One new rule

DONT USE .WMA FILES. Why?

Some of then have DRM protection, so it's a damn pain in the ass to rip, convert etc.

New versions of winamp are not playing WMA. By the way, does anybody know how to play those kindda files on winmap 5.35?

Also WMA files won't work on most mobile devices. And some people of us use these... Linux users can also only play back non-DRM-crippled WMA files.

Ogg Vorbis offers superior sound quality at the same bitrate. I've seen reports where Vorbis at 192 k/s beat the crap out of MP3 at 320 k/s.

However, it's also not supported by many hardware devices. My X5 fortunately does playback Ogg Vorbis, and some MP3 players can be equipped with a better firmware called RockBox that can also playback Vorbis. That's why I'm actually using Ogg for my CDs.

You could probably argue that a 192 k/s Ogg can be converted to an okay MP3 file, and downloads would be smaller with Ogg, but I doubt many of the users here know how to convert, do you?

Oh, and for Windows Media Player, you need to download a separate codec pack for Ogg Vorbis support. (Linux users have full support pretty much everywhere; often even better than MP3 which has some patent issues)

MP3 is still the way to go, unfortunately. It's just very very compatible.

Buy a Mac...

In 15 years I don't use ever
Antivirus or Nortondisk

No problem with any kind of music file...

Use jRiver Media Center, plays everything, converts everything, uses lame or any encoder.exe you like.
What is this DRMthing? You had this with some files downloaded from here?

DRM means that your computer needs to talk to Microsoft to be able to decrypt and play the file. So they can charge you for it, or prevent you from copying the file.
Yes, we've had uploads where some songs were DRM protected.

is there a free ripper other than audiograbber?

t99
http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/

Thanks, Aggoo!

I am for audio and video purposes only using the

VLC Videolan Player:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

This awesome software plays almost every audio file (mp3 - wav - ogg - wma)
and video file without any problems, it is available for every fucking platform and
- the best of all:

it is freeware!!!

greetings

t.