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Topic: which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ? (Read 12300 times) previous topic - next topic
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which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

i now use mp3pro becasue mp3pro files are smaller than mp3s so i can store more albums.i also care about teh quality ? Is it as good as the 128 or 192 mp3 ?IS there any audio formart smaller than mp3ro but good quality ?
Which kind of audio format should i use ? i care both about the size of the audio and the quality after that
thank in advance

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #1 –
Quote from: kucku on
i now use mp3pro becasue mp3pro files are smaller than mp3s so i can store more albums.i also care about teh quality ? Is it as good as the 128 or 192 mp3 ?IS there any audio formart smaller than mp3ro but good quality ?
Which kind of audio format should i use ? i care both about the size of the audio and the quality after that
thank in advance


You must not be archiving, or else you would need to choose a lossless format which would result in large files.  You are not asking independent questions since the size of an audio file and the audio quality are highly related.

Reference: What speakers should I get?  I want the cheapest possible, but I want good sound reproduction.

You have to make a trade-off between these two factors, and where you draw the line is really up to you.  I'd say for relatively small file sizes and guaranteed audio quality (as far as you can with lossy), go get LAME and follow the recommended guidelines on this site.  I'd avoid MP3Pro since it is proprietary, but beyond that I don't know too much about it.

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #2 –
A quick answer if you are interested in both small files and quality would be either a flavour of AAC or Ogg. Both can sound surprisingly good at low (<128kbps) bitrates.
Every night with my star friends / We eat caviar and drink champagne
Sniffing in the VIP area / We talk about Frank Sinatra
Do you know Frank Sinatra? / He's dead

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #3 –
for best sound quality and size ratio try AAC+ VBR +- 64kbps... i just dont like how 48kbps no matter stereo coupling and that stuff

if you want to preserve the audio quality to its full extent... just use FLAC to archive to DVDs and then transcode to whatever lossy codec is best whenever you feel like it.

I personaly dont archive to lossy formats because there will always be improvements, and a better lossy format would render all your archive obsolete. That wont happen with lossless formats

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #4 –
Some quick numbers. A FLAC compressed album will average 350 megs. So 1000 albums will take 350 gigs. (enh, units are vague on purpose)

A 400 gig hard drive runs $100.

1000 albums will take about $87.50 for online (no, not the Internet) storage.

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #5 –
Quote from: PiezoTransducer on
Some quick numbers. A FLAC compressed album will average 350 megs. So 1000 albums will take 350 gigs. (enh, units are vague on purpose)

A 400 gig hard drive runs $100.

1000 albums will take about $87.50 for online (no, not the Internet) storage.


Or to put it another way, that album that cost you $10-$15 to buy, costs you less than $0.10 to archive in a lossless format.

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #6 –
It's more like 150-200mb in my experience.

(Well, Frances the Mute is 500mb, but that's an extreme example...)
err... i'm not using windows any more ;)

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #7 –
500mb is not that extreme well that is actually pretty big.

It depends on the type of music and how much of it there is on the disc.  It is a fair and conservative assumption to suggest that flac will compress a file down to 60% of it's original size provided that the content is stereo and isn't overly quiet.

I think 350 is a much more reasonable number than 200 for your average disc.

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #8 –
Quote from: greynol on
It depends on the type of music and how much of it there is on the disc.


Yes it can vary quite alot and will depend to some extent on what type of music you fancy. If anyone is interested then here's one persons actual data for comparison. I just took the first 25 complete CD's in my lossless (monkeys audio) collection and the data was as follows.

Number = 25 Complete CD's
Minimum Size = 158 MiB
Maximum Size = 505 MiB
Average Size = 262 MiB
Std-dev = 73.9 MiB

In general I found that older CD's of material that originally fit on an LP (vinyl) tended to be smaller than the average and "Best of" compilation type CD's tended to be larger than the average.

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #9 –
I used to store my CDs in mp3pro format. I was not happy to find that RCA/Thomson appear to be phasing out mp3pro as a format. Even the newest RCA hardware players don't support it, which I find unbelievable. I think it was a great format, but they made it difficult for other vendors to support.

So now I'm archiving in FLAC, and plan to encode to ogg/mp3/whatever on-the-fly for whatever player I'm using at any given time. My car stereo can only handle CBR mp3s, I'd rather use ogg vorbis for bringing music to work to play on the PC, yet I can still make audio CDs with original quality.

Hard drives are getting so cheap, you might as well do lossless, and not have to archive more than once, hopefully.

Good luck.
--  tung  --
http;//tung.co

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #10 –
Quote from: PiezoTransducer on
A 400 gig hard drive runs $100.


