HydrogenAudio

Hydrogenaudio Forum => Polls => Topic started by: guruboolez on 2008-01-01 15:17:42

Poll
Question: What's your *main lossy* format of choice?
Option 1: MP3 votes: 681
Option 2: Ogg Vorbis votes: 214
Option 3: AAC (MP4, M4A, AAC) votes: 198
Option 4: MPC votes: 46
Option 5: WMA Standard or PRO votes: 3
Option 6: Atrac (any version) votes: 2
Option 7: WavPack lossy votes: 8
Option 8: LossyWAV + lossless votes: 6
Option 9: other lossy format votes: 0
Option 10: I don't use lossy AT ALL! votes: 55
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: guruboolez on 2008-01-01 15:17:42
Happy new year to everyone.
New year, new poll.
Lossy/lossless polls are a tradition here in HA.org. The first one started few weeks after the site was founded by Dibrom. As explained in last year's poll (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=51493&st=0) I think that polls should be rationalized in order to compare more easily the choices of HA members. The 2007 general poll was created exactly one year ago and got 921 voters ; I hope this one will last one full year¹ as well and will reach the 1000!

I made small changes in the poll structure:
• WMA and WMA Pro are now one unique poll choice (they got less than 1% of total votes last year and I needed a free row to make the other changes possible)
• WavPack lossy was added
• LossyWAV + lossless whcih appeared this year was also added
other lossy format and I don't use lossless AT ALL! are split
• I reordered the list according to the 2007 popularity (TAK before OptimFROG)
• Apple Lossless was accidentally removed 

9000 new persons are registered on hydrogenaudio's forums since last poll. I hope that many of them will answer to this new poll. In advance, thank you for your vote.


To finish, a very big thank you to houyhnhnm who offered us a pretty complete synthesis of HA Polls since the beginning, here (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=51493&view=findpost&p=537917):

[a href="http://img406.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lossydi7.png" target="_blank"]
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Eli on 2008-01-01 16:10:56
I am VERY interested in the future of TAK. Once it goes open source and gets a little more software support it may well replace FLAC for me. I switched this year from MP3 to AAC. I use an ipod, my wife uses an ipod, all my friends and family use ipods. I had alot of playback problems with VBR Lame MP3 files on the ipods, so I have switched to ABR AAC.

Since its a "ripping" poll as well, you should have added an option for ripping software of choice.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: tev777 on 2008-01-01 17:03:08
I've given up Vorbis in favor of MP3s ubiquity, but still love the completeness of the Vorbis format. When I find a portable device with proper support I may go back.

Long live FLAC! Josh Coalson for President (of some small island somewhere)!
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: nyarlathotep on 2008-01-01 17:17:31
Hello guru and Bonne Année!

I voted:
- MP3: for compatibility.
- WavPack: because Bryant is a nice guy from San Francisco and I like the foobar2000 icon.
- one file per track: for no special reason other than I never had a problem with that.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Fandango on 2008-01-01 17:43:03
Interesting how Wavpack lost its users to FLAC. The current poll seems to show that this trend continues. Or is it because of TAK?

My guess is that growing hardware support for FLAC caused this and maybe even FLAC's new feature of embedding images. Now that there's a new competitor out there (TAK), it may also draw some specific users to it, those who always look out for the most efficient codec.

PS: my choices
  • MP3 - it's transparent to me, compatibility and it's still actively developed.
  • WavPack - I like its efficiency, it has a "full" feature set (except embedded image functionality isn't widely supported with players yet, tho it works with fb2k which is most important), it's free software.
  • One file per CD - I don't play lossless on devices that need track-based audio files, when I need track-based files I transcode to lossy anyway using fb2k. And I don't like non-compliant cue sheets, also one file per disc is easier to manage when having a large music library on HD.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Bourne on 2008-01-01 18:13:12
-
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: evereux on 2008-01-01 18:27:29
Since its a "ripping" poll as well, you should have added an option for ripping software of choice.

I was thinking the same.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: guruboolez on 2008-01-01 18:42:51
Since its a "ripping" poll as well, you should have added an option for ripping software of choice.

Indeed. But I can only put three questions per poll.
Someone should maybe create an advanced ripping poll.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Gow on 2008-01-01 20:07:09
Mp3:  Lame 3.98b6 -v2 -vbr-new,  transparent to me on most of my tracks and is easily read by the xbox360 that my computer networks with, along with being a good choice for my Zune player.

TAK:  -p4,  offers good compression and I only use it as a means of archiving audio so compatibility is unimportant as long as it plays and can be encoded with foobar2000.

Mix:  I use a mix of single track image with cue and tracks, depends on the CD.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Squeller on 2008-01-01 20:23:22
As for lossless I used wavpack before, but now I encode anything to tak.
And I switched from mp3 to nero aac, all my devices support it.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: UED77 on 2008-01-01 20:30:43
My lossy format of choice is MP3 for universal compatibility -- my hardware players are old and relatively featureless, yet nonetheless they suffice for my purposes. That said, the overwhelming majority of my rips are lossless, I only encode to LAME 3.97 --vbr-new -v4 on-demand.

Lossless-wise, all my music is in WavPack High, sometimes having used -x3, sometimes having used -x6 with no real consistency (and feel no need to enforce it). Once TAK will support seeking without seektables like WavPack, I'll consider a migration to that format.

A possible reason why WavPack could've lost "market share" in the previous year is that its hardware support still lags behind that of FLAC, so users looking for hardware support that are more likely to use FLAC anyway. That leaves users looking for higher compression (than FLAC) but decent flexibility (more flexible than OptimFROG or Monkey's Audio) using WavPack (like me), yet these are the users most likely to switch to TAK eventually.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: anishbenji on 2008-01-01 20:40:49
Moved over the years, from Monkeys Audio to Wavpack and now am using TAK p5m with one file per disc for my lossless archive.
Use MP3 (lame 3.86 beta V4) as my primary lossy format for its universal compatibility.
Anish
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: audioadam on 2008-01-01 20:43:18
For lossy I've been using MP3 so far - because it will play on my old DAPs. I imagine this will change to vorbis in the new year because I am thinking about buying a new DAP with vorbis compatibility, and I love the gapless nature of vorbis files.

For lossless I have been using FLAC so far, because of the wide acceptance of them. I love that it's open source, too. It's entirely possible I might try TAK and WavPack both this year, just out of curiosity, and one of them might replace my FLACs... but you never know.

For lossy and lossless I use single image and cuesheet, because so many albums I have are gapless.

I think 2008 is likely going to be a year with alot of transition, with the new formats that are emerging (new hybrid lossy/lossless) and the other promising lossy and lossless types that are appearing and being developed. It'll be interesting to see how this year compares to 2009.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Nick.C on 2008-01-01 20:50:24
Unsurprisingly, I use lossyWAV + FLAC for my on demand lossy transcoding and FLAC for my archive.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: IgorC on 2008-01-01 21:46:06
And I switched from mp3 to nero aac, all my devices support it.

++

FLAC and TAK for lossless. Voted for TAK.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: DreamTactix291 on 2008-01-02 00:00:06
TAK -p5m single file with embedded cuesheet for the lossless archive.

Vorbis -q5 for use on the go on my two Rockbox-enabled DAPs.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: twostar on 2008-01-02 00:01:07
my vote goes to the most compatible formats: flac and mp3. compatibility is king for me.

on a sidenote, the graphs are quite interesting. i did use ape and mpc years ago and made the switch. looks like a lot of HA members did too.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: dbAmp on 2008-01-02 00:09:51
-MP3 LAME 3.98b6 -V2 (I switched back from AAC for device support, ubiquity, etc.)
-WavPack (For efficiency reasons at the time I started archiving)
-One file per disc with cuesheet or chapters (This makes it easy to recreate CDs and maintains proper gaps)
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Leto Atreides II on 2008-01-02 00:14:30
I voted Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and per track.

Most of my lossy catalog is still MPC, but I voted for Vorbis because if I was to encode more lossy files I would probably use Vorbis.  I'm about as confident in Vorbis's quality as I am in MPC's quality now and it is more likely to be supported.

FLAC simply because it is most widely supported, open source, and "good enough" as far as compression goes.  TAK certainly looks interesting for the future.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: BoraBora on 2008-01-02 00:37:51
Lossy: LAME for my wife's PAD.

Lossless: FLAC. I love WavPack but I'm now using Catraxx for audio management and the only lossless codec supported is FLAC.

One file per track. I can't see the image/cue solution advantages anymore, and anyway Catraxx don't support them. Plus, I delete the many identical songs I have more than once.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Diow on 2008-01-02 02:15:49
Lossy:MP3, LAME 3.97. One file per track, ABR 266 for "classical" music (Enya, Bethoven.etc.) and "-V0 --vbr-new" to all the rest.
Lossless: APE, Extra High, one file per album + cuesheet.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Light-Fire on 2008-01-02 02:47:15
I use mp3 for lossy and Apple Lossless. Strangely Apple Lossless was not an option unlike the previous year!
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: guruboolez on 2008-01-02 03:21:29
I use mp3 for lossy and Apple Lossless. Strangely Apple Lossless was not an option unlike the previous year!

Noooooooooo! My mistake 
I don't know if it can be edited without reseting the whole poll....

EDIT: just tried: I can't edit the poll, only my first post.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: The Seeker on 2008-01-02 03:34:44
I use FLAC level 5 to archive my CDs, all kept on an external HDD. As I own an iAudio X5, I use Vorbis q5.0 for portable play and home listening.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: buktore on 2008-01-02 06:19:52
Since I Only use PC+Foobar (No DAP here. Don't ever need one) Compatibility is not my concerned. So I use Vorbis lancer build q-6 for lossy for highest quality with giving bitrate and speed. (q-4 is good enough but a just a peace of mind.) and TAK 5 for lossless.The new version usually has compression (sometime significantly with quieter music) better than APE high while still decoding a lot faster and usable not like APE more than "high" which is damn slow.

In ripping mode however, I rip them using image+cue AND use foobar to split them in to individual tracks. It's a bit tedious work but I can have backup of my disk (image cue file) and convenient of using individual tracks at the same time. If I ever need to burn it back to CD I just merge individual tracks together using foobar+image cue file to burn.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: rudefyet on 2008-01-02 09:21:55
Well, last year is was AAC since I bought a Mac, but this year I'm re-ripping everything to MP3 since I built a new PC, and want to use my music with Media Center and such.

