HydrogenAudio

Lossless Audio Compression => Lossless / Other Codecs => Topic started by: Sniffer on 2003-08-08 11:58:57

Poll
Question: The best to you is???
Option 1: LossLess Audio votes: 5
Option 2: Monkey's Audio votes: 52
Option 3: FLAC votes: 90
Option 4: PAC votes: 1
Option 5: OptimFrog votes: 2
Option 6: WavPack votes: 9
Option 7: RKAudio votes: 0
Option 8: WMAudio votes: 5
Option 9: Bonk votes: 0
Option 10: Shorten votes: 2
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: Sniffer on 2003-08-08 11:58:57
I really want to Know your opinion, i decided to make this Poll because all i have seen regarding lossless is between Flac and APE, althought i have been searching around and LA gives the better compression, why don't you use it instead of FLAC or APE, I know Flac gives other features but..........


One question, with Foobar we can apply replaygain in all formats, don't we???

Thanks for your time.
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: gutzalpus on 2003-08-08 12:01:49
LA has great compression ratios, but is WAY too slow at compressing/decompressing.  I might switch over to it once CPUs hit about 10GHz.
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: bigjohnson on 2003-08-08 12:11:07
Where can I take a look or get LA?
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: Sniffer on 2003-08-08 12:12:37
www.lossless-audio.com (http://www.lossless-audio.com)


For me the best and i have take some comparations test's.


Update:

La is supported by

XMMS (Linux)
Winamp (WIN32)
Foobar (WIN32)


You need net.framework (update windows) for LA to work.

Update 2:

Quote
LA has great compression ratios, but is WAY too slow at compressing/decompressing. I might switch over to it once CPUs hit about 10GHz.



They will, they will.....3.200GHZ so far
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: Mac on 2003-08-08 13:21:58
I tested LA out, and it gave noticably bigger files than APE extra high.  This was on non-standard samples of audio, not regular songs..    but seeing as that's one of the main things I encode, I wasn't impressed.

Also, it is so slooooow on a 1.8ghz machine
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: mdmuir on 2003-08-09 00:01:11
My question is-why is shorten so popular on live band recording websites?

I know it encodes and decodes fast, but in my experience it is one of the worst when it comes to final file size. Is it just because they started with it and do not want to switch to something else?
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: rjamorim on 2003-08-09 00:16:05
Quote
My question is-why is shorten so popular on live band recording websites?

For the exact same reason MP3 is still popular despite better alternatives.

It's the most widely known and used format.
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: ScorLibran on 2003-08-09 04:28:17
Quote
Quote
My question is-why is shorten so popular on live band recording websites?

For the exact same reason MP3 is still popular despite better alternatives.

It's the most widely known and used format.

Ubiquity definitely has its merits.   

But I prefer FLAC because...

-1-  It's compatible with both of my primary listening platforms, my PC and my car's Music Keg (for which FLAC is the only currently supported compressed lossless format).

-2-  It's open source.  I'm not a software developer, but I do believe in the concept of open source.

-3-  It has good encode/decode performance, which means it can be used on more marginal hardware without problems compared to other formats (which is the reason PhatNoise can support it in their PhatBox/Music Keg with an ARM 74MHz CPU and 32MB of RAM).

-4-  It sounds cool to say "FLAC".  Even cooler than "LA", and definitely cooler than "APE". 
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: LIF on 2003-08-09 04:44:53
I use almost exclusively Monkey'sAudio, because:
1-Good compression and speed;
2-EAC, CDex,WinAmp, etc support it;
3-Its the most common format avaliable on the lossless newsgroups;
4-I never had problems wich "bad crc" on archived files.

Days ago, I just made some tests with FLAC, and despite its lower compression, its very usable.
Honor mention must go to WavPack also. Its the fastest one, but it generates files little bigger than Monkey's.

/edit/: Monkeys comes with its own frontend. but I only use the main executable (mac.exe) on Speek's Multifrontend, the Dll(macdll.dll) directly on EAC and in_ape.dll on WinAmp.
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: smack on 2003-08-12 10:15:20
LA - Lossless Audio because of the high compression ratio. B)
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: eltoder on 2003-08-12 11:06:22
Yet another lossless codecs poll. Cool. 

-Eugene
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: _io_ on 2003-08-12 11:30:45
Hate to say this, but i used to use LA until I found that about 1 in 40 of my encoded songs would not decode losslessly, I don't know if this is solely a problem with the LA format or because I used apev2 tags with them, but it put me off using the format.
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: bigjohnson on 2003-08-12 11:59:44
Quote
www.lossless-audio.com (http://www.lossless-audio.com)


For me the best and i have take some comparations test's.


Update:

La is supported by

XMMS (Linux)
Winamp (WIN32)
Foobar (WIN32)


You need net.framework (update windows) for LA to work.

Update 2:

Quote
LA has great compression ratios, but is WAY too slow at compressing/decompressing. I might switch over to it once CPUs hit about 10GHz.



They will, they will.....3.200GHZ so far 

Thank you!
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: ssamadhi97 on 2003-08-12 12:09:22
Quote
My question is-why is shorten so popular on live band recording websites?

I know it encodes and decodes fast, but in my experience it is one of the worst when it comes to final file size. Is it just because they started with it and do not want to switch to something else?

Yes, that's basically it.

