Ogg Vorbis Questions (again)

[LtData]

As I have noticed and as it has been mentioned many times here before, converting to Ogg is slow. Really slow. The PowerPack does nearly nothing to speed this up. Is there anything that can be done to speed it up, on the code level? I'm just wondering, cause I really like the size and sound of Ogg and it's just annoying when it takes 7-8mins to rip to Ogg.

Once I purchase an external Hard-Drive, all my CDs will be archived to it in FLAC, which brings up another question:
My anal-retentive audiophile (yes, I think we all have one) did some "research" comparing Ogg at maximum quality and FLAC and said there was no discernible difference in sound or that he could see in Goldwave. He said the only difference was just filesize. I know there has to be some other difference, but is there something I can tell him. If it's from Spoon, I know he'll listen :D. This friend is also the one who first introduced me to dbPowerAmp, so you can blame him for me being here :p.

[Spoon]

Re: Ogg Vorbis Questions (again)

Ogg is lossy that is it throws information away, FLAC is lossless (just like zipping up the Wave files). At higher bit rates (what is called becomming transparent) you will not be able to tell the difference between the two, someone with top of the range headphones might be able to.

[Brian49]

Re: Ogg Vorbis Questions (again)

I find that ripping from CD to high quality ogg takes about 30 seconds per track using the PowerPack. If this is taking 7-8 minutes on your system, perhaps it's something to do with your hardware?

[LtData]

Re: Ogg Vorbis Questions (again)

Thanks for the reply Spoon. The computer equiptment he is using a Creative Audigy Platinum and Audio-Technica M40fs headphones. He knows FLAC is lossless and Ogg is lossy, but he still insists Ogg at maximum is the same quality, albeit smaller files, as FLAC medium.

And in reply to ripping speed:
Using a 36 minute CD, it takes me 4 minutes to rip a CD to WAV and 5 1/2 minutes to rip the CD to OGG. Guess I was just ripping some longer than normal CDs when i got the 7-8 minute time.
Just to help you understand this, I'm using a laptop with a 24x CD read speed. I guess I just wanted to rip faster, but noticing the time to rip to WAV, there doesn't seem to be much hope for me. Oh well, guess fast rip times will just have to wait until I build my desktop this summer.

One more question, if I may:
Is the only difference between Monkey's Audio and FLAC that Monkey's file size is a little smaller?

[|VuDu|]

Re: Ogg Vorbis Questions (again)

Yes I have the same problem.
All my song files are in the ogg format. But sometimes I convert them to mp3 128 so that I can copy them to my cellphone and the best it gets is around 2.5x with the computer idle, just with dMC running. But when using Nero Burning ROM Encode Files feature it goes up to 8x. The problem is that it's a trial and I have a 20songs limit.

[Spoon]

Re: Ogg Vorbis Questions (again)

Monkeys is a little better on compression than flac.

Nero will not be using the Lame encoder that dMC uses - it is known as a very high quality mp3 encoder.

[|VuDu|]

Re: Ogg Vorbis Questions (again)

so, there's no way to the same encoder that NERO uses on dMC?
Because it's a huge difference!
It sure would be great if that was possible.