The AAC tag extenders just don't cut it for me.

As for lossless, OptimFrog, compression to the max!
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Squeller on 2008-01-02 09:46:47
Once TAK will support seeking without seektables like WavPack, I'll consider a migration to that format.
What's the disadvantage of seektables (except for the additionally needed bytes)?
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: evereux on 2008-01-02 10:16:31
Wavpack and MP3.

I too am very interested in TAK and may make the switch this year. I would switch to AAC but my car stereo doesn't currently support it (my phone does) and I have no reason to change it ... unless there is one with gapless AAC playback?
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Bruno Monteiro on 2008-01-02 10:48:00
I voted for MP3, Wavpack and mixed settings (cue file for Wavpack and multiple files for MP3).
MP3 is the most compatible code with the software/hardware I use (VirtualDJ, PDA, my car's MP3 player) and Wavpack provides me a good storage option.
I use Lame --vbr-new -v 2 since I cannot ABX it from the original (I doubt I could even from -v 4  ) and Wavpack -hh -x1 (more than x1 is SO overkill).
Have a great year, everybody!
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: herefornow on 2008-01-02 11:18:27
Interesting poll, curious to see what everyone else is doing. Voted mp3 format for all. Have not gotten around to buying a large hd. So lossless is out of the question. Just bought a refurb Sansa e280 off ebay. May rockbox it so, I have a real reason to use other formats  . Best wishes to all for a prosperous New Year. 

cheers,
herefornow
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: halb27 on 2008-01-02 12:19:18
lossyWav + FLAC is what matches my needs perfectly for listening purposes, Monkey for archiving purposes.

I am still interested in mp3
a) because of its universal usability
b) because at a bitrate of ~250 kbps on average (which more and more users can afford) I'm sure all my quality demands can be fulfilled by a hypothetic ideal encoder, and we do have encoders which come close to that (Lame 3.98b6 -V0, but Helix and FhG @CBR256 are real good as well, with each of them having specific strengths in the various problem areas).

My feelings are also with wavPack lossy which one day - with an added quality control - may outperform the lossyWAV/FLAC combination.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: xmixahlx on 2008-01-02 23:33:18
mpc + flac + "mix of cue and tracks"

although i do use mp3 (lame) and wavpack - but not as much.


later
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: beto on 2008-01-02 23:47:34
Vorbis for new lossy encodes. All my devices support it and I am satisfied with it at 96kbps.

FLAC for new lossless encodes. I have a great deal of Wavpacks but now I choose FLAC simply because it decodes faster in my slow computer and I feel it is more widely accepted as the codec of choice for most people in the lossless scene. I do not intend to convert my Wavpacks to FLAC because I don't see the point.

One file per track for new rips because it is easier to manage and suits all my needs.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Zarggg on 2008-01-03 05:17:54
Lossy: Ogg Vorbis, though I use AAC for transferring to my portable (if I ever get around to loading Rockbox, it will be Ogg Vorbis 100%)

Lossless: WavPack. TAK isn't quite as robust as I would like yet (nor does it have the player support I need), but I'll be watching it as new versions come out.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: jmcguckin on 2008-01-03 06:05:08
my cd's are ripped to FLAC via CDex, then run thru a ReplayGain scan via foobar2000 for my lossless archive...

for my lossy library (which goes straight to my iPod) I use Nero AAC @ q0.425 and use foobar2000's Converter to run the transcoding, with a pre-conversion +1dB boost.  this puts the average bitrate of my lossy library between 128-129kbps, which for me is a good balance between quality and filesize.  I've never had any playback issues, and I'm more than satisfied with Nero AAC's performance at this quality level...
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: greynol on 2008-01-03 06:24:59
TAK isn't quite as robust as I would like yet...

Please explain what you mean.  Do you have any evidence to back this claim?
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: fj4 on 2008-01-03 07:46:32
MP3 (LAME), only because my lady is content with her iPod the way it is, she doesn't want me to Rockbox it (yet.) Otherwise, I would much prefer lossyWAV+FLAC or Ogg Vorbis.
Damn you Apple for not supporting Free codecs.

FLAC, more support than TAK and fast enough.

One track per file, why not? Keeps things simple. If I really need a hard copy (very rarely) no one I know can hear gaps in Burrrned CD's.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: probedb on 2008-01-03 10:21:35
MP3 (LAME) for lossy just because of compatibility.
FLAC for archiving and on my server for the Squeezebox since storage space isn't a problem
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Trondis on 2008-01-03 11:20:31
I voted OGG for lossy, but most of my lossy files are in Atrac3plus 64 kbs. (I use mostly Sony players.) The OGGs are for my Pocket PC. I might switch to HE-AACv2 as soon as Pocket Player supports it.

I voted Wavpack for lossless. But actually most of my archives are nrg images. I use Wavpack only for my LP rips, since it is fast, efficient, and stores the cues set in Adobe Audition. (Flac and Monkeys Audio loose the cues.) I might rip the images to Wavpack to save space later on.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Borisz on 2008-01-03 14:52:58
lame 3.97 -V 0 --vbr-new, till i get a new hd (preferably 750gb minimum), then I'll just copy over my flac backups.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: GeSomeone on 2008-01-03 15:18:17
Here we are asked for our main codecs of choice. So I chose the ones I prefer at the moment.

In my case I use Musepack (mpc) and LAME (mp3) for lossy encodes.

For lossless I try more codecs as the differences are only in the CPU load and compression ratio, not sound quality. In the last year FLAC has catched up compression wise and the speed is good too, but I'm using WavPack and TAK too.

LossyWav (with FLAC but maybe also with WavPack) is also something I'm looking into, kind of in between traditional lossy and lossless.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: UED77 on 2008-01-03 18:10:23
Once TAK will support seeking without seektables like WavPack, I'll consider a migration to that format.
What's the disadvantage of seektables (except for the additionally needed bytes)?


Upon transcoding my lossless collection, I'd prefer to do it with foobar2000, with pipe encoding. TAK currently uses a default seek table size of 8 minutes which isn't suitable for all of my music, given how with longer track lengths, seek accuracy decreases. (Info taken from TBeck (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=59331&view=findpost&p=532455)). WavPack handles this with seekpoints in the stream, and is thus much more preferable to me. TBeck stated the TAK bitstream also has such a capability, and I'll wait for this functionality to be introduced before I transcode to TAK.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: joeshrubbery on 2008-01-03 19:12:33
For lossless, TAK all the way. Compresses better than Flac and much faster than other formats when getting those kinds of compression ratios. The only thing that slowed me down at all in jumping onto this format was waiting for it to work in Foobar.

For lossy they're primarily aimed for use on my Rockboxed Sansa E260, which after playing around with several formats I eventually settled on Vorbis at Q1 (~80 kbps). MPC is lightning fast for decoding so I'm thinking should yield better battery life, but I was a bit leary of using it at the bitrates I was aiming for. Same goes for mp3. That left me waffling between Vorbis and AAC, and eventually Vorbis won out.

One track per song, it's worked fine for me for a decade of music on the PC, I've no need to change my ways in this respect. YMMV
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: greynol on 2008-01-03 19:59:48
For lossless, TAK all the way. Compresses better than Flac and much faster than other formats when getting those kinds of compression ratios.

TAK does not compress faster than Monkey's Audio at similar ratios.  If you you look at Synthetic Soul's  Lossless Codec Comparison (http://www.synthetic-soul.co.uk/comparison/lossless/) nothing compresses faster than Monkey's Audio at similar ratios.  Decompression speed is an entirely different story.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Sebastian Mares on 2008-01-03 20:36:29
I rip one file per track using dBpowerAMP. I then convert the WAV to FLAC and WMA Lossless. Finally, I import the WMA Lossless to my iTunes library and convert to AAC before I eventually delete the WMA files. The extra step with WMA Lossless is only in order to preserve tag information. I might switch to Nero AAC soon, though. I didn't check how gapless that is combined with an iPod Touch.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: BradPDX on 2008-01-03 21:06:30
Since giving up on Windows, my choices are fewer but quite satisfying.

* iTunes or Max encoding to AAC for lossy (usually 128kbps VBR). I rarely use Max because iTunes generally works perfectly.
* Apple Lossless for, well, lossless. Plays in all my stuff, supports all the iTunes tags, etc. Plays well with others.

We still have one Windows box in the house, but we just let the kids play with it. The change away from Microsoft has been refreshing and productive and I find that I don't miss EAC/FB2k one bit. Everything works and sounds just great.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Lyx on 2008-01-03 21:27:48
Its interesting to see the stats so far reflecting, that once a codec reaches a certain feature-set and "good enough" compression-efficiency, its all about hardware and software support. The ability to transfer music between a high amount of devices and use them as casette-tapes were used in the past (nearly everywhere) has a huge impact. Take AAC for example... above 128kbit, it doest really perceptually offer a big advantage over mp3...... just because of iTunes, iPod and a number of other devices, it is now gaining quite a bit of usage.

That opens up interesting questions for developers of codecs - if ones primary interest is usage-share, then would one be better advised to write plugins and tools for the codec, once it became "good enough" feature-wise? If yes, then that would mean that codec devs also need to be application-devs if they want they codec to be successful.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Marky Mark on 2008-01-04 00:40:58
Largely based on what I've learned from Hydrogenaudio, my votes are:

-MP3 (thanks to the LAME developers)
-FLAC (thanks to Josh)
-One file per track (I use folder configurations for artist/album organization (God bless foobar), and single files for tracks seem to work well for compatability purposes)

The first album I ever owned was Thriller on LP...no mp3 or FLAC.  Don't let that void my vote please. 

-Marky Mark
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Clear89 on 2008-01-04 16:09:28
  • Lossy - I use AAC. It's compatible with all my hardware, and I can push the bit rates lower to save more space.
  • Loseloss - I use FLAC. I've used it since the beginning, it's a solid format.
  • One file per CD - For organisational purposes.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: apul on 2008-01-04 18:38:30
Lossy: MP3 V0
Lossless: FLAC
One file per track

Et bonne année guru et les autres !
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: 4tified on 2008-01-04 18:52:08
Lossy: Tie Between MP3 and Atrac. MP3 is the most common at high VBR's, very easy to listen to. (plus the mass compatibity) Atrac because it sounds the best to me in lower bitrates.

