Ah. Err. OK, well, I'm going to have to go into pedantic bastard mood here.
Could you post the command line you used to rip the Oggs?
First things first: if Ogg had been obeying your command to rip at 192k (constant bitrate), the oggs would have been the same length as the MP3s, plus or minus a little due to differences in file format header overhead. Ripping at 192k *means*, "Retain exactly 192 kb per second of information", no matter what the codec. By default, oggenc uses variable bitrate, meaning that your command to rip at 192k was interpreted to mean, "average around and about 192k".
In fact, you have discovered one of the interesting features of Ogg, which is that it does indeed fudge its bitrate unless you command it *very* definitely not to do so -- and why not? It makes perfect sense to throw away useless information; if a signal is simple enough to describe adequately well in less than 192k, then why waste the space? Equally, if another signal is very complex and does not submit happily to lossy compression, then I say go for it, keep the extra information... and so do the authors of Ogg.
Secondly, "bitrate über alles" is not quite the way it goes, when trying to ascertain the quality of lossy compression. In fact, it is hard to judge the quality of compression formats in a rational way, since everyone has their little preferences in terms of sound. One can use various methods of physically checking the similarity of the final ogg or mp3 to its original wav, but it isn't all that revealing in terms of the actual perceivable quality of the various rips (trust me, I did this at university). Instead, one generally ends up doing listening tests, such as this one (http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/9795), and as it so happens, Ogg Vorbis generally comes out at or near the top. Such tests are also not generally conducted using cheap audio equipment, by the way... as it turns out, much of what one hears is the result of one's own setup. So-called scientific testing has to attempt to overcome these issues.
A suggestion: you won't find much difference in Mp3s and Oggs at high bitrate. If you want to hear the actual differences in capabilities of the two formats, you must check at the low-bitrate end of the spectrum. Rip some tracks in Mp3 and Ogg at 128, 96 or lower, and all will become clear.
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Date: 2004-10-11 08:29 am (UTC)Could you post the command line you used to rip the Oggs?
First things first: if Ogg had been obeying your command to rip at 192k (constant bitrate), the oggs would have been the same length as the MP3s, plus or minus a little due to differences in file format header overhead. Ripping at 192k *means*, "Retain exactly 192 kb per second of information", no matter what the codec. By default, oggenc uses variable bitrate, meaning that your command to rip at 192k was interpreted to mean, "average around and about 192k".
In fact, you have discovered one of the interesting features of Ogg, which is that it does indeed fudge its bitrate unless you command it *very* definitely not to do so -- and why not? It makes perfect sense to throw away useless information; if a signal is simple enough to describe adequately well in less than 192k, then why waste the space? Equally, if another signal is very complex and does not submit happily to lossy compression, then I say go for it, keep the extra information... and so do the authors of Ogg.
Secondly, "bitrate über alles" is not quite the way it goes, when trying to ascertain the quality of lossy compression. In fact, it is hard to judge the quality of compression formats in a rational way, since everyone has their little preferences in terms of sound. One can use various methods of physically checking the similarity of the final ogg or mp3 to its original wav, but it isn't all that revealing in terms of the actual perceivable quality of the various rips (trust me, I did this at university). Instead, one generally ends up doing listening tests, such as this one (http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/9795), and as it so happens, Ogg Vorbis generally comes out at or near the top. Such tests are also not generally conducted using cheap audio equipment, by the way... as it turns out, much of what one hears is the result of one's own setup. So-called scientific testing has to attempt to overcome these issues.
A suggestion: you won't find much difference in Mp3s and Oggs at high bitrate. If you want to hear the actual differences in capabilities of the two formats, you must check at the low-bitrate end of the spectrum. Rip some tracks in Mp3 and Ogg at 128, 96 or lower, and all will become clear.