Re: Musepack in 2020
Reply #4 –
It's not really transparent by default, I've found it needs at least 2 workarounds:
1) need to adjust ATH per track using option ltq_gain based on track loudness (not really viable to do by hand, because each track needs a different value, so you'd need to script that; I wrote it already btw, can upload if someone's interested), otherwise it will delete too much stuff from very quiet tracks
2) it's easily ABXable on a "killer" sample "Fighter_Beat_Loop" even at maximum quality preset (and this sample sounds quite similar to sounds which can be found in some music genres), and I've found only 1 way to work around that (add `--nmt 18` option) which also raises bitrate quite a lot, making it harder to say it's competitive with modern codecs)
After learning about the level o contrivance you have to resort to, all I could infer is that Musepack, though still viable for many people - well into our current days, just didn't work for you as a lossy VBR CODEC should:
i.e, set it up once or twice and forget about it! - not on a per-song basis!