Lossless: FLAC (Compression Level 8): FLAC is really good on space, decent speed encodes, and is very versitile (then again, I haven't experiemented with anything other than WAV and FLAC recently, so that's bound to change).

One file with CUE sheet: I do this for two reasons....

1. There's just the CUE sheet and the Media File...easier to manage than 10-25 files per folder (OK, so not the best reason)

2. Since I can't make up my mind whether to Append or Prepend track gaps with different CD's, I find it best to archive using the one file so that I make as many different combinations as I want....It's easier to manage the CUE sheet/media files from foobar and such....just personal preference really.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: grombulk on 2008-01-04 20:07:06
Lossy: MP3 V5 --vbr-new
for compatibility and DAPs

Lossless: FLAC --best
for longterm archiving

Rip:one file per disc with cuesheet or chapters
But not for long,
ripping is still a little problematic, I used abcde -1
single flac archives are hard to convert in Linux
for converting I still use foobar2000, runs fine in wine, but I'd rather go native
also cuesheets are not well supported in most audio-players
on the other hand rubyripper is very nice.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: xmixahlx on 2008-01-04 21:35:43
grombulk, what is the "problem" you get when converting single flac archives in linux?


later
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: kenny01 on 2008-01-04 21:53:47
My lossy format of choice is MP3 for universal compatibility -- my hardware players are old and relatively featureless, yet nonetheless they suffice for my purposes. That said, the overwhelming majority of my rips are lossless, I only encode to LAME 3.97 --vbr-new -v4 on-demand.

Lossless-wise, all my music is in WavPack High, sometimes having used -x3, sometimes having used -x6 with no real consistency (and feel no need to enforce it). Once TAK will support seeking without seektables like WavPack, I'll consider a migration to that format.

A possible reason why WavPack could've lost "market share" in the previous year is that its hardware support still lags behind that of FLAC, so users looking for hardware support that are more likely to use FLAC anyway. That leaves users looking for higher compression (than FLAC) but decent flexibility (more flexible than OptimFROG or Monkey's Audio) using WavPack (like me), yet these are the users most likely to switch to TAK eventually.

I've been using WMA standard which, for some reason, sounds very lifelike to me.  To me, there is no harshness, and the sound seems natural.  I find it amazing that besides me, only 1 other person has selected WMA.  I could understand that if it was really bad, but I can't find such a major flaw with it.  When I ABX and compare the codec to the original, it is virtually identical (128kz).  I know it's not exactly like the original, but the difference is very slight.  I'm not pushing WMA here, only commenting on my amazement that only 2 people have selected the codec.  MP3 is also excellent, but for some reason I just like the sound of WMA.  It's hard to objectively explain it, just a general feeling about the sound.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: randal1013 on 2008-01-05 04:31:23
AAC
WavPack
disc as one file w/ cuesheets
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: dutch109 on 2008-01-05 12:54:15
Lossy : MP3 -V5 and Vorbis -q2 but I voted MP3 because it provides a longer battery life on my Samsung player and I love MP3Gain.
Lossless : WavPack -hh -x (I was using Monkey's Audio two years ago but switched to WavPack)
One file per track.

The 2007 general poll was created exactly one year ago and got 921 voters ; I hope this one will last one full year as well and will reach the 1000!
Well, it is done ! 
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: guruboolez on 2008-01-05 13:08:31
Not really. Total votes / 3 = total voters (or voting people).
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: TREX6662k6 on 2008-01-05 14:37:22
Wow you see the monkeys audio drop in the graph and the gradual increase of WavPack's popularity? Then (most likely) FLAC has an update and people start jumping bandwagons.

Same with MPC (because development is dead?), looks like the majority went to MP3 and a few to Ogg.
Cool graph's.

Ogg, WavPack, 1 file.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: guruboolez on 2008-01-05 16:49:05
Last year I built my first graphs upon the 1200 (400x3) first votes and published the details (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=51493&view=findpost&p=462293)... for main lossy formats only.
We just reached the 1200 votes few minutes ago. Results could therefore be compared:


LOSSY:  1200 [400x3] first votes comparison (2007-2008)

Code: [Select]
             
            2007     2008
AAC        11.75%   18.00%
MP3        55.50%   51.25%
MPC         4.75%    6,25%
VORBIS     22.50%   20,25%

The most impressive change is for AAC which apparently gained some users coming from the MP3 and the Vorbis basis. Small progress for MPC too (SV8 effect?).



For lossless formats, I filled the table 2007 final results.

LOSSLESS: 2007 (final results) and 2008 (400 first results)

Code: [Select]
          2007     2008
FLAC     59.42%   62.50%
MONKEY    4.65%    4.00%
TAK       0.76%    7.00%
WAVPACK  21.97%   18.00%
Flac is more and more hegemonic. Nice beginning for TAK (which was in beta stage when the 2007's poll started). WavPack regress a bit more (and is now far from his peak reached in 2006).

Of course, these results only apply for a small part of hydrogenaudio's community.

Ah yes, it took 6 days to reach 1200 votes last year. This time: same score after only five days.
Next comparison: on 2008 2009, january 4th maybe
___

P.S. my 2008 votes are: AAC - Flac - 1 file per track
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: lexor on 2008-01-05 17:14:32
Ah yes, it took 6 days to reach 1200 votes last year. This time: same score after only five days.
Next comparison: on 2008, january 4th maybe

I don't understand how can next be on the 4th if you posted this on the 5th?

mp3+flac+1 file/track for music (I use aac in movies, but I see this poll as primarily music)
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: guruboolez on 2008-01-05 17:25:58
2009 of course. I'm still in 2007 in my head.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: robert on 2008-01-05 18:31:39
my votes:

- MP3, more than good enough to have my beloved music in the office and on my notebook
- I don't use lossless, I've ripped all my CDs to plain wave files on my main computer's HD
- one file per track
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Bylie on 2008-01-05 18:42:55
  • MP3 for use on my DAP (Cowon D2), transcoded on the fly from my lossless archive;
  • WavPack at the moment using settings : -hh -x1, I'm a former FLAC user but have transcoded to WavPack a couple of weeks ago;
  • One file per track fits my needs perfectly.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: krmathis on 2008-01-05 18:53:15
I don't get this!
OptimFrog s listed, but NOT Apple Lossless... Huh!

Imo this poll is pretty much worthless without listing the most popular codecs!
/me vote for resetting the poll and make it as complete as possible. 
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: guruboolez on 2008-01-05 19:13:08
As explained some days ago, I made a mistake and forgot Apple Lossless. I'm sorry. Users have therefore to vote into « other lossless codec » (category which might include few votes for shorten, LA, ATRAC Lossless or any other rare encoder).
Obviously Apple Lossless votes are comprise between 0% and 3% (2.91% ATM; 2.71% last year), which shows how popular it is here on HA.org. If the score stays the same in the next months, then my mistake wouldn't be a big problem.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: krmathis on 2008-01-05 20:14:50
Ok, I get it!
Hopefully Apple Lossless will be worthy its own place in the '2009 ripping/encoding general poll'...
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: ozmosis82 on 2008-01-05 20:45:30
Lossy: Nero AAC q0.4 (though I prefer Vorbis, personally)
Lossless: FLAC --best, one file per track

I used to use WavPack (Bryant IS a great chap) but switched to FLAC for its hardware support.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: IgorC on 2008-01-05 21:05:23
The 2007 general poll was created exactly one year ago and got 921 voters ; I hope this one will last one full year¹ as well and will reach the 1000!

...

9000 new persons are registered on hydrogenaudio's forums since last poll. I hope that many of them will answer to this new poll ...

The behavior of new  members is hardly predictable. 
2007  921 voters
2006 (lossy format poll)  971 voters http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=43254 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=43254)

It's common to see that in first day there are something like 160 votes.  Then during 2 days there are +160 votes, 4 days +160 and keep going.
First 1 day - 160 votes
Next 2 days - +160
Next 4 days - +160
Next 8 days - +160

Each time it's get twice longer period to obtain the same number of votes.
Looking at the numbers of this poll there should be something like 1000-1100 votes +/- 100-150. I know it's far from any kind of precision. 
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: krmathis on 2008-01-05 21:05:40
  • MP3
  • Apple Lossless (other lossless format)
  • One file per track
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: somemightsay on 2008-01-05 21:18:44
Voted a few days back ...

Lossy: MP3 (Lame -V2, although have been experimenting with -V0 lately). Have about 3000 songs
in the library; played on my PC or through a Soundbridge M1000 via Firefly on an NSLU2, and on the
iPod Classic 80 GB that I received for Christmas.  Also have a stack of MP3 CDs at work that I play on
an old-school Rio MP3 portable CD player. Everything is one file per track.

Lossless: Don't do lossless at the moment, but am considering trying learn how to rip to FLAC with EAC ...
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Zarggg on 2008-01-05 21:28:31
TAK isn't quite as robust as I would like yet...

Please explain what you mean.  Do you have any evidence to back this claim?

<sarcasm>I'm sorry; I didn't realize I needed to provide proof in order to use a certain encoder over another. What is the current "approved encoder" so that I can conform to your empirical standards?</sarcasm>

What I mean is that TAK does not (last I checked) support Unicode tags, which I use a lot.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Nick.C on 2008-01-05 21:40:06
TAK isn't quite as robust as I would like yet...
Please explain what you mean.  Do you have any evidence to back this claim?
<sarcasm>I'm sorry; I didn't realize I needed to provide proof in order to use a certain encoder over another. What is the current "approved encoder" so that I can conform to your empirical standards?</sarcasm>

What I mean is that TAK does not (last I checked) support Unicode tags, which I use a lot.
In which way does the lack of unicode tags make TAK not robust? What Greynol was requesting was evidence to back up your fairly ambiguous statement....
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: greynol on 2008-01-05 21:40:15
What I mean is that TAK does not (last I checked) support Unicode tags, which I use a lot.

Your concept of "robust" is interesting to say the least.

