The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

The Ur-Quan Masters Re-Release => Starbase Café => Topic started by: Chrispy on December 14, 2005, 02:51:56 am



Title: Audio Converter
Post by: Chrispy on December 14, 2005, 02:51:56 am
I have a problem. I need a program that can convert m4a files into mp3 files. Does anyone know the best way to do this?


Title: Re: Audio Converter
Post by: Chrispy on December 14, 2005, 03:27:40 am
Actually scrap that. I found out a good transcoder for winamp, and I also found out that it doens't matter. Does anyone know what the difference between between mp3 and AAC (.m4a) files?

I know that ogg is good because it's not copywrited. but beyond that I don't know the prose and cons of any of these.


Title: Re: Audio Converter
Post by: Deus Siddis on December 14, 2005, 04:39:51 am
"Does anyone know what the difference between between mp3 and AAC (.m4a) files?"

According to wikipedia:


"AAC's improvements over MP3:

Sample frequencies from 8 Hz to 96 kHz (official MP3: 16 Hz to 48 kHz)
Up to 48 channels
Higher efficiency and simpler filterbank (hybrid → pure MDCT)
Higher coding efficiency for stationary signals (blocksize: 576 → 1024 samples)
Higher coding efficiency for transient signals (blocksize: 192 → 128 samples)
Much better handling of frequencies above 16 kHz
More flexible joint stereo (separate for every scale band)
What this all means to the listener is better and more stable quality than MP3 at equivalent or slightly lower bitrates."


The article is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding


"I know that ogg is good because it's not copywrited. but beyond that I don't know the prose and cons of any of these."

According to meep and novus, the ogg also has a higher quality than the older MP3. You can get a patch for media player that will allow you to run oggs (again, thanks to meep):

http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/


Title: Re: Audio Converter
Post by: Chrispy on December 15, 2005, 01:17:01 am
That was very helpfull, thank you.