2014 codec poll

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2014 codec poll

Reply #25 – 2014-04-01 05:37:37

I don't really encode much music for desktop or portable use. My use is up to a random whim.

I tend to prefer Vorbis or Opus for lossy encoding for desktop or distribution, but fall back to MP3 if I feel like supporting software which doesn't play either of those. I still have lots of files in all of those formats gathered from various sources. I also have a number of MusePack SV7 files that I can't really replace with anything else.

For lossless, I gravitate between FLAC and Apple Lossless. I have also used Wavpack, but don't use it that regularly. And I also still have some files in Monkey's Audio format, which I haven't bothered to transcode to something else. I even acquired one rare game bundled promotional CD in WMA Lossless, but quickly transcoded it to something else.

FAKE EDIT: The overwhelming majority of my music collection is still in sequenced or emulated game console formats, which are often compact, but may require substantial processing power to decode.

2014 codec poll

Reply #26 – 2014-04-01 13:57:29

Very little change for me compared to the poll from 2013 or 2012. I switched from MP3 to AAC about 5 years ago and my current collection is now probably 80% AAC.

I still listen to all my music (both portable and on my home HiFi) using AAC and a bit of MP3. All my music is backed up in FLAC format but that's on a portable harddrive somewhere. AAC is good enough for listening for me and I can't be bothered to find a way to play the FLACs on that drive through my HiFi.

2014 codec poll

Reply #27 – 2014-04-01 14:10:14

AAC and MP3 for desktop, AAC for portable use and FLAC to backup important CDs.

2014 codec poll

Reply #28 – 2014-04-01 17:58:57

Hmm... 139 votes and TAK and WavPack are head-to-head for lossless runner-up, leaving ALAC apparently in the dust, so far.

2014 codec poll

Reply #29 – 2014-04-01 18:45:58

Quote from: includemeout on 2014-04-01 17:58:57

Hmm... 139 votes and TAK and WavPack are head-to-head for lossless runner-up, leaving ALAC apparently in the dust, so far.

5 votes behind = in the dust? Also, you know everyone can read right?

The only thing that bothers me of ALAC, even though I am using it exclusively for lossless, is the fact that doesn't have any error protection. ...or does it? I haven't read the contrary yet.

2014 codec poll

Reply #30 – 2014-04-01 19:13:43

Quote from: eahm on 2014-04-01 18:45:58

The only thing that bothers me of ALAC, even though I am using it exclusively for lossless, is the fact that doesn't have any error protection. ...or does it? I haven't read the contrary yet.

Most codecs don't, FLAC can detect an error but does not really protect: one bit flips and you have an error, 0.1s of sound missing. Monkey's Audio and Optimfrog don't have such protection, see here. This table says ALAC does handle errors, but I can't find anything about it in the thread that belongs to it.

I'd say, why not try it and report it in the thread I mentioned?

2014 codec poll

Reply #31 – 2014-04-01 20:00:51

Quote from: ktf on 2014-04-01 19:13:43

Quote from: eahm on 2014-04-01 18:45:58
The only thing that bothers me of ALAC, even though I am using it exclusively for lossless, is the fact that doesn't have any error protection. ...or does it? I haven't read the contrary yet.

Most codecs don't, FLAC can detect an error but does not really protect: one bit flips and you have an error, 0.1s of sound missing. Monkey's Audio and Optimfrog don't have such protection, see here. This table says ALAC does handle errors, but I can't find anything about it in the thread that belongs to it.

I'd say, why not try it and report it in the thread I mentioned?

I was referring exactly to that table and "Error handling" doesn't say anything on ALAC, at least the others have Yes and No.

Reading the other discussion, thanks for the reply.

2014 codec poll

Reply #32 – 2014-04-01 20:43:46

Quote from: eahm on 2014-04-01 20:00:51

I was referring exactly to that table and "Error handling" doesn't say anything on ALAC

Oh, I misread it, I was looking at WMAL for some reason. Still, someone should check it. I'll try sometime soon what iTunes does with corrupt files.

2014 codec poll

Reply #33 – 2014-04-01 21:28:26

Quote from: ktf on 2014-04-01 20:43:46

Oh, I misread it, I was looking at WMAL for some reason. Still, someone should check it. I'll try sometime soon what iTunes does with corrupt files.

