"Jim H" wrote in message
...
more from the 'Stimpy school' of uk.rec.audio-ism:

"Jim H" wrote in message
...

Yes, Im a die-hard linux user ;-)

A die-hard linux user not using ogg as their main format?

I guess if you want to share, you have to go with the masses ;-) For
better or worse, MP3 has a *huge* amount of momentum - look at the
comparative volume of MP3's vs. Ogg on Kazaa

But who uses kazaa anymore?

Maybe 5.1 audio will help ogg take off, dvda/sacd ripping would certainly
help ease people away from old stereo formats like mp3. There are also
some
cheap ogg decoding chips for portable players around now. Thanks to the
dodgy buisness practices wma has a large share of audio on personal
computers, but is less often shared than mp3.

If you really must have 1:1 audio, there's always the lossless codecs
- FLAC, BONC etc. Although audiophiles seem to be unnecessarily wary
of data compression - AFIK SACD/DVD-A formats don't even employ
lossless data compression.

There was an amusing article in one of the hi-fi comics last month
about how to 'get into' ripping CDs - they were suggesting that
anything lossy at all was a no-no and one should only ever rip at
'full size' (1411 kbps). I've done a few back to back 1411 vs. 320
kbps tests and, to be honest, struggle to find *too much* difference.
I think ripping at 320 is about the point where the old diminishing
returns thing kicks in.

With mp3, maybe, but mp3 is getting on 13 years old now, and at 320k it's
really outside the original design. You can't keep throwing high, out of
spec bitrate at an old format it and expect the quality to scale nicely. I
do not believe there to be audiable difference between an r3mix lame rip
(vbr,~180) and a 320 cbr one.

--
Jim H jh
@333
.org

WMA which is suppose to be twice!!! as effiecent as MP3. I havent heard a
good WMA yet.