Skip to main content

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.

Poll

What codec do you use predominately in your collection?

MP3
[ 447 ] (46%)
Ogg Vorbis    
[ 267 ] (27.5%)
MP4-AAC    
[ 123 ] (12.7%)
MPC    
[ 94 ] (9.7%)
WMA    
[ 13 ] (1.3%)
Other
[ 28 ] (2.9%)

Total Members Voted: 1167

Topic: Your lossy codec of choice in 2006? (Read 184587 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #150
Not really good points. At the last listening test all contestants were tied at 128 kbps, and all scored an average above 4.5. So making a generalized statement that MP3 is worse than Vorbis or AAC at 128 kbps is plain false without backing this up with your own listening test. Besides a few problem samples, you will be hard pressed to find any real disturbing differences at 128 kbps.

okok.....virtually tied with the margin of error ensuring no one opponent being crowned the clear winner...but the graph is still the most prevalent in one's mind post listening test and private listening tests have confirmed this superiority around 180 kbps in the realm of classical where it previously performed poorly:

Not exactly a smoking gun but certainly something not to be brushed aside.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #151
One private listening test (conducted by someone with very good ears) is not indicative for the most of us. And even here Vorbis is not 'king' like you said before.

Let's just face it, we thankfully have arrived in an era where the quality of a lossy encoder does not necessarily has to be our biggest concern in making a choice of them anymore.
"We cannot win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win."

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #152
You're correct...for the rest of us without "bat ears," differentiating at such bitrates would be nigh to impossible.  I'm just pointing out trends as of late.  It was only a year prior to the above test in 2004 that Vorbis was performing comparatively poorly in Guru's tests.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #153
In the past I chose Musepack as (prefered) lossy codec for personal use (as I use no portable  ). It is still OK, but it is going the way of the dinosaurs. 
Because I see no reason (yet) to redo the existing collection in another lossy format, the major lossy part is still mpc. Also I find myself not adding as much music to my collection as I did some years ago.
These days I lean more to lossless, also LAME would rank quite high as my choice for new lossy codings now.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #154
MPC --quality 8 --ms 15 --xlevel
as PC/laptop and DVD space saver, small-sized backup of my Lossless archive.

MP3-Lame -V5 --vbr-new
for my portable USB 1 GB stick, running outdoors, car stereo.


and to complete:
Lossless as archive & HiFi PC listening
formerly Flac and WavPack -x -m
now Flac -8 -V , as Flac is already supported in various HiFi hardware, which is less and more uncertain regarding wavpack unfortunately.

So I have 3 encodes (made as 1 step automatic process by Mareo.exe during EAC ripping) of each album on 3 different DVDs,
Lossless ca. 600 - 1000 kbit/s
MPC ca. 280 kbit/s
MP3 ca. 128 - 140 kbit/s
and feel safe to never rerip again

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #155
Quote
okok.....virtually tied with the margin of error ensuring no one opponent being crowned the clear winner...but the graph is still the most prevalent in one's mind post listening test and private listening tests have confirmed this superiority around 180 kbps in the realm of classical where it previously performed poorly:


Nero encoder used in that test is quite obsolete - latest Nero encoder (used in Sebastian's 128 kbps listening test, however with a bug that is fixed now)  and Vorbis were quite tied.

I hope Guru will do a new higher bit rate listening test sometimes - I am quite sure the quality picture has been changed compared to the last year.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #156
maybe he will in August 2006...and I'm sure the results will make it even more difficult to pick a favorite.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #157
I have been using Musepack ever since the year 2000. Now that development has stopped and other codecs as AAC and Vorbis (and even MP3) catch up in quality i'm thinking about switching to another format. What is important to me are several features MPC has:
- native gapless playback (bybye AAC...)
- replaygain support
- high quality

From my POV the latest aoTuV oggenc features all this, plus it's free. There's just something I couldn't find by googling: Is replaygain just something most players feature, or is it explicitly mentioned in the Vorbis spec? I wonder if replaygain will work in mobile players or car stereos that support Vorbis.
Blubb

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #158
- native gapless playback (bybye AAC...)
- replaygain support


Nero AAC, Vorbis and LAME mp3 are all natively support gapless playback. Of course only if the player or decoder also supports this properly.

The same basically goes for replaygain. Although in the case of AAC and MP3 it is not natively supported by the command line encoders and decoders. Depends if that matters to you I guess.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #159
MP3. Quality and features are not an issue when using -V2 or higher and proper tagging.
"To understand me, you'll have to swallow a world." Or maybe your words.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #160
Nero/CT AAC and Lame becouse very good encoders for all situations.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #161
Quote
Nero/CT AAC and Lame becouse very good encoders for all situations.
And Vorbis too. 