EDIT: Thanks Nick.C.  I was asking for evidence in the event that "robust" meant something that actually made sense like not being error-prone.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Keykey on 2008-01-05 21:49:49
.- MP3
.- Monkey's Audio (High)
.- Image + cue

With that and Foobar I can go to the end of the world 
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: ddawg on 2008-01-05 21:57:27
Lossy: The progress for me has been mp3 -> mpc -> vorbis -> mp3, just switching this year back to mp3. It's just easier, transparent and reasonably fast for me. I hate that I now have old lossy files from previous years that are in different formats, which I have to transcode for different portables. Damnit, should've stuck with mp3 all along.

Lossless: last year I voted for wavpack and the year before that I voted ape but now I voted I don't use lossless formats. I've just gone all mp3 now, everything in v0 and that's it. I decided that I'm not that fussy on quality.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: eevan on 2008-01-06 00:30:11
AAC (Sometimes Vorbis)
TAK
One file image
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Delerious on 2008-01-06 06:02:23
MP3 for lossy
  Flac for lossless
  Mixed on how I rip, more likely to be one file for FLAC and almost certainly one file for "Live" material.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: alvaro84 on 2008-01-06 06:10:48
Lossy: The progress for me has been mp3 -> mpc -> vorbis -> mp3


Somewhat similar here. Went back to mp3 for the sake of my cheap portable. I hope my next one will support Vorbis too and I can forget transcoding them, because these are my two main lossy formats now.
As for lossless, I quickly became a fan of TAK and converted many of my FLAC files to TAK lately - they still decode very fast and are compressed somewhat better - the difference is enough for me to make TAK look good

Anyway, according to foobar my music library consists of:

Quote
MP3 (66.4%); TAK (14.1%); FLAC (9.2%); Vorbis (6.9%); Musepack (2.0%); WavPack (0.5%); WMA (0.5%); MP2 (0.4%); DTS (0.0%)


Essentially it shows two main formats per category (MP3/Vorbis and TAK/FLAC), spiced with some more exotic formats. Lossy is still in the lead but in the last year I make my rips in lossless. And MP3 is so widely accepted that I probably can hope that I can play them after 20 years or so (but I actually do replace lossy files with lossless if I can and especially if they have audible compression artifacts (For example, I still have 128cbr files here and there)).
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Dar Li on 2008-01-06 09:42:56
Main
Lossy : MP3
Lossless : Flac , wavpack (multichannel , embed cue +pics)


However , i'd like to make 3  mentions :


With the growing storage capacities ,the split lossy/lossless is becoming less important, only the usage can determine to someone to use lossy or lossless. The main issue i see is not to choose between the two , but to convince the musical industry to release quality lossless. If the master is clipped and compressed , the lossy file will be affected even more.  Now , i'm scanning the wav's to detect clipping/compressing before taking the decision to go lossy , keep lossless or delete both. I noticed that there was nothing wrong with my lossy settings or codec quality , but the albums that sound bad are mainly because of the poor mastering.

Wavpack has a hybrid mode. One can make a lossy rip , and store also the correction. Lossy + correction can recreate the lossless file. This feature is just terrific . You can have your lossy collection at hand , archiving only the correction.  I think this is the way to go for the ideal codec in the future. I'd love to see this hybrid behavior with AAC or others.

I'm using K3b as Gui to rip and transcode. Now that kde4 will be available to windoze  too ( 4 day for now) , you will see a lot of quality unix software spreading on windoze. It would be nice to make also pool to see the Gui's people are using to rip/transcode .
My k3b settings for mp3 :
/usr/bin/lame  -V0  -q0 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2  --nogaptags --clipdetect --replaygain-accurate  -p  -h -m j  --tt %t --ta %a  --tn %n  --ty %y  --tl %m --tc formyearsonly  - %f
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Zarggg on 2008-01-06 15:03:45
EDIT: Thanks Nick.C.  I was asking for evidence in the event that "robust" meant something that actually made sense like not being error-prone.

Then I was probably using the word wrong. I meant "robust" in the "feature-rich" sense. I was under the impression that it did not support Unicode tags. If I am mistaken, I'll take another look. I'll admit that I'm a little slow when it comes to (relatively) new formats and often go based on what I hear from other people who use them.

Lossy: The progress for me has been mp3 -> mpc -> vorbis -> mp3, just switching this year back to mp3.

Similar to me, except it was MP3 --> Ogg Vorbis --> MPC --> Ogg Vorbis (--> MP3 --> AAC for portable).
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Josef Pohm on 2008-01-06 22:03:38
In my case it's:

- MP3;
- TAK;
- One file per track.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: dissociative on 2008-01-06 22:33:38
-lossy mp3
I think of MP3 as as very old wide-spreaded audio codec, the only disadvantage that I see is that it doesn't support sound sample rates such as 37800Hz or 32000Hz, I should use the sox's polyphase sample rate conversion because I'm unsure about the accuracy of the resample algorithm used in lame

-lossless: flac -V -8
for archiving I encode one file per disc with embedded cuesheet.
for casual use I encode one file per track.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Curtor on 2008-01-06 23:16:49
Lossy: Vorbis.  I still love it; what can I say?  It's a crime that development has all but vanished as I really thought it would ultimately by able to prevail.  Booo for xiph.org!  I've greatly softened up on my views of MP3 due to the tireless quality work of the LAME developers.  I'm not opposed to using it at all anymore for the sake of making life easier for friends that I send things to.

Lossless: Monkey's Audio.  I knew it's numbers would drop again this year for the same reason as Vorbis - a complete lack of development.  But it's such a fast compressor and saves me so much disk space over the other options that I can't tear myself away just yet.  FLAC has become so commonplace that I do find it useful for sharing damage-free files with people on occasion.  WavPack seems to be a victim of its own complacency; I haven't noticed them pushing hard for anything in the past year which I think has caused a lot of people's attention to drift to the more actively ambitious projects like TAK.

Ripper: EAC.  The one and only option for me.

Format: One file per song.  The most common thing I do with audio files is fire them over MSN.  Album-sized files just aren't practical nor do they offer any benefits to me.

I guess my biggest shock of the year has been the influence of the iPod on people's choices of audio formats.  I'm stunned by the power of advertising to overcome obstacles (like less-than-competitive compression, monopolistic closed-source control, poor transferability with the world at large).  One has to wonder what the world would look like if Apple had elected to be less overbearing and chosen open formats like MP3 and WavPack as the formats of choice in its world.

Always an interesting poll... thanks for doing the work on it guruboolez.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Francksoy-Wizzu on 2008-01-07 06:51:16
Lossless:
I ripped my whole CD collection to FLAC, no special reason, more like... it was the first fast thing I came across.. 

Lossy:
For my own mobile listening: Vorbis Q3 (Aotuv b5). Gapless (Very important for me! Non-gapless playing is extremely annoying!), smaller files than MP3 for similar quality, 'sound signature' more pleasant to my ears than LAME at such bitrates, VorbisGain allows easy recursive ReplayGain processing.
For friends and for demo tracks: MP3 LAME V3.98b6, Q4 or Q3.
Experimenting with Nero AAC these days. Considering the lack of any user-friendly software allowing ReplayGain processing of AAC files, I plan to stay with Vorbis and MP3.

Ripping: EAC or ECDDA. Both work with C2, EAC is more advanced but doesn't allow single-pass album cover art tagging, and ECDDA performs FLAC encoding on-the-fly which saves some time.

One file per song. I never understood the reason for single file + cue sheet, I must be stupid. 
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: TBeck on 2008-01-07 07:03:29

Once TAK will support seeking without seektables like WavPack, I'll consider a migration to that format.
What's the disadvantage of seektables (except for the additionally needed bytes)?


Upon transcoding my lossless collection, I'd prefer to do it with foobar2000, with pipe encoding. TAK currently uses a default seek table size of 8 minutes which isn't suitable for all of my music, given how with longer track lengths, seek accuracy decreases. (Info taken from TBeck (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=59331&view=findpost&p=532455)). WavPack handles this with seekpoints in the stream, and is thus much more preferable to me. TBeck stated the TAK bitstream also has such a capability, and I'll wait for this functionality to be introduced before I transcode to TAK.

From TAK's Readme (updated for the final release):

"By default a seek table for 10 minutes is beeing created. Because it requires very little space and TAK can also compress it to cope with longer files, the default setting is fine for audio files with a duration of about 1 to 80 minutes."

You will hardly notice any delay when seeking in files up to 80 minutes (or a bit more) and the compression penality for short files >= 3 Minutes will be less than 0.01 percent (for 1 minute it's about 0.02 percent).

Although i intend to implement seeking without seektable i probably will nevertheless recommend the usage of the seektable, because it will be a bit faster, especially when reading from devices with slow random access like a CD-ROM.

  Thomas
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: HQ84 on 2008-01-07 09:35:13
ummm, let's see:
Lossy: OGG Vorbis Lancer(SSE3) [20061110] (based on aoTuV b5 [20061024]) it feels to be less exrteme in clipping high freq's than LAME MP3 at times, i use the CLI for both anyway, so i always specify the desired low/high pass... MPC is pretty loveable ... i'm still waiting for the full 8 release though before using it for main lossy encoding
Lossless: Monkey Audio 4.01 (the CLI still says 3.99!!) faster and better compression than FLAC, i tried TAK for a while, still a bit expeimental i see, but wondering what WavPack has better than APE? it's not giving me better compression ratio anyway?! and APE is well-supported by Music Brains Picard, which i use as tagger, as well as the support for FLAC...
Cue: i use a mix of single file per track + Cue, and sometimes single file per CD + Cue... no specific reason!!

EAC is my only choice for ripping, and for transcoding i always use the CLI versions of whatever encoder there is, it feels much safer knowing exactly what you're doing over there

One file per song. I never understood the reason for single file + cue sheet, I must be stupid. 

