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Poll

What's your *main lossy* format of choice?

MP3
[ 681 ] (56.1%)
Ogg Vorbis
[ 214 ] (17.6%)
AAC (MP4, M4A, AAC)
[ 198 ] (16.3%)
MPC
[ 46 ] (3.8%)
WMA Standard or PRO
[ 3 ] (0.2%)
Atrac (any version)
[ 2 ] (0.2%)
WavPack lossy
[ 8 ] (0.7%)
LossyWAV + lossless
[ 6 ] (0.5%)
other lossy format
[ 0 ] (0%)
I don't use lossy AT ALL!
[ 55 ] (4.5%)

Total Members Voted: 1308

Topic: 2008 ripping/encoding general poll (Read 295644 times) previous topic - next topic
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2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #75
AAC (Sometimes Vorbis)
TAK
One file image
If age or weaknes doe prohibyte bloudletting you must use boxing

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #76
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.

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #77
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)).

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #78
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

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #79
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).

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #80
In my case it's:

- MP3;
- TAK;
- One file per track.

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #81
-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.

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #82
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.

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #83
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. 

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #84

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). 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

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #85
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 

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #86
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...

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #87
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)
I'm on a horse.

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #88
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.
WavPack 5.6.0 -b384hx6cmv / qaac64 2.80 -V 100

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #89
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 

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #90
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.

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #91
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  )

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #92
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...

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #93
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

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #94
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

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #95
mp3 mp3 mp3  wohoooo

and some flac even though I only ever listen to mp3s.

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #96
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.

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #97
Glad to see that TAK is more popular than Monkey's Audio now  And this is just the beginning..
Thinking Outside The Box

2008 ripping/encoding general poll

Reply #98
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.