dBpowerAMP Ogg Vorbis Codec

 
Ogg Vorbis
is a popular free (as in free from patents) encoder, of a much higher quality than Mp3 - most players support Ogg through a plug-in and even portable player Ogg support is surfacing (Rio Karma, Neuros Audio, iRiver). Ogg supports full ID Tagging where track information (Artist etc) is imbedded within the music file. This current release is on a par with AAC (mp4) and WMA 9, for encoding I would recommend using Variable Bitrate q .6 which gives about 192 Kbps.

This Ogg Vorbis Codec installation enables dBpowerAMP Audio Player (dAP) to play Ogg files and dBpowerAMP Music Converter (dMC) to convert to and from Ogg.

 Ogg Compression Options 

Encoding - Ogg files fall into these distinct categories:

  • Variable Bitrate (VBR). Ogg files are made up from 100's of small audio chunks, called frames. Whilst encoding a VBR file, the encoder decides which bit rate to use for each frame. Bit rates can drop down to lower value when it is warranted (if there is not much sound going on), and switch up to a higher bit rate when required. VBR files should be used when encoding ogg files unless there is a specific reason not to,

  • Constant Bitrate (CBR), a constant bit rate is used throughout the encoding process,

  • Average Bit Rate a little like VBR except with VBR the end file size is not known (could be small, could be big), ABR is VBR with known end file size, it works by regulating how variable the compression is, so at the end of the compressing the average is exactly the value specified.

Bitrate - Measurement (in 1000 bits per second) of how much compressed audio data flows per second. Higher bit rates files are of a higher quality than lower bit rate files.

Frequency - number of samples per second to be encoded, 44100 happens to be the exact frequency Audio CDs play using. [as source] allows the output frequency to be set the same as the input frequency.

Channels 

Stereo - two channels of sound, enables instruments to appear separated from one another, Just imagine if we only had one ear then there would be no need for stereo...

Mono a recording with only a single channel of information. A question that is often asked Why is my 128kbps encoded Mono file, not half the size as a 128kbps encoded Stereo file? The answer is simple, to keep the Kbps rate constant, the mono file is encoded at twice the quality rate as the stereo file (Kbps measurement is for the whole recording regardless of the number of channels, so Per Channel Kbps = Kbps / Number of Channels).

[as source] sets the channels to match the input channels.

 Advanced Tagging Configuration 

From dMC Configuration (start >> programs >> dbpoweramp music converter >> configuration) ID Tag Options reveals tagging options: 

Ogg Vorbis

Uppercase Tag Elements certain programs (such as the iRiver database manager), will not recognize ID Tags unless they are all uppercase, ARTIST would work, but Artist would not, this option fixes this deficiency.

 Version Changes 

Complete Version Changes