I'm doing a batch conversion to .mp3 and was wondering what bitrate I should encode them to to keep the sound quality with as small a file size as possible.
doesn't matter...you're transcoding and they're going to sound like shit no matter what. Keep them as ogg or rerip from the original, lossless source
For me, the original is the .ogg file, no other source is available to me, and it is not an option to keep them in their current format. I'm not as much of an audiophile as you are, so what may sound like shit to you is perfectly acceptable to me [anything 192kbps (or in some cases 128) or above is fine with me]. back to the question, does anyone know how to find the bitrate of an .ogg file?
When you're converting from a lossy format to anything, you're losing quality, regardless of bitrate; it'll be a transcode. Though most of the time OGG is a lossy container, there is a lossless mode, apparently. You can use Foobar to check the properties of a song. Just keep in mind, 192kbps OGG != 192kbps MP3, so I honestly wonder how this will help you decide.
Oh I love it when audiophiles start argueing about this kind of thing. "like, omg, 192kbps MP3's sound awful, OGG sounds soooo much better!" somebody who works with music a lot can hardly tell the difference any normal listener can't. the only time you will is when you get into the lower bitrate MP3's, 160kbps down and things start going awfully poor quality.
Wearing headphones at those bitrates there'd be a bit of a difference. I wouldn't call it huge though by any measure. Depends on exactly what you're listening to as well though, and all kinds of other variable. All i'm saying is, the differences in quality between formats is often very small and people tend to uneccessarily overstate the difference.
As always, Tomi seems to be the only one that flatout answered my question and didn't get sidetracked. Thank you Tomi. edit: I just realized what that was saying. when I said "it's not an option to keep it in .ogg" I didn't mean that I refused to listen to it in .ogg, its just not compatible with my mp3 player (Microsoft Zune). that's the reason I'm doing this, because I want it playable on my Zune. 2nd edit: well I just got around to downloading foobar2000 (heheh, funny name). they're VBR 170-205kbps so I'm gonna do CBR 192kbps (the program I'm using doesn't support VBR encoding). thanks again Tomi.
Depending on the genre, I can hear a difference between 320kbps/MP3 and FLAC, so what? I know people who can't hear the difference between 128 and 320 kbps/MP3, nevermind 256 and 320 kbps/MP3. Half the time, people think they hear a difference when they don't; placebo effect, I think. But yes, when you're used to 320kbps/MP3 and FLAC, 192kbps/MP3 will sound terrible to you, and 128kbps/MP3 is not even bearable. Yeah, I'm an audiophile, so what? It ties in with being a musician mostly. Am I going to get yelled at for that one too? Anyway, glad I could help you, 'pancakes.