James Wilkinson wrote:
Robin Laing wrote:
>There is an interesting comment about oggenc will only work with wav files.
>
>From the man page.
>"oggenc reads audio data in either raw, WAV, or AIFF format and encodes
>it into an Ogg Vorbis stream."
>
>This would imply that to go from mp3 to ogg, you will have to convert
>the file to a wav, raw or AIFF. Then create the ogg file. Again, each
>process has the risk of creating more distortion.
Er: no.
Both FLAC and wav [1] are lossless compression formats. You can go from
one to the other to the raw data all day without losing anything[2] or
creating any distortion[3]. That's the point of FLAC: it stores
*everything* in a relatively small amount of disk-space.
You can also go from MP3 or ogg to wav without losing any more data.
(You lost some when you created the MP3 or ogg in the first place:
that's still gone, of course).
So (if you're using a fixed-width font...):
FLAC ------------> wav -----------> ogg
no data loss data loss
MP3 (some data -----------------> wav ---------------> ogg
already lost) no data loss here more data loss
The data loss involved with going to ogg (or MP3) has to do with the
output format, not the input.
I do stand partly corrected. I don't like admitting I am wrong. :)
The point is if you have mp3's, you are best to just leave then alone to
retain the best quality possible in the mp3.
FWIW, I rip to flac as it is lossless. Now to get a flac codec on my
mp3 player. I also won't purchase online unless it is in a lossless
format as many mp3's I have heard sound like crap. Which I agree is
associated to the encoding.
Thinking about this, I remember the argument about CD's losing sonic
quality over LP's. Now we are going another step with losing quality by
using mp3's.
--
Robin Laing