then from there on you can drag and drop your files into it.... but i noticed i had to convert my MP3's to .WAV files first (i used the free app called 'Media Coder Audio Edition' to convert .mp3 to .wav) and then drag and drop them (the converted .WAV files) onto the ogg encoder app and it will then convert to 45kbps (average bit rate) .ogg files.... after conversion listen to them on your speakers and compare i think you will find that a high percentage of the time most music sounds quite good considering it's only 45kbps.

but regardless if you agree with me on how good or bad the sound is, one thing is for sure, .OGG is MUCH better than .MP3 at low bit rates (say under 128kbps (i.e. 96,64,45kbps etc)) in sound quality as you can noticeably tell the difference as it sound's overall more 'clear' vs mp3 at low bit rates like 64kbps etc, where as mp3 is more 'muffled' at the lower bit rates.... bottom line is i think you will actually be impressed with how good .ogg sounds at 45kbps

also since im using 45kbps .OGG exclusively on my Sansa e250 2GB player.... even though i only have 2GB, in a way i have 4GB+ (im basing this on 128kbps MP3 vs 45kbps OGG)

and to sum it up on a 2GB player your looking at about 32hours @ 128kbps MP3 vs  64+hours @45kbps OGG.

[AlexP]

Each to their own, but converting lossy (whichever) at 128 kbps to lossy (whichever) at 45 kbps - urgh.  I'd rather do any number of unpleasant things than listen to music that sounded so terrible.

[ThaCrip]

@ BigBambi ... i guess it mainly depends on how picky you are cause i honestly feel that anyone who says .OGG @ 45kbps (especially when converted from a original CD source) is 'horrible sounding' is either A) extremely picky with sound quality or B) has a top notch set of headphones or maybe C) has exceptional hearing (which i would assume most people dont) (i never tested my hearing but im 'guessing' it's easily within the normal range of hearing and i consider myself fairly picky with sound but nothing extreme like some of those audiophiles are )

cause i myself can notice a difference between the original source and a 45kbps .ogg file when made from original source (tested on my PC with Winamp Lite when played back with the preset of 'treble and bass' on Klipsch Pro-Media 4.1 speakers, which are better than average pc speakers overall) but it's nothing drastic overall, especially just listening to it on a basic portable player like Sansa e250 with some decent headphones since i think it's easier to hear the flaws on my PC speakers vs playing on the Sansa e250 with a basic set of headphones.

cause even if 45kbps is a little low.... you could even switch it to a 64kbps average bit rate to help clean up the sound a little.

cause as far as MP3 i would not even consider going less than 128kbps on my portable player.

i guess the point i was trying to make is you keep a fairly high percentage of the sound quality at a super small file size... so for those people who have a fairly large collection of music and aint got space to burn (i.e.  dont have 4-8GB+ of space) .OGG at 45kbps is a solid choice especially if riped from the original audio cd.

basically to sum it up... overall i dont consider .ogg worth the trouble to use unless your using it at bit rates lower than 128kbps cause it dont really shine over MP3 well until u get into the low bit rates

but you gotta agree with me though about the lower bit rates (say 96kbps or lower) about what i was saying about the mp3 vs ogg comparison, right?

[AlexP]

@ BigBambi ... i guess it mainly depends on how picky you are cause i honestly feel that anyone who says .OGG @ 45kbps (especially when converted from a original CD source) is 'horrible sounding' is either A) extremely picky with sound quality or B) has a top notch set of headphones or maybe C) has exceptional hearing (which i would assume most people dont) (i never tested my hearing but im 'guessing' it's easily within the normal range of hearing and i consider myself fairly picky with sound but nothing extreme like some of those audiophiles are )

I'm not an audiophile, I have reasonable but not very expensive earphones, and my hearing is nothing special.

I'm only picky in the sense I want to listen to music without artifacts and distortion.  OGG at 45 kbps *is* horrible sounding (note I never actually said that, but it is true anyway) IMO (especially when transcoded from another lossy source), and whether it sounds better or worse than MP3 at those bitrates is largely irrelevant - for anything other than speech, both are pretty crap, and for speech speex would be the better choice.  I'm glad you can happily listen to it, but no thanks.

Anyway, this is off topic now, so lets stop.  The concerns of the OP seem to me to have been answered, so I'm going to lock the thread.