HydrogenAudio

Hello!

So, what are codecs of your choice? 

Also there is another nice poll about "lossless vs lossy" and "portable and home use" here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=99496).
These two poll complement each other.

At this point every device I use to listen to music supports Vorbis except my car stereo. I used to have a USB stick with a subset of my collection encoded to mp3 for the car stereo. But, my car stereo supports bluetooth so now I end up playing the Vorbis files on my phone through it instead. So, my main archive is FLAC, and all portable devices have the archive encoded to Vorbis q2.

Apart from expecting a few variations (Opus may be going slightly up, for instance); as the number of voters piles up, does anyone think there will be too much of a difference from 2012's or 2013's results?

Here is the graph.
(http://s27.postimg.org/zacew0k6b/codecs.png)

P.S. Table

	   MP3	  AAC	 Vorbis	 MPC	Opus
2007	54.2	12.8	22.8	4.4	
2008	56.2	16.3	17.7	3.8	
2009	59.1	16.3	14.3	4.5	
2010	53.4	19.1	15.1	4.4	
2011	46.4	23.8	16	4.3	0.6
2012	45.4	25.8	15.4	3	2.8
2013	42.5	25.46	13.83	3.37	5.56

The next-to-last option causes some confusion.

Recording, editing, or converting audio involves using uncompressed PCM on a regular basis. Heck, just playing a CD qualifies, and you could make a case that even just playing back your FLACs means you're "making use of" a decoded uncompressed PCM bitstream. But I don't think that's useful to know in this context, because it's completely incomparable to the responses for the lossless compressed formats. To compare to the other answers you presumably want to know whether people keep WAV etc files around for playback or long-term storage, not whether they record to it or use it as an intermediate format.

Also, one has to call uncompressed PCM a lossless format, but to me it seems that to call it a codec is to push that term, already strained by the confusion between formats and codecs, beyond the breaking point. So someone who only uses raw PCM might answer yes to each of the last three options.

I imagine what you mean with the last three options is more along the lines of

Other losslessly compressed format
I leave PCM etc in uncompressed files (WAV, AIFF, RAW) for playback or long-term storage
I only use lossy formats for playback or long-term storage

I don't think it possible to use xHE-AAC this year yet

I found this while googling for xHE-AAC: http://www.indexcom.com/streaming/codec/xheaac/ (http://www.indexcom.com/streaming/codec/xheaac/)
Are those files really encoded with a xHE-AAC encoder?

Apple Lossless (ALAC) (.m4a). AAC only for portable (which I almost never do) and for the "Random" folders I keep just to remember single songs (that they play when everything is shuffled).

FLAC on my PC, lossyFLAC on my Rockboxed iPod Classic, Musepack on my Rockboxed Fuze+.

I don't think it possible to use xHE-AAC this year yet

Maybe.
You mention it as xHE-AAC. Me think too that  it's uncomfortable to pronounce another name loudly. 

I found this while googling for xHE-AAC: http://www.indexcom.com/streaming/codec/xheaac/ (http://www.indexcom.com/streaming/codec/xheaac/)
Are those files really encoded with a xHE-AAC encoder?

yes, those files are encoded by some xHE-AAC encoder.

The next-to-last option causes some confusion.

Propose your alternative and let's change it.

Since finding some really great settings with vorbis it will become really difficult for me to change codec in the future. The most important parameter for me is impulse_noisetune=-15.

Thanks IgorC.

Oh yes, the codecs I use:

Car: MP3

Home: hybrid Wavpack (MP3s, MPC, AACs encoded a long time ago making way for it).
Main reason: as I already stated before, the moment I switched to hybrid Wavpack, all the headaches with managing a bloated lossy+lossless library became a thing of the past.

Rockboxed DAP: lossy Wavpack. Encoding new stuff mostly, as the other lossy formats in it were already well-encoded, assorted lossy files.

Huh, at this point (59 votes) no one chose Monkey's Audio? I thought it was still being used by quite a few people here?

Anyway, for me MP3 + Vorbis + FLAC for sharing recordings (Vorbis and MP3 for the HTML5 audio tag and MP3 and FLAC for download), Vorbis for portable, FLAC for archival.

