Apply Chain - Export Ogg - what OGG quality?

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Audacity 2.1.3
Windows 7

Hi all,

when using Chains to automate process, and one of the processes being automated is Export OGG…what quality is that OGG file being saved as?
When I export an audio to OGG, there is always an option that allows me to select the quality (in terms of numbers form 1 to 10). However, when using Apply Chains there is no way to tell the software what quality the exported file should be saved as? How does it know what quality to save it?

Does it save is the same quality as the original opened file (essentially, it doesn’t further downgrade the quality)?

  1. But, what if the opened file is an MP3, and I’m using Chains to export to OGG, how THEN would it know what quality to save it as?

Thank a bunch!

2

The manual doesn’t seem to address that, but my quality values stick from the last time I used them.

essentially, it doesn’t further downgrade the quality

Compressed formats always downgrade the quality. That’s why it’s so dangerous to edit and do production in MP3. If you open a 128 quality MP3 and export it 128, you could have just made a 64 quality show. It never stays opening quality. I assume all the compressed formats do that, too. Audacity has to make whole new sound files on Export. You’re not really editing the original file.

You can keep the original 128 quality by exporting your work as perfect quality WAV. The show doesn’t become perfect quality, it just doesn’t get any worse. That’s why ACX AudioBooks recommends submitting mono voice readings at very high 192 quality MP3 or higher. They’re going to resample to other products and services and they want the quality to fall apart as gently as possible.

Koz

3

It’s possible FLAC doesn’t do that. FLAC gets it’s smaller files by reversible tricks. I don’t think they throw anything away.

Koz

4

Thank you…this is very useful info. I kind of suspected this answer.



Compressed formats always downgrade the quality. That’s why it’s so dangerous to edit and do production in MP3. If you open a 128 quality MP3 and export it 128, you could have just made a 64 quality show. It never stays opening quality.

Wow…I didn’t know that. I guess then in order to preserve as much of the audio quality, I should try to complete all my edits in one ‘session’ and save the file only once.

Thanks!

5

There is another way to do this. If you have very simple cuts edits, you can use an editor that doesn’t take the sound file apart and put it back together again.

http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/MP3#re-encode

Scroll down. The quality after edit on those is the same as you started.

Anything complicated such as equalization or noise reduction and you’re stuck with recoding and the quality decrease. You can also help a little by using a higher quality compression for the new files. You still get the quality hit, but it’s not as bad. Of course, the files are bigger.

Koz