Burning Ogg Vorbis tracks to audio CD
 

I hope this hasn't been covered before; a quick search seemed to suggest that it hadn't.

Basically, the title sums up my question. I've got audio in Ogg (or some other non-MP3) format, and I'd like to create audio CDs from it. What's the recommended methodology? Also, any answers that consist of "Crack Nero. Problem solved." or something similar won't be of much help to me. I'd prefer to be above-board with this.

Thanks.

I would decode them to WAV files with Foobar's converter and burn them with EAC. Both are, of course, free.

If you don't use Foobar:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/

Or alternatively, Nero has a plugin for Ogg Vorbis, so you can just drag-and-drop .ogg files to add them to your CD. It can decode most common audio formats with a few plugins, which is handy for making CDs.

And just briefly, if you care about this sort of thing: If you own Nero (well, own, have a downloaded/burnt copy, whatever), you can legally use a freeware plugin as was mentioned earlier.

But in addition, it's also always better to use Nero to burn audio CD's directly from the OGG files, rather than converting a lossy format like OGG back to WAV and then burning (converting from lossy formats loses audio quality put simply). If the Ogg's are very high quality (q7 and up), you're probably OK (Ogg Vorbis is a pretty reasonable format as far as converting back and forth goes, as opposed to MP3), but much lower and it's, well, a bad idea. But if you generally listen to low-quality MP3 files, ignore this message.

- Spike

You can't "burn audio CD's directly from the OGG files". I mean, you can burn OGG files on a CD, but it won't be an Audio CD, in the CDDA sense.

Sorry if that's what you meant but it seemed unclear. =p

There's no difference really. Nero will convert the OGG files to wav before burning them, sinc that's the only way to make an audio CD.

I don't believe that's really true (as the others have said), though if you have something concrete that confirms it, I'd like to read it. Whether it's Nero converting the Ogg file or Foobar, the file has to be converted to a CDDA-friendly format, such as a PCM WAV file before it can be burned to an audio CD.

A similar process occurs when you play the Ogg via your favorite software player--it decodes the Ogg file to PCM data which is sent to your soundcard. That's what makes me think that you may be misinformed. Now, certainly, re-encoding a WAV file that was decoded from an Ogg file would result in a loss of quality, but it's the re-encoding part that does that, not the decoding.

Admittedly, I am using the assumption that Nero doesn't decode them. I mean, I've used programs that obviously decoded the OGG to a WAV and then burned it. Nero is probably really efficient and does it lightning fast- but I've never seen it do it (I check).

That's probably it. But I was thinking that maybe.. ah well. I'll have to rethink that one. Thanks guys.

- Spike

I was myself always surprised at the conversion speeds of Nero. Like, burning an Audio CD from MP3 files seems to take as much time as it takes burning one from WAV files. But yeah, there's no Audio CD without using WAV PCM, so I guess we can just say Nero has some nice decompression algorithms.

It's not that Nero has super fast algorithms or anything. Since MP3 isn't actually a free standard (like Ogg Vorbis, Musepack, FLAC, etc.), Ahead most likely licensed the Fraunhofer decompression algorithm for use in Nero. The reason you don't see a difference is that Ahead assumes your computer doesn't suck, so it just does the decompression in the background at the same time as it's writing to the CD. It's always going to take longer to write data to a CD than to decompress the data from a compressed format--such is the nature of the CD-R media. So there's no real difference in the time it takes to complete the write process.

For the most part, the various codecs for audio and video out there today are designed for optimum decompression efficiency (in terms of consumption of processor cycles) so that you can fast forward, rewind, or jump straight to a certain time with as little delay as possible.

Right, thanks again guys.

Incidentally (and this is probably OT, but eh :) ), I was under the impression converting MP3 to WAV (especially non VBR/HQ MP3) was a really bad idea, whereas Ogg Vorbis apparently converts to WAV with minimal quality loss. I mean, isn't converting both ways lossy? Just because you make a MP3 a WAV again, surely that loses quality again.

Correct me if I'm wrong- I'm just trying to understand here, not have a go at anyone or sound arrogant or anything.