FLAC and Wavpack (lossless and hybrid) on my PC; Musepack and mp3 on my portable devices.

Huh, at this point (59 votes) no one chose Monkey's Audio? I thought it was still being used by quite a few people here?

Though early to confirm anything, with the poll tallying 60-something votes, it's also interesting to see ALAC lagging behind both WavPack and TAK.

Though early to confirm anything, with the poll tallying 60-something votes, it's also interesting to see ALAC lagging behind both WavPack and TAK.

Not much WavPack but TAK. Weirdest thing to me since Apple is so big and influential.

But, as I said, it's maybe too early.

Besides, this being mostly HA folk's opinions, I think Apple can put its head on the pillow tonight, reassured its world dominance is not threatened by that in the slightest, I'm afraid.

ALAC for the computer

AAC for the iPod

MP3 for the car cd player

tak for archival & playback on pc.
vorbis for my sansa clip+.
i also voted mp3 because i sometimes buy from the amazon mp3 store and download dj sets/podcasts/etc.
although i have a handful of AAC files i did not vote for it because i despise having to buy from itunes. i have done it on the very rare occasion something is not available anywhere else.

ALAC for my archives and AAC for general listening, portable listening, and in my car.  I used to encode everything to AAC and mp3 so that I could burn mp3 data CDs for my car but I installed a Bluetooth receiver negating the need for having an mp3 library as playback is all done through my phone.  I use iTunes and OS X so ALAC made the most sense to me, it's hard using a different lossless format inside of Apple's world.

Still MP3 and FLAC, still not seen any reason to change.

Musepack, because I don't have to keep two libraries. It's (almost) lossless and still economic. If necessary, it can be transcoded to other lossy format with minimum damages.

It's (almost) lossless

There is no such thing as "almost lossless". It is or it isn't.

Quote from: Antonski on 2014-03-31 21:51:33

It's (almost) lossless

There is no such thing as "almost lossless". It is or it isn't.

That's not exactly correct, eahm. LossyWAV defies categorization as either lossy or lossless.

Lossy for portables- Vorbis, lame mp3, and Musepack, depending upon the device, with some purchased aac's and mp3's on all the DAPs.

Lossy for desktop computer- aac (qaac and Winamp FhG-aac) and lame mp3; as well as iTunes aac and Google mp3 purchases.

Lossless for desktop computer- ALAC

Lossless for archive- FLAC, ALAC, and a few Windows Media Lossless.

Not much has changed from last year except for the additions of Musepack (which replaced the overkill FLAC files on my Sansa Clip Zip) and Winamp FhG-aac.  I'm not "married" to a particular codec; but rather try to match codecs with particular devices and usage situations in terms of audio quality, efficiency, battery consumption, storage constraints, etc. without transcoding.

I don't really encode much music for desktop or portable use. My use is up to a random whim.

I tend to prefer Vorbis or Opus for lossy encoding for desktop or distribution, but fall back to MP3 if I feel like supporting software which doesn't play either of those. I still have lots of files in all of those formats gathered from various sources. I also have a number of MusePack SV7 files that I can't really replace with anything else.

For lossless, I gravitate between FLAC and Apple Lossless. I have also used Wavpack, but don't use it that regularly. And I also still have some files in Monkey's Audio format, which I haven't bothered to transcode to something else. I even acquired one rare game bundled promotional CD in WMA Lossless, but quickly transcoded it to something else.

FAKE EDIT: The overwhelming majority of my music collection is still in sequenced or emulated game console formats, which are often compact, but may require substantial processing power to decode.

Very little change for me compared to the poll from 2013 or 2012. I switched from MP3 to AAC about 5 years ago and my current collection is now probably 80% AAC.

I still listen to all my music (both portable and on my home HiFi) using AAC and a bit of MP3. All my music is backed up in FLAC format but that's on a portable harddrive somewhere. AAC is good enough for listening for me and I can't be bothered to find a way to play the FLACs on that drive through my HiFi.

AAC and MP3 for desktop, AAC for portable use and FLAC to backup important CDs.

Hmm... 139 votes and TAK and WavPack are head-to-head for lossless runner-up, leaving ALAC apparently in the dust, so far.