Francksoy?! is that THE Francksoy from CDF  ?!
well, for me, the single file per CD+cue reigned for a while, it makes you feel more comfortable that you have an EXACT image of the CD on your HDD, and it usually keeps the pre-gaps for Track no1, if used with EAC, usually it contains nothing but silence, but sometimes it has this 2 seconds of craziness that's been added for some strange reason 
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Francksoy-Wizzu on 2008-01-07 10:09:25
Francksoy?! is that THE Francksoy from CDF  ?!
Er... yes.. we met each other there? 
Quote
well, for me, the single file per CD+cue reigned for a while, it makes you feel more comfortable that you have an EXACT image of the CD on your HDD, and it usually keeps the pre-gaps for Track no1, if used with EAC, usually it contains nothing but silence, but sometimes it has this 2 seconds of craziness that's been added for some strange reason 
I see... I guess, then, that I simply never came across a CD specifically needing an image extraction to get a guaranteed 1-1 audio copy...  Or that I missed some 'craziness' in one of these, without ever noticing it...
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Synthetic Soul on 2008-01-07 11:21:22
I guess, then, that I simply never came across a CD specifically needing an image extraction to get a guaranteed 1-1 audio copy...  Or that I missed some 'craziness' in one of these, without ever noticing it...
Very possibly.  If you have a large collection* you will no doubt have some CDs with hidden tracks at INDEX 0 of TRACK 01.  The later versions of EAC show the first track in red if a CD has one of these indices.

* My personal experience appears to indicate that approx. one CD in a hundred will have a hidden track like this.

While I'm here:
  • MP3 (LAME -V5 --vbr-new)
  • WavPack (-hm)
  • One file per album (I still think it's the easiest way to archive)
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: DARcode on 2008-01-07 13:42:19
Lossy: MP3 still does it for me, playing it safe (yup, a tad overkill in most cases) with 3.97 --pfe I can enjoy my music anywhere (DAP, CD/DVD players, mobile), I'm only waiting for a broader stand-alone CD/DVD players and DAPs support to switch to AAC.

Lossless: extremely happy with WavPack, enjoy the hybrid feature a lot, basically that's the only codec I use on the PC, tho TAK's speed is tempting.

Ripping: one file per track, I often DAP a selection of my fav songs as opposed to whole albums.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: pepoluan on 2008-01-07 17:34:11
My votes:
- Lossy: MP3
- Lossless: WavPack
- Ripping strategy: Mix

Alright... those of you who knew me will perhaps be surprised by my votes, so I think an explanation is in order...

I no longer have my iPaq 2210 (farewell, old buddy ) so I can no longer listen to Vorbis on my commutes. In addition, I also lost my Nokia 6230 (it's been really nice to me ) and am now forced to use this crappy BenQ-Siemens EF51 which only support MP3 (some AAC files I made for the 6230 indeed play, but not all. And heck I've tried making new AAC files for it, but none played).

If I can lay my hands on a device that's capable of playing Vorbis, I'll switch over to Vorbis again. But ATM, I'll have to be content with MP3.

On the lossless department, I no longer have the luxury of spending all day & night for OptimFrog compression, so I'll go with WavPack.

I have no change in ripping preference. I do Image+cue if the CD is completely gapless, or per Track if it's not. No bit-perfect obsession here 
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: greynol on 2008-01-07 17:48:46
Lossless: Monkey Audio 4.01 (the CLI still says 3.99!!)

I believe 4.01 involved GUI-related changes only, your compressed files should be exactly the same.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Francksoy-Wizzu on 2008-01-07 22:09:42
The later versions of EAC show the first track in red if a CD has one of these indices.
Thanks for this info. 
As I ripped 90% of my original CD collection (441 discs) with EAC 0.99 PB3 and never noticed a red track, I guess I haven't missed much, if any at all, which good to know. 
Maybe it's because half my collection is classical/baroque and only the other half is pop/various, which reduces the statistical odds of coming across such hidden tracks I guess... 
But enough with the Off-Topic now (sorry guys  )
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: HQ84 on 2008-01-08 08:40:36
Quote
Er... yes.. we met each other there?

ummm, i'm Headquarter84 there, well, i doubt that you might know me as we've never really discussed anything in the forums, but i've always noticed your existence anyways  glad to see some fellow freaks over here too 

and i think there's nothing i need to add about hidden tracks , Synthetic Soul have summed it all in the least number of words!!;)
though i can't deny that i haven't got ANY CD of my collection (800+ CDs) that contained anything in INDEX 0 of TR01... well, at least nothing that i checked since i started using EAC 


Quote
I believe 4.01 involved GUI-related changes only, your compressed files should be exactly the same.

i believe that to be right, at least in the case of the MAC.exe file, it's the exact same size in bytes between 4.01 & 3.99, with different creation and modification dates, don't have any tool to compare it bit-to-bit though.. but the improvements include a new version of WavPack compressor included (4.31 instead of 3.4) and the lack of RKau and Shorten encoders, all in the external folder.. as well as for the lack of the MakeAPL, QuickRenamer and the CoolEdit/Audition APE plugin, or the winamp plugin...

i've noticed that the new version of MusicBrainz Picard tagger (0.9.0) supports WavPack, maybe i should give it a second try then!! if it proves to have better compression over APE, then 2008 might become the WV year for me ... in addition to the fact that i love the red .WV foobar icon far more than the pale grey .APE one ... and i'm still using Foobar2000 v0.8.3... so i guess there's no TAK for me... at least until i feel comfortable about the new buggy 0.9.x foobar...
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Christian Schindler on 2008-01-08 11:17:59
Hi,

one question: Is HE-AAC also part of the AAC category? If yes, it is not obvious. If yes, shouldn't it be mentioned somewhere in the description?

Regards,

Christian
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: user on 2008-01-08 12:41:08
How is user's preferred way ?

Let's start with the beginning:

ripper: EAC 0.9b4 , it simply rips anything  , so no needs to update, alternatively EAC 0.95pb3 might work also.
EAC secure mode, accurate stream, no c2 usage, Test & Copy , to single tracks, EAC's non-compliant cue sheet.

ripping to 3 formats in different target bitrates & purposes at 1 time during EAC's ripping&tagging&encoding step:

by mareo.exe:

1. Lossless: FLAC (v1.2.1 at the moment) -8 -V , best compression & quick enough for P3 @ 800 MHz, Win XP.
Purpose is listening at home in HiFi, which means High Fidelity, listening music as natural as possible like played live without amplifiers, speakers.
And yes, iirc, my 1st and only Lossless encoding to Monkey's audio was a long time back,
then switched to FLAC, then had a time, when I used WavPack,
and now since some longer time already again, back to FLAC,
which I will keep as Lossless format, because it has the broadest hardware/industry device/playback devices support.
So:  No propietrary formats like SoNever, VerySmallSmooth or Oranges,
because their devices are and have been too expensive, and even too low quality, bugs and even less playback features than no-name Al-Cheapo Asian devices for USB & MP3

2. Lossy as small sized (ca. 265 kbit/s vbr bitrates averaged) and cheap backup for the Lossless, as transparent as possible, even after transcoding to mp3 or playing by Logic7/DPL2 DSPs, as Lossless replacement, in case the Lossless data is lost. Additional small = reasonable sized on laptop HD for having perfect music on the run.
My favourite is here MPC (v.1.16 atm) --quality 8 --ms 15--xlevel

3. Lossy MP3 for daily usage in noisy environments, fast food music, ie. listening in car or during running/sports outdoors.
This means MP3 Lame 3.97 (only stable versions, previously 3.90 Dibrom compile)
-V5 --vbr-new , ca. 125 - 150 k VBR.
This due to simple usage and widely support by cheap but good players like USB sticks, think of running through the woods and hills outdoors with earphones and USB-stick or connecting the USB-MP3-stick to your Kenwood car-radio system, maybe via Cassette-adapter or via FM-radio frequency, or directly via Aux connector, or directly the USB connection to modern car-radios.

Sizes are MP3 V5 ca. 130 - 135 k vbr, to MPC quality 8 ca. 265 k , to Flac Lossless 700 - 1000 k, maybe 800-900 k average, but very dependent on the albums/music collections.
This translates to sizes of MP3 Lame V5 / MPC quality 8 == 1 / 2
and
MPC quality 8 / Lossless FLAC == 1 / 3 --- 1 / 3.3
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: germanjulian on 2008-01-08 23:27:25
mp3 mp3 mp3  wohoooo

and some flac even though I only ever listen to mp3s.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Kujibo on 2008-01-09 01:24:52
I think I first started seriously ripping when Vorbis came out (at -Q6). Ripped CDs straight into Vorbis for listening off the computer.

Recently aquired a Cowon D2 so that gets Vorbis as well, but lower quality (still experimenting) ripped directly from the CDs until ...

Now also acquired a car with an MP3/WMA CD player (and no DAP or aux-in hookup). I use LAME/MP3 for it and try to target an artist's studio discography to fit on to one CD, so the quality varies as I try to maximize it by making the CD as full as possible. It's really a bit of a pain, so I've been doing a lot of experimentation and learning. As a result I've been reripping my collection to FLAC as needed (I also just bought a 1 TB drive) and then use Foobar to transcode, destructively replaygain, and make prerandomized track number ordering for burning tracks randomized (as the randomization feature in my player is a complete joke).

So lately I've been spending more time creating and listening to MP3s for lossy, but I still vote Vorbis because I still use it for the Cowon, and if I had the choice I would only use it. I use Flac because I'm well aware of it through Ogg and it is free, but I might switch if something else compressed more that was also as free to use and was reasonably standard.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Kirya on 2008-01-09 12:39:46
Glad to see that TAK is more popular than Monkey's Audio now  And this is just the beginning..
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: antman on 2008-01-09 15:04:26
For 2008:

Ripper: FB2K 0.9.5, WMEncoder 9
Lossy: WMA Standard, VBR ~80kbps
Lossless: FLAC 1.2.1B, Level 5
Ripping: One File Per Track

All WMA bashing aside, my cell phone only supports MP3 & WMA.  I can get smaller files out of WMA and my ears can't tell the difference.

Like others have posted this is around my fourth time I've changed lossy codecs.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: xmixahlx on 2008-01-09 19:32:01
Lossless: Monkey Audio 4.01 (the CLI still says 3.99!!)

I believe 4.01 involved GUI-related changes only, your compressed files should be exactly the same.


this is true


later
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: lextune on 2008-01-09 21:42:34
1. mp3

2. flac

3. One file per track

Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: singaiya on 2008-01-10 06:23:21
AAC
Tak
tracks
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Lu Tze on 2008-01-11 22:56:24
Lossy: Ogg Vorbis, because my mobile player supports it and it is just more efficient than MP3 (as well as AAC for >80kbps to my ears, but my player does not support AAC anyway), and the encoder is much faster as well.