It's "The Standard". It has been embraced by the taping / trading communities when they started looking into online trading and distributing and Shorten (initially a voice codec, intended to compress mono speech material and equipped with lossy encoding capabilities) was the only decent, and now that everyone including the less computer savvy people is used to handling SHN files, people are reluctant to switch to alternatives.

FLAC is getting there, being endorsed in addition to Shorten at both etree.org and archive.org, but with many tapers who don't make hi-res recordings sticking to Shorten it doesn't stand much of a chance yet. People are unsure about how to handle the additional features FLAC brings as well, like the fingerprints / stored hashes of the raw pcm data, tagging support, etc.. that's why you won't see a real switch anytime soon.


Shorten's bad performance when it comes to compression ratio can be blamed on the simplistic predictors and lack of inter-channel decorrelation. Then again, those are the very same reasons why both the encoder and the decoder are so fast.


Edit:

I for one use Shorten all the time because I'm stuck in online trading communities as well - and now that it supports ape2 tagging in foobar one of my major beefs with it is gone as well. Disk space isn't really an issue for me.

For my own encoding business I use FLAC or APE, depending on my mood.
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: eltoder on 2003-08-12 12:33:36
Quote
Hate to say this, but i used to use LA until I found that about 1 in 40 of my encoded songs would not decode losslessly, I don't know if this is solely a problem with the LA format or because I used apev2 tags with them, but it put me off using the format.

Have you reported the bug?

-Eugene
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: _io_ on 2003-08-12 12:53:27
I reported a different bug involving the foobar plugin where a particular song would always crash foobar, never heard anything back so I didn't bother with this one, besides  I presumed it was due to me tagging with apev2 when this isn't in the spec.
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: danchr on 2003-08-12 14:36:19
FLAC - Because It Worksâ„¢
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: AstralStorm on 2003-08-12 14:48:48
FLAC - because it works in the background on Pentium 100.
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: mcbevin on 2003-08-12 15:15:56
Just a few comments regarding La ....


Quote
You need net.framework (update windows) for LA to work.


The .NET Framework is only required for the frontend. The commandline program, Winamp plugin etc work without requiring .NET.


Quote
LA has great compression ratios, but is WAY too slow at compressing/decompressing. I might switch over to it once CPUs hit about 10GHz.


La is obviously slower than many of the other compressors. However, that doesn't neccessarily make it too slow for everyones needs. Around 15-20% CPU usage on my AMD-2400+ during playback is not an issue as far as I'm concerned, and even on my P-III 1000 its not an issue unless I'm wanting to do something CPU-intensive at the same time. Not sure I understand the need to wait for 10GHZ - would  having only the remaining 4.6Ghz of a 5Ghz machine available during La playback be not enough for you perhaps?


Quote
i used to use LA until I found that about 1 in 40 of my encoded songs would not decode losslessly


This would be obviuosly a very serious bug if true and I would hope that anyone encountering such bugs would report them to me, along with a copy of the song involved! La has undergone extensive testing, and no such bug has been found in the current version, but that doesn't rule out such possibilities completely, so please do send me one of these problem songs so I can see what the problem is.


Quote
I reported a different bug involving the foobar plugin where a particular song would always crash foobar, never heard anything back so I didn't bother with this one,


I remember one such bug that was reported in La 0.4 beta, and was then fixed a couple of weeks later in La 0.4 final. Is this the one you're referring to?
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: gutzalpus on 2003-08-12 15:42:39
Quote
La is obviously slower than many of the other compressors. However, that doesn't neccessarily make it too slow for everyones needs. Around 15-20% CPU usage on my AMD-2400+ during playback is not an issue as far as I'm concerned, and even on my P-III 1000 its not an issue unless I'm wanting to do something CPU-intensive at the same time. Not sure I understand the need to wait for 10GHZ - would having only the remaining 4.6Ghz of a 5Ghz machine available during La playback be not enough for you perhaps?


Right now, since I'm primarily using a PIII-650, encoding time, decoding time, and playback CPU usage are definitely a concern.  I currently have about 300 CDs encoded in FLAC format.  I wouldn't want to take the time to switch all those over until I can do it  relatively quickly.  Currently the extra space used by FLAC is not much of an issue to me.  I never said LA was too slow for everyone's needs.  However, it is definitely too slow for my needs at this point.
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: den on 2003-08-12 15:44:37
Wavpack for me.

It's hybrid mode is very useful for me. I can retain lossless at home, and high quality lossy when I am "on the road". (I'm typing this from Manila, but tomorrow I am in Taipei so it must be Tuesday...)

Optifrog is also very good, but it is not the best for the CPU challenged. I am yet to own a PC that can crack 1G.
Title: Lossless Codecs
Post by: Polar on 2004-08-16 10:22:17
I really see no point in keeping this poll/thread open and active, if an update is available here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=24921). Apparantly, someone has recently cast the 165th vote, even though the mentioned update was well over a week under way, thus distorting these 1 year old results

So: admins, could you please close this poll (just like you did with the old lossy poll (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=2404) in favour of the new one (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=24678)) and perhaps even undo this latest vote?

The August 2004 version (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=24921) has resulted into this (with the 2003 poll results - as frozen to 164 votes - in (grey)):

(http://www.lossless.info/ha/aug2004poll.png)