Ogg vs. mp3 question

[oc911gangsta]

Ok so I am learning fast on the Mint, but this one has got me stumped. I have my Sandisk mp3 player working with Mint, but when I tried to transfer some files to it there were in .ogg format. Now I have never heard of this format, and wondering do I just need to find a converter or what? The files originally came off a Windows computer as mp3, but when I transferred them over to the Linux one they switched to ogg.

Thanks in advance

[newW2]

Ogg is a free, open standard container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The Ogg format is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital multimedia. That is from here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg
And here is a comparison:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison ... er_formats

[MagnusB]

I have yet to see a MP3 player support OGG, so you just have to use MP3 for now. What are you using to import your music?

[curtiswtaylorjr]

I did a little research and found that some Sandisk mp3 players do play ogg I guess it depends on how new it is. You will need to find the specs on your specific model. I'd say don't convert them back to mp3 if your player supports ogg do to more audio quality loss. Your player if it is older say 2-3yrs or more may support it with a firmware update. All the research I've done suggests that ogg is as good if not better than mp3 in both quality and size.

Hope this helps.

[MagnusB]

OGG is more or less equal to MP3, I have only seen complaints about how it handles metadata. I generally prefer MP3s, since I have a damn Ipod and need Windooze and Itunes to handle that...

[oc911gangsta]

Cool I did some more research last night and I am checking on the firmware update for my Sandisk. But I also found the aptl to make Sound Juicer extract as mp3 so all is good.

[newW2]

And when you need it: soundKonverter. You can find it in synaptic. It's KDE, but runs fine in Gnome as well.

KDE frontend to various audio converters
With soundKonverter you can convert between various audio
file formats. Supported formats are: (encode/decode)
- ogg (e/d)
- flac (e/d)
- mp3 (e/d)
- wav (e/d)
- wma (d)

Currently supported backends are oggenc, oggdec, flac, lame,
ffmpeg (partly), mplayer (partly).

Homepage: http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=29024

[MALsPa]

Yes, .ogg is an "open" format, there are portable music players out there that play .ogg files, and the sound quality is great. I've been using a Samsung portable music player; I have a few .mp3 files, but most of my music is in .ogg format or .wma format (files transferred over from Windows days). Anybody who wants to stay away from proprietary formats like .wma or .mp3, .ogg works out well; you might have to dig a little to find a player for it but they aren't too hard to find.