- Spike

Well, it's simple really. There are 2 categories: Lossless and Lossy. Lossless can be uncompressed like PCM or WAV, or can be compressed without any loss in quality like APE or FLAC. Lossy (MP3, OGG, MPC ...) is always compressed, but this time this compression do alter the quality.

Converting MP3 (an already lossy compressed audio fle) to WAV (a lossless uncompressed audio file) will not provoke any further loss in quality. The WAV will sound just the same as the MP3 it was converted from, but will weight 10x more. =)

However, recompressing that WAV (that was created from a MP3) to another MP3 will create an additional quality loss since the original audio would have now been compressed 2 times.

Capice? =)

Yeah, I got that in theory, but why wouldn't converting from one format to another, regardless of lossy->lossless or vice versa make a difference? Surely it's bad quality-wise either way.

I think I get it though, Niki. Gotta bust these myths in my head sometime. Thanks as always.

- Spike

To answer that, you need an understanding of how lossy codecs work. Put very simply, when you encode a WAV file to MP3, the way it becomes smaller is by removing parts at the very high and very low ends of the frequency range. We're talking stuff that dogs and bats and such can hear, but we can't. Humans, relatively speaking, have very limited hearing capacity, so there's a lot of audio data in any recording that is completely extraneous for the average person. MP3 encoders cut out some of that, and pack the remaining audible stuff into tidy digital containers, reducing the filesize dramatically.

That's how lossy encoding works, so surely you can see that if you encode something that's already been encoded, the only thing that could be chopped out is data that DIDN'T get chopped out the first time--meaning it's probably audible. Hence the quality loss due to re-encoding.

On the other hand, decoding a lossy-compressed file results in no additional quality loss. PCM WAV files consist of nothing but raw, uncompressed audio data, that digitally represents an analog waveform. You can't have any of the tidy digital containers I mentioned before with WAV, so you have to toss them and expand the MP3 out to get it to conform with the PCM standard. That's all that decoding does. It may help you to grasp the concept if you think of decoding not as converting to another format but as expanding what's already there.

As for lossless codecs, the encoding process doesn't actually remove any of the audio data, it just compresses it. Think of zip files, for example. FLAC, Monkey's Audio, etc. use a more complicated compression method than the zip method, but it's the same concept--zip is a lossless compression algorithm. You can zip and unzip stuff without losing any of the data in the files, right? Same deal with lossless.

Don't misunderstand me here- I understand perfectly well what you mean. I'm just asking questions, flights of fancy.

I mean, it sounds like you're almost saying decoding a MP3 to WAV improves the quality. ;)

But I understand. If you were to encode a WAV to MP3, and then the MP3 back to WAV, the original WAV would be the best, but the latter two would be equal (just not in filesize).

- Spike

I honestly don't see how you could have gotten that out of what I said, particularly after the explanation of how lossy codecs work. :p

It sounds like you've got the idea though.

I don't know either- I just read a lengthy Hydrogen Audio forum thread about it and certainly get it now. I guess I presumed converting lossy to anything, even lossless, had to be bad. Just one of thos ethings you (wrongly) assume I guess.

- Spike

Well, burning Audio CDs from Lossy formats isnt recommended but heh, it's like listening to the Lossy format on your PC, all in all. I personally expressly mention on the CD that it was burn from Lossy though, so I don't go ripping it in the future.

What people usually flip about, and with good reason, is converting Lossy to Lossy. Like, people who don't like the OGG format will convert it to MP3 and won't realize the audio has suffered losses 2 times now.

Oh, no kidding. Don't think I'm a *complete* idiot for the lossy->lossless mistake, I fully understand about lossy->lossy, etc.

It's actually a big issue for me, and the Sierra music community- we (QuestStudios and my site) use Ogg Vorbis, and a lot of people don't understand Ogg or convert the Ogg, etc.

To be honest, the game music community is really disappointing in that regard- it's either lossless formats like FLAC or it's MP3, no alternatives. Why MP3 is still the format of choice is beyond me.

- Spike

The facts it doesnt require additional plugins and is compatible with portable devices count a lot, I guess.

