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.

Poll

WHAT IS YOUR FORMAT OF CHOICE?

MP3
[ 48 ] (21.9%)
OGG VORBIS
[ 43 ] (19.6%)
MUSEPACK / MPC
[ 104 ] (47.5%)
AAC/MP4
[ 24 ] (11%)

Total Members Voted: 265

Topic: What format are you using most? (Read 24721 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

What format are you using most?

Reply #25 –
Musepack with preset standard is good enough for me. Still usually at under 200 kbps.

What format are you using most?

Reply #26 –
Quote
as anybody knows here at hydrogen i'm an psytel 2.15 aac man.

I didn't know, and I bet 99% of the other members neither.

Quote
nothing comes closer to original in lossy format. especially the aac hq presets ultra+ archive. new nero don't have any chance against, though it's mostly based on the psytel code and developed by the same man.

Oh really? According to whom?? I bet you wouldn't even be able to ABX Nero's extreme preset. Please read TOS #8 before opening your mouth.

Quote
also mpc (a lot of great stuff is available) is really good soundin at hq (q7 insane or Q8 braindead.) and worth to store in hq lossy format (if not available in .aac)

Have you made a double-blind test to see if --standard is not good enough for you, or you are just plain "braindead"?

What format are you using most?

Reply #27 –
It's all about portability!  (w00t)

I don't sit at my computer to listen, I use various portable devices (CD & flash) so I'm still stuck on MP3.  Although I have a Philips AAC player on order, so that may change a bit, or if Iriver ever does Ogg Vorbis for their old players....

What format are you using most?

Reply #28 –
Fixed AAC/MP4 poll option. Note that it's 4 votes short of the real number now.

What format are you using most?

Reply #29 –
Since switching over to FLAC for anything not on CD, I've been less exact and wanting to spend less time with my "temporary" portable files. Switched to iTunes AAC, because it encodes ~10X the speed of LAME--aps/--ape (and still a little over half that for --apfs/--apfe), and at 192/224 it's very close to the LAME presets through my iPod and Grado 225's. If LAME was capable of the same speed I'd probably stick to MP3 for possible compatibility with others.

Currently encoding audiobooks in MP3 and AAC to see how things play out. Gave up on MP3Pro.

Just hoping QT goes to true VBR AAC  and and the rest of the community can do to AAC/MP4 what they did over time with MP3.

What format are you using most?

Reply #30 –
Quote
Fixed AAC/MP4 poll option. Note that it's 4 votes short of the real number now.

Thanks Garf!

What format are you using most?

Reply #31 –
AAC all the way - iPod baby!
"...ambience?, I AM ambience!"

What format are you using most?

Reply #32 –
Quote
Heh.. seems like we're getting almost as bad as slashdot here...

Yes, for it to be completely like /., the required Cowboy Neal option would be put in the poll... And certain predefined answers involving nakedness, petrified, grits, clusters, your base, soviet russia, and others  But this is Hydrogen Audio, so um.. no?

Oh, about the poll, well mpc for me because is the best quality/size compromise when using a PC, which is currently the only medium i use for audio playback. Its good that it also encodes quickly as well

If mpc were available in portables, would some of you change your minds? i wonder... Someday some sort of "programable" portable device will get launched, so people could add their custom formats and the company building the devices won't need to touch any license or pay any royalties themselves
She is waiting in the air

What format are you using most?

Reply #33 –
almost never touch lossy formats these days - actually dislike MP3s almost as much as WMA files, but would use MPC -q6 or 7 if storing something beside the master copy now.

What format are you using most?

Reply #34 –
I'm going to have to vote for mp3, primarily for the reson that it's very convenient to pack a ton of HQ tracks on a cd-r and hit random on a compatible car deck.  I hate shuffling through numerous CD's while on the road.  Besides that, I'm convinced that .mpc q8 is the absolute best I've heard as far as lossy codecs are concerned.  My next library conversion will probably be done using the FLAC frontend (well, after I score another huge HD).

What format are you using most?

Reply #35 –
I vote for Wavpack lossy!

I'd use Wavpack lossy or Optifrog Dualstream over your lame poll options any day! 

Roll on Wavpack 4...

What format are you using most?

