I saw this post (and subsequent thread) in Xiph.org.

http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200208/0209.html

They are talking about consequences of the new policy why Thompson.

In subsequent replys, they are talking about there is nothing wrong if you know the quality will suffer if you transcode but want to be in the 'legal side', and that the quality will not be much less if you use 'reasonable' bitrates.

I'm not worried of this whole thing as my mp3 are few, but i think this could be of interest.

The question is: what do you think 'reasonable' bitrates are for a given mp3 bitrate, mainly 128kbps, 160kbps and 112kbps, as most mp3 are encoded at these bitrates...

Do not transcode mp3 to ogg (Or any lossy format to any other format for that matter).

If you're worried about a "legal side", the music you've downloaded off a p2p network is still in breach of copyright no matter what format it is in.

There has been no policy change regarding licencing fees for mp3s. An idiot at slashdot.org posted an article that was factually incorrect on every count, which led to the current hoo-haa. The mp3s you have encoded yourself using LAME or any other mp3 encoder are perfectly legal and are subject to no 0.75c fees whatsoever.

I really know the reasons for not doing that, but please, read the thread posted before answering, cause for your answer, i know you didn't.



I know, the problem isn't with the music itself, is in the decoders (and encoders). Free decoders are no longer legal.

False.

AFAIK, Thomson and FhG didn't start demanding fees for free decoders (and I believe they won't ever start)

You decoder is legal until you get a registered letter asking you to pay for fees. Until then (and beyond, if you pay the fees), your decoder is perfectly legal.

BTW: remember that Winamp is legal - and will keep being legal even if decoding patents are enforced - because Nullsoft/AOL already payed the one-time fee.

So, IMO, it's bullshit to start killing all MP3 and replacing them with Vorbis because people are concerned (as if...) that the decoder is illegal. There are perfectly legal decoders available for free.

Regards;

Roberto.

Ok, ok, forget all the assumptions about the decoders no longer being free...

Again, it doesn't matter with me, as i have only a few mp3...

But then, I don't believe there is no one considering migration, so I still think posting recommended settings for transcoding from 112, 128 and 160kbps mp3 to ogg might be of interest.

(And again, i know, allways warning that transcoding only gives you, if did properly, a slightly worst quality)

If there's someone considering transcoding his MP3 collection, he should be strongly steered from these intentions, instead of being given a "Do it this way:"

Again, there's NO legal/practical/moral/whatever reason to get rid of your MP3s. Period.



Wrong again.

Quality loss is only "slightly worse" when you transcode from a Subband encoded file (MPC or MP2) to a Transform encoded file.

If you do Transform -> Transform (MP3 -> Vorbis), quality loss IS big.

Regards;

Roberto.

How picky are you today

Ok, let the public vote if they are wanting to transcode or not or if the quality is substantially degraded or not...

...or give me tools to close this (evil?) thread once and for all

I don't care what the public decides. They can transcode their entire collection to VQF, for all that I care.

But I would like them to know that doing that will ruin their music.

I am only stating that transcoding your MP3 collection to Vorbis is plain insane and there's no reason to do that. And I hope people read this before taking this step.

Regards;

Roberto.

Again, how picky are you today.

Ok, only the facts: All people over there, cease and desist of transcoding from one format to another as long as you can.

Debian users: be warned that the next release of Debian could or couldn't have a mp3 decoder. They are still discusing it.

Period.

P.S.: I still have the sensation that no one got my point, but well, I don't want to fight for something that is not of my concern.

You are clear too close this thread if you think so.

It's scary people like ManyFaces that gives me the shivers when considering downloading an OGG while thinking:
-Has it been transcoded?
Feels like this whole Slashdot story has started a new genus of transcoders... I really hope these people put a "WARNING, TRANSCODED FILE!" in the tags comment-field, but I guess I shouldn't be very optimistic.

Best tip: DON'T.

