Encoding Music with Ogg Vorbis

My music library is filled with FLAC audio files. Although great for archiving due to its lossless nature, the individual files are large. A 4 minute music track weighs in typically at a hefty 40 MB. Repeat this for every compact disc in the collection and the hard disk fills up quickly.

Ogg Vorbis is supported on every Linux distribution. Android phones are capable of playing it, although some have difficulty recognizing it as a music file. This was a problem with iterations before Froyo (version 2.2). A number of game publishers have also released their apps with Ogg Vorbis-encoded soundtracks. Gameloft's Despicable Me: Minion Rush is a prime example.

Install vorbis-tools with Synaptic Package Manager. This will also pull in the official oggenc encoder by Xiph.Org. Place the files to be converted in the home directory. Depending on the files you have, enter one of the following command in a terminal.

oggenc --quality 6 *.flac
oggenc --quality 6 *.wav

I chose Vorbis quality 6 because it did not require noise normalization. It also preserved lossless channel coupling. The files were encoded around 192 kbit/s. My music library is about to be filled with Ogg Vorbis audio files.