Thank you for the comment. I have libopus0 1.3.1-3 installed. While I can play back opus files in strawberry, there are many missing integrations, like metadata cover art, and also audio level normalization seems to skip my opus files completely, as evidenced by viewing scanned files in the playlist with the “integrated loudness” or “loudness range” columns visible, or in the context tab if configured to display loudness parameters. Until I can get that sorted, vorbis is my go to.
Thanks also for the tip about variable bitrate. After reading some more about both codecs, I realized my constant br isn’t doing me any favors, and both excel when it comes to vbr. I’ll also dial back to the 6 or 7 vbr level and go from there. Honestly, my process to develop the conversion that “worked” for me was to take several 320k mp3s from way back in my collection and do a CBR conversion to vorbis that resulted in approximately the same file size, or slightly smaller. Not a very scientific benchmark. I just stuck with that when converting from opus.
Thanks again!
PS I added my current conversion string to my OP. I’ll share my results back here after I trial the new one.
ETA: I think I recall now that some conversions using variable bitrate would fail because the source files didn’t match up to the bit depth or some mathematical multiple of the source bitrate or some such thing that confused me, and was fixed by switching to a constant bitrate. Course, I could have it backwards. I do that a lot these days…)