Your number one tip for transcoding from MP3 to Vorbis:

'If I subsequently share the Vorbis files on *any* file sharing network, Jon Ingram will track me down and break all my fingers to stop me causing any more damage.'

xcLame, from John33, adds a tag when transcoding mp3->vorbis

I think it is "Source=MP3", or something like that.

But I doubt other transcoders would do the same. :/

That is the last thing i hope to ear (read?).

So, with my best inttentions, and knowing *perfectly* that transcoding only gives you way worst quality, I posted this thread in anticipation that if, for a unfathomable reason (or not so unfathomable), mp3 could be a not-recommended-at-all codec to stay with, we all can choose the lesser of two evils.

...and what I got back: pure criticism, not one serious attempt to approach a *possible* future problem and now even insults.

I can only say that I am dissapointed. The whole impression I have of this forum had been severly damaged.

Don't like the idea of such *evil, brain-damaged and missguided* ideas go by? Close the thread. I said it once. I even recommended it if my whole intention was missunderstood, as it did.

BTW, 12345: don't be scary about it, as I previously said, I have little if any mp3 here, not one ogg transcoded for you to *download*. I once made the mistake of transcoding and not keeping the originals and I payed dearly. That is what convinced me to use only *lossless* (FLAC) for backup.

I'm really getting sick of seeing this kind of stuff around here...

First of all, transcoding is not the "lesser" of two evils. It doesn't even belong in the same equation. Either keep your mp3s the way they are, or encode to a lossless format.

Transcoding to another lossy format like this is simply inexcusable. Period.

Second, I agree with rjamorim. By making a guide on how to transcode, no matter how much you may recommend against this, the fact that a guide exists means that on some level it must be "OK". This gives people the wrong impression. If nothing else, it gives them the impression that it's "bad, but not all that bad".

About getting back pure criticism, well what did you expect? Pretty much the core philosophy here are HydrogenAudio is to raise awareness of quality related issues in regards to audio coding. There are other factors, but I think it's safe to say that this is the biggest focus of the forum. What you are suggesting is very far from this goal. In fact, it could really be regarded as a step backwards. After spending so much time trying to tell users about how transcoding is bad, now we're supposed to promote it, just because some zealots are getting all riled up about something which is not nearly as big of a deal as they are making it out to be? That's not what HA is about.

A correct solution to this problem would be to tell people to re-rip their albums in Vorbis. If they really want the format to succeed, they could do it a big favor by encoding directly to vorbis and thus increasing the quality of content available, giving a good name to vorbis. Transcoding, on the other hand, will do nothing for the Vorbis image, and instead will possibly cause people to think that Vorbis files = shit quality, hampering its chances for acceptance in the long term. Remember, it doesn't matter so much what someone on here knows, it's what the x million average joes on the internet hear when they download their first vorbis file. You could draw analogies here to something like Joint Stereo in MP3. Because of buggy FhG implementations of this technique, probably 75% of the people out there still think that it does more harm than good. First impressions will always come back to bite you in the ass.

As for your "opinion of the forum" being "severely damaged", well that's too bad. It's also too bad that you would jump to such rabid conclusions in the vein of the few people you spoke to in this thread somehow representing the entirety of HA. This is just as flawed a line of thinking as recommending that users transcode their audio files. Oh well...

There will be no closing of this thread. If you can't take the responses you get here, just don't bother to post anymore. It's pretty simple.

Oh, and for the last time, I wish people would quit taking criticism of their arguments so personally around here. I swear, it's like if you say somebody is wrong, it's some sort of dire insult or something. Get over it people.

My apologies... As i said, that wasn't my inttention.



Just a little note: I didn't start this thread to promote vorbis. That is plainly false.



Just another note: I didn't put a single line recommending to transcode. Read again.



So you think I recommend to close this thread for the sole reason of me being hurt? Come on, it's for the same reasons you posted above: a step back. If i were wrong, and nothing here is useful, just close it and stop to made that damage to newcomers. As for other matters, i couldn't care less if it is closed or not.



