I’ve used ogg vorbis for storing my fairly large (~1200 discs) CD collection on my Debian system and am very happy. All the same programs should be readily available on Ubuntu. The apps and overall process I use are as follows:
1. Ripping - KAudioCreator - rip to oggs at desired quality setting (1-10, default is 3, I use 6). The program uses CDDB lookup to handle most of the metadata.
2. Music player - amaroK - great program!.
3. To burn copies of CDs back to audio player format - select tracks in amaroK, click “Burn This Album”, and K3b automatically launches to burn the disc.
4. To make mp3 files to transfer to iPod - grab transKode, an add-in script program for amaroK (for my amd64 machine I had to build this from source, but i386 users don’t have to). transKode is a little cumbersome but basically works fine. Of course, you need LAME to encode mp3s.
5. To actually transfer the files onto my iPod I use gtkpod - works fine.

amaroK is supposed to be able to do steps 3, 4, and 5 without leaving the program, but I have not gotten it to work.

Sound quality is fine, whether listening on the computer, the iPod, or from CDs coded from ogg back to wav and played on my main home audio system. I’m by no means a hard-core audiophile, but I am a music buff (mostly jazz and classical) and an amateur pianist and saxophonist, and I cannot distinguish between the reencoded CDs and the originals on my Bose home theatre system, using good-quality symphonic and chamber recordings as a test.

A fantastic introduction to the completely open/free audio format. I myself am ripping CDs to FLAC (lossless) for the desktop machines and then producing OGGs from those FLAC files for music on the move.

FLAC I use as a permanent audio storage solution. The files tend to be miles larger than your average OGG file but it is fairly “future-proof”. Also, you can produce any of the smaller file formats from a FLAC file such as an OGG/MP3 and the FLAC file will remain untouched.

I will soon be looking out for an iAudio device. Or possibly something else. Would anyone possibly know of an “OGG supported devices” listing?

Steve

Every time I go to my local Electronics Gadgets shop, I look for CD/DVD players supporting OGG format. I thought that there must be AT LEAST one in the market who supports it, albeit silently. I could’nt find one.

Again, I wonder if I can get to meet designers of such equipment, OR if there are OEMs of sort who could be influenced for supporting ogg formats.

Thirdly, are there any hacks available to know whats the firmware which goes in such equipment and can we hack it to support ogg as well.

Would suggest if we can some how assemble such knowledge into a good HOWTO and start making our own OGG supported DVD/CD Players.

Anand Shankar

“using MP3 considering its gray area of use.”

Huh? Since when has there been any kind of gry area in the use of MP3s? I am not talking about Copy Right violations, I am talking about the use of the format itself.

Michael: On the Linux platform, because of the fact that no one in the US is footing the bill for Linux users to listen to MP3s in popular distros like Ubuntu (excluding Xandros, Linspire/Freespire and SLED 10), it is indeed, quite a gray area to listen to MP3s on Ubuntu basd on US Law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues

Microsoft and Apple pay these license fees for their users, so most people are simply not aware of this.

Steve: Another option would be various iRiver players using this:
http://ifpgui.sourceforge.net/

Wow, yet another FUD article. There is no “grey area” in using MP3s. It is perfectly legal to do so in the civilized world. Software patents are mostly void outside the U.S. and you don’t have to pay license fees for non-commercial patent usage anyhow.

There’s no point in recoding existing MP3s into OGG. It’s the best choice for transcoding new CDs into high quality audio files, but that’s about it.
Patents are not a worthy decision point here.

Give it a rest.

Mario’s troll patrol wrote:
“Wow, yet another FUD article. There is no “grey area” in using MP3s. It is perfectly legal to do so in the civilized world. Software patents are mostly void outside the U.S. and you don’t have to pay license fees for non-commercial patent usage anyhow.”
Please re-read the article as you are *clearly* not living in a jurisdiction threatened by IP issues. Yes, IP issues suck, but guess what - they exist in a number of countries, be it rather silly to those living elsewhere. Yes, in the US, it is a grey area, please do some research on this before spouting off about things you obviously know nothing about. Again - *jurisdictions* is the operative word here. ;)
Mario wrote: “There’s no point in recoding existing MP3s into OGG. It’s the best choice for transcoding new CDs into high quality audio files, but that’s about it. Patents are not a worthy decision point.”
Again, listen to the video *closely* this time. I *clearly* stated that encoding lossy to lossy is not desired, be it worthwhile to those who understand the loss of quality.
As for Patents not being a worthy of decision point, if Desktop Linux in the US is going to be taken seriously outside of existing LUGs, you damn well better believe it means getting a grip on how IP headaches actually work, and why no one in the US will EVER be able to OEM Linux distributions without the IP issues addressed. I will point out that I am trying to stop adoption deals like we have seen with Microsoft while folks such as yourself, obviously in another region of the world, cannot wrap your minds around what we have to deal with here in this country. Get a freakin’ clue! ;)

It’s very, very bad advice.

No-one who hasn’t got cloth ears would ever consider one lossy format converted to another lossy format acceptable:

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Transcoding

I like Ubuntu but this kind of ignorant nonsense is one of the things that puts one of the FOSS world.

So many FOSS people have to do such unproductive things, such as conduct holy wars against perfectly good formats, including those of the Motion Picture Experts Group. These are good formats — hint “expert” actually has a meaning here.

Closed formats belonging to Microsoft are a bane, open formats where there may, at the moment, be licensing issues are a different matter. Canonical doesn’t want the expense of paying for licences for MP3, but it went to trouble of making installation of the codecs easy enough, so get your eyes off people’s MPEGs. They’re not part of your holy war.

And don’t give bad advice that is destructive of the sound quality of people’s recordings. You may not be able to hear the difference: they may be, but not till too late.

You know, an MP3 decoder is an MP3 decoder, if it decodes to another format or if it decodes to play.
*IF* it is illegal to play MP3s, it is also illegal to transcode them to another format.
Sorry, but that’s the way it is.
So you are sacrificing quality and compatibility for just another way to (possibly) break the law.

Pat: That is a good point. So in the end, it is always preferable to rip your purchased music whenever possible. For the sake of quality and otherwise.

Pat: After looking into it, I ‘believe’ that the rights are secured via Fluendo’s decoder, which means that all the licensing stuff is in place.
http://www.fluendo.com/press/releases/PR-2005-05.html
http://soundconverter.berlios.de/

Good to know, about the licensing.
Though I don’t think anyone in their right mind would argue that ripping from CD is *still* the best way to get high quality legal music on your computer. Didn’t even Bill Gates say something to that end, talking about how digital music stores still can’t give consumers what they want, as far as bit rates and DRM compatibility?

At any rate, great video. Compatibility with a certain file type should never be a barrier for entry to Linux.

Pat: Thanks. :)

I use FLAC for all my CDs and the transcode to Ogg Voribis using oggenc. The Ogg files are for my portable player and/orstreaming over ADSL.
(Transcoding from lossless to lossy is fine btw, of course.)

Anyway, if you’d like to have proper GAPLESS playback on Ubuntu you can use the application called Aqualung. It’s great! Very simple but sounds brilliant,

apt-get install aqualung

HTH