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

Originally Posted by Spikey

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.

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.

Originally Posted by Spikey

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).

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

Originally Posted by Spikey

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.

Quote:

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.

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

Originally Posted by Spikey

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

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.

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.