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Topic: Compression ratio comparison! (Read 4562 times) previous topic - next topic
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Compression ratio comparison!

My Plextor Premium arrived today, so here's the promised comparison of codecs. I used dbpoweramp to encode in WMA lossless, FLAC, Monkey Audio, and Wavpack.
Compression speeds obtained (AMD XP 2400+):
WMA: 23*
APE extra high: 21*
FLAC medium: 40*
FLAC high: 2.1*
Wavpack high quality: 32*
All quite fast enough, except for FLAC high, which curiously gave compression ratios somewhere between FLAC low and FLAC medium for the two tests I made of it. So FLAC high is out of the tests.

Test 1: Beethoven Piano Sonata no. 1 Allegro, Artur Schnabel, recorded some time between 1932 and 1935
wav: 33,585kb
wma: 11,066
FLAC low; med; high: 12,734; 11,566; 11,918
APE fast; normal; high; extra high: 10,812; 10,608; 10,586; 10,559
Wavpack: 10,834

Test 2: Beethoven string quartet no 1 in F major, adagio, Vegh Quartet, c. 1973
wav: 99696kb
wma: 45,107
FLAC (medium): 46,060
APE (extra high): 43,561
Wavpack (high quality): 45,346

Test 3: Bach Johannes Passion, Gardiner 1986 Choral: Wir hat dich so geschlagen
wav: 15,665
wma: 5,842
FLAC: 6,102
APE: 5,630
Wavpack: 5,786

Test 4: Mozart Symphony no 35 in D, Minuet-Trio, Boehm 1960
wav: 36,521
wma: 16,879
FLAC: 17,223
APE: 16,399
Wavpack: 16,834

The winner: APE. The competition between wavpack and WMA is close, but wavpack takes second place, WMA third, and FLAC loses. This is a clear ranking, with the same positions in all four tests. APE had similar ratios at all settings, and would still have won in fast mode.

Compression ratio comparison!

Reply #1 –
Unless you're specifically comparing the dbPowerAmp plugins, this is a bad comparison.

First, the Monkey's Audio plugin has not been updated for MA 3.99.

Second, the Flac plugin on high compression mode is utter, utter crap.  Flac.exe using --best is about four times faster and compresses better.

Compression ratio comparison!

Reply #2 –
True. There's something very wrong with the dbPowerAMP FLAC plugin. Maybe it was compiled with BCC? :B

Compression ratio comparison!

Reply #3 –
why LA is not in this list or is it THE best? 
An err is human, I'm inhuman

Compression ratio comparison!

Reply #4 –
LA isn't on the list because it's not supported by dbpoweramp (as far as I know). I think it offers the best compression (but worst speed).

Compression ratio comparison!

Reply #5 –
Quote
Second, the Flac plugin on high compression mode is utter, utter crap.  Flac.exe using --best is about four times faster and compresses better.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=223980"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I found this. However medium compression I would think is similar to what you could get with flac.exe.
 

Compression ratio comparison!

Reply #6 –
Quote
LA isn't on the list because it's not supported by dbpoweramp (as far as I know).[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

True. Still, you might try to use dBpowerAMP's Create Generic CLI feature and point it to la.exe. Didn't work for me, though. After a couple of seconds of conversion, it returned this error:
Quote
Codec Error '
Lossless Audio Compressor
Version 0.4b, copyright Michael Bevin 2002-2004
Usage instructions ...
la [flags] input-filename [output-filename]
Flags
-high      - high compression mode - slower, but better compression
-overwrite - au
I got the same error message with whichever combination of command-line flags I tried, whereas the same flags didn't return the slightest error using [a href="http://members.home.nl/w.speek/multi.htm]Speek's Multi frontend[/url], and converted just fine. Which makes me conclude that the above error isn't due to the La executable, but to dBpowerAMP.

Quote
I think it offers the best compression (but worst speed).[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=224072"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Correct as far as La's superior compression ratio is concerned, but OptimFROG's highnew and extranew levels are still quite a bit slower than La in either default or high setting.