HydrogenAudio

Hope nobody minds me posting this poll, I didn't see anything similar elsewhere on the board, but if this has already been posted up -- sorry! Seeing as there is so many choices of audio format I wondered what is being used most.



EDIT:

[span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%']  MP4 means AAC/MP4 - it was my mistake for not putting these on the same line as intended. [/span]

I use [span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%']format c:[/span]

 

I guess there hasn't been one of these polls too recently, anyway.  But $20 says Roberto comes by any minute with a snide remark:  "Not another codec poll?!?!?"   

But seriously...Vorbis (Post 1.0 CVS) floats my boat just fine right now.  My next change will be when I get a much larger HDD in my PC and car, and it will be to FLAC.


Edit:  Interesting...6 votes so far, and none are MP3'ers.  Vorbis: 2, Musepack: 4.

It was a poll like this one year ago. But anyway, it's nice to see the results these year.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=2404& (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=2404&)

I was using mp3 in the previous poll. Now I have more mpc files than mp3's. And I have re-rip all my albums in mpc.

Cool. As I said, I didn't see anything like this poll around at the moment, and I'm still a baby on this board so I didn't get to see the poll last year. Thanks for the link Pri3st.

For what it's worth, I voted for MPC, but like ScorLibran I'll definately go down the lossless route once HD space permits.

AAC 4 me, becuase It's flexible, and It does what I want from a lossy codec. I want all of you try to encode some files with this codec, you'll never regret, cuz It's a high quality and It's becoming very supported... that, for me, is enough. I don't even use lossy codec, I use Flac, but I like to transcode to AAC and share.

It's a pitty I'm the fist who voted for AAC 

Ogg kicks a$$!

Since few days MPC for HQ    Vorbis for the rest

if i need lossy compression i use vorbis -q6. no windows tuned garf version, no tweaked commandline options. it's pretty cool for nearly every situation and his firm sound is really a tradeoff to listen music on ultra low quality pc speakers and hq headphones.

for cd quality or archiving audio material flac is my choice.

BadHorsie

AAC 4 me, becuase It's flexible, and It does what I want from a lossy codec. I want all of you try to encode some files with this codec, you'll never regret, cuz It's a high quality and It's becoming very supported... that, for me, is enough. I don't even use lossy codec, I use Flac, but I like to transcode to AAC and share.

It's a pitty I'm the fist who voted for AAC 

I agree that from my experience with AAC it IS mighty impressive, but as I'm only a couple of days into this format I couldn't really judge it fully yet. I do intend to to experiment more with it in the future since my friend porcuhead hooked me up with all the goodies... (thanks mate)

So, how about quality settings for AAC - what's the equivalent to something like LAME --ape or MPC --quality 6/7?

@deeswift:  BTW, MP4 is not an audio encoding format, it's a container format.  MP4 can hold AAC encoded audio streams, for instance, but it can hold other types of data as well.  It's like Ogg, in that respect.  (Unless I'm mistaken on this.)

But you have the "big four lossy's" represented, so that's what's important.  Oh except for WMA...but then again, who cares about Microsoft's limited, proprietary format, anyway?

DAMN! My stupid mistake -- it was supposed to be AAC / MP4 on the same line but I don't think I can change it. Hold up...

EDIT: Nope, can't change it. Maybe a moderator can.

Agreed about WMA, there was little point in including this.

DAMN! My stupid mistake -- it was supposed to be AAC / MP4 on the same line but I don't think I can change it. Hold up...

You can't change the poll itself, but edit your first post in the thread and put in large letters [ size = 5 ] at the top something like...

[span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%']In the poll, MP4 means AAC/MP4[/span]

...so people will see it before they vote.

I agree that from my experience with AAC it IS mighty impressive, but as I'm only a couple of days into this format I couldn't really judge it fully yet. I do intend to to experiment more with it in the future since my friend porcuhead hooked me up with all the goodies... (thanks mate)

So, how about quality settings for AAC - what's the equivalent to something like LAME --ape or MPC --quality 6/7?

I really can't tell if there is a profile which can equal MPC or MP3 presets, but you could try Nero's encoder  B) (beacuse It supports batch encoder, which is very useful, and It has profiles) and use "transparent profile", or higher, you'll get very much quality than Quicktime CBR (technically speaking  ) at very good file sizes. I think Nero's encoder is MY best choice, so wouldn't give it a try?

Interesting.  I wonder... rjamorim's tests have shown AAC to beat Ogg Vorbis time and again.  So why is Vorbis more popular?

