After finally having switched over from MP3, I have decided to convert a chunk of my music collection to Ogg Vorbis. I was wondering if anybody could recommend a quality setting I should use for converting to Vorbis while maintaing a maximum amount of quality using the least amount of disk space. Most of the MP3s I will be converting are 192 kbit CBR.

keep your mp3s! transcoding is kinda senseless!

Yes.. there's really no point in converting your Mp3's to Vorbis. Just about any player that will play Vorbis will also play MP3. You're just going to incur a needless quality hit by doing the conversion.

The point of Ogg Vorbis is (IMHO) to save space, not maintain maximum transparant super high fidelity CD-sound.
Transcode your MP3's to Ogg Vorbis Q2(96 kbit) or Q3(112 kbit) and you'll be fine, unless you're an audiophile.

I'd say if you have the original CD's just start fresh.

I think you'll get decent sounding ogg's from quality 2 to quality 4 however you won't have the problems from the mp3's saved into the ogg's.

I agree to that. Ripping from the original CD is always best.
But the title says "Best settings for Converting MP3's to Vorbis", right?

Hello,

I'd like to know the best way of committing suicide, can you give me any advice?

Yes---rip a Britney Spears CD with Blade at 8kbps, making sure to select the regular stereo option and no lowpass. Then transcode the files to "near-CD Quality" 32kbps WMA's. Give them a listen and I'm sure you'll be dead by the end of the CD.

Anthrax, if you must transcode, I would error on the side of caution and go for the q3 setting, which generally averages around 112kbps. Try testing different -q values and see which one is the best comprimise between sound quality and size for your ears...for me, it's -q4 (encoded from a CD of course), but you may be happy with less.

On the unacceptable transcoding scale, how would converting 320kbps MP3s into --standard or --xtreme MPCs rank?

What's your motivation? Since MPC is basically a PC-bound format (i.e. not used on portables) what are you gaining by transcoding? Saving some hard disk space? I don't think it's worth it unless you simply cannot bear the space requirements of 320kbps MP3.

When people ask about transcoding, I wonder if their source files came from the P2Ps. Otherwise, if you have the original CDs, don't think twice about re-ripping and re-encoding...just do it.

Results in a death sentence if you share them.

Or a handjob.

Also, if the MP3s in question are from P2P, they could have previously been transcoded by the (unknowledgable) person(s) from whom they were downloaded. Best to keep them as they are, I think.

Rob

Listening to: 'La Parra' from 'Nice, Piedmont, Liguria: Polyphony Of The Southern Alps' by 'Corou De Berra' on Media Jukebox

...was that really necessary?

That they did, because I couldn't get a decent rip from a track on a CD of mine. Otherwise, again, no issue.

why not to try transcode DivX to DVD? fun guarantee...

a lot of people actually transcode from DivX to SuperVCD (predecessor of DVD).

I even knew a guy, who transcoded from VCD into DivX.
And when I asked him, he told me that DivX was higher resolution, so the movie looks better when stored in DivX format. And I was like