Lossless: Monkey's Audio. FLAC compresses less good, and I see absolutely no advantage to compensate that.

Type: Per-Track. Per-CD turned out to be too much of a hassle, and with gapless playback Per-Track has no disadvantages I can think of anyway.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: chrisgeleven on 2008-01-12 00:50:58
I have decided for now my personal CD's will be in AAC 256kbps VBR encoded with iTunes. Online purchases will either be from iTunes Plus (DRM-free AAC) or Amazon's MP3 store (256kbps DRM-free MP3's), depending on price and selection.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: RandyOsbourne on 2008-01-12 02:48:25
As for lossless I used wavpack before, but now I encode anything to tak.
And I switched from mp3 to nero aac, all my devices support it.


Nero aac still currently has a bug, .m4a aac does not play on ipod shuffles...
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: collector on 2008-01-12 11:14:49
MP3 V2, file per track to listen to; for normal use and DAP
Flac -6, image per disc for the archives, although I listen to them too via cue sheets.
Combination for classical albums: one flac per composition > all movements in one flac, seperate individual movements also playable via cuesheet.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: JeanLuc on 2008-01-13 00:03:25
Lossy:

I don't do MP3 anymore for my personal archival needs (but I sometimes need MP3 for my car stereo or my girlfriend) ... since I have two iPods, I mostly use the Nero AAC encoder with foobar2000 to convert parts of my flac library to M4A. I still have lots of Lame MP3 files but I don't see myself adding new MP3 to my music collection. I use the Nero AAC encoder between 0.45 and 0.55 for transparent quality. I also bought some iTunes+ tracks from ITMS and I like the idea of high-quality and DRM-free content that can be bought from online stores ...

Lossless:

FLAC all the way ...

Ripping (archiving):

I rip the disc to HDD first as a single image & cue ... thanks to the new EAC version, I can use accuraterip for that, too. Afterwards, I mount the image with an older DaemonTools version (3.46 without SPTD) and create single files and noncompliant cuesheets for my flac library and everything else I need off that disc (like lossy tracks).

Nero aac still currently has a bug, .m4a aac does not play on ipod shuffles...


seriously ... that does not sound like a Nero AAC encoder bug to me ...
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: crystal-clear on 2008-01-13 13:07:22
I use Wavpack for lossless. I'm curious why it is losing its user?  It's better than FLAC in every ways (faster, smaller file size, etc), well, except for hardware compatibility, but I transcode them to MP3 for casual listening so it's not a problem to me
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: twostar on 2008-01-13 17:38:39
based on this (http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison#Comparison_Table), flac's only weaknesses are:
1. lack of hybrid/lossy mode
2. average compression
3. and slightly above average encoding speed

my take on flac's continued success: as HDs continue to grow, weakness number 2 will be less of a factor (except for very large audio collections). and with modern cpus encoding speed is already not a factor. also most people would use a lossy codec for use with their DAPs, so a hybrid/lossy mode is not a must have feature.

and it doesn't hurt that flac is the most compatible lossless format.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: greynol on 2008-01-13 20:21:18
flac's only weaknesses are:
I realize you're quoting from the wiki, but...

>2. average compression
Most of the data I've seen squarely places flac at below average compression when compared WavPack, Monkey's Audio and TAK.  For rock, pop, hip-hop and just about any other genre that is typically mastered with compression, flac usually places dead last.  For jazz, classical and/or older recordings with less compression flac certainly fares better.  As they say, your mileage may vary.

>3. and slightly above average encoding speed
Ranking the encoding speed without specifying the level of compression is utterly meaningless.

and it doesn't hurt that flac is the most compatible lossless format.
I think you're on to something here.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: twostar on 2008-01-13 21:02:08
>3. and slightly above average encoding speed
Ranking the encoding speed without specifying the level of compression is utterly meaningless.

on an aging athlon xp 2400, flac encodes at 19x here (http://www.synthetic-soul.co.uk/comparison/lossless/index.asp?Sort=EncodeRate&Desc=0) which is a well below average. that still should be fast enough for most people.

--adverb edit
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: greynol on 2008-01-13 21:23:26
on an aging athlon xp 2400, flac encodes at 19x here (http://www.synthetic-soul.co.uk/comparison/lossless/index.asp?Sort=EncodeRate&Desc=0) which is a bit below average.

Based on that data, 19x is well below average.

The following all give better compression than flac -8:
  • WavPack -h @43x
  • MAC Fast @52x
  • Tak -p0  @110x
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: joeshrubbery on 2008-01-13 22:43:47
on an aging athlon xp 2400, flac encodes at 19x here (http://www.synthetic-soul.co.uk/comparison/lossless/index.asp?Sort=EncodeRate&Desc=0) which is a bit below average.

Based on that data, 19x is well below average.

The following all give better compression than flac -8:
  • WavPack -h @43x
  • MAC Fast @52x
  • Tak -p0  @110x



I call shenanigans here, if you're gonna compare speeds don't be comparing FLACs slowest high compression settings with TAKs fastest low compression settings, et al.

Either  TAK -p5m vs. FLAC -8  or  TAK -p0 vs. FLAC -0  would be a fair speed test. Don't know what the settings should be for the other two encoders off the top of my head... been too long since I last used either.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: greynol on 2008-01-13 22:47:13
I call shenanigans here, if you're gonna compare speeds don't be comparing FLACs slowest settings with TAKs fastest, et al.

Ranking the encoding speed without specifying the level of compression is utterly meaningless.

The issue I was addressing concerned flac's placement regarding encoding speed and compression.

The following all give better compression than flac -8:
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Cosmo on 2008-01-13 22:51:30
101
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: greynol on 2008-01-13 22:56:39
Then lets see how the rest perform near 65.721%!
  • Tak -p0 @110x
  • WavPack @64x
  • flac -5 @53x
  • Monkey's Audio Fast @52x
At these settings, TAK, WavPack and MAC still produce smaller files than flac -5.

Now once you use flac -0, things do indeed change, but it seems most people around here don't use -0...
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=58731 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=58731)

The vast majority of people taking that poll indicate that they use -8.  Certainly it may be fast enough, but it isn't anywhere near "average" or "above average".  This is the only point I'm trying to make.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: jcoalson on 2008-01-13 23:16:35
if you're talking about why people choose a codec, I doubt that matters.  all encoders are fast enough.  encoding is done once.  flac is fastest where it matters most (decoding).  being below average in compression is not a big deal when all codecs are within a few % of each other.  I address all that here (http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html).  for a visual, here's a graph of synthetic soul's data (encoding speed v. compression ratio) without exaggerating the scale to highlight small differences:

(http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/7861/encodetk7.png)
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Curtor on 2008-01-13 23:22:01
What's really interesting to me based on this poll, is that FLAC is more dominant in the lossless category than MP3 is in the lossy one!  That seems like quite a significant milestone considering the true dominance of MP3.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: jcoalson on 2008-01-13 23:30:09
p.s. here's the decoding side:
(http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/1156/decoderj3.png)
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: greynol on 2008-01-13 23:34:40
being below average in compression is not a big deal when all codecs are within a few % of each other.
I totally agree with you.  The post that got me started said the compression was average, not below average.

flac is fastest where it matters most (decoding)
This really depends on why someone chooses to use lossless compression, but I do concede that this is a very popular reason, as is compatibilty...
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=51082 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=51082)
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: valnar on 2008-01-13 23:53:43
I rip with EAC + R.E.A.C.T. and Arcue all my CD's to FLAC image + Cue sheet.  One single file so I can recreate the original CD.  (I'm actually only 75% done with my collection as of now.  I started over 6 months ago).

I only rip to MP3 as needed from those FLAC files, which is rare since I don't have a portable music player.  I listen to most of my music at home, or take the original CD's with me in the car on any given day or mood.

Robert
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: IgorC on 2008-01-14 19:58:45
p.s. here's the decoding side:
(http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/1156/decoderj3.png)


What version of TAK it was?  There is outdated version of TAK 1.0.1 http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html (http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html)
Last  TAK 1.0.3 has higher decoding speed.  And 1.0.4 decoder will be still faster.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: greynol on 2008-01-14 20:19:06
flac has the ability to decode without checking the md5 checksum, and I believe this is what tipped the scales.  If the numbers didn't reflect this option then the differences should be more pronounced.

The graphs were from Synthetic Soul's data, and FWIW, the it primarily focuses on rock.

EDIT: From the information on his site, Synthetic Soul used TAK 1.0.2b and flac 1.2.1.  Josh has included a link to data that includes flac decoding speeds without using the md5 checksum below:
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: jcoalson on 2008-01-14 20:29:35
his current data is for tak 1.0.2b.  tak is fast but doesn't compute md5.  the flac data is the one with MD5 enabled.  with MD5 disabled (as typical in playback) flac is faster still.

http://www.synthetic-soul.co.uk/comparison...esc=0&All=1 (http://www.synthetic-soul.co.uk/comparison/lossless/index.asp?Sort=DecodeTime&Desc=0&All=1)
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: greynol on 2008-01-14 20:39:33
>tak is fast but doesn't compute md5.

TAK uses a checksum for each frame.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: jcoalson on 2008-01-14 20:54:17
so does flac, flac's md5 is a layer of checking on top of that which is useful for archival but not much for playback.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: IgorC on 2008-01-14 22:44:53
>tak is fast but doesn't compute md5.

TAK uses a checksum for each frame.


So, both FLAC (with MD5) and TAK (frame checksum) are error robust. Correct me if it's not true.
Then FLAC should have MD5 enabled for comparison.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Synthetic Soul on 2008-01-14 22:51:14
EDIT: From the information on his site, Synthetic Soul used TAK 1.0.2b and flac 1.2.1.  I recall him doing additional testing since, but am currently searching for more specifics.
I did finish tests on 1.0.3b1 in late December, but what with Christmas, and then me being away for over a week, I totally forgot about it.  I'll try to get the 1.0.3b1 data up soon.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: greynol on 2008-01-14 22:54:35
So, both FLAC (with MD5) and TAK (frame checksum) are error robust. Correct me if it's not true.
Then FLAC should have MD5 enabled for comparison.

