James Wilkinson wrote:
Robin Laing wrote:
There is an interesting comment about oggenc will only work with wav files.
From the man page.
"oggenc reads audio data in either raw, WAV, or AIFF format and encodes
it into an Ogg Vorbis stream."
This would imply that to go from mp3 to ogg, you will have to convert
the file to a wav, raw or AIFF. Then create the ogg file. Again, each
process has the risk of creating more distortion.
Er: no.
Both FLAC and wav [1] are lossless compression formats. You can go from
one to the other to the raw data all day without losing anything[2] or
creating any distortion[3]. That's the point of FLAC: it stores
*everything* in a relatively small amount of disk-space.
You can also go from MP3 or ogg to wav without losing any more data.
(You lost some when you created the MP3 or ogg in the first place:
that's still gone, of course).
So (if you're using a fixed-width font...):
FLAC ------------> wav -----------> ogg
no data loss data loss
MP3 (some data -----------------> wav ---------------> ogg
already lost) no data loss here more data loss
The data loss involved with going to ogg (or MP3) has to do with the
output format, not the input.
I do stand partly corrected. I don't like admitting I am wrong. :)
The point is if you have mp3's, you are best to just leave then alone to
retain the best quality possible in the mp3.
FWIW, I rip to flac as it is lossless. Now to get a flac codec on my
mp3 player. I also won't purchase online unless it is in a lossless
format as many mp3's I have heard sound like crap. Which I agree is
associated to the encoding.
Thinking about this, I remember the argument about CD's losing sonic
quality over LP's. Now we are going another step with losing quality by
using mp3's.
--
Robin Laing
