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.
Topic: Which is the best lossless codec? (Read 477599 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 2 Guests are viewing this topic.

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #150
Quote
Oops, sorry about that. Actually 57% is the line.
^^
Quote
In the comparision, I replaced "Compression efficiency not on par with other lossless codecs" with "Relatively slow encoding" (that is, comparing to other codecs that compress much more at same speed). I think it's fairer towards FLAC. Do you agree?
that's one (nice) possibility. however, it seems that compression efficiency is really not on par, so I would have just added this to WavPack also 
Nothing but a Heartache - Since I found my Baby ;)

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #151
Quote
Well I don't want to say that you lie but probably you're just little bit confused. I've tried MultiFrontend and LA Frontend with APEv1/APEv2 tags and also Foobar's Diskwriter Commandline Encoder with selected APEv2 tag and found that Winamp doesn't support APEv2 tags. Tried both 0.4 and 0.4b. Foobar does but it's more native Foobar functionality than support from format. Furthermore official documentation of LA says: ID3 v1.1 tagging support
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=290086"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Uhm, you are right. LA's Winamp plugin does NOT recognize the APE2 tags. Sorry, I didn't intend to spread false information...

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #152
Quote
that's one (nice) possibility. however, it seems that compression efficiency is really not on par, so I would have just added this to WavPack also 
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=290286"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Well, feel free to edit the Wiki article. That's another reason I moved there - that is, so that it doesn't stay in one man's hands and therefore is subject to his bias.


Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #154
Quote
BTW: It's important to mention that efficiency is not compression ratio. Efficiency is a relation between compression ratio and encoding speed.

efficiency is not defined in the doc, it might clear things up.  more helpful I think would be rating "encoding efficiency" and "decoding efficiency".

Josh

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #155
Quote
Quote
BTW: It's important to mention that efficiency is not compression ratio. Efficiency is a relation between compression ratio and encoding speed.
efficiency is not defined in the doc, it might clear things up.  more helpful I think would be rating "encoding efficiency" and "decoding efficiency".
decoding efficiency = fast decoding / decoding complexity (system resources usage)?
Nothing but a Heartache - Since I found my Baby ;)

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #156
Hello. I'd like to inform you that I replaced the PNG table with a Wiki table, with lots of help from Jan S.

Check it out here:
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...omparison_Table

So, no more need for the Excel spreadsheet and the PNG image. People can edit the table directly (but be very careful when doing so, as it is easy to break everything with a misplaced |).


The only modification from the recent PNG table is that now TTA has "average" software support. I changed that after it came to my attention that no audio editor supports it.

So, clarifying how each codec gets the software support ranking:

"Bad" is when only a handful of players support this format, or even worse, only the player provided by the manufacturer (E.G, Real Lossless and, until recently, ALAC)

"Average" is just average support. A few players, no editors, etc.

"Good" ranking requires that a) the format can be played on more than one platform, preferably with several players and b) it can be imported and exported by an audio editing application.

"Very good" is not really quantifiable. You just know that format has that ranking, from the amount of applications supporting it in several different platforms.


Questions? Comments?

Regards;

Roberto.

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #157
Hi, Roberto. Great guide. I'm starting a lossless conversion (in the sense that I'm starting to encode new things in lossless, almost like a religious conversion). As I'm on a mac, I'll stick with ALAC.

Just a pair of comments and a question:

1) ALAC is supported in linux (and maybe in gnu/hurd) there is a debian package called "la" that decodes apple lossless. Oh, well it is decoding. Said nothing.

2) ALAC is very fast on encoding. For me (G5@1,8GHz) it is 16x minimum when I'm not encoding H.264 video.

Now the question:

What is ALS? I could not get sensitive info using the search function. Is this a new format? (I thnk not, because it is not on the table) or just a cuesheet-like thingie for some other format?


Wish-list: ALAC/MP4 (and AAC/MP4) supporting internal cuesheet, as to have one file in the hard disk, but the whole album in the library (implementing also gapless automatically).

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #158
ALS is a new lossless format that is developed for the MPEG 4 group to be a new ISO standard. Too bad it hasn't been standardized yet, as all major companies have made their own codecs by now.

Perhaps more interesting is the other effort by the MPEG4 group, the SLS codec. It is a hybrid codec based on AAC, so it can be played back on anything that plays AAC.

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #159
I see you added an "Oddball Formats" section to the Lossless comparison Wiki page. But not even there did Bonk or RKAU make it.... Poooor things! 
"ONLY THOSE WHO ATTEMPT THE IMPOSSIBLE WILL ACHIEVE THE ABSURD"
        - Oceania Association of Autonomous Astronauts

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #160
ALAC should be updated to reflect the changes made in QT7. This has to go at least:
Quote
Doesn't support multichannel audio and high resolutions

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #161
Quote
I see you added an "Oddball Formats" section to the Lossless comparison Wiki page. But not even there did Bonk or RKAU make it.... Poooor things! 
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=296101"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Haha. That just shows it's about time I add those formats to ReallyRareWares

Thanks, I just added them to the lists.

