I honestly don't want to offend people, but I honestly don't have time to wade through the massive amount of useful information here.

What I've done instead is spend 20 minutes reading, and come to the conclusion, almost entirely from this thread http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=36465 (Which I haven't even read in full) that Vorbis is probably suitable for me.

I'm intending to keep my entire library in FLAC format. But for mobile devices (my X5L) I'll need to use a lossy codec so they use less space (and as I understand battery life).

I was looking for a lossy codec that was appropriate, and from previous experience 180 or so bitrate seems to be a suitable file size compromise, while still allowing the music to be almost indistinguishable from lossless.

I'd just like to make sure I've made a suitable choice, and I've not grabbed the completely wrong end of the stick.

Again I do appreciate that there's tons of information here, and that I'm quite flagrantly refusing to read it all, but as I said, I don't have time to learn everything about everything, so this is something I'm going to have to stab in the dark about.

I'm intending to encode using foobar, which as far as I understand means I'll need to setup custom command lines etc to do it, but it's entirely possible, and once set up easy.

Edit : It seems I'm getting confused with Ogg Vorbis and Ogg aoTuV.

"Normal" Ogg Vorbis seems to work in Foobar, and for simplicity I'll stick with that.

at around 180kbps, you may as well encode to lame V2 or V3, and in addition to transparency get the added benefit of "play anywhere".

At high bitrates, both MP3 and Vorbis are almost always transparent, but mp3 has higher support.

Where Vorbis can have an edge, is at medium bitrates (around 100-140kbps)... there, it can play its strengths while still offerering medium bitrates. At 180kbps though, nearly everything is transparent anyways, so you can as well go for compatibility.

This does not mean, that vorbis at high bitrates is a bad choice - its just that there are more efficient choices.

- Lyx

I don't have any "play anywhere" issues though...

The only mobile device I'm currently using is my X5L. Sure my phone plays MP3s and so does my Cybook, but neither of them are really suitable, and I can't think of a reason why I'd want to use them for it.

I had considered using "normal" MP3s, but since the only compelling reason I could think of was, as you said, play anywhere, then it makes no diference to me.

I'm thinking I should be using the -q5 setting to get what I'm after.

Have I picked the wrong codec?

Well, since you said that you have backups in FLAC, you cannot really go seriously wrong, in case your equipment changes.

The thing is this:
Regarding perceptual quality - ignoring transcoding - there is no difference between vorbis and mp3 at such bitrates, most of the time.

So, a decision between vorbis and mp3 at high bitrates then is about other criteria than perceptual quality. This can range from support to features to political issues to just plain "aesthetics". Regarding support and compatibility, mp3 has the upper hand. Regarding features - you may want to check if your equipment properly handles gapless playback for both formats. Politics and aesthetics are too individual to rate generally.

Sounds like you have a good plan. Don't even worry about your lossy choice; having everything in FLAC means you can just batch re-encode everything later if you change your mind.

p.s. I recommend using Aoyumi's tuned version of oggenc, rather than the default. The default codec has basically stagnated in the past few years.

Thanks. That's really the answer I was looking for.

Now off to the Foobar forum to see if I can get the damned thing working

Edit : Well. That was easy. In case anyone comes across this thread in a search and finds that they're struggling to get it to switch from FLAC to Ogg, I used oggenc283_sse3mt_lancer20061110.zip, which (if I get this right) is a derivative work on aoTuv, which in turn is a derivative work on Vorbis.

I've now got that working. So now it's time to get PAR2 files working for it... and then get a backup sorted of that, and I'm set

Does this "edge" not manifest all the way down to 80kbps? I would actually think it does, especially after yet another AoTuv tuning this month.

I think what was meant was that this "edge" is for medium and lower bitrates, i.e. anything below 100-140 kbps. There is no question that Vorbis is better than mp3 at 80 kbps and below, where mp3 performs poorly at best.

You might also consider that OGG is usually faster to encode, using the optimized lancer builds. For example, on my machine I can usually batch encode FLAC to MP3s at around 90x realtime on average, whereas I average over 130x realtime encoding to vorbis with the SSE3MT lancer build. I don't know how big your library is, but if you're converting thousands of FLAC files over, it can take a long time depending on how fast your PC is.

You should also consider the endurance of your portable. Vorbis is usually harder to decode than MP3 and you may have to recharge more often than with MP3.

OP, there is not such thing as "Ogg aoTuV". aoTuV is a fork of standard Vorbis with some tunings to improve quality. Files encoded with aoTuV are still Vorbis-compliant and will work in any player.



If you have a player like that with such a bad optimization, then I feel sorry for you. Don't spread FUD, though.