I'm going to work on learning more about the particulars of Ogg Vorbis and fine-tuning my setup.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that I probably won't be re-encoding everything into this new and wonderful format.

The primary reasons are:

1) I have other devices which are still dependent upon the MP3 format and do not (yet) support Ogg Vorbis. It's more convenient for me to let these devices all share the same set of MP3 files. Obviously, when the time comes that these devices do support Ogg, I will reconsider.

2) The primary advantage of Ogg over MP3 is that it does a better job of encoding at a given bit rate. For instance, a 128kbps Ogg file will sound better than a 128kbps MP3 file. But I already encode my MP3s at a much higher bitrate than 128 and can't tell the difference between the original CD and my encoded MP3s. So the only advantage Ogg would give me is disk space savings, and thanks to products like the empeg and the Jupiter, storage is the least of my worries at this time.

Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to put down Ogg or anything. I applaud the format and its technological advances, and it's great to think that it may be coming soon to our beloved empeg player. I just don't have a compelling reason to re-encode my entire collection at this time.

I have a question about the Ogg format, though: Does it solve the gapless playback problem we experience with MP3s? If it does, I will likely re-do all of my continuous-track albums in Ogg format.