A question for the people who like the OGG versions of the songs better

[Vortex]

What is so special about them in .ogg? Ive listened through them but to me they sound part radio, part muffled sometimes, and the bass doesnt seem as good as the mp3 version.

Maybe its just me who knows.

[eloj]

Are you talking about all tracks or a specific one? (and it's "Ogg", not "OGG")

If all, then a) Yeah, it's just you. b) I suggest you head over to the listening test and prove yourself. :-)

Be quick, it closes the 21st

[Vortex]

nah i dont think its me. Everything seems cloudy and radioish... neovulcan can back me up  

and explain why "Ogg" and "OGG" is such a big "spelling" mistake to you

[neovulcan]

nah i dont think its me. Everything seems cloudy and radioish... neovulcan can back me up  

that's an affirmative. i looked at an OGG faq. basically OGG saves space by shifting to a lower quality during periods of low quality sound. ideally it shifts to a higher quality during better parts. the problem is that the shift to lower bitrates doesn't save that much space, and more importantly it shifts to low bitrates during important parts of the song. i might take OGG more seriously if there was a good encoder....and my mp3 cd player supported it.

[eloj]

If there was a good encoder? There's a very good encoder available and it's called 'oggenc'.

It's Ogg because that's the name of the container format. It's a name, not an acronym. I'm sure you guys wouldn't want me to consequently misspell your names, right?

If we start from the beginning; which of these 60s clips of about 0.5MB each sound best to you?

a) mp3 version.
b) vorbis version.

You'll notice that they've been given pretty much the same amount of bits to do their work, and they both use the same samplerate.

(I'll supply the original wav to anyone who thinks he/she can produce a better sounding mp3 version given the above specification)

[Vortex]

Well I must say those are better clips compared to the machinae supremacy ones. From Machinae Mp3 vs Ogg point of view mp3  wins hands down to me.

In the point of view from the 2 clips you supplied its a draw where both have weaknesses. The mp3 version sounds a little blurry compared to Ogg at points, while the Ogg seems too sharp and radioish.

[Wintress]

To me, Ogg is simply a variation of, or a loose definition of vbr (variable bit rate). Vbr done with EAC-09b4 and Lame 3.92,  sounds great...but I still prefer 192 bitrate mp3 for the best sound quality. Just my opinion.

And, it doesn't matter to me if someone spells it OGG or Ogg or ogg...I've always pronounced it as "Dog without the D".  

[eloj]

>To me, Ogg is simply a variation of, or a loose definition of vbr (variable bit rate).

Oh, my.

Really, I don't think I have the energy for this.

[Wintress]

>To me, Ogg is simply a variation of, or a loose definition of vbr (variable bit rate).

Oh, my.

Really, I don't think I have the energy for this.

Hehehe, okay, I guess that wasn't entirely fair, nor accurate, so read for yourselves:

http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/

 Ogg Vorbis is a completely open, patent-free, professional audio encoding and streaming technology with all the benefits of Open Source:

http://www.vorbis.com/

               

[Skvate]

Ogg pwns mp3 any day And the Machinae Ogg files sound better than the mp3s.

I think VBR is generally better than CBR....at least with Ogg.

[wisepenguin]

i always use the ogg versions for machinae songs, and i think but not sure on this that on some songs rob has done them differently or added something else in.

really not sure on that though.

i would urge anyway who wants to download the songs to get them in ogg

[backoffbitch]

To be honnest, both are JUST as good. Problem is differences in hardware. One soudnd chip may decomrpess and Ogg better than another and same goes for mp3. For me both sound the same at higher bitrate mp3 use for comparision. At 64k on mp3 the Ogg blows it away. get a really good sound card so that your CPU doesn't have to do the work and you will notice a huge difference in your Ogg decompression.

 I grabbed the Ogg versions of all the Machinae songs.. maybe I will grab the mp3 versions for my mp3 player too then compare the differences.

 Keep in mind too, 90 percent of the time it depends on what PC hardware was used for compressing the music. Have a good sound card and you can churn out 128k mp3's that blow away any of their Ogg rips... have a bargain basement card and you end up with crap.

[eloj]

You're wrong on so many levels.

The actual computer used to compress does not matter. The software and setting do, but not the hardware. The sound card isn't used for compression (let's disregard any specialized applications).

When decoding what is produced is a raw binary stream. Again, the sound card is not involved in decoding (normally -- AC3 hardware and such is a special case). Audio compression formats are foremost specified by what they produce when decoded -- if two different decoders produce different streams, they're probably doing something wrong (disregarding post-processing in the form of dithering and such)

So what matters is:

 1. The encoding _software_
 2. The sound card and everything behind it; amps, headphones/speakers and ears.

.. and a 128kbit/mp3 isn't going to "blow away" anything.

[backoffbitch]

You're wrong on so many levels.

The actual computer used to compress does not matter. The software and setting do, but not the hardware. The sound card isn't used for compression (let's disregard any specialized applications).

When decoding what is produced is a raw binary stream. Again, the sound card is not involved in decoding (normally -- AC3 hardware and such is a special case). Audio compression formats are foremost specified by what they produce when decoded -- if two different decoders produce different streams, they're probably doing something wrong (disregarding post-processing in the form of dithering and such)

So what matters is:

 1. The encoding _software_
 2. The sound card and everything behind it; amps, headphones/speakers and ears.

.. and a 128kbit/mp3 isn't going to "blow away" anything.

I think you need to researk the MKII chipsets a bit bud.

[Daita]

Hi all my first post to the forum been reading a while now and listening to the band for almost 2 years. I found out about em when i heard the amazingly great gianna sisters cover and loved every minute of their music from then on.  

Anyway I was about to say that you could hear something in the OGG version of Earthbound that you couldn't in the mp3 but it turns out i have an older version in mp3 or something thats actually missing the vocals that play out with the song after 4:03.  What i wanna know is when did they add these vocals to the song or is this just some strange oddity in my file for anyone curious download it off the webpage now and then grab my mp3 here

http://www.siamshade.org/temp/mp3s/machinae_supremacy_-_15_earthbound.mp3

oh and for the record i like ogg better ^^