I really belive that if LAME don't exist, Vorbis probably will have the most votes, that for sure... well that and the fact that MP3 has been more than 10 years arround and because of that is a standard de facto.
JorSol
aoTuVb5 -q4

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #162
What can I say? AAC VBR 128 on my iPod(s) sounds great. Simple to encode via iTunes and small file size to boot. It's my codec of choice for 2006. No problems with MP3 though - LAME rocks! Still burn MP3 CDs for the car from time to time. -V4 vbr new.

All archives are ALAC on DVD via EAC and iTunes encode.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #163
hödyr: Vorbis and ReplayGain are two separate things. RG support is even less common than Vorbis support (and non-existant on hardware players, unless Rockbox supports it). It's just a tag for a RG-enabled player to know how much to scale the volume by.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #164
Yeh, ReplayGain is virtually useless outside of Foobar.  I wish Winamp (and also some DJ software) supported it natively.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #165
hödyr: Vorbis and ReplayGain are two separate things. RG support is even less common than Vorbis support (and non-existant on hardware players, unless Rockbox supports it). It's just a tag for a RG-enabled player to know how much to scale the volume by.
Rockbox does support ReplayGain in tags for just about everything it plays including Vorbis.  But comparatively to the amount of devices in the world support is very low.
Nero AAC 1.5.1.0: -q0.45

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #166
iTunes/QT AAC VBR 160 for my iPod. I use iTunesJoin for gapless live shows etc. which is basically a front end for chapter tool.

FLAC for archives, converted to AAC when needed with Toast 7.0.2, tagged with Media Rage/iTunes.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #167
Is replaygain just something most players feature, or is it explicitly mentioned in the Vorbis spec? I wonder if replaygain will work in mobile players or car stereos that support Vorbis.


Sadly Monty excluded replaygain from the vorbis standard. I saw a thread about the whole debate. This in my view was a big mistake. I personally would be very much surprised if any portable or non-PC solution would support the de facto standard replaygain tags. Hence I convert my FLAC onto Ogg Vorbis using the secret and not lossless (!) --apply-replaygain-which-is-not-lossless FLAC option, which in effect waivegains the decoded signal and I encode this into Ogg Vorbis

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #168

wavpack lossy @350kbps for archiving purposes; mp3@Lame(preset standard) for my portable player


Isn't WavPack kinda bad at 350?  Er... for transcoding purposes at least?  It seems to me that >384 was the magic number.


i dont think so.. even at 300kbps i wasnt able to distinguish it from original; so i already have some headroom  at 250 i was actually able to hear a little added noise (i know waveform comparsions arent quite accepted here but at 350 (320) it least differs from the original when compared w/ other lossy encoders)

edit- i am using the "high quality" option, which lowers a little the quantization noise

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #169
Okay... I just remember Bryant once saying that 384 kb/s in Wavpack should be transparent, so that's where I got this notion that you'd have to use a bitrate higher than that.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #170
Yeh, ReplayGain is virtually useless outside of Foobar.  I wish Winamp (and also some DJ software) supported it natively.
IIRC WinAmp 5 supports ReplayGain, depending on the input plugin. The input plugins that come with WinAmp 5 all support RG.

Edit: There are lots of players that now support ReplayGain. See the HA Wiki page for ReplayGain.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #171
The MPC contigent is still managing to hold onto their lead over MP4 by a thread.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #172
The MPC contigent is still managing to hold onto their lead over MP4 by a thread.

yes ... and they have been by Vorbis.

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #173
mpc (Musepack) for home collection (-q 5)
AAC for low-bitrate mobile music listening; mp3 (lame of course) for ringer tone (my SE K700i can't use AAC for this)
mp3 again for portable player (bitrate is low because of environment noise)
and no lossless at all 

Your lossy codec of choice in 2006?

Reply #174
IIRC WinAmp 5 supports ReplayGain, depending on the input plugin. The input plugins that come with WinAmp 5 all support RG.

Edit: There are lots of players that now support ReplayGain. See the HA Wiki page for ReplayGain.


Uhm... that's news to me... is there any way of verifying this from Within WinAMP?  It seems like my replaygained tracks all sound like different volumes when played in WinAMP.

They all usually sound quite a bit louder than my music videos, in any case.

[edit]
This forum thread in WinAmp's forums seems to contradict your statement pepoluan.
http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=234302