Hi,

I'm pretty new to ogg encoding, but I experimented with Lancer last night, which encodes considerably faster than the oggdrop I also downloaded. This will come in handy when I convert my entire CD collection.
I had a couple of questions:

1. Which version of Lancer is best to use, 20061013 (which uses b4.51/r1) or 20061110 (which uses b5)? Does the newer version really offer enough to warrant overlooking the older, stable version?

2. On a similar note, does anyone think it's useful to encode at q7 instead of q6? I'm using my iAUdio as a de facto backup drive, and while I realize ogg isn't lossless, if using q7 means better quality with slighly higher space usage, I'm okay with it...

Thanks!

Metranil

1. I've been using the 20061110 binary since it came out and I never had any problems. There are additional quality tweaks in this binary so I would definately recommend it.

2. I'm personally encoding with q4 which is transparent for my ears. I'd suggest you start encoding at q0 and then abx to test if it is transparent for you. If not, go to q1, q2, q3 q4 and so on. IF you can't distinguish the original and compressed song at a lower quality level than q6 or q7 why bother wasting space?

I would use the latest version. Q7 isn't a bad idea if you can afford space and already find Q6 enough. Its been discussed before and setting a little quality headroom can be usefull. i.e - if Q4 is normally enough go for Q5 or 6 - one or two presents higher in any codec but not more.

In can second Kef's statements, the current Lancer build has already proven being a very reliable one. Using it I've encoded many thousands of songs without noticing any glitches so far.


In my opinion both settings are overkill, hence there's nothing serious to say about this from my side. In theory quality is always better with increasing bitrates, but a lossy codec's intention is to provide transparent quality at small file sizes. An encoded track can't sound better than transparent, for this reason I'd recommend you to actually perform some ABXing instead of relying on theoretical improvements.

If it's mainly about backing up your collection, as stated above, then lossy isn't a good way to go, no matter which bitrates you choose. That's simply due to these caponized files being unsuitable for further processing, making them a poor archive. I'd rather suggest thinking about investing some money for a large external drive which would serve as a data storage for losslessly compressed material. That's the way I did it myself, my external thingamabob is currently filled with a FLAC archive, lots of self-made DivX-/XviD-movies as well as important system and document backups. The FLACs don't serve for actual listening, they're only there for me to be able to create lossy collections for all devices used for audio playback, no matter which file format is actually compatible to the hardware.