Yeah, just sheer ubiquity is what's keeping MP3 around. Musepack is currently my favorite, but support for it is pretty sparse. Ogg is growing on me, due in no small part to the overwhelming Linux support it has. A lot of portables, my own included, play Ogg out of the box now too.

I'd like to see something open like Ogg or Musepack overtake MP3, but I don't really see it happening.

Wow, thanks for all the advice, guys.

Personally, I chose to go with Ogg because it was the only open format my portable would play out of the box.

You mean thanks for completely derailing your topic? :D

Yeah, that's usually the case. My portable also has FLAC support, but I really don't need lossless when I'm using a $50 pair of headphones. There's Rockbox firmware for Cowon's X5 players now, which would add Musepack support and a slew of other nifty things, but I don't have $250 for an X5 right now. :p

To derail further ;)

I guess, if you're some kind of audiophile, or have nice headphones, or like good quality music (which I'msure most of us satisfy some of the criteria of), I don't see why you'd encode or rip your music in MP3, or accept MP3 downloads, when it's JUST as easy to rip as Ogg Vorbis is (wow, I have to drag and drop my WAV's on a fish). Really, MP3 is more annoying to bother with. OggDropXPd is damned easy and GOOD.

Seriously. This is an audio community. It's also got a lot of rebels, people who like to download illegally and such. Why wouldn't you support the better, open-source format (hint: not MP3)?

Also, I've seen great Vorbis players. But if you're using shitty headphones, and an Ipod with some crappy EQ you probably wouldn't notice. :) Guess that's the real reason, people's hearing has been lost over the last 5 years.

- Spike

In my opinion, I find MP3's quality to be very respectable. The sound is still more than clear enough for the music to be enjoyable, and the broad hardware support is definitely an advantage. I often listen to music outside of the computer, either on a portable device or on a full-size system, and it's actually handy to be able to put many songs (more than a regular audio disc) on a single disc. I also listen to normal audio CDs, but for downloaded music, which is in huge majority in MP3, hardware players that support that format are nice. If another format was to be as widely supported by hardware, and its sound would also be great (i.e. not WMA), I might consider switching to it.

It's been a while since I've followed the codec scene, but wasn't Ogg Vorbis actually inferior to MP3 at high bitrates (and superior at low ones)? MPC was considered better than those two at high bitrates, and even achieving it at a smaller filesize. If this still stands, shouldn't you OGG-users switch to MPC?

The easy solution to satisfy everyone (or almost) in the music sharing scene would be to provide everything in lossless. This would make the dial-up users cry, and would somehow waste bandwith, but at least everybody would have the power to select his encoder and settings of choice. Or, another way would be to have people buy their own original albums and do their own game rips. This, in fact, might also make them more appreciative of the music, and not go nuts about how free (and mostly illegal) music files may not sound 100% perfect.

Well, when I started using Musepack more on my FTP server, people kind of freaked out. Change is scary and I think that even here, audiophiles are still in the minority. And even the ones we do have would probably get laughed at by the really crazy ones. OggDrop is a perfectly good little program (and the command-line oggenc is really great--it has built in wildcard support which mppenc lacks), but if you've never heard of it, you can't know that.

And yeah, listen tests still indicate that Musepack provides better sound at higher bitrates than both MP3 and Ogg. But at higher bitrates, the difference is negligible to the point where it doesn't matter for a large majority of listeners.

It's kinda pointless to say that OGG "sounds better" than MP3. Sure, it sounds better at equal bitrates, but then the issue isnt so much sound quality than file size.

And yeah, in our 100$ 350GB HD era, people don't care about file sizes as much as they used to.

I don't mean purely "same quality lower filesize", as that *doesn't* mean that it sounds better.

I've seen some great Hydrogen Audio forum threads where they've weighed it up- and Ogg Vorbis around quality 6-8 can closely match what a CD sounds like, but the VBR Mp3's simply aren't quite as good.

Why's that a big deal, when the difference is small? It isn't so much. But when you could use one of two encoders, and one's better- why use the other. Vorbis is free and open-source which as I said should appeal to us "free"-spirited individuals, and Ogg players are numerous in number now.