Quote
ALAC should be updated to reflect the changes made in QT7. This has to go at least:
Quote
Doesn't support multichannel audio and high resolutions

[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=296102"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Ah, that's very interesting indeed. You tested it on multichannel and high resolution (96kHz/24bit) streams?

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #162
Quote
You tested it on multichannel and high resolution (96kHz/24bit) streams?


I tried a 96kHz stereo stream from archive.org, but it lists up to 192kHz and 5.0/5.1 in the settings window. If anyone know where to find multichannel files I'd be glad to test

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #163
Quote
I tried a 96kHz stereo stream from archive.org, but it lists up to 192kHz and 5.0/5.1 in the settings window. If anyone know where to find multichannel files I'd be glad to test
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Well, there's this multichannel stream I created to verify speaker positioning:
[a href="http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/upload/test.m4a]http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/upload/test.m4a[/url]

It can also help test QuickTime decoding multichannel AAC

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #164
Ok, the file plays back fine and it reports it as "AAC, 6 Channels, 48,000 kHz". But for some reason, QT freezes when pressing the "settings.." button in the export pane, so I can't convert it..

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #165
Meh. Buggy.

Try this then: It's a wavpack of that same multichannel stream
http://www.rarewares.org/rja/test.wv

You can decode it with the MacOS binary:
http://www.rarewares.org/files/lossless/wa...k-4.2-MacOS.zip


Edit: actually bzip compressed it nearly as well as WavPack, so you can use this if wavpack won't work for you:
http://www.rarewares.org/rja/test.wav.bz2

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #166
That did the trick!

I converted it to both AAC & ALAC as .mov's, but it doesn't seem to passthrough multichannel to the mpeg4 container  The alac file ended up as 174KB.

Should I upload the two .mov files?

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #167
Quote
I converted it to both AAC & ALAC as .mov's, but it doesn't seem to passthrough multichannel to the mpeg4 container   The alac file ended up as 174KB.


Thanks for testing!

Quote
Should I upload the two .mov files?[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=296140"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Yes, please. I'm curious about how my QuickTime 6 will behave with a multichannel ALAC.

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #168
Quote
Yes, please. I'm curious about how my QuickTime 6 will behave with a multichannel ALAC.
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Posted them [a href="http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=33897]here.[/url] I bet QT 6 will choke on both, but it's worth a try anyway.

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #169
Heh, it's interesting. It loads both files and recognize both as multichannel. But no sound comes out when playing them back.

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #170
I have updated WIKI page with this info:

- LA's error state changed from white to red just because
Code: [Select]
c:\Shifter\Software\MUSIC\Packers\Lossless\La v0.4\tools>la test1.la

Lossless Audio Compressor
Version 0.4b, copyright Michael Bevin 2002-2004

Decoding test1.la [**********..............]
This application has requested the Runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.
Please contact the application's support team for more information.


- TTA's error state changed from red to green because
Code: [Select]
c:\Shifter\Software\MUSIC\Packers\Lossless\TTAEnc v3.3>ttaenc -d test1.tta
TTA1 lossless audio encoder/decoder, release 3.3
Copyright (c) 2005 Alexander Djourik. All rights reserved.
For more information see http://tta.sourceforge.net
------------------------------------------------------------
File:    [Test1.tta]
Decode:  checksum error, 46080 samples wiped
Decode:  wrote 1408192 bytes, done, ratio: 0,74, time: 0
------------------------------------------------------------
Total:   [1/1, 1,3/1,0 Mb], ratio: 1,377, time: 0'00
------------------------------------------------------------


I also added a note about error robustness in TTA's pros

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #171
Very good. Thanks

Edit: I added "Fits the Matroska container" to WavPack.

 

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #172
I added streaming support to MAC since the changelog for the latest release seems to indicate streaming is supported.
Quote
Changed: Decoding engine better at handling corrupt streams / loss of internet connection while playing

http://www.monkeysaudio.com/versionhistory.html

Edit: I just noticed that the wiki indicates Monkey's Audio doesn't support ReplayGain. I've edited that as well.


Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #173
Jan S. has since informed me "Some programs support replaygain thru tags but that is not the same as it being supported by the format.". I'd like to know what constitutes ReplayGain support.

Granted MAC doesn't conform to the ReplayGain standard (8 bit field in the header file), using APEv2 tags instead. FLAC also uses tags (vorbis comment) for ReplayGain and is listed as ReplayGain supported. So, are we defining ReplayGain support as standard compliant or tag support? If the former FLAC should be changed to "no", if the latter MAC should be changed to "yes".

Which is the best lossless codec?

Reply #174
When you encode with FLAC you can use "--replay-gain" option, so i guess that this is the reason for FLAC's support.

I had a quick look to see if Monkey Audio can do this but couldnt find the info and gave up looking.
Just because foobar can replaygain an audio file doesnt mean it nativly supports it?