I've decided that for the next week or two, I will listen to OGG Vorbis files exclusively. I'm allowing myself to convert other formats to OGG if needed (though I'll only do that if it's lossless).
Why switch to OGG Vorbis, even temporarily?
1) I learned that, when I am running Rockbox, my Sansa Clip+ gets about an extra hour of battery life when playing Vorbix files compared to MP3.
2) I still remember when I got my first MP3 player in 2004-ish and I was all excited because I was going to shrink my library down to 64kbps WMA files. And I did it, and it sounded terrible. I researched something better and have been using LAME encoded MP3 files ever since.
Well, I've done blind testing on myself, and apart from a few exceptions (notably Nightwish,my main guilty pleasure) I cannot tell the difference between the LAME MP3 with 256kbps and the OGG Vorbis with 80kbps. So there's a savings!
I've already converted about twenty CD's to OGG at various bitrate formats ranging from Q1 (80kbps) to Q5 (150 kbps) and I've only filled up about 1 GB. Albums usually weigh in at about 40 MB or less, and sound absolutely identical to me. So, wow.
3) This allows me to find out what I'm really going to miss from my MP3 collection. If I really like an album, I can buy the physical copy, which is probably a good idea anyway.
4) This allows me to hunt for music in new ways. I've already discovered some stuff on Jamendo, and I've barely begun!
5) Just to see if I can.
What are the problems I may run into?
-You Look Nice Today, my favorite podcast, only ships in MP3 format. However, considering that the files are only speech, I can't see how a trans-format would hurt the quality much. (Appending note: I was right!)
-A handful of albums (most notably Mr. Jigga's self titled album) are only available, at least to Americans, in AAC on iTunes, or MP3 format elsewhere. This is a common thing for netlabels, which is irritating.
Where will I be hunting for new music?
Free stuff: Jamendo, Kahvi Collective, the netlabels on the Internet Archive
Paid stuff: Physical CD's on Amazon (hooray for Amazon Prime!), Magnatune, Mindawn, etc.
Also, some of the albums I purchased digitally are at my local library in CD form (which is why I purchased many of them; I love that place's selection). So I might go and rip en-masse the stuff that I have. I'm considering it, anyhow.
For those interested, I'm doing my CD ripping on my desktop in Windows 7 (shocker), because as far as I'm aware there is no better CD ripper than Exact Audio Copy.
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