What is the best sounding portable mp3 player?

[BitFlipper]

Ogg is open source...

Well that should not make anyone drop everything else and run to it. In fact the problem with Ogg is that none of the legit download services provide their content in Ogg format, and I doubt it will ever get any DRM features (because that will reduce the warm, fuzzy feeling you get when using Ogg), meaning no mainstream download service will use it. Which means few players will support it, other than for the novelty of it. Which means if you rip all of your music to Ogg you will forever have only a limited option of players to choose from.

And you can get open source MP3 encoders like LAME as well, there's even an implementation that works with Sonar (and probably other hosts as well).

As far as Ogg quality, yes it probably is better than plain old MP3, but so is just about every other format that came after MP3. So even there it does not have some magical advantage.

BitFlipper

[Glooper]

The biggest advantage to ogg is that it does not insert silence at the beginning of the file. This is essential when sharing files to record other tracks with. Mp3's, wma's and ACC's all insert a few ms's of silence at the beginning of the file.

However for a portable player then OGG support is less essential.. though I wonder if you loose that anoying gap imbetween songs with OGG compatible players?

Ben

[InfiNeat]

why is ogg vorbis "better than mp3?" Does it sound better? Isn't it still an mp3? How does it sound comparably to mp4?

I might be too late now, but here are my reasons for preferring ogg to mp3:
- Through my own tests, I find it sounds quite a bit better than MP3 for the same file size. I can't stand most 128 kbit MP3s, but Ogg files of the same size are acceptable. You can cram more songs in the same space for the same quality or you can get better quality for the same space. I think MP3 is better at low bit rates, though, like for voice notes.
- I have the Fraunhofer codec for MP3s which I think is better than LAME. But I can only use it inside Sonar and I'm not planning on buying the standalone version.
- The format seems to have gotten almost as much support as Microsoft's WMF format (which is better than MP3 also). This is not bad for open source and the popularity is growing steadily. It's future looks bright and I like to encourage that.

[BitFlipper]

Well almost any newer format is better than mp3, so I don't think ogg has some real advantage here. Also, you say "the format seems to have gotten almost as much support as MS' WMF", although I really don't see that. There really are not that many digital players that support it, most people's PCs can't play it (since they don't have the decoder installed), and love it or hate it, but without any DRM you won't find the big online music store supporting it. The record labels just won't sign any deals with online stores if their content will be distributed in a form that is not even mildly deterring of pirating.

Also, most people don't even know what Ogg is if you were to ask them...

BitFlipper

[kybernaut]

Hey joxy,

what exactly sounds bad?

I have an iPod shuffle which has incredibly good D/A converters. 160 kbit AAC files sound good to me here.

Maybe try AIFF to find out whether it's something with the encoding or with your player electronics.

[Genja]

what exactly sounds bad?

Bad is that swooshy sound in the high end that .mp3 files produce, especially at anything under 160kpbs. Also you get a loss in the low end punch and a general added muddiness.

I'd say get an IPOD with a hard drive so you've got lots of space, and encode everything at 320kbps.

[kybernaut]

what exactly sounds bad?

Bad is that swooshy sound in the high end that .mp3 files produce, especially at anything under 160kpbs. Also you get a loss in the low end punch and a general added muddiness.

Yeah, I know the downsides of MP3. But the original poster uses AAC and I wanted to get more info on his "bad sounding" iPod...

My own experience with AAC is pretty good for everything 160 kbit and upwards.

On the other hand, I read somewhere that most iPods have no stellar D/A converters (according to some reviews, the shuffle is an exception here, though)


kybernaut