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Andre
Asked: 2013-01-05 11:48:04 +0800 CST

Is transcoding 24bit FLAC to 16bit OggVorbis an issue?

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I have a bunch of HQ recordings as FLAC with 24bit resolution. They take too much space on my Android device, and Ogg achieves transparent sound (particularly when on the go with noise around me) at much lower bit rates. (I do not want to start a discussion about what differences people might think they can hear at this point.) To convert FLACs to Ogg, I can just do 

oggenc -q 6 *.flac

because oggenc can directly read in FLAC - which is great. Since I am not a sound engineer, I was wondering if I am cocking-up here. AFAIK Ogg works with 16bit. Anything to take care of when going from 24 to 16bit?

Besides the bit resolution, is resampling from 96 kHz (or more) to 44.1 (or 48 kHz) problematic? On software side this is pretty easy to achieve, just with: 

oggenc -q 6 --resample 44100 *.flac

Practically the outcome is fine. The OGGs sound great. However, the theoretical considerations keep my mind busy. Is the conversion from 24 to 16 bit and the resampling from 96+ kHz to 44100 kHz a problem from the point of sound mastering?

Thanks!

sound

2 Answers

  1. I had a large collection of FLAC audio files and I converted them with great quality with The Mobile Media Converter Link it has advance settings and I think it worked awesomely you might wanna give it a try if ogg is not in the list of file formats you can always add it just click the button that has the name of the format and then just select add or remove file formats you will find it there. I hope this helps.

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  2. You can install the graphical tool Sound Converter from either the Ubuntu Software-Center or your package manager.

    The tool will allow you to drag and drop audio files and folders containing audio files inside the window and convert it to other formats. It allows you to choose the output file format and set different options for the chosen format.

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