My guess is that the best AAC verisions aren't free (legally).
Anyone else have a theory or guess?

Well, maybe:
- scales well to low bitrates
- open-sourceness, portability of the tools

I archive with Monkey's Audio (*.ape) and playback with Ogg Vorbis (*.ogg).

Interesting.  I wonder... rjamorim's tests have shown AAC to beat Ogg Vorbis time and again.  So why is Vorbis more popular?

My guess is that the best AAC verisions aren't free (legally).
Anyone else have a theory or guess?

For me it's about hardware compatibility.  The only non-DRM, gapless, lossy format compatible with all of my platforms is Vorbis.

If AAC would work in my car, I'd pay for an AAC encoder.


Edit:  Oops...AAC is not gapless, huh?  Then scratch that.  The moment they re-write AAC from the beginning and make it natively (portably) gapless, then I'll consider it. 

Quote

DAMN! My stupid mistake -- it was supposed to be AAC / MP4 on the same line but I don't think I can change it. Hold up...

You can't change the poll itself, but edit your first post in the thread and put in large letters [ size = 5 ] at the top something like...

[span style='font-size:12pt;line-height:100%']In the poll, MP4 means AAC/MP4[/span]

...so people will see it before they vote.

hehe... done.

Quote from: sthayashi,Sep 30 2003, 01:38 PM

Edit:  Oops...AAC is not gapless, huh?  Then scratch that.  The moment they re-write AAC from the beginning and make it natively (portably) gapless, then I'll consider it.   

You're kidding!!? I thought it WAS gapless.

Quote

I agree that from my experience with AAC it IS mighty impressive, but as I'm only a couple of days into this format I couldn't really judge it fully yet. I do intend to to experiment more with it in the future since my friend porcuhead hooked me up with all the goodies... (thanks mate)

So, how about quality settings for AAC - what's the equivalent to something like LAME --ape or MPC --quality 6/7?

I really can't tell if there is a profile which can equal MPC or MP3 presets, but you could try Nero's encoder  B) (beacuse It supports batch encoder, which is very useful, and It has profiles) and use "transparent profile", or higher, you'll get very much quality than Quicktime CBR (technically speaking  ) at very good file sizes. I think Nero's encoder is MY best choice, so wouldn't give it a try?

I will indeed try NERO, I have v6 on here but if AAC really isn't gapless I'm not even gonna consider it! I NEED gapless. I mean, how could I listen to something like Marvin Gaye's What's Going On album with GAPS!!? It would completely ruin it, as mp3 does.

Heh.. seems like we're getting almost as bad as slashdot here...

Check these threads please:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....aac,and,gapless (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=7787&hl=aac,and,gapless)
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....aac,and,gapless (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=12827&hl=aac,and,gapless)

In short, gapless AAC is possible, and it is supported by Nero AAC in the latest versions of Nero.

. I mean, how could I listen to something like Marvin Gaye's What's Going On album with GAPS!!? It would completely ruin it, as mp3 does.

This is a little off topic for the poll, but if you encode a whole album into 1 mp3 file, and then use one of the splitter programs,  will they split on frame boundaries, thus giving you gappless mp3?

Quote

Edit:  Oops...AAC is not gapless, huh?  Then scratch that.  The moment they re-write AAC from the beginning and make it natively (portably) gapless, then I'll consider it.  

You're kidding!!? I thought it WAS gapless. 

Nero AAC, anyway, may not be gapless "everywhere you play it" because it requires specific decoder support for gapless playback.  This thread (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=12827&st=0&) describes the capabilities of Nero 6.0.0.15 in this regard.  Then again, Vorbis wouldn't be gapless on a player that didn't do pre-buffering (to handle it's somewhat demanding overhead for real-time playback), so there are always exceptions.

As for QT AAC, I'm not so sure.  I was thinking more about HE AAC.


Edit: From this post (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=12827&view=findpost&p=130538) in the same thread, it looks like QT AAC is not gapless yet.

[span style='font-size:7pt;line-height:100%']Multiple edits...running in horror from the "slashdot effect"[/span] 

I still generally prefer MP3 because of greater support and better tuned codecs.  With today's hard drives, you can easily rip at 256k or more.

However I am using Vorbis more than I used to.  I'd use vorbis even more if 1) they'd update it / tune it, 2) more support in audio programs (MusicMatch, etc.)

Anyway, I voted Vorbis.