There's only a handful of real reasons to use MP3 as I see it, and they mainly are laziness or ignorance, or some sort of 'tradition'.

The way I understand it, Vorbis uses a 'clever' version of VBR which basically varies the bitrate incrementally. Not to be confused with VBR MP3, which varies in blocks of 32 (i.e. uses 192 kbps one second, 224 the next), Ogg varies the bitrate constantly to get the balance right between quality and filesize. That's how they're smaller than MP3.

As for quality, Vorbis beats MP3 at any bitrate (well, except if the Ogg was encoded at a really low bitrate and the MP3 was encoded at a really high one, obviously), from some excellent reviews I've seen.

The reason they produce different quality (and sounding) encoded files is that the codec filters are different, the psychoacoustics are different etc. They're not merely different forms of compression like ZIP or RAR, where smaller filesize is the only means of measuring. 10 KB filesize here and there is irrelevant, as Niki points out (although I don't think a 350 GB harddisk would hold my collection of VGM in lossless formats).


To qualify, let me say I don't make such statements lightly- if you look at old topics on my message board, you'll see I was once (not so long ago) very anti-Vorbis. It's taken a lot of research and really, there's no time I've seen where anyone's claimed MP3 was a superior format (at least, not satisfactorily), it's always the reverse.

It took a long time to convince me. But generally speaking, I only see people using MP3 over Ogg due to MP3 players they have. That's pretty weak.
I've found no real barriers to using it- WinAmp plays the files, Ogg players exist, etc.

Of course, if I want to burn a MP3 CD, I still do it, and don't have nightmares over the minimal quality reduction, or anything. But my point is that when *I* rip and when *I* convert my WAV's that I create to Ogg, I do it because I want everyone else to hear my music as close quality-wise to the original source file, without being lossless itself.

Of course of course, codecs change quality-wise all the time. But I haven't (yet) heard any news to change my mind.

EDIT: In fact, http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=50750

- Spike

Interesting. Must say I wasn't aware it wasn't just a filesize issue. =/

Basically, that's what I used to think too, which is why I'm trying not to be uppity (especially since it's still somewhat subjective).

It doesn't sound like many people in the VGM community (and I'm not talking about leechers, but respected members) think very hard about this stuff, which is disappointing to say the least.

- Spike

I've already stated my reasons (MP3 is not "perfect", but it still has very good quality and is the most practical format so far), so I won't continue to make my fingers go around it, but what I'd like to hear about is how you would compare OGG vs. MPC, since MPC is superior from what I know and I don't see why you would favor OGG over it.

I'm not an audiophile on any level, but I do listen to a lot of music on a lot of different devices in a lot of different places. At least part of this discussion seems to be about why the masses do what they do, so my opinion may have some relevance...do with it what you will.

I want music files that sound good and will play with minimal fuss wherever I go. The statement,

"Wow, these tunes sound pretty good (a lot better than the cassettes I grew up with), and I can play them on my computer, my portable, my Xbox, my work computer, etc."

is much more valuable to me than the statement,

"Wow, I've got some tunes back home that someone with more finely tuned hearing than I have or someone in a side-by-side blind test would, if they had great hardware, identify as better-sounding than those crazy MP3s the uninformed masses use. Of course, during normal listening, I can't tell the difference, and of course my Xbox doesn't play them, my portable doesn't play them, and my work computer doesn't play them...but, boy, do I feel cool when I'm listening to those files on my home computer."

It's a bit like the next-gen DVD formats for me. I have a PS3, and I don't deny that BluRay movies look better on my TV than standard DVDs. Am I going to go re-buy all the DVDs I currently own? Not as long as I have some player that will play them. At some point, the difference between great content in good fidelity and great content in great fidelity just isn't important to me.

I'm in the Musepack camp, but I think part of the reason that Musepack isn't plowing past Ogg is just that there's too damn many different formats out there. Musepack may be technically superior to Ogg, but I believe Ogg has been around longer. On top of that, to be able to tell the difference, you'd have to have some really serious equipment and something bordering bat hearing. As far as I'm concerned though, the two are interchangeable right now--I wouldn't be any more likely to turn down a q 6.0 Ogg file than I would be to turn down a Standard Musepack file. To be perfectly honest, the two sound the same to me, and my playback equipment is quite good.