WMAL has "Yes". Thanks for any future test. We are OT.

2014 codec poll

Reply #34 – 2014-04-01 22:33:24

TAK all the way. I have lots of music, all encoded with TAK 2.3.0 using -p4m -md5.

2014 codec poll

Reply #35 – 2014-04-02 02:44:52

i have some mp3 and wma downloaded from internet,
rip cd using flac, alaway lossless

2014 codec poll

Reply #36 – 2014-04-02 04:31:49

Quote from: eahm on 2014-04-01 18:45:58

Quote from: includemeout on 2014-04-01 17:58:57
Hmm... 139 votes and TAK and WavPack are head-to-head for lossless runner-up, leaving ALAC apparently in the dust, so far.

5 votes behind = in the dust? Also, you know everyone can read right?

I'm neither rooting against ALAC nor for it (I've never used it and doubt it I ever will). I just meant at this rate, ~5 votes equal to a relative difference of roughly 80-90% behind the other two codecs. That's all.

Quote from: d125q on 2014-04-01 22:33:24

TAK all the way. I have lots of music, all encoded with TAK 2.3.0 using -p4m -md5.

d125q, this question is not intended as some sort of criticism whatsoever and it's just out of sheer curiosity and lack of knowledge about TAK:

I've always wondered what a good reason for choosing TAK over other open source CODECS would be.

I mean, are there any perks that only TAK can offer for you (or any other TAK user, for that matter) to have chosen it over the others?

2014 codec poll

Reply #37 – 2014-04-02 21:07:21

There is another lossy codec I sometimes use. It's DTS and only for 5.x surround music.
For the rest it's mp3, FLAC and occasionally Musepack for the portable device.

2014 codec poll

Reply #38 – 2014-04-02 21:17:33

I use nothing but AAC TVBR 66 which yields me around 128Kbps. The 96kbps aac test from last year convinced me nothing else was required. At least for my old ears.

2014 codec poll

Reply #39 – 2014-04-02 22:09:02

In the past, I was using FLAC everywhere for convenience reasons. But then my now dead sansa clip+ decided it wanted to annoy me with random decoding glitches when playing FLAC, so I needed an alternative.
The problem was the battery time with other formats, losing quite a few hours by going wavpack lossy, or others.

Musepack ended up having an even better battery time on the clip+ than FLAC, so the change was easy.
And now that I had to recode my music for portable use anyway, there was no reason to stick with FLAC as my PC is able to decode TAK and TAK saves me some space, if not much.
With FFMPEG being able to decode TAK now afaik, I'm not worried about playback compatibility on different OSes.

Quote from: includemeout on 2014-04-02 04:31:49

I've always wondered what a good reason for choosing TAK over other open source CODECS would be.

I mean, are there any perks that only TAK can offer for you (or any other TAK user, for that matter) to have chosen it over the others?

The argument of HDD space being totally cheap never had any weight for me.
I prefer to maximize the use of any piece of hardware I have, so if TAK saves me more space compared to FLAC, I take it.
TAK is still very annoying with its lack of unicode support, but I still hope it gets added sooner than later.

2014 codec poll

Reply #40 – 2014-04-02 22:13:23

Here's why I use the codecs that I use:

MP3: It works in my car (MP3 CDs), and because of music since forever.
Opus: It works on my RockBox'ed iPod Nano, and out of curiosity and amazement, how good it performs.
FLAC: Those are my CD rips and live recordings of which I've done quite a lot in the last couple years.

I usually use the standard presets with my favorite encoders.

I use -h with lame and --best with flac.

I used to have several Ogg/Vorbis files, but by now, I've pretty much got rid of them (all of them were encoded from FLAC), and re-encoded them to Opus (from my FLAC sources).

2014 codec poll

Reply #41 – 2014-04-03 03:41:37

FLAC and MP3, still.

I guess I've just lost interest in comparing one codec to another.

2014 codec poll

Reply #42 – 2014-04-03 14:42:26

Quote from: includemeout on 2014-04-02 04:31:49

d125q, this question is not intended as some sort of criticism whatsoever and it's just out of sheer curiosity and lack of knowledge about TAK:

I've always wondered what a good reason for choosing TAK over other open source CODECS would be.