Based on what Josh is saying, flac does not need to compute an md5 checksum to be on par with TAK.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: TBeck on 2008-01-14 23:05:11
EDIT: From the information on his site, Synthetic Soul used TAK 1.0.2b and flac 1.2.1.  I recall him doing additional testing since, but am currently searching for more specifics.
I did finish tests on 1.0.3b1 in late December, but what with Christmas, and then me being away for over a week, I totally forgot about it.  I'll try to get the 1.0.3b1 data up soon.

Thank you so much! 

It's great for me to have such a trustable source for TAK evaluations!

So, both FLAC (with MD5) and TAK (frame checksum) are error robust. Correct me if it's not true.
Then FLAC should have MD5 enabled for comparison.

Based on what Josh is saying, flac does not need to compute an md5 checksum to be on par with TAK.

Since we are currently a bit nit-picking: TAK's frame checksum is 24 bit, FLAC's 16 bit... But this shouldn't affect the speed, but only the error detection strength.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Synthetic Soul on 2008-01-15 13:58:50
I call shenanigans here, if you're gonna compare speeds don't be comparing FLACs slowest high compression settings with TAKs fastest low compression settings, et al.

Either TAK -p5m vs. FLAC -8 or TAK -p0 vs. FLAC -0 would be a fair speed test. Don't know what the settings should be for the other two encoders off the top of my head... been too long since I last used either.
It's funny what people will call 'fair'.  As greynol pointed out, we cannot compare like for like when it comes to compression, as FLAC and TAKs compression range, for my data, do not intersect.  In order for FLAC to compete, with comparitive compression, we must use its slowest settings.  You need a constant in order to compare the other aspects - i.e.: compression must be constant to properly compare encoding and decoding speed, or encoding speed must be constant to properly compare compression.

Out of interest:

TAK -p5m vs. FLAC -8 (vs. WavPack -hhx3)
Code: [Select]
              %       E       D
TAK     63.532%     10x     93x
FLAC    65.476%     19x    120x
WV      64.378%      4x     58x

TAK -p0 vs. FLAC -0 (vs. WavPack -f)
Code: [Select]
              %       E       D
TAK     65.281%    110x    129x
FLAC    70.674%    134x    141x
WV      66.741%     73x    103x

Note that TAK ranges 63.532-65.281% and FLAC ranges 65.476-70.674%.

Perhaps we should consider default values:

Code: [Select]
                 %       E       D
FLAC       65.721%     53x    124x
MA         63.793%     41x     38x
TAK        64.093%     62x    113x
WavPack    65.582%     64x     88x

Now once you use flac -0, things do indeed change, but it seems most people around here don't use -0...
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=58731 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=58731)

The vast majority of people taking that poll indicate that they use -8. Certainly it may be fast enough, but it isn't anywhere near "average" or "above average". This is the only point I'm trying to make.
I find it very interesting that the majority (59%) of FLAC users are using -8, and 97% of users who voted use -5 or over.  It shows that these "negligable" values are... well, not so negligable.

if you're talking about why people choose a codec, I doubt that matters. all encoders are fast enough. encoding is done once. flac is fastest where it matters most (decoding). being below average in compression is not a big deal when all codecs are within a few % of each other.
We must also remember that really fast decoding speeds are irrelevant, when restricted by I/O.  I changed my reported values from global time to processing time as I was seeing major drop-offs in speed due to hardware restraints.  Anything over 60x was being noticeably affected, and nothing could get much past 80x.

All said and done, I agree with the majority that there is little between the major codecs.  It should come down to feature set, compatibility, error tolerance, etc.  TAK is still in its early stages, yet it is already proving to be a strong contender.  WavPack is a superb, easy to use, all-round codec with a fantastic feature set.  FLAC is robust, fast and proven, and it will take some change for it to be toppled from its current position.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: IgorC on 2008-01-15 18:03:55
We must also remember that really fast decoding speeds are irrelevant, when restricted by I/O. I changed my reported values from global time to processing time as I was seeing major drop-offs in speed due to hardware restraints. Anything over 60x was being noticeably affected, and nothing could get much past 80x.

Excelent. It will be more usefull to see the numbres under real conditions.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: TBeck on 2008-01-18 06:39:46

EDIT: From the information on his site, Synthetic Soul used TAK 1.0.2b and flac 1.2.1.  I recall him doing additional testing since, but am currently searching for more specifics.
I did finish tests on 1.0.3b1 in late December, but what with Christmas, and then me being away for over a week, I totally forgot about it.  I'll try to get the 1.0.3b1 data up soon.

Thank you so much! 

It's great for me to have such a trustable source for TAK evaluations!

Thanks for the update!

Some comments (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=59711&view=findpost&p=542173) in the TAK 1.0.3 thread.

  Thomas
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Engywuck on 2008-01-18 14:49:36
another question...
when I look at the graph for lossy codecs I see a gigantic surge in 2003 for Musepac, with continuous decline for it afterwards.

Why did it have such great figures then? New codec version released shortly before? Some other super-duper-hype?
And what's the final reason for it's constant decline afterwards? LAME getting so much better?

BTW: I voted for FLAC/MP3/by file
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Brent on 2008-01-19 13:24:08
Lossy is a difficult problem, because as a whole it's depricated to me in favor of lossless (FLAC). But if I would choose a lossy format, it would be whatever AoTuV's latest Vorbis build would be, because it's free (OS) and good. Yet, if lossy is required, I nearly always choose MP3, because it's a) good enough (V5 or something) b) play's _everywhere_ and it on the virge of being patent and license free too.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: shadowking on 2008-01-19 14:06:50
another question...
when I look at the graph for lossy codecs I see a gigantic surge in 2003 for Musepac, with continuous decline for it afterwards.

Why did it have such great figures then? New codec version released shortly before? Some other super-duper-hype?
And what's the final reason for it's constant decline afterwards? LAME getting so much better?

BTW: I voted for FLAC/MP3/by file


Musepack started as a more efficient vbr solution at the time to mp3. AAC and vorbis were still maturing. Lack of development for some time, missing seeking, compatibility worries drove more and more people away. This is in conjunction to maturation of other codecs and lossless encoding. In the last 2 years there are more hardware playback options available, good seeking and development has picked up again. its really not much less supported than aac if you forget the ipod.

Biggest problem ?

- Needs a return to its roots. Currently MPC serves mostly as a transcoding hack from --insane --braindead.  Instead, We should rockbox a device, buy a Cowon, stop transcoding and return to efficient size and great quality for --standard and --extreme.

-  There has been no psymodel adjustments for years. Issues are minor but Klemm or someone alike is ultimately needed.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: sh1leshk4 on 2008-01-21 13:22:00
For lossless now I choose TAK over WavPack, due to speed and compression reasons.
I don't care about compatibility since it's only for archival and local playback (on my PC); for portables I use lossy.
Still waits until it's ready to be open-sourced and then ported over to *nix systems, though.

Subjectively speaking (which means for my ears only), for quality reasons now I choose AAC over MP3 for lossy.
With AAC I can accept ~128kbps while with MP3 a -V2 setting is a minimum requirement.
Back then I'm with Vorbis (aoTuV was the only reason I stick with it) but in general I've moved over from that one.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: jcoalson on 2008-01-21 18:45:32
EDIT: From the information on his site, Synthetic Soul used TAK 1.0.2b and flac 1.2.1.  I recall him doing additional testing since, but am currently searching for more specifics.
I did finish tests on 1.0.3b1 in late December, but what with Christmas, and then me being away for over a week, I totally forgot about it.  I'll try to get the 1.0.3b1 data up soon.

updated my comparison too, to tak 1.0.3b and ape 4.01.  tak turbo seems about 5% faster than version 1.0.1 on this corpus
http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison_all_cpudectime.html (http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison_all_cpudectime.html)
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: TBeck on 2008-01-21 22:24:15
...
updated my comparison too, to tak 1.0.3b and ape 4.01.  tak turbo seems about 5% faster than version 1.0.1 on this corpus
http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison_all_cpudectime.html (http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison_all_cpudectime.html)

Thank you! That's very interesting for me, because your file sets differs very much from Synthetic Soul's.

For the decoding speed: The increase from V1.0.1 to 1.0.3 is about 15 percent on a P3. Since TAK isn't using any P3 specific instructions, i assume the slower L2-Cache of your P2 is the reason for the smaller increase in your test.

Could you please also include TAK's strongest mode -p5/-p5m (aka "Insane")? This was -p4 in TAK 1.0.1, but TAK 1.0.2 inserted the new turbo preset...

  Thomas
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: jcoalson on 2008-01-22 07:47:27
added graphs: http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html (http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html) (scroll down)
will add tak insane as soon as the run finishes.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: TBeck on 2008-01-22 18:01:09
will add tak insane as soon as the run finishes.

Thanks.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: IgorC on 2008-01-24 15:16:46
added graphs: http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html (http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html) (scroll down)
will add tak insane as soon as the run finishes.

Is something wrong with numbers of highest ratios? http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison_all_ratio.html (http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison_all_ratio.html)

Tak 1.0.3b (insane max)        383.78 MB  50.60%
Monkey's Audio 4.01 (insane) 381.79 MB   50.65%
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: jcoalson on 2008-01-24 16:11:16
no, average ratio is used instead of overall ratio to keep longer tracks from having too much influence.  see also http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html (http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html)

the inversion is due to ape insane doing much better on the long indian classical track.
http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison__l_..._sivapriya.html (http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison__l_sub_raga_sivapriya.html)
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: NetRanger on 2008-01-24 16:45:41
Lossy: MP3 -V0

Lossless: FLAC Q8

One file/track
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: IgorC on 2008-01-25 00:26:18
no, average ratio is used instead of overall ratio to keep longer tracks from having too much influence.  see also http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html (http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html)

the inversion is due to ape insane doing much better on the long indian classical track.
http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison__l_..._sivapriya.html (http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison__l_sub_raga_sivapriya.html)

Thanks. Got it.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: VCSkier on 2008-01-26 19:38:04
Back when I was active on these forums, I was a committed Wavpack user, and I used LAME to encode my local mp3 files.  Since I because a linux user almost two years ago, I've switched to FLAC and OGG.  CD's that I want to archive for potential reproduction, I use K3B to rip to a FLAC image with a cuesheet.  For playback, I rip my cd's to ogg files (one per track).  I really enjoy this method, as all native linux tools very comfortable and naturally handle the FLAC and Vorbis formats, and integration is excellent.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: A_Man_Eating_Duck on 2008-01-28 06:36:11
@VCSkier

Did you ever find a linux player that fully supported CUE+FLAC's?
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: VCSkier on 2008-01-30 14:23:06
@VCSkier

Did you ever find a linux player that fully supported CUE+FLAC's?