Hi folkz,
as anybody knows here at hydrogen i'm an psytel 2.15 aac man. nothing comes closer to original in lossy format. especially the aac hq presets ultra+ archive. new nero don't have any chance against, though it's mostly based on the psytel code and developed by the same man. also mpc (a lot of great stuff is available) is really good soundin at hq (q7 insane or Q8 braindead.) and worth to store in hq lossy format (if not available in .aac)  i rebuild my huge musiclib the last 5 months and deleted tons of mp3 albums by rippin albums into aac or getting stuff by friends in mpc.  ogg or mp3 don't interest me anymore.
in lossless i think the ape is the most prefered at the time and if i have enough hd space one day i will rebuild my lib once again in ape. but till those days i'm very satisfied with psytel aac or for second mpc.

shine on

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

as anybody knows here at hydrogen i'm an psytel 2.15 aac man.

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

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

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

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

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

It's all about portability!  (w00t)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks Garf!

AAC all the way - iPod baby!

Heh.. seems like we're getting almost as bad as slashdot here...

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

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

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

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

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

I vote for Wavpack lossy!

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

Roll on Wavpack 4...

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

I didn't vote cause I actually prefer to listen to the ape or flac files.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some reasons... (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=12436&view=findpost&p=131178)

Here are some reasons... (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=12436&view=findpost&p=131178)

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

Oh well..

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

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

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

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

Quote

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

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

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

In case you haven't seen it yet, check out the Vorbis hardware wiki (http://wiki.xiph.org/VorbisHardware).

Quote

Here are some reasons... (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=12436&view=findpost&p=131178)

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

Oh well..

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

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

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

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

Quote

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm currently using mpc -q5. I would like to switch to aac so I can play them in an Ipod that I might get...  but i'm can't seem to figure out how to tag them. I found this (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=13914&) topic but it wasn't really helpful to me.

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

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

Thx!  But don't go to trouble just for me.      Trying a few different bitrates, though, may provide some valuable info concerning the capabilities of the Neuros with Vorbis playback.

Here are some specifics that I ran into with Vorbis decoding on extended tests with the Kenwood Music Keg using the Tremor decoder libs (HA and LA).  Among my test tracks, a couple that "broke" at the lowest nominal bitrates were Fatboy Slim's Kalifornia (surprise?) and Acid 8000.  When encoded with fractional quality levels above 4.00, these tracks would begin to skip and suffer from serious pitch distortion as the playback buffer emptied and a moment passed until it filled again, repeating every couple of seconds.

And just last night me and my g/f were about to get out of the car and before I turned off the stereo, The Crystal Method's Trip Like I Do had the same problem, (encoded at -q 4.25).  I have my high-accuracy decoder threshold set to 132000, so I think setting it down to 130000 or 128000 would solve that one without having to re-rip and re-encode.

If you intend to try a couple of test tracks encoded with different -q settings, watch the meter first when they play in fb2k or Winamp.  The ones encoded at, for instance, -q 4.00, that have bitrate spikes up to ~200kbps (or higher) are ones that could cause such skipping/distortion problems on a portable player.  Just some things to watch out for.   


[Sorry for being slightly OT from the original post.]

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

Nah, that's not true (at least not for the current one's - I got mine yesterday - might be true for older one's I suppose?).

I transcoded some mpc's to aac using Foobar (0.71) with the nero aac plugin (you'll need a copy of Nero as well to do this) and then transfered the files using vPOD (0.53). iPOD picks up the tags fine and plays them fine 

You do seem to need the latest versions though - I had issues with earlier versions of vPOD which didn't pick up all the tags correctly.

Quote

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

Nah, that's not true (at least not for the current one's - I got mine yesterday - might be true for older one's I suppose?).

I transcoded some mpc's to aac using Foobar (0.71) with the nero aac plugin (you'll need a copy of Nero as well to do this) and then transfered the files using vPOD (0.53). iPOD picks up the tags fine and plays them fine 

You do seem to need the latest versions though - I had issues with earlier versions of vPOD which didn't pick up all the tags correctly.

what kind of tag is it? i seem to be really confused when it comes to tagging and aac.
i figured out how to tag with nero but it was missing the "year" portion.  if i add the year into the tag using foobar do you think it will work with the ipod.

one more question. how is the battery life? i like the way nero transparent preset sounds but will it eat up too much power?

what kind of tag is it? i seem to be really confused when it comes to tagging and aac.
i figured out how to tag with nero but it was missing the "year" portion.  if i add the year into the tag using foobar do you think it will work with the ipod.