Jaraph, you're a member of the vast majority of people who use a digital audio format. The majority rules, as it usually does, and so MP3 is still alive and kicking. I'm pretty much okay with Lame VBR MP3s though, so I'm not really complaining.

This is sort of veering away from what I've been saying so far, but another benefit over MP3s aside from psychoacoustics and filesize for both Ogg and Musepack is the fact that they don't use the ID3v2 metadata standard, which is starting to show its age. I may be more obsessive-compulsive than some of you, but metadata is pretty important to me, and ID3v2 takes friggin' forever to apply compared to APEv2.

I'm rambling, though, so that's it for me for now. :p

Forgive me if I'm showing my ignorance Rimo (and others), but I haven't heard anywhere that Musepack is superior to Ogg Vorbis.

To be fair, I haven't heard much about MPC though. I'm fairly sure the test that made me choose Ogg included MPC though.

- Spike

I believe the listening test in question is this one.

There's also a newer one over at soundexpert.info, but the way they rated that one seems strange to me. They did it on a point scale where anything over 5 points is, beyond all reasonable doubt, transparent. You would think that going any higher than 5 points would serve no purpose as far as recommending one codec over another goes. I don't know where those higher numbers are even coming from really, but the way they explained it doesn't account for anything over 5.

Yep, that's the one. Only problem is it's out of date. I personally want to do my own listening test.. LAME hasn't come so far since then (as opposed to Ogg with aoTuv's encoders), so I can be fairly confident Vorbis is still in the lead. Still, that's why you run tests, otherwise it's well, subjective :)

Testing is confusing though. And as you say, subjectivity can be a problem when rating scales become like that. If you look at ABX (double-blind) tests, 5 is 5- perfect, exactly like the CD audio. There can't be 6/5 or whatever. 5/5 would be transparent.

If you are good enough, when you do an ABX you'll rate the original WAV file 5/5, anyway. Or lucky enough ;)

- Spike

Spikey, I agree that Vorbis is the better format, but the simple thing is that MP3 is ubiquitous and considered "good enough" by most. And while you assert that it is not a filesize/quality issue, in the majority of cases that's exactly the question: How many bits does this codec take to represent audio with audible transparency? MP3's approximation of human psychoacoustics is good enough to produce humanly-transparent audio, and so is Vorbis' model. (Although, there are some uncommon samples that will make either codec artifact at just about any bitrate.)

Additionally, while there may be many Vorbis-compatible players, people who have invested hundreds of dollars in portable or car-based MP3 players will not be so eager to make yet another pricey purchase just so they can listen to Vorbis files. Even some Vorbis-compatible hardware players don't have full compability... I know for sure that certain iRiver players can't play Ogg Vorbis files that contain frames larger than a certain value (I can't remember right now... I think it may be any frame > 320Kbps, or maybe even 160Kbps). You, Spikey, might care to use Vorbis, but honestly you cannot expect everyone else to be so eager about it, just as I can't expect everyone to care enough to use my audio ripping guide. Some people just want their music on their hard drive fast, quality be damned.

Also, I find it hard to believe that, knowing all of this you do about Vorbis, you did not realize that all codecs are (and indeed must be) decoded to get at the audio data inside. Saying Vorbis -> WAV degrades quality is like saying a ZIPed .DOC -> .DOC degrades the quality of the Word document. And it would also imply that simply playing an MP3 degrades the quality of the audio going to your speakers (since decoding converts the audio to raw PCM, the kind of data that WAV files contain, and the only kind of data your soundcard can understand)... which makes no sense.