Nope.  But K3B rips and burns them.  Maybe someday, but in the meantime, I have no problem just using my vorbis track-files for playback. 
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Daniel Beaver on 2008-02-07 20:35:24
Oh, I suppose I will throw in my two cents.

My music is 58.8% mp3 and 41.2% aac. ABX tests on my part revealed that a -V5 (128k) mp3 sounds transparent to me when listening through my sennheiser 497 headphones connected to my laptop (the best audio equipment that I own). Therefore, Mp3 is "good enough" for my uses. Given that, it is somewhat irrelevant to me what lossy format I use, as long as my player supports it.

I keep a flac backup of all my CD's on an external hard drive. I don't put much thought into lossless formats, since for me there are no practical differences between them (foobar plays all of them, and the compression ratios are similar).

The huge drop in Musepack usage is interesting. I would guess that has to do with the lack of hardware support, and also because rockbox-supported players are getting old.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: S-12 on 2008-02-17 03:21:30
It's very interesting to see the trends over the past five years of these polls.  The first time I ever voted in one here, MPC and Vorbis numbers were essentially reversed from where they are so far in this poll - MPC was holding steady in second place behind MP3, while Vorbis was gradually inching up from about 1/3 the number of MPC's votes.  And look at them today: Vorbis has gained a dramatically increased user base, and FLAC seems to have steadily (though more gradually) increased in popularity from 5 years ago as well.

I'd attribute the success of Ogg Vorbis to (a) continued hardware support year-to-year, and (b) steady, continual development improving the quality of the format, helped well along by its open source status.  Nowadays I use Lancer -q5 exclusively for my lossy encoding.  Even problem samples like Fatboy are transparent to me in casual listening now with the latest encoder version - a far cry from prior releases.  Or maybe it's just because my ears, being now middle-aged, can no longer discern variances as well as they once could.  But regardless, I still want to thank everyone who has continued to put their time and effort into Vorbis development since its inception.

I voted for Vorbis (all of my hardware devices are compatible with it), FLAC (likewise) and one file per CD track.  There's an exception to the latter, though, for tracks which in my opinion "always go together", such as INXS ~ Need You Tonight/Mediate, The Cars ~ Shoo Be Doo/Candy-O, and some Pink Floyd tracks including ABitWp1/HDooL/ABitWp2 and Empty Spaces/Young Lust.

Soon after I began here in 2002 I encoded my collection into FLAC (v1.0.8, I believe) for lossless reference and Vorbis (first Xiph v1.0, then GT3b1) for portability.  I've re-encoded a few times since, mostly because of an interest in various psychoacoustic encoding formats during the time I was participating heavily in RA's listening tests.  But, for the most part, I haven't strayed from that initial, successful formula.  It's served my needs very well in the years I've used it so far.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: The Sheep of DEATH on 2008-02-21 21:42:44
The lossy graph is quite interesting.  It shows MPC (with nearly 50% userbase) getting replaced by MP3 (now it has the 50% userbase), with everything else more or less flat, staying the same over the years.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Lyx on 2008-02-21 22:03:09
A general trend appears to be, that there are roughly two kinds of groups on ha.org. Those who go for the most practical and sophisticated solution (MP3, FLAC) and geeks/early adopters. For the first group, maturity, support and compatibility are most important. The second group instead is interested about technical advantages - no matter how minor or if they are practically relevant - and simply playing with the bleeding edge.... they will without hesistation jump ship if a codec starts to stagnate or mature (no visible active development and new toys to play with). For example, the usage-share of vorbis is equivalent to the activity in vorbis development. WavPack users jump ship to TAK, because TAK is "newer", has more rapid development and (practically minor) technical advantages.

As so often, even though there are "middleground codecs", there do not seem to be many "middleground users". Both WavPack and Vorbis could be considered to be a compromise between the two mentalities - yet, their userbase is mostly geeks/early adopters which now jump ship.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Scott (scott_dft) on 2008-02-29 13:37:29
AAC as m4a all the way, entirely due to Sony and Coca-Cola.

Why Coca-Cola? Well from various promotions, was able to amass a load of free i-tunes credit. At the same time, about a year ago, got the Sony Ericsson W810i. Excellent music phone, with AAC/m4a support (can't remember off the top of my head if it has support for HE-AAC). From then on was hooked on i-tunes, especially as a little sprinkling of magic dust turns m4p to m4a for the phone.

Found AAC @ 192 pretty much transparent to my ears, even through a fair quality hi-fi system. So all the CDs get ripped at this. I now have a 2Gb card for the w810i and usually just hold a collection of favourites on it, rotated about every couple of months, so the large file sizes are not an issue.

While all these other codecs have merits, I have to agree with several earlier posters and say that if you find a practical solution why not stick with it (even if your interest it the codec was borne out of brain-washing marketing by capitalist american companies  ). Even managed to (pretty-much) shoe-horn AAC into Windows Media Player / Media Centre!

Just one last point: if I was being honest, I could class myself as an Apple-hater, so my options are not due to any allegiance to Apple. Indeed I am pleased at the continued development to take AAC beyond Apple and the i-pod.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: MetalheadGautham on 2008-03-06 04:32:18
I prefer ogg vorbis and musepack for lossy ripping, but due to the abundant bitrate choice in vorbis, its my winner

flac and wavpack again have a tie in lossless, but as flac is more supported, it wins

I don't like cue sheet + single file ripping. Instead, I prefer indivudual files, playlist files and gapless playback amarok
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: birdie on 2008-03-09 09:08:55
Lately I primarily do not encode at all since I mostly download from the Internet where two most popular formats are MP3 and FLAC.

If I happen to rip audio CDs then I prefer FLAC or WMA if I decide to go lossless and Ogg Vorbis @q9 if I want to conserve the HDD free space.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: poppy10 on 2008-03-15 18:27:15
No point ripping to obscure formats. I need to be able to play my music on the maximum possible variety of devices, hence mp3 (lame 3.98b6 V 4) and FLAC all the way.

It's a bit sad to see MPC and Monkey's Uudio drop all the way from 50% down to 4-5% over the years. Guess they have just withered away and died 
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: weirving on 2008-03-29 00:30:00
Found AAC @ 192 pretty much transparent to my ears, even through a fair quality hi-fi system.

While all these other codecs have merits, I have to agree with several earlier posters and say that if you find a practical solution why not stick with it (even if your interest it the codec was borne out of brain-washing marketing by capitalist american companies  ). Even managed to (pretty-much) shoe-horn AAC into Windows Media Player / Media Centre!

Just one last point: if I was being honest, I could class myself as an Apple-hater, so my options are not due to any allegiance to Apple. Indeed I am pleased at the continued development to take AAC beyond Apple and the i-pod.


I also resist drinking Steve Jobs' koolaid. But given a preference, I would use AAC instead of MP3 too. I also have experimented with the directshow AAC plugins for Windows Media Player. But my primary media player is still Foobar2000.

So why do I stick with MP3, though I think it is old-tech, outmoded, and at least slightly inferior to AAC or OGG? My car, damn it! And my portable. Both support MP3. NEITHER supports AAC or OGG. MP3 might be old and refined to the end of its potential, but it is a standard that everybody supports. Until that starts to change in a significant way, I have to stay with MP3. For archiving, it's FLAC images and cue sheets for me!
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: houyhnhnm on 2008-06-07 06:17:18
The 2007 general poll was created exactly one year ago and got 921 voters ; I hope this one will last one full year as well and will reach the 1000!

1100 voters now! 

(http://img76.imageshack.us/img76/1576/lossyln8.th.png) (http://img76.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lossyln8.png)

(http://img77.imageshack.us/img77/4750/losslessvw4.th.png) (http://img77.imageshack.us/my.php?image=losslessvw4.png)
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Synthetic Soul on 2008-06-07 09:46:24
Thanks for the graphs.

It's interesting to plot the resurgence of MP3 - mainly to the detriment of Musepack - although all codec's user bases are obviously suffering from MP3's dominance in the marketplace.

I suppose the same could be said for FLAC.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: houyhnhnm on 2008-06-07 15:01:16
I suppose the same could be said for FLAC.

So do I. As a matter of course, which song to listen is important to most people and they don't want to be worried about which codec to use.

I don't know what should determine the popularity, but I hope some people think "Popularity is not necessarily a reason for choosing a codec." Shares are just results of choices.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: The_Cisco_Kid on 2008-06-22 06:41:48
After going through ape and flac, I am now using wavpack in the hybrid mode for all archives.
My audio website uses just the lossy hybrid files for shorter files, and Ogg-Vorbis for longer (5-10+ minutes) bits encoded at ''-q -0.21'' .  Works quite well when encoding mono recordings frequently more than 60 years old, and gives a comparable size with much better audio quality to my ears when compared to the hundreds of 32 kbps OTR MP3s that I have collected over the years.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Kitsuned on 2008-07-18 20:57:21
I use FLAC -5 for my cds.  I put them on an external drive which I sometimes will turn off, depending on how hot it is.  For my portable, I use Lame's mp3 encoder at -V3 for a nice balance between quality and size.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: waltereegho on 2008-08-31 22:20:12
Ogg Vorbis, FLAC lvl8 and multiple file ripping for me. I'm not a fanboy though, as long as lossless remains lossless and lossy has a good compression . I despise Itunes formats like m4p and m4a.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: DonP on 2008-12-05 13:56:21
Thanks for the graphs.

It's interesting to plot the resurgence of MP3 - mainly to the detriment of Musepack - although all codec's user bases are obviously suffering from MP3's dominance in the marketplace.


Now that I have a portable that plays Musepack I'm using it more, but most of my stuff is in vorbis.

For podcasts and audiobooks I've been using speex.  Can't beat ~5 MB/hour.
Title: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll
Post by: Synthetic Soul on 2009-01-01 15:54:29
Happy New Year everyone!

This poll is now closed; please vote in the 2009 poll (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=68338).