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Having a large HD for audio storage, pretty much negates any advantage of OGG these daysWith my Senns, I can definately hear the metalic oscillation that shows up on lower-bit-rate music. It's much more noticable when using my headphone amp. Tis why I compress everything with Apple Lossless. It does a great job, where as my ears can't discern any difference between it and the original CD.Having the option for FLAC and OGG would be nice, since it would offer more choices to the music player that already plays the widest range of formats, so I hope future iPods will have built-in support.

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Hugely disappointing title. COG will have to continue to be my OS X flac player.

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I've had a lot of friend who are Apple users who ask me how to put a flac album on their ipods. I always have to explain to them the complex process, but with plugins like this, they can just "sync" (transcode) them. Anything that makes it easier for the consumer, the better, right?

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Don't talk to me about little plastic speakers, my speakers are $600 per Speaker + an Extra Subwoofer for another $300. My Amplifier is about $800. My headphones are about $100. And I still can't hear a difference between MP3 and CD at preset standard, not with classical music either. I challenge everyone who says he can to do a blind test and he'll lose. Most people claiming so never did a blind test. A blind test is when a MP3 and a plain WAV both run at the same time, synchronously and a mixer randomly fades between both. Then the listener must press a button whenever he's sure to hear the MP3 and another one whenever he hears the CD. The hit rate is about 50% right and 50% wrong for 99% of the listeners, which is as good as random guessing and pressing the keys randomly would have been. So they can't hear the difference, they only believe they can when they know they are listening to a MP3.

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For those who are interested in scientific listening tests, and need more than impressions and placebo, see here:<a class="user" href="http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Listening_Tests#Multiformat_Tests&quot;&gt;http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Listening_Tests#Multiformat_Tests&lt;/a&gt;

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These components are nice, but it would be much nicer if there would be native support for Ogg in iTunes / QuickTime. For instance, the equalizer, sound check or sound enhancer don't work with Ogg files in iTunes. And of course, iPods can't play Ogg. I've read somewhere that a while ago, they didn't want to do the effort of adding Ogg support because "nobody was asking for it". Therefore, everyone who wants better Ogg support should use <a class="user" href="http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html&quot;&gt;http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunesapp.html&lt;/a&gt; to let Apple know.

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I agree, most people can't tell the different, but unfortunately, I can. It's very much how I write a song, arrange and mix it. Do some basic mastering and convert to mp3. I know exactly what it should sound like and that converting it to mp3 kills the highs, squashes to rich lows. The reverb off high hats loses that shine. For most people though, mp3 is a great alt.

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When you are fading between them it would make it harder (but not impossible) but if you were to loop various sections of songs from different genres and a/b them between lossless and an mp3, it would be easy to tell the difference to someone who has a more sensitive or trained ear. Producers, mixing and mastering engineers for sure. Anyone who even takes music production the least bit seriously. Most consumers won't able to tell the difference but don't say no body could because you are wrong.

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It only renames tracks into those random alphanumeric once it's transfered it to the iPod. It's a way to try and detire people from taking music off the iPod even though their own product, iTunes, will rename it properly when you add the music back into iTunes. I don't see the big deal about rename the tracks to artist, album, trackname ect... Some people bitch about renaming scene releases but I used to rename those before I ever used iTunes. I don't want the scene rippers name in the file name or the use of underscores instead of spaces. iTunes fixes all those after I tag the tracks proper and helps me maintain a nice, clean and trim collection.

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You are wrong. Forget audiophiles and HIFI. Listen to an mp3 and then a lossless rip though reference monitors with trained ears than talk some s**t. HIFI doesn't have s**t on reference monitors. They have a flat response or as close to a flat response as a speaker can get. They are used to mix and master music in studios by audio engineers. People with trained ears. I have a pair of reference montiors and have done an A/B mp3 V2 vs Lossless test. It's very obvious, especially when you export your own music and then encode into mp3. mp3 KILLS the bright highs and lush lows. It muddles the dynamic range and overall, the track sounds more static (not noise but lack of movement)

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I can't tell the difference either, but my wife can. I checked it out on wikipedia and found out that women hear tones at a much higher frequency...and I must agree. My wife will complain about the quality and both my daughters complain on some songs. So, dismissing it as snobbish is just naive and close minded.

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