Accusing you of being a "scary one" without actually knowing you, is not a criticism about any argument given. But that last post was only a first reaction..., period.

People transcode all the time, wether you like it or not. I do it, most of my music is in Monkeys, but a fair number is 192Kbps mp3, when I want to stick some audio on my Rio I transcode to a lower bitrate, or even >>SHUDDER<< wma. Of course the advice of HA in this situation would be to dig out the original CDs and spend hours re-ripping to get a 64kbps wma....

Or draw from your archive of lossless encoded files...

Perhaps someone can pm ManyFaces the recommendations and get this over with?

Wrong.

First, of course people transcode all the time. But HA supposedly is here to go against this practice, and not to offer transcoding guide.

Second, it has already been stated that, although suboptimal, transcoding is acceptable when you NEED smaller bitrates. (For portable players, of course. And streaming, sending files to others by e-mail...)

But, IMO, it's plain wrong to transcode from one format to another based on ManyFaces' arguments. MP3 decoding isn't illegal, and most probably won't be illegal.

And yes, I think the advice of HA would be spend hours re-ripping to get the best quality you can at that bitrate. If you can live with the worse quality introduced by transcoding, go for it.

Regards;

Roberto.

While I totally agree with the opinion that transcoding mp3 -> ogg is pointless and in fact perhaps detrimental to Ogg, the thread that the origional post referred to ran on and many thought that people out there *would* transcode regardless. It was suggested that any transcoder tag's the resulting ogg as 'Transcoded'. Of course the average Joe would probably never read the tags but if people were going to transcode then this is better than having no info to say why the file sounds like crap.

At the risk of contradicting myself, it's still better to talk people out of transcoding - and I have done a few times in the last couple of weeks.

I'm afraid there is one form of transcoding to another lossy format which the HydrogenAudio forums should support, which is that of transcoding to lower bitrates. This would be used in cases such as converting to streaming bitrates, or DVD ripping where the prefered option of reencoding from original is usually not possible.

We can't say that there is absolutely no reason to transcode.

I retracted some post ago from my that supossed arguments, the only fact I write was that Debian developers supossedly were discussing to drop the mp3 support or not.

Just a note.

I'm afraid that while there are 'newby' friendly programs that exhibit this feature then it will become prevalent.
More and more people are becoming wise to the qualities of .Ogg and unfortunately unless we can get each and every one of those users to visit and read this site then they will go ahead and transcode,their program offers it and so they will go ahead oblivious to the damage they are causing.


On a side note,I do participate in a p2p (direct connect,my own hub too) and I state in a readme in my shared that ALL my files are of pure origin and from my own source and nowhere else,and hence NOT transcoded.

ps, its; parrot.servebeer.com look for Batts *


*Expects this to be removed soon

Maybe we can convince some developers (dBpowerAMP - anyone ) to add a short notice when people transcode using their apps... (not mp3 to ogg IST death but something concerning the quality loss...)

If anyone interested:

http://www.vorbis.com/ot/20020905.html

http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis/200208/0219.html

P.S.: I'm not giving an oppinion, just posting the info. Period. This is for all eager to say 'ManyFaces wrote this' or 'ManyFaces wrote that', when in most cases, I didn't wrote what they said.

P.P.S.: ...but then, maybe you are understanding other things of my comments as I do for yours, cause English is not my native tongue and there could be missunderstandings.

Oh, forget about it!

Maybe it's just my nature. Whenever I'm told that I can't, or shouldn't do something, I can't resist trying it.

I just decoded a 192k mp3 and encoded it into a 64k QuickTime 6 aac file. I must say that the result is amazingly decent. Frankly, I wouldn't have expected this decent output from any 64k file, even from a freshly ripped wav.

I wonder, have there been ANY listening tests to support the position that transcoding to a lower bitrate is such a bad thing?