Also, I'd like to clarify the explanation someone made, that while correct in result, is totally incorrect in process. Re-encoding loses quality based on the simple principle that continuously approximating (encoding an MP3) based on each previous approximation (the existing MP3) will result in an increasing deviation from the original (CD/WAV). Just like playing "telephone", or faxing faxes. The explanation that one encode removes inaudible data, thus other encodes must find other data to remove (with the implication that it will be audible) is completely false. I suppose a better way to describe lossy compression, to avoid such confusion, is that it represents data in an approximate fashion such that it will likely never be exactly equal to the original. There is really no active "removal", it's more of a... selective, approximate preservation.

Yeah. It (the reencoded file) doesn't care about the original source data's quality, but rather the current copy's quality, if that makes sense.

Moguta, I never said "everyone's a moron for using MP3", I'm just wonderign why almost noone uses Vorbis. I totally understand why people use MP3, I just think they're all poor reasons. It's just as easy if not easier to use Ogg- I haven't got my head around MP3 switches yet, and I like to think I understand this sort of thing.

Again, I haven't sent a mass GFF PM/email saying "Vorbis is the way to go", or whatever. And I understand your frustration about not everyone using the best VBR MP3 they could be.

But, so what if I can't expect that? Just because people want music fast doesn't make my assessment any less valid, it just means people are stubborn and ill-informed.

Well, from experience I've learnt Vorbis is far superior to MP3 at recreating a WAV than MP3 has ever been. <shrugs> There's a lot of reason to choose Vorbis. I guess it goes back to the supermarket theory- there's so much to choose from, people don't have enough time to make (fully) informed decisions, so they shop around, or just don't care.

I guess I assumed that all decoding was lossy, as the files were being converted from a lossy format, which couldn't improve the sound.. I guess it's one of those silly things (I learnt it from another music forum I visit, I think). But that's why I visit places like Hydrogen Audio and GFF, because I love (game) music and good quality audio. I searched on HA for a while finding out info afterwards, to dispel more of the myth.

- Spike

It sounds like you still don't quite understand what decoding is. Decoding should never be lossy, because its simply a "translation" from that codec's arbitrarily-structured data compression to the standard raw data format that your hardware or other software can process. If you tried to pass actual MP3 data to your soundcard, or MPEG data directly to your video card, you'd only get gibberish out of it. Compressed files are only useful for one thing: being stored on your hard disk (or other permanent storage). To get any actual use from the file, the data must first be decompressed, usually into the RAM. (In the case of playing compressed media, it is decompressed in a "stream", continuously decoding what's about to play and discarding from memory what has already played.) There is no output of a compressed file without decoding, so saying that decompressing introduces loss to the output is pretty comparable to declaring 1 is not equal to 1. "... which makes no sense."

The only process that introduces loss is the encoding phase... when the source audio is approximated into that lossy file. And, of course, lossless compression formats will encode with no loss, exactly preserving the source. (Also of note, WAV is neither lossless or lossy per se, because it is not a compressed format at all. It contains PCM data that can be sent directly to the soundcard.)

You say that Vorbis is far superior at recreating the original WAV than MP3... I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume that you really meant Vorbis is superior at recreating the sound of the original WAV as heard by the human ear, because anything else in the original WAV is worthless as far as we're concerned. However, this does not do anything to counter my point that MP3s at a higher bitrate will achieve the same identical-sounding effect (aka "transparency"), so it's still just a bitrate efficiency issue.

But what it mostly comes down to -- and don't ignore this, it's the most important piece -- is many people like to be able to share their music. If you just have your music in Ogg Vorbis, then you will find that far fewer people will be receptive to your sharing... even though its a free offer! The majority thinks MP3 is just fine and would consider getting their computers to play Vorbis as much more of a hassle than the additional disk space required by MP3s of similar quality. And that's if they even care about the difference in audio quality...

As a post-note, I must say I have been amazed at how good music sounds at low quality settings with the latest aoTuV version, compared to the horrendous MP3 quality I remember at those sub-64Kbps bitrates. And I don't doubt that Vorbis reaches audible transparency "earlier" than MP3 in most cases... but the compatibility thing (having both portable and car-stereo MP3-CD players) and the sharing thing make MP3 my personal lossy format of choice. Although, I say lossy choice because I encode all of my albums to the lossless FLAC format, usually only transcoding to lossy when the audio is to be used beyond my computer. :p