I mean, are there any perks that only TAK can offer for you (or any other TAK user, for that matter) to have chosen it over the others?

I began using TAK when I was struggling with disk space and every saved MB meant to me. Now the situation with disk space is somewhat better, but I have found no reason to ditch TAK whatsoever, especially considering the fact that I'm "stuck" in the Windows ecosystem.

Aside from that, I consider TAK to be the most "technologically advanced" codec and like the APEv2 tags way more than the Vorbis Comments.

2014 codec poll

Reply #43 – 2014-04-03 16:07:32

Now I finally understand the reasons behind using TAK.

Thank you d125q and ChronoSphere.

2014 codec poll

Reply #44 – 2014-04-05 04:40:46

Most of my collection is FLAC. Some of the grateful dead shows from archive.org are in ape or shorten.. SHN I convert to flac, ape I leave as is since I only ever use VLC or rockbox anyway. If I download music from youtube, which is a lot less often than it used to be, I just use whatever codec is in the audio part of the movie file and isolate that with ffmpeg. At least that way I avoid a second lossy-lossy transcoding. Thrift store tapes and vinyl, if I want to make it portable and I can't find it in a digital format, either end up as flac or ogg. LPs and cassettes usually end up as flac, 78s and 8-tracks usually end up as ogg, depending on just how terrible it sounds when playing direct. Everything that I have in a lossless format, be it a CD or a download I bought online, I leave lossless. That accounts for the vast majority of my collection so I'm waiting eagerly for those terabyte microSD cards...

2014 codec poll

Reply #45 – 2014-04-05 23:22:16

Listening to some music on the go this morning, I realised I'd forgotten to mention another reason why I do stand by hybrid WavPack when it comes to choosing a CODEC:

There simply is no psychoacoustical artifacts to worry about as it could be the case (I said "could" not "would", just to be on the safe side of TOS8 ) with some problematic samples for other lossy CODECS (Suzanne Vegas' Tom's Diner anyone?):

All you have to worry your well-trained ears about (after years of lossy encoding & hanging around on Hydrogen Audio) is just the noise floor, that can be easily put in the leach by increasing the bitrate and tweakening one or two switches during encoding, in case you happen to detect it (which practically seldom happens, given the kind of environment one usually listens to lossy files under).

And no, Bryant is not endorsing me or anything of the kind : it's just that as the days pile up since I've started using it, I realise how unique this CODEC is.

2014 codec poll

Reply #46 – 2014-04-06 11:10:56

Quote from: includemeout on 2014-04-05 23:22:16

There simply is no psychoacoustical artifacts to worry about as it could be the case

As is the case with LossyWAV too, of course. I don't know which implementation is superior or whether it being built into WavPack brings any other improvements aside from not needing to install another application. Interesting too see that WavPack Lossy and LossyWAV have (at this moment) the same amount of votes.

Something else I'd like to remark: it seems the voters are a pretty homogeneous group, at least for the lossless codecs. From 80 through 210 votes, FLAC has been around 65-70%, WavPack and TAK tied around 8%, Apple Lossless around 5%... In short, the early 'half' of the voters has voted roughly the same as the second half. That's I think an interesting observation.

2014 codec poll

Reply #47 – 2014-04-06 11:13:24

I voted this:
AAC (desktop) and Opus (portable) for lossy
TAK (desktop) and FLAC (for sharing) for lossless
I don't use MP3 anymore but I see it still beats others hands down

2014 codec poll

Reply #48 – 2014-04-06 11:13:32

Quote from: ktf on 2014-04-06 11:10:56

As is the case with LossyWAV too, of course.

Yup. Regardless of your own hearing and sensibility to lossy artifacts (which are very close to non-existant with modern codecs at half the bitrate), the peace of mind element is pretty cool, IMO.

2014 codec poll

Reply #49 – 2014-04-06 12:01:02

Quote from: Anakunda on 2014-04-06 11:13:24

I don't use MP3 anymore but I see it still beats others hands down

For decoding, a lot of stuff is only available in mp3, like most streams and podcasts.
For Google music it is essentially a requirement as anything else gets transcoded.

Notice

Poll

What lossy codecs do you use on a *regular* basis?

What lossy codecs do you use on a regular basis?