You should be able use Foobar's tagging to update your files, but make sure you have an up to date version, as I think it's ability to tag AAC files is a fairly recent addition.

I also found that the software that transfers the music onto the iPOD needs to understand the tags as well (I guess it has to write it into the iPODs database or something) - the first version of vPOD I tried lost a few tags here and there, but the latest worked ok.

I don't know about Year, but the album / artist / genre all seemed to come across ok. My iPOD doesn't seem to display Year, but I might be missing something there? As I said, I only got it yesterday so I'm still playing ...

one more question. how is the battery life? i like the way nero transparent preset sounds but will it eat up too much power?

Can't tell you too much about the battery life let, but I'm using Nero's transparent setting so time will tell so to speak ...

were can i get the nero aac plugin? i can't find it anywhere!

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

You are wel catered for on the PC, I suggest you try a few see which you like best - if you want to Rip straight from an Audio CD to an iPod and have it in AAC (mp4) and correctly tagged then try this (install all to the same location):

Install Sveta Portable Audio here:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/SvetaPortab...udio-r4b4.1.exe (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/SvetaPortableAudio-r4b4.1.exe)

and the mp4 codec here:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/dBpowerAMP-...codec-mp4b5.exe (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/dBpowerAMP-codec-mp4b5.exe)

and finally the iPod Sveta Driver:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/bin/svetadrivers...A-SvetaiPod.exe (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/bin/svetadrivers/SPA-SvetaiPod.exe)

After installing the last it will ask to connect the iPod, do so. Then start 'Audio CD Input' insert a CD, select Rip Menu >> Rip To  and select 'Apple Ipod', select Rip Menu >> Compression Settings  and set the format to use as mp4. That is it, any existing files (especially lossless) can be converted by installing the correct dBpowerAMP Codec from 'Codec Central' then right click on the File(s) >> Convert To >> Apple iPod. Simple!

I'm still using mp3 -- lame 3.92 --alt-preset standard. I don't find the need to use higher bitrates because my ears find this setting good enough.

I've been looking at Vorbis for a long time now... but still haven't made my mind to take the plunge yet....

Thx!  But don't go to trouble just for me. 

Eh... not to worry, because I was curious to find out myself.  Unfortunately, I updated my firmware first (or maybe that's a good thing).  I updated to the most recent Ogg Vorbis fixes.  Then I encoded a few Bryan Adams songs at -q 8.  At this setting most of the songs are consistantly above 200 kbps.

I'm happy to report that there seemed to be no serious flaws in the playback.  This is a relief because this morning, I thought I heard a skip on a -q 3 encode of Live's Horse.  That was with older firmware though.

For those keepin score on their own versions of the Neuros, I WAS using the one available at Open Neuros Audio (http://open.neurosaudio.com/), which is version 1.40A.  Available here: http://www.tobiasly.com/neuros/updates/ (http://www.tobiasly.com/neuros/updates/) is versions 1.41, 1.42, and 1.43.  I switched to 1.42 and did the -q 8 testing on that.

Quote

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

You are wel catered for on the PC, I suggest you try a few see which you like best - if you want to Rip straight from an Audio CD to an iPod and have it in AAC (mp4) and correctly tagged then try this (install all to the same location):

Install Sveta Portable Audio here:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/SvetaPortab...udio-r4b4.1.exe (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/SvetaPortableAudio-r4b4.1.exe)

and the mp4 codec here:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/dBpowerAMP-...codec-mp4b5.exe (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/beta/dBpowerAMP-codec-mp4b5.exe)

and finally the iPod Sveta Driver:

http://www.dbpoweramp.com/bin/svetadrivers...A-SvetaiPod.exe (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/bin/svetadrivers/SPA-SvetaiPod.exe)

After installing the last it will ask to connect the iPod, do so. Then start 'Audio CD Input' insert a CD, select Rip Menu >> Rip To  and select 'Apple Ipod', select Rip Menu >> Compression Settings  and set the format to use as mp4. That is it, any existing files (especially lossless) can be converted by installing the correct dBpowerAMP Codec from 'Codec Central' then right click on the File(s) >> Convert To >> Apple iPod. Simple!

That works great! Thanks.

I can't rip directly to my IPod yet because I don't have one. But I'll just rip to my harddrive now and send it to the IPod when I get it.

I chose AAC/MP4 as it is my fav at the moment.  But I have to say, I mostly use mp3 because of my portable player