Hi folks; I notice that while the mp3 and mpc forums seem to have clear cut stickies on the best current encoder/settings to use, both Ogg and AAC don't seem to have these. But on to my question . . .

Due in large part to various hardware devices I've acquired for home/auto use, I've pretty much settled in to using mp3's with Lame 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard. I haven't played with Ogg Vorbis in some time, but I'ld like to check out where the latest is at. So, what is the current Ogg encoder/decoder and settings to use if I want to compare it to the above mp3 settings?

Thanks all, Dex

Garf's GT3B1 version at -q5 would be a good place to start. That's what I use.

http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org/ogg.html

Thanks Indybrett, but . . . I'ld rather look like an idiot than start off wrong. There seems to be quite a few Ogg selections there. Could you be more specific about which one I should download. I noticed three different GT3B1 dll's.

Thanks for your time and effort, Dex

Edit: Ooops, I think I see it, its the one at the top!

Hi,

I'd use Oggenc2.3 GT3b1.

Set up the EAC Compression Options like this:

• [x] Use external program for compression
• Parameter passing scheme: User Defined Encoder
• Use file extension: .ogg
• (specify path to oggenc2.exe)
• Additional command line options: -q 5 -a "%a" -t "%t" -l "%g" -d "%y" -N "%n" -G "%m" %s -o %d
• Bit rate: Doesn't matter, you can set it to 160-192 kbps for a better file size estimation
• [ ] Use CRC check
• [ ] Add ID3 tag

HTH,

Dominic

I've edited my post in that sticky thread so it gives more information about vorbis encoders, settings, etc. Let me know if I missed out something.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....t=0#entry131596

Also, does anyone know if the vorbis plugin in winamp 2.x has had that vendor tagging bug fixed? I've provided a link to version 1.3.5 of the plugin (which I'm hosting) which doesnt have the bug but that may be redundant if the newer versions of winamp 2 have the bug fix.

Not sure about the DLL's. I suppose it depends on what program you are using to rip+encode.

I actually don't encode while ripping. I rip first, then use OggDrop to encode later.

QuantumKnot: Your edit was perfect. Thats should really help folks to figure out whats what.

indybrett: While I normally use AudioGrabber or EAC, when it comes to Ogg, I do what you do and encode to OggDrop. Thanks.

Dex

I'm still using Win98SE and I'm getting always 'Unicode translation error 87' - but compression nevertheless takes place and I can use the resulting files. What is going wrong?

oggenc2.3 incorporates the Unicode patch that Peter Harris produced. This is known not to work correctly on Win98SE. If it causes a problem other than an error message, let me know and I'll produce a version, tell me which one you want, with the Unicode patch removed.

Actually, my unicode patch is a no-op on Win9x. That error message is coming from the broken pseudo-unicode code path that existed before my patch. That error is one of the reasons I created the patch in the first place.

Unfortunately Win9x doesn't really do Unicode, it just pretends to. Otherwise I would have extended the patch to do something on 9x too.

That said, feel free to try both with and without the patch if you like. If the behaviour changes on 9x, then it is a bug in my patch.

Rather than do a fresh compile now, could you try this one: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jfe1205/oggenc2.2.zip and tell me if you get the same error? Also, were you using wave file input, or a lossless format?

Answers to these will help a lot.

@ john 33



John, the error only occured when I tried to compress a .wav from HD with EAC's 'Compress WAV' command - and I was using Volcano's command line from above:

q 8,3 -a "%a" -t "%t" -l "%g" -d "%y" -N "%n" -G "%m" %s -o %d

Of course oggenc2 can't know anything about artists etc. when I only compress a .wav file without further information. When I will be ripping directly to .ogg from CD (o.k. EAC still uses a temporary .wav first) with that command line everything is o.k. with both compiles oggenc2.2 and oggenc2.3.

Sorry for making trouble - my fault. Since I'm just starting with ogg (I have worked only with mp3, mpc and ape before but forthlooking to firmware upgrades supporting ogg it's time know to deal with this format) the firt thing I tested yesterday was to find the quality setting appropriate for me. It's 8.3 ...

So, this basically happens when using the above command line in convert, ie., when EAC doesn't have the CDDB info and, therefore, the tags are empty? If so, that's probably not worth looking at as EAC may be passing any sort of garbage.

@Peter Harris: Any view on this?

Yes, seems to happen only then - when I rip from CD directly with CDDB data (or manual input...) everything is fine.

Hmmm, I would have no idea what EAC is trying to pass, if anything, to the encoder in this situation. If you've ripped to wav and want to encode and tag, you may want to look at oggdropXPd. It has fairly extensive tagging facilities.

I agree; that would be my first guess, too.

Passing parameters program-to-program isn't quite the same as typing them in on the command line. That also may have something to do with it.

Given that the files produced are fine, I'm inclined to not worry about it.