Hmm... 139 votes and TAK and WavPack are head-to-head for lossless runner-up, leaving ALAC apparently in the dust, so far.

5 votes behind = in the dust? Also, you know everyone can read right?

The only thing that bothers me of ALAC, even though I am using it exclusively for lossless, is the fact that doesn't have any error protection. ...or does it? I haven't read the contrary yet.

The only thing that bothers me of ALAC, even though I am using it exclusively for lossless, is the fact that doesn't have any error protection. ...or does it? I haven't read the contrary yet.

Most codecs don't, FLAC can detect an error but does not really protect: one bit flips and you have an error, 0.1s of sound missing. Monkey's Audio and Optimfrog don't have such protection, see here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=33226&view=findpost&p=316496). This table (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison#Comparison_Table) says ALAC does handle errors, but I can't find anything about it in the thread that belongs to it.

I'd say, why not try it and report it in the thread I mentioned (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=33226)?

Quote from: eahm on 2014-04-01 18:45:58

The only thing that bothers me of ALAC, even though I am using it exclusively for lossless, is the fact that doesn't have any error protection. ...or does it? I haven't read the contrary yet.

Most codecs don't, FLAC can detect an error but does not really protect: one bit flips and you have an error, 0.1s of sound missing. Monkey's Audio and Optimfrog don't have such protection, see here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=33226&view=findpost&p=316496). This table (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison#Comparison_Table) says ALAC does handle errors, but I can't find anything about it in the thread that belongs to it.

I'd say, why not try it and report it in the thread I mentioned (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=33226)?

I was referring exactly to that table and "Error handling" doesn't say anything on ALAC, at least the others have Yes and No.

Reading the other discussion, thanks for the reply.

I was referring exactly to that table and "Error handling" doesn't say anything on ALAC

Oh, I misread it, I was looking at WMAL for some reason. Still, someone should check it. I'll try sometime soon what iTunes does with corrupt files.

Oh, I misread it, I was looking at WMAL for some reason. Still, someone should check it. I'll try sometime soon what iTunes does with corrupt files.

WMAL has "Yes". Thanks for any future test. We are OT.

TAK all the way. I have lots of music, all encoded with TAK 2.3.0 using -p4m -md5.

i have some mp3 and wma downloaded from internet,
rip cd using flac, alaway lossless

Quote from: includemeout on 2014-04-01 17:58:57

Hmm... 139 votes and TAK and WavPack are head-to-head for lossless runner-up, leaving ALAC apparently in the dust, so far.

5 votes behind = in the dust? Also, you know everyone can read right?

I'm neither rooting against ALAC nor for it (I've never used it and doubt it I ever will). I just meant at this rate, ~5 votes equal to a relative difference of roughly 80-90% behind the other two codecs. That's all.

TAK all the way. I have lots of music, all encoded with TAK 2.3.0 using -p4m -md5.

d125q, this question is not intended as some sort of criticism whatsoever and it's just out of sheer curiosity and lack of knowledge about TAK:

I've always wondered what a good reason for choosing TAK over other open source CODECS would be.

I mean, are there any perks that only TAK can offer for you (or any other TAK user, for that matter) to have chosen it over the others?

There is another lossy codec I sometimes use. It's DTS and only for 5.x surround music.
For the rest it's mp3, FLAC and occasionally Musepack for the portable device.

I use nothing but AAC TVBR 66 which yields me around 128Kbps. The 96kbps aac test from last year convinced me nothing else was required. At least for my old ears.

In the past, I was using FLAC everywhere for convenience reasons. But then my now dead sansa clip+ decided it wanted to annoy me with random decoding glitches when playing FLAC, so I needed an alternative.
The problem was the battery time with other formats, losing quite a few hours by going wavpack lossy, or others.

Musepack ended up having an even better battery time on the clip+ than FLAC, so the change was easy.
And now that I had to recode my music for portable use anyway, there was no reason to stick with FLAC as my PC is able to decode TAK and TAK saves me some space, if not much.
With FFMPEG being able to decode TAK now afaik, I'm not worried about playback compatibility on different OSes.