Reply #36 –
Ape or Flac for storage. Usually mp3 for portable cd creation, cause  portable cd player  I own doesn't support any other lossy format. Foobar 2000 or dbpoweramp makes it easy to convert ape or flac to lossy format for any use needed at the moment.

I didn't vote cause I actually prefer to listen to the ape or flac files.
you will make mp3's for compatibility reasons.

What format are you using most?

Reply #37 –
My current computer is an 700Mhz eMac running Mac OS X 10.2.7 and I currrently encode in AAC format using iTunes.

What format are you using most?

Reply #38 –
Mp3 because of portability reasons. --a-p-s LAME with occassional --a-p-i classical rips.
If I want lossless I stick with CD, if only because I'd have to buy a couple of samsung 160GB drives to store every bit I own  .

Also, most any consumer DVD player will now playback mp3 files from CD. This allows me to share music with my physical friends in a quasi-legal fashion without burning dozens of CDs.

  What compression I have done with MPC and AAC has been impressive.

What format are you using most?

Reply #39 –
not that its my favourite format (i currently have approx. 11,500 music files on my hdd, and approx 98% is mp3), but why isn't WMA among the choices? it is, afterall, a very widely used format.
myspace.com/borgei - last.fm/user/borgei

What format are you using most?

Reply #40 –
Quote
not that its my favourite format (i currently have approx. 11,500 music files on my hdd, and approx 98% is mp3), but why isn't WMA among the choices? it is, afterall, a very widely used format.

Here are some reasons...

What format are you using most?

Reply #41 –
Quote
Here are some reasons...

Well, to be honest, that's lame reasons. "Because we dont like Microsoft, we choose to exclude their formats, even though it is a widely used audio compression format" - that has started to show some good results.

Oh well..
myspace.com/borgei - last.fm/user/borgei

What format are you using most?

Reply #42 –
I'm not ripping anything to lossy anymore (I have been convinced to use Monkey's Audio ), so I didn't vote. With future developments on the portable player market being pretty unclear at the moment (other than the fact that AAC/MP4 is support is really starting to come now), it just doesn't feel right to settle for a lossy format.

MP3? Nah. It works all right if you use foobar2000 for playback (APEv2 tags, ReplayGain, and most importantly gapless playback), but is a pain to handle with other players. AAC/MP4? No good free encoders available (it does look good though, and I must admit I have, until recently, always under-estimated the power of the format). Vorbis? So far, I haven't seen any promising events concerning the portable player situation (pretty much the opposite to what we've been promised all this time by Xiph, in fact). And MPC... well, that's what I have been using all this time, but I know I'll probably never be able to playback those files on a portable device (I'll have to make transcoded copies for portable use, for those CDs I can't re-rip to lossless at least). I still reckon, though, that for purely PC based playback, MPC is the best solution.

What format are you using most?

Reply #43 –
Quote
Vorbis? So far, I haven't seen any promising events concerning the portable player situation (pretty much the opposite to what we've been promised all this time by Xiph, in fact).

Ogg Vorbis playback on the Neuros is a reality.  I wouldn't make that statment if I hadn't actually gotten my Ogg files to play back on MY neuros. Granted, it's not promising, but it's a working implementation

What format are you using most?

Reply #44 –
Quote
Quote
Vorbis? So far, I haven't seen any promising events concerning the portable player situation (pretty much the opposite to what we've been promised all this time by Xiph, in fact).

Ogg Vorbis playback on the Neuros is a reality.  I wouldn't make that statment if I hadn't actually gotten my Ogg files to play back on MY neuros. Granted, it's not promising, but it's a working implementation

There's also the Rio Karma, and the iRiver iHP-120, and others...

In case you haven't seen it yet, check out the Vorbis hardware wiki.
Over thinking, over analyzing separates the body from the mind.

What format are you using most?

Reply #45 –
Quote
Quote
Here are some reasons...

Well, to be honest, that's lame reasons. "Because we dont like Microsoft, we choose to exclude their formats, even though it is a widely used audio compression format" - that has started to show some good results.

Oh well..

