Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: Best choice for lossy audio compression. (Read 2964 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Best choice for lossy audio compression.

My problem is this:  I have about 6.5GB worth of CDs compressed as mp3 on my laptop using LAME APS. 

I have no particular complaints of LAME sound quality other than when I burn the LAME APE files on my desktop machine to CDDA with Nero and play it back, there is a lot of ringing with high frequencies.  The solution to that I assume is to re-rip using Musepack -q6 or higher. No problems there, because drivespace is of no real concern I can go hog-wild.

On my laptop it's another story. I'm still searching for something that will provide transparent or near-transparent sound with a significant cut in space consumed compared with LAME APS.

I've been looking at AAC, MPC, mp3Pro, OGG, and WMA. I have done very limited testing since I don't have stacks CDs with me (which is essentially the whole point of having them compressed on the laptop).

I've essentually ruled out WMA due to Microsoft's demands of not decoding to .wav or transcoding to anything else (I can do that anyway, but just the idea of them saying 'no' turns me off to it, not to mention the lackluster sound quality).

AAC sounds OK, but there's licensing issues with it, plus it takes an extra step with each file to make it into an MP4 so the foobar plugin can see it.

I like the way mp3Pro performs in terms of quality vs. filesize (I can't hear any difference when turning the Pro enhancements on and off during playback with files encoded at max VBR quality), but given the licensing issues over that, I may rule that one out as well, not to mention I don't have anything that can give me an accurate playing time or average bitrate of the file since the encoder doesn't put VBR headers on. >_<

That basically leaves me with the other 2 codecs.  I'd prefer to use MPC or OGG since they are more or less thought of as having better sound quality, however, their performance at 128~192kbps is unknown to me.

I guess that I don't want to go any higher than OGG with -q4 or 5, and MPC with Radio or Standard setting.

Any thoughts on which of the two I should use; which one would perform better at these settings? (Yes, I've searched and dug through this forum for about a day looking and came up with little useful info  )

(Edit: "other 2 codecs" Not 4. I can't count this morning!  )
godzilla525

Best choice for lossy audio compression.

Reply #1 –
I guess I should elaborate further... Even after reading other threads, it still seems like it's up to a coin toss, which I may actually do if I can't find any consensus one way or the other.

I also noted that the GT3 version of OggEnc is tuned from -q5 to 10, so if I used OGG it would be the GT3 version at -q5, or around 160kbps.

That bitrate would fall somewhere between the radio and standard presets for MPC, but I don't know if it's possible to encode with MPC that way. --longhelp makes no mention of this, nor is there any MANUAL.TXT (referenced by the executable) included in the archive. 

Even though the AC'97 in this laptop starts rolling off at 16kHz >_< , I still burn CDs with it and may use some other method in the future of getting sound out of it.  Therefore I don't want to have to re-encode everything down the road if I discover some unpleasant artifacts.
godzilla525

Best choice for lossy audio compression.

Reply #2 –
Quote
That bitrate would fall somewhere between the radio and standard presets for MPC, but I don't know if it's possible to encode with MPC that way.

You can of course use --quality 4.5 if you like. B)
I think you should do a couple of tests to see how much you would win on the filesize anyway.
Quote
Even though the AC'97 in this laptop starts rolling off at 16kHz, I still burn CDs with it [..]

Burn Audio from your desktop as you said in your first post. Then you only need to worry about playback quality and filesize.
But it's all up to you really
--
Ge Someone
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

Best choice for lossy audio compression.

Reply #3 –
Quote
When I burn the LAME APE files on my desktop machine to CDDA with Nero and play it back, there is a lot of ringing with high frequencies.

Strange. Besides pre-echo there shouldn't be prolbems with lame --alt-presets (standard+) that occur that regularly and obviously. Do you use an old version of Nero that could have mp3 decoding problems? It could be possible too that the reason for this is the way you play back the CDDAs (e.g. crappy CD player's DAC causing aliassing).

About Vorbis vs. MPC: MPC standard should be superior to Vorbis ATM, no matter what settings you choose. At very low bitrates Vorbis is superior for sure (IIRC Guruboolez posted recently that Vorbis performs very bad on some quiet classical music - do a search if it's importent to you). I (and I'd say noone else here) can't tell you at what bitrate/setting they're equal. It depends on what you encode and your taste (i.e. what artifacts are more annoying to you).

If you want more than a guess, you'll have to test yourself.

About AC'97 sound: Do you know Viaarena forums? You'll find valuable AC'97 related threads there and links to drivers (VIA, Realtech) that yould improve things for you.
Let's suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who is feeling negative? The rain? Or YOU? What's causing the negative feeling? The rain or your reaction? - Anthony De Mello

Best choice for lossy audio compression.

Reply #4 –
In your situation MPC -q5 may be good. It's small enough for the laptop (hopefully) and you can use them on your desktop as well. (Difference between -q5 and -q6 is nearly always inaudible)
 

Best choice for lossy audio compression.

Reply #5 –
Quote
Besides pre-echo there shouldn't be prolbems with lame --alt-presets (standard+) that occur that regularly and obviously. Do you use an old version of Nero that could have mp3 decoding problems? It could be possible too that the reason for this is the way you play back the CDDAs (e.g. crappy CD player's DAC causing aliassing).


IIRC the version of Nero I had installed was 5.5.9.14 or something like that.  It isn't the latest, but it's fairly recent.  Another thing is that I'm using LAME 3.92.  I have since downloaded the recommended version (3.90.something) for future use.

You're probably right about the CD player.  The headphone output on it sounds very different from the line output (the line output sounding much more natural). I did temporarly build a small headphone amp for it in the distant past to use the line output, and boy did that thing sound amazing.  I didn't think the headphone output in the player was that bad, but I guess it is. 

I'll have to build a more permanent version soon...

I also just ran RMAA (version 5 is out... woo hoo!) in loopback mode on the laptop AC'97 (Crystal CS4205 w/Intel drivers since that's the only way the line in works; it's nonexistant with Crystal's drivers  ) and it said the frequency response from 20-20k is -1.68/+0.66dB with 0.024% THD + N, and a dynamic range of 80dB.  So the 16kHz rolloff thing isn't so much the laptop as it is either my headphones  or my hearing. :'( ...unless the hybrid output behaves differently (due to impedance) whether I have headphones connected or a line input...

I have a file that was encoded with LAME APS that takes 10.4MB at a rate of 192kbps.
That same file encoded with MPC standard (q5) takes 9.25MB at a rate of 171kbps.
Encoded again with MPC q4.5 takes 8.14MB at a rate of 151kbps.

MPC standard takes 77.8MB for the album I tested, where LAME APS takes 88.2MB... 11% reduction in filesize overall with improved sound quality.  If that trend continues over the rest of the collection, I would save about 700MB.

If I used MPC with q4.75 I would be really close to the standard and would hit around 161kbps for that particular file. At that rate I might be able to shave roughly 1GB of the total collection.  I might stick with q5, though, as that seems to be a good compromise.
godzilla525