MP3 not supported?

[Robin Laing]

Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Monday 21 November 2005 10:50, Mark Jordan wrote:
> 
>>the article mentioned using the Ogg or Flac codecs. Is there a tool
>>that easily converts mp3 to these formats? can ogg or flac be put onto
>>cds and played? when i means simple it would be nice to have something
>>like "convert foo.mp3 bar.ogg"
> 
> 
> Flac is a lossless compression utility, but its output would not be
> hugely smaller than a .wav.  I haven't used it but I'd expect it to be
> indistinguishable from the original.
> 
> Ogg, OTOH, does have some losses, but for my ears, anything above a Q6
> setting at encode time is indestinguishable from the original, and
> generates file sizes comparable to mp3's at 128k, or smaller.  I can't
> say that the 128k mp3 is even listenable, giveing me a very high
> fatigue factor after 5 minutes or so.
> 
> So I think the statement that ogg is better than mp3 at any comparable
> filesize is quit true.

 From my experience, flac is ~25% smaller than the wave files for most 
music.  I really have not looked that closely.   I will have to look 
closer into this.

I use OGG but I feel with the cost of HD's today, why save as a lossy 
format.  Also, this gives me a backup of my CD if it decides to fail. 
  Convert back to wav and have a copy if ever needed.

I do agree with you that ogg is much better than mp3's in my own 
experience.  I find that all the ogg files I have ripped seem to have 
a full dynamic range over any of the mp3's.  Even when the mp3's have 
a higher bitrate.