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Quote (via the link above) by Dibrom, Sep 3 2003, 06:29 PM...
Aside from a lack of volume in discussion, the following points make WMA rather unsuitable for a lot of purposes which are at the core of this community:

1. The WMA developers do not participate in the discussion.
2. WMA does not work well with a significant portion of the audio utilities which are discussed or developed on these boards. By design, WMA is a rather closed and restricted format, and so what can be done with the format in terms of community participation is extremely limited.
3. The sources are closed so there is no chance of participation in development. (And before someone says something about MPC being "closed", this is not true. The MPC sources have been available for quite some time, and furthermore, Frank has traditionally been willing to listen to and work with the community to further development).
4. WMA is rather entangled in the whole DRM issue. Regardless of whether this affects users in all cases or not, this is enough of a problem to make it unsuitable for widespread support in a community forum like this.
5. WMA is not a "best of breed" codec (in terms of quality it has come in close to last on many occassions in many tests) like at least most of the others that have their own top level categories. This might be changing now with WMA Pro, but it has not been the case traditionally. While there are other issues to consider besides quality, HA has always favored high quality/performance before other considerations.
6. Because of the closed and restricted nature of WMA and it's development, and the fact that it is not standardized, there is no way to really track it's development over time, except by focusing on each major release. This further hampers the type of discussion that traditionally takes place on HA.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The name "Microsoft", or the issue that anyone may hate the company or the format was not even mentioned in Dibrom's post.  His points are valid supportable reasons for not having a WMA forum at HA, and could also justify (in my own opinion) not including the format in a poll such as this (thought that's entirely up to the poll originator).

The instance of the format that has "started to show some good results" is WMA Pro, which is not a widely used audio compression format.

What format are you using most?

Reply #46 –
Quote
Quote
Vorbis? So far, I haven't seen any promising events concerning the portable player situation (pretty much the opposite to what we've been promised all this time by Xiph, in fact).

Ogg Vorbis playback on the Neuros is a reality.  I wouldn't make that statment if I hadn't actually gotten my Ogg files to play back on MY neuros. Granted, it's not promising, but it's a working implementation

What Vorbis quality levels / bitrates have you tried successfully on the Neuros?

And have you tried testing to determine the highest encoded quality setting the Neuros could play back without buffering problems?  I'm really curious to see which companies are overcoming the obstacle of "bitrate maximums" for decoding Vorbis on limited hardware, and how they are doing it.

What format are you using most?

Reply #47 –
Quote
Ogg Vorbis playback on the Neuros is a reality. [...] Granted, it's not promising, but it's a working implementation

Last I heard, the Neuros players weren't even available in Europe.  Apart from that, I can't say I like them much from what I read on the website... even the 128 MB flash-based player is, like, huge (there are smaller hard disk players than that!) and probably wouldn't fit into my jeans pocket.

I had completely forgotten about the Rio Karma and the iRiver player though, which both are a good step forward.

@PoisonDan: Heh, I was reading the hardware page at the Xiph Wiki the moment you posted that...

What format are you using most?

Reply #48 –
Quote
Last I heard, the Neuros players weren't even available in Europe.  Apart from that, I can't say I like them much from what I read on the website... even the 128 MB flash-based player is, like, huge (there are smaller hard disk players than that!) and probably wouldn't fit into my jeans pocket.

I had completely forgotten about the Rio Karma and the iRiver player though, which both are a good step forward.

There's a belt clip with the 128MB version, so you might like that.  The 20GB is bigger and definitely larger.  I don't know if it's too big for you, but it barely fits into my shirt pocket.  It will DEFINITELY fit anywhere that a portable CD player will fit.

As for the Rio Karma & the iRiver iHP-xxx, don't believe the hype until you hear of someone with a working implementation.  Plans are just as easy to drop if they can't get it working.

@ScorLibran, I don't have many CDs with me right now, but I'll give you a report on various q levels if you'd like.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention.  Last night, it was raining hard on my walk back home.  I put the 20GB version of the neuros in my jeans pocket to keep it dry.  It was uncomfortably bulky, but it fit.  Like I said, not promising, but it does work.

What format are you using most?

Reply #49 –
I'm currently using mpc -q5. I would like to switch to aac so I can play them in an Ipod that I might get...  but i'm can't seem to figure out how to tag them. I found this topic but it wasn't really helpful to me.

hmmm it seems that ipod will only play aac if you have a mac. there goes that idea...