I've always wondered what a good reason for choosing TAK over other open source CODECS would be.

I mean, are there any perks that only TAK can offer for you (or any other TAK user, for that matter) to have chosen it over the others?

The argument of HDD space being totally cheap never had any weight for me.
I prefer to maximize the use of any piece of hardware I have, so if TAK saves me more space compared to FLAC, I take it.
TAK is still very annoying with its lack of unicode support, but I still hope it gets added sooner than later.

Here's why I use the codecs that I use:

• MP3: It works in my car (MP3 CDs), and because of music since forever.
• Opus: It works on my RockBox'ed iPod Nano, and out of curiosity and amazement, how good it performs.
• FLAC: Those are my CD rips and live recordings of which I've done quite a lot in the last couple years.

I usually use the standard presets with my favorite encoders.

I use -h with lame and --best with flac.

I used to have several Ogg/Vorbis files, but by now, I've pretty much got rid of them (all of them were encoded from FLAC), and re-encoded them to Opus (from my FLAC sources).

FLAC and MP3, still.

I guess I've just lost interest in comparing one codec to another.

d125q, this question is not intended as some sort of criticism whatsoever and it's just out of sheer curiosity and lack of knowledge about TAK:

I've always wondered what a good reason for choosing TAK over other open source CODECS would be.

I mean, are there any perks that only TAK can offer for you (or any other TAK user, for that matter) to have chosen it over the others?

I began using TAK when I was struggling with disk space and every saved MB meant to me. Now the situation with disk space is somewhat better, but I have found no reason to ditch TAK whatsoever, especially considering the fact that I'm "stuck" in the Windows ecosystem.

Aside from that, I consider TAK to be the most "technologically advanced" codec and like the APEv2 tags way more than the Vorbis Comments.

Now I finally understand the reasons behind using TAK.

Thank you d125q and ChronoSphere.

Most of my collection is FLAC. Some of the grateful dead shows from archive.org are in ape or shorten.. SHN I convert to flac, ape I leave as is since I only ever use VLC or rockbox anyway. If I download music from youtube, which is a lot less often than it used to be, I just use whatever codec is in the audio part of the movie file and isolate that with ffmpeg. At least that way I avoid a second lossy-lossy transcoding. Thrift store tapes and vinyl, if I want to make it portable and I can't find it in a digital format, either end up as flac or ogg. LPs and cassettes usually end up as flac, 78s and 8-tracks usually end up as ogg, depending on just how terrible it sounds when playing direct.  Everything that I have in a lossless format, be it a CD or a download I bought online, I leave lossless. That accounts for the vast majority of my collection so I'm waiting eagerly for those terabyte microSD cards...

Listening to some music on the go this morning, I realised I'd forgotten to mention another reason why I do stand by hybrid WavPack when it comes to choosing a CODEC:

There simply is no psychoacoustical artifacts to worry about as it could be the case (I said "could" not "would", just to be on the safe side of TOS8  ) with some problematic samples for other lossy CODECS (Suzanne Vegas' Tom's Diner anyone?):

All you have to worry your well-trained ears about (after years of lossy encoding & hanging around on Hydrogen Audio) is just the noise floor, that can be easily put in the leach by increasing the bitrate and tweakening one or two switches during encoding, in case you happen to detect it (which practically seldom happens, given the kind of environment one usually listens to lossy files under).

And no, Bryant is not endorsing me or anything of the kind  : it's just that as the days pile up since I've started using it, I realise how unique this CODEC is.

There simply is no psychoacoustical artifacts to worry about as it could be the case

As is the case with LossyWAV too, of course. I don't know which implementation is superior or whether it being built into WavPack brings any other improvements aside from not needing to install another application. Interesting too see that WavPack Lossy and LossyWAV have (at this moment) the same amount of votes.

Something else I'd like to remark: it seems the voters are a pretty homogeneous group, at least for the lossless codecs. From 80 through 210 votes, FLAC has been around 65-70%, WavPack and TAK tied around 8%, Apple Lossless around 5%... In short, the early 'half' of the voters has voted roughly the same as the second half. That's I think an interesting observation.

