Musepack setting for very high quality?

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Re: Musepack setting for very high quality?

Reply #50 – 2020-08-09 12:24:07

Quote from: synclagz on 2020-06-20 19:05:10

@shadowking
Thanks for explaining these settings.
One more question for wavpack + correction files:
How to select multiple folders but to copy only .wv files (not wvc) and retain folder structure?

Since your question has gone under the radar, and assuming you're using something else, I believe many will agree the Copy to... feature on Foobar2000 (a right-click on desired tracks/albums on any Playlist reveals it under the File Operations option).

Just make sure the Copy Entire Folder Content option is not ticked off and, assuming all you have inside your (album?) folders it's only the .wvc and .wv files, it will copy only the latter (in my case, to a temporary folder, as I cannot copy directly to my phone) while keeping the folder structure.

My only pickle with it is that I cannot copy the cover.jpg files for the artwork (which I insist on being in a separate file in order to save precious storage space and not increasing therefore my already fat ~415Kbps lossy wavpacks, as per my sig), but I'm sure if I looked further, I could find out an option to do the very same process with a backup or file copying utility such as Robocopy whilst copying said .jpg files as well.

Re: Musepack setting for very high quality?

Reply #51 – 2020-08-09 13:20:32

Also, since you were at it, I thought I'd chime in with why I, in good Dr. Strangelove fashion, "learned to stop worrying and love Wavpack hybrid":

Firstly, it's the one rip-one-file tagging solution and "fuhgettaboutit": no more, like I'd been doing since the early days we were congratulating Dibrom on starting up this community back in Sep 2001, under another username I'd completely forgotten about - (including its password, by the time I created this one, and I don't use it anymore, so TOS12 wasn't hurt) and I'd recently changed from MP3 -r3mix, to MP3 standard (which obviously meant a new re-rip of CDs) to MPC --xtreme -tmn 32 -nmt 16 -scale .97 (then called MP+) - only to have, a few years later, to re-encode (actually container-change) said MPC files from SV7 to SV8 - and have a few of them corrupted! That meant more re-ripping!

Second, due to previous setbacks such as described above, and the simple fact I'm not that 20-something-year-old of yore, time is also another issue I unavoidably have to factor in, as, at least now, with Wavpack lossy, with all theoretical encoding to other lossy formats guaranteed to be done "losslessly" on the PC with the correction files, I can rest assured an 128GB SD card will suffice for most of my ~~my entire~~ often listened to audio collection on my phone - until prices in my country for a 256 or 512GB card (gulp!) become more affordable. And that will be in 2 or 3 years, at most. (assuming the economy doesn't turn even sour over here and we will have a less stupid government then!).

Under an exclusively lossless collection, were I to wait for 1TB cards to get cheaper here (as that would take up roughly double the storage space my ~415Kbps lossy wavpacks do), I'd probably have to wait for at least a whole decade! And my being no spring chicken anymore... well, you get the picture!

So it's just not a matter of "HDs get cheaper by the day" - it's a slightly more complicated equation that drove me to use hybrid encoding - and be happy about it!

Re: Musepack setting for very high quality?

Reply #52 – 2020-08-10 08:57:15

@includemeout
thanks a lot.
Yes, my question gone under the radar and since then I was thinking what is the best solution for me to make things simple in one archive only. Wv+wwc is definitely a good choice, however I wanted to make things even simpler - just one file archive.

In the meantime I finally ripped my whole cd archive to flac and I end up at 310 GB archive. Not big, but not small either. For mobile phone I need 512 GB sd card to fit whole flac collection but price for mSD cards is still a bit high.

What I was trying to figure out is sweet spot for wavpack lossy so that I have high quality with peace of mind.
After trying to ABX glockenspiel sample and Atem lied (from new guruboolez listening test) I realized that
I can't do it at -b384x1 (using my Audiotechnica ATH-M40X headphones, which are decent in my opinion).
Now I think that I could easily go with -b450x4 (maybe -b512x4 which is still 40% smaller than lossless) and drop lossless completely but still need some confirmation (in my opinion even -b450x1 should be enough for me, but since x4 is a must for high quality, I'll use it to have addition quality headroom).
This setting will reduce my 310 GB flac archive in half and I can fit my whole music collection on 256 GB SD card and still have enough room for future cd rips.
I didn't decided yet what is best thing to do (besides my ripping to lossless for now)

Re: Musepack setting for very high quality?

Reply #53 – 2020-09-10 06:55:10

Quote from: shadowking on 2020-06-20 18:04:19

For quality use -hx4, -hh or least -x4 . I like -hx4 as the encoding / decode penalty isn't big. -hx3 is good alternative to -x4

@shadowking

I tested a lot of songs using -n switch and -hh is usually better than -x4 on average and peak noise, and encoding using -hh is much, much faster than -x4.
So, how would you rate -b450hh for quality?

Re: Musepack setting for very high quality?

Reply #54 – 2020-09-13 13:16:35

Quote from: synclagz on 2020-09-10 06:55:10

Quote from: shadowking on 2020-06-20 18:04:19

For quality use -hx4, -hh or least -x4 . I like -hx4 as the encoding / decode penalty isn't big. -hx3 is good alternative to -x4

@shadowking

I tested a lot of songs using -n switch and -hh is usually better than -x4 on average and peak noise, and encoding using -hh is much, much faster than -x4.
So, how would you rate -b450hh for quality?

It should be similar to -x4 and as you observed slightly higher quality.
Infact this was the way until wavpack v4.40. The recommendation
was -h , -x or both. -h is todays -hh and -x is today -x4

For new rips you can use -b450hhc for lossless. rip to an offline drive and copy them to
your main drive. You can then delete the wvc on main drive to give more space and make
transfer to portable player / phone easier. If you keep the offline drive, the entire process
can be reversed too.

Re: Musepack setting for very high quality?

Reply #55 – 2020-09-14 06:58:57

Thanks a lot.

Even -b450hh is probably enough for standalone arhive but I'll use correction file and decide later if I need it or not.

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