Confusion transcoding audio...

[Jeff D]

I'm looking into converting some songs from napster to ogg for portability and I ran into a problem. I don't really know what napster is using at the audio format. I think it's wm9 or something like that at 192k, I know nothing about microsoft codec performance, but I think I've seen 192k is about the same as mp3 at 128k... ie crap. Honestly 192k asf file sounds way better to me than a 128k mp3, but I've got tin ears.

So, if I choose to transcode the audio to ogg what would be a safe bitrate for ogg encoder to not waste any space by settings that are too high for the source quality and won't degrade the quailty any more than it already is?

I understand how bitrate is used in mp3 and ogg land, but I don't understand anything about microsoft compression.

So, if my sources are some wm encoding @ 192k what would a good setting for the ogg encoder to match those settings? And is there any reason to only use a CBR encoding?

Thanks

[Jeff D]

Just to give a little more info after searching around outside...

It seems that for matched settings that OGG will use slightly more space than the WM9 encode, it seems that way to me.

I think I've got a pretty close match using the OGG VBR 192-256 setting in the encoder. The OGG file sizes are roughly 300K more in size. I'm just not sure about the quality change, I've just moved and my setup isn't complete and I'm listening through crappy monitor speakers... Would OGG VBR at 160-192 be a better choice without wasting space and sacrificing quality?

[Skelsgard]

Just use Quality mode a q=3, that would create a good quality, good size file, with equivalent quality that the 192 WMA.