Not here it doesn't! A decent Seagate one costs £115 inc delivery, which means ~$215.

The joys of exchange rates (and expensive markets!)

For most PC and CE items comparing USA to UK you can just replace the dollar sign with a pound sign - which means currently in real terms they're about twice as expensive in the UK and in the USA!

Remember you will also need to back up your lossless archvie, which means another HDD of equal capacity, or a stack of DVD-Rs.

Soon you're at $400 for 1000 CDs.

I admit, within a couple of years, lossy is going to seem completely pointless for home listening. But I'm not quite there yet. Others may well be!


As for the original question (which could just be a troll or a joke!), have you considered WMA9? All the compatability and portability of mp3pro (i.e. none) but better sound. Or check the listening tests (see dedicated forum area) for comparisons of various formats at various bitrates.

Cheers,
David.

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #11 –
thanks guy for your replys.

As i Mentioned , i want save the storage of my 2 seagate 350GB and i want my mp3 quality can be acceptable, not too bad. I often use my PC to listen to the music  not Ipod or CD player. I often convert my mp3 to mp3pro 96kbs by Jetaudio ( low speed hihgest quality) . Some say that mp3pro is out of date (no developing since 2003  wat a pity ) and recommend me to use AAC or OGG. now i try Mediamonkey to convert to OGG but i don't know which quality , bitrate of OGG should i choose in Mediamonkey. Th'as what i wonder if i use AAC ? I want convert a mp3 to : Mp3pro, OGG , ACC ( Any other :WMA9, .. some other if it can be better ) , both same size,  and at that time i can test my mp3 to choose the best one ( How can we test : by software of by our  listening ).

Another question , after converting to mp3pro  if i want to use mp3 and i reconvert mp3pro to mp3, how' s the quality?Is it as good as beforce converting >.

THanks

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #12 –
Quote from: kucku on
Another question , after converting to mp3pro  if i want to use mp3 and i reconvert mp3pro to mp3, how' s the quality?Is it as good as beforce converting >.

THanks


No. it is worse and it is called transcoding. Don't do this.

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #13 –
Quote
I often convert my mp3 to mp3pro 96kbs by Jetaudio ( low speed hihgest quality) . Some say that mp3pro is out of date (no developing since 2003 wat a pity ) and recommend me to use AAC or OGG


If you've currently only got your songs as mp3s then please just leave them as they are. Anything you do to them is only going to hurt the quality.

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #14 –
The recommended procedure is to re-rip the tracks to the current wiki-specified recommended settings for the major lossy codecs (mp3, aac, ogg/vorbis), instead of transcoding, which can lead to audible degradation.

-brendan

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #15 –
I also recommend to Re-Rip all your CDs (takes a lot of time but it's the only good thing you can do)..

And keep your fingers away from MP3Pro, it's crap. If you really want to archieve your CDs, then use a lossless codec like FLAC. When you have FLACs, you can still transcode to MP3/Ogg/AAC or anything if you need it.

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #16 –
Quote from: uart on
Quote
I often convert my mp3 to mp3pro 96kbs by Jetaudio ( low speed hihgest quality) . Some say that mp3pro is out of date (no developing since 2003 wat a pity ) and recommend me to use AAC or OGG


If you've currently only got your songs as mp3s then please just leave them as they are. Anything you do to them is only going to hurt the quality.



But if i don't convert, my HDD can not store all my mp3s. For example 1 album =100MB but after converting to mp3pro 1 album = 50MB only. So i can download more albums if i use mp3pro

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #17 –
OK i will not use mp3pro.

i'm still confused.  i get the mp3 from the Internet. a 350GB HDD can store 3000CD in Mp3 while it can store 6000CD in Mp3pro.Mp3pro is crap and out of date. So now i will use mediamonkey to convert my mp3s to Ogg.
But that's is transcoding.

i think i understand something

If we rip CD  we can make mp3 , aac , ogg ... and in this situation AAC and OGG is good choices
But if we get the mp3s from the Internet so don't try to convert them to another audio format because that's that transcoding and it' is really bad. Is that right ?
What should i do if i want to reduce my mp3s size without hurting the quality ?
Is MP3packer useful ? can you tell me some software can do like Mp3packer because it's not easy  for me  to use this soft.

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #18 –
Quote from: ...Just Elliott on
It's more like 150-200mb in my experience.

...



Instead of using megabytes (too vague?), stating percentages % may be more useful if the wav files have already been ripped.  If the CDs haven't been ripped yet, counting up the # of discs and estimating megabytes may be be better.  Anyways...