I voted this:
AAC (desktop) and Opus (portable) for lossy
TAK (desktop) and FLAC (for sharing) for lossless
I don't use MP3 anymore but I see it still beats others hands down

As is the case with LossyWAV too, of course.

Yup. Regardless of your own hearing and sensibility to lossy artifacts (which are very close to non-existant with modern codecs at half the bitrate), the peace of mind element is pretty cool, IMO.

I don't use MP3 anymore but I see it still beats others hands down

For decoding, a lot of stuff is only available in mp3, like most streams and podcasts.
For Google music it is essentially a requirement as anything else gets transcoded.

Quote from: ktf on 2014-04-06 11:10:56

As is the case with LossyWAV too, of course.

Yup. Regardless of your own hearing and sensibility to lossy artifacts (which are very close to non-existant with modern codecs at half the bitrate), the peace of mind element is pretty cool, IMO.

Apart from the peace of mind re artifacts, I get to have near lossless copies of my music collection in a format I like (FLAC) at reasonable bitrates by lossless standards. I also enjoy great battery life using lossyFLAC on my Nexus 4 (via Poweramp).

As is the case with LossyWAV too, of course.

I get to have near lossless copies of my music collection in a format I like (FLAC) at reasonable bitrates by lossless standards.

Though at a bitrate ~50% higher than what I consider my personal 'WavPack's comfort zone' while still yielding the same artifact/noise free files.

(...)the peace of mind element is pretty cool, IMO.

Yep. Nothing better than knowing you're listening to those cymbals, castanets, etcetera as they sound the way they should under all circumstances.

That's not exactly correct, eahm. LossyWAV defies categorization as either lossy or lossless.

Can you please explain? Sorry I don't get it.

Quote from: ktf on 2014-04-06 11:10:56

As is the case with LossyWAV too, of course.

Quote from: akin0780 on 2014-04-06 23:48:33

I get to have near lossless copies of my music collection in a format I like (FLAC) at reasonable bitrates by lossless standards.

Though at a bitrate ~50% higher than what I consider my personal 'WavPack's comfort zone' while still yielding the same artifact/noise free files.

Quote from: skamp on 2014-04-06 11:13:32

(...)the peace of mind element is pretty cool, IMO.

Yep. Nothing better than knowing you're listening to those cymbals, castanets, etcetera as they sound the way they should under all circumstances.

I have no doubt that Wavpack lossy is very good in and of itself, although I do think that lossyFLAC has the edge being pure VBR. Wavpack lossy is based on an ABR model of sorts.

Quote from: akin0780 on 2014-04-01 03:54:00

That's not exactly correct, eahm. LossyWAV defies categorization as either lossy or lossless.

Can you please explain? Sorry I don't get it.

Whilst being technically "lossy", lossyWAV qualifies to be called "near lossless" since what it does is reduce bit depth dynamically, free from the dictates of psychoacoustic models.

There is another lossy codec I sometimes use. It's DTS

Correct. I have some music files with DTS and it seems one can make those at home. 

Nothing has changed. Flac for the lossless files, like disc images with cuesheets. MP3 -V3 for the poular files, casusal listening and for the Sansa Clip that my wife uses.

Quote from: GeSomeone on 2014-04-02 21:07:21

There is another lossy codec I sometimes use. It's DTS

Correct. I have some music files with DTS and it seems one can make those at home. 

Nothing has changed. Flac for the lossless files, like disc images with cuesheets. MP3 -V3 for the poular files, casusal listening and for the Sansa Clip that my wife uses.

LossyWAV and WavPack Lossy are most definitely lossy, which is why they are named that way.  If the input is not identical to the output of the codec,  it's lossy, period.  "Near lossless" is a meaningless term.  If it's near, but not identical, then it's lossy.

They don't use a psychoacoustic model like other lossy codecs, so they do behave a bit differently in terms of the kind of artifacts you'll hear and at which bit rates.  But they are still lossy.

FLAC for just about everything I rip from cds.

QAAC -TVBR 90  (190kbps) for portable use and in my car.

I think we can remove OptimFrog from 2015 codec poll: 1 vote in 2012, 0 votes in 2013, 0 votes in 2014...