My FLAC ratios based on 2000+ CDs:
  • popular, rock & roll:  flac -1 (64%)  flac -8 (61%)
  • classical (piano, symphonies, etc) :  flac -1 (42%)  flac -8 (don't know haven't tried it yet)

Based on the wide range, it may be more accurate to divide a CD collection into at "classical" vs everything else to more accurately estimate storage capacity.

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #19 –
Quote from: greynol on
500mb is not that extreme well that is actually pretty big.
It definately is as I use -8. For -5, maybe. And this is a single-disc album.
err... i'm not using windows any more ;)

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #20 –
Quote from: kucku on
What should i do if i want to reduce my mp3s size without hurting the quality ?
Is MP3packer useful ? can you tell me some software can do like Mp3packer because it's not easy  for me  to use this soft.


Mp3packer is about the only thing that could possibly reduce the size of your mp3s without reducing the quality, but I would expect the size reduction in your case to be extremely small. It is mostly aimed at files that were created with very high CBR bit rates that contain lots of unused bits.

If size is really that important to you, and we can't talk you into getting a larger disc drive, then you should run some ABX tests to see if you can hear the quality loss from transcoding. Maybe they will still sound OK to you, but only you can decide for yourself.

If you do end up transcoding then you might consider AAC or Ogg, which are both reported to be of very good quality at low bit rates, but stay away from mp3pro.

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #21 –
Quote from: kucku on
i'm still confused.  i get the mp3 from the Internet.

Naughty boy.   

Quote from: kucku on
a 350GB HDD can store 3000CD in Mp3 while it can store 6000CD in Mp3pro.Mp3pro is crap and out of date. So now i will use mediamonkey to convert my mp3s to Ogg.
But that's is transcoding.

Everything is a tradeoff. To squeeze more music in less space you have to bring down the bitrate. Bringing down the bitrate also brings down quality. It's a fact of life and you cannot escape it. 
If space is a constraint for you, first you have to find for each lossy codec (mp3, ogg, aac, whatever) what quality level is acceptable to you. For low bitrates (below 128kbps) I would not use pure mp3 but that is only my personal preference.
In my personal listening tests I found out that ogg or aac at 96kbps and below (till 64kbps) are quite listenable. This works for me, and might work for you too.
If you intend to go further (64kbps and below) you might want to consider he-aac or aac with parametric stereo, but bear in mind that you have to use a compatible decoder (just like with mp3pro) to take advantage of these formats.

Quote from: kucku on
i think i understand something

If we rip CD  we can make mp3 , aac , ogg ... and in this situation AAC and OGG is good choices
But if we get the mp3s from the Internet so don't try to convert them to another audio format because that's that transcoding and it' is really bad. Is that right ?
What should i do if i want to reduce my mp3s size without hurting the quality ?
Is MP3packer useful ? can you tell me some software can do like Mp3packer because it's not easy  for me  to use this soft.

Unfortunately the world is not that black and white.
If you rip CDs you can use a multitude of formats (mp3, aac, ogg, wma and others) with very decent results. They all are good choices for general use, and in the end it will boil down to your personal preference and compatibility needs.
You cannot reduce the size of mp3 files without hurting quality, except doing very marginal size reduction with mp3packer of course. There simply is no known way to do that.
Short answer: if you rip CDs and can afford the space, go lossless (FLAC or similar). If you cannot afford the space, use mp3 for compatibility reasons. If quality and space is important and you have to go below 128kbps consider ogg and aac.
Hope this helps.

[small]edit: bitrate considerations[/small]

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #22 –
Quote from: ...Just Elliott on
Quote from: greynol on
500mb is not that extreme well that is actually pretty big.
It definately is as I use -8. For -5, maybe. And this is a single-disc album.
I recently stumbled accross a flac album done with -8 which was 558MB; 70% of its original size.

Transcoding it to ape using MAC -c3000 took it down to 538MB.

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #23 –
Generally, you ought to store your ripped CDs in a lossless format like FLAC, and anything downloaded from the internet in its original format (mp3s from the internet should just stay as mp3s - wouldn't hurt to edit the tags, though). If you need to transcode downloaded mp3s to another format (mp3pro or something), you should still keep the original mp3, because you can't revert back to the original with lossy compression.

Of course, you're only downloading legally published mp3s, right? 
--  tung  --
http;//tung.co

which audio format should i use to store thousands of albums ?

Reply #24 –
My life has been divided into those periods when I had more time than money and those where I had more money than time.

It's too bad that kucko can't afford to pay for the storage to rip losslessly.

Ripping vinyl takes a lot of time.  When he can afford the storage, there is a good chance he won't have the time to rerip.

A couple of years from now, the incremental storage required to store lossless rips will be almost free.  For my purposes, it already is.