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Poll

MUSIC. MP3

~ 115 kbps or less (V6 ... V9)
[ 2 ] (0.7%)
~ 130 kbps (V5)
[ 13 ] (4.7%)
~ 145 kbps
[ 1 ] (0.4%)
~ 160 kbps (V4)
[ 11 ] (4%)
~ 180 kbps (V3)
[ 18 ] (6.5%)
~ 200 kbps (V2)
[ 51 ] (18.5%)
~ 230 kbps (V1)
[ 13 ] (4.7%)
~ 260 kbps (V0)
[ 55 ] (19.9%)
320 kbps
[ 35 ] (12.7%)
I don't encode a music to MP3
[ 77 ] (27.9%)

Total Members Voted: 290

Topic: What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.) (Read 53470 times) previous topic - next topic
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What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Hi, Everybody,

This poll (as some other) is created to collect some data of general tendency in use of audio codecs for a different purposes and contents.


Basicly it contains 3 following questions:

1º - What bitrate do You encode a music to MP3 at?
2º - What bitrate do You encode a music to post-MP3 codecs ([HE-]AAC, Vorbis, Opus and other) at?
3º - What bitrate do You use for a such purposes like encoding a speech, streaming (radio,podcasting) with a post-MP3 codecs  like (HE-)AAC, Vorbis, Opus and other.


Feel free to comment your particular preferences.

Thank You.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #1 –
AAC: -V73 (~150) so the vote goes to ~130 and ~160
Speech: HE-AAC 32

Actually I would like to change my MP3 vote to: I don't encode a music to MP3. Thanks.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #3 –
I reported mp3 at V2 and no use of other codecs/bitrates in rest of the survey.  But there was no way to indicate that I'm only using mp3 V2 for portable devices and where for home use I use FLAC format.  Just noting that the meaning of "what bitrate used" could be quite different if asking for use in portables or automobile vs use in general.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #5 –
I preface this by noting that at home on the LAN everything is stored in and played as FLAC.


When I'm forced to use mp3 for music I usually encode at V2, maybe V3 or V4 if space is tight.. I voted for V2.

My lossy preference for music is generally Vorbis at -q2 (~96kbps)  or q3 if space is plentiful. I never encode music in vorbis higher than q3 for personal or family use. I distribute some of my old band's music at higher quality levels just to reduce the whining from people who don't know any better. I voted for ~100 kbps or less. Once Opus support starts appearing as supported on the devices I use I'll likely convert to Opus at the ~96kps level to attain the same file size and just ever so slightly improve quality even though Vorbis already satisfies me in this space. Can't complain about a little more quality margin for free.

For speech (for me, not a ton of use for this yet) I aim to use Opus at ~32kbps.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #7 –
Quote from: garym on
But there was no way to indicate that I'm only using mp3 V2 for portable devices and where for home use I use FLAC format.

Most of us have a lossless storage home with today HDD capacities. See 2013 codec poll
I think there is no need to figure out that.


Quite surprised that, yet, 32 kbps audio is on demand. People wouldn't mind about a decent video+audio streaming on a mobile devices. As for me, youtube videos (low quality) aren't playable on mobile bandwidth here.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #8 –
Quote from: IgorC on
Quite surprised that, yet, 32 kbps audio is on demand. People wouldn't mind about a decent video+audio streaming on a mobile devices. As for me, youtube videos (low quality) aren't playable on mobile bandwidth here.

Aren't playable because of not enough bandwidth or high traffic billing?
Here for example, in good field conditions, I have enough bandwidth to play even 320kbps streams on my mobile with no problems at all (or YouTube videos FWIW), but I have a plan with only 1Gb/month of data included, so high bitrates are still not an option for me, not on long terms at least.

And speaking about "fidelity", there is a local radio station that streams the matches of my town's football club on 32 Kbps WMA...
... I live by long distance.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #9 –
Frankly, I've found MP3 and FLAC to be sufficient for all my encoding purposes.  Sure, MP3 has a lot of technical problems but my ears can't hear most of them at higher bitrates.  And you still can't beat its portability.
I couldn't choose my MP3 setting (-V0+ or ~290kbps in halb27's implementation) so just went with 260.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #10 –
Quote from: Nessuno on
Aren't playable because of not enough bandwidth or high traffic billing?
Here for example, in good field conditions, I have enough bandwidth to play even 320kbps streams on my mobile with no problems at all (or YouTube videos FWIW), but I have a plan with only 1Gb/month of data included, so high bitrates are still not an option for me, not on long terms at least.

And speaking about "fidelity", there is a local radio station that streams the matches of my town's football club on 32 Kbps WMA...

Here local carrier have opted for unlimited mobile internet at cost of speed. The speed is 256 kbps during first 10 MB per day and then 64 kbps. The good thing it's very cheap and have a massive character. 1 AR$/day. (0.2u$). Everybody's messaging, whatsuping, sharing a fotos and so on. Good stuff. 

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #11 –
Quote from: IgorC on
Here local carrier have opted for unlimited mobile internet at cost of speed. The speed is 256 kbps during first 10 MB per day and then 64 kbps. The good thing it's very cheap and have a massive character. 1 AR$/day. (0.2u$). Everybody's messaging, whatsuping, sharing a fotos and so on. Good stuff. 


I'd go for that over the typical $40US/month  for 2 GB we get around here.  As it is I opted for a tab with no mobile plan.  I may go for a mobile hotspot if I can find a good plan that just charges for days used.



What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #12 –
Quote from: DonP on
I'd go for that over the typical $40US/month  for 2 GB we get around here.  As it is I opted for a tab with no mobile plan.  I may go for a mobile hotspot if I can find a good plan that just charges for days used.

By the by, just heard on the news of a president Obama's plan to cover all of US territory with free wi-fi, as a measure to speed up economic growth... 
... I live by long distance.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #13 –
My settings haven't changed in years and likely won't.

Still use these all via Speeks frontends (you all still remember those don't you):
* FLAC
* LAME: ~ 200 kbps (V2)
* Vorbis: ~ 192 kbps

Quote from: Nessuno on
cover all of US territory with free wi-fi


Would be nice but the U.S. was promised dirt cheap broadband a long time ago back with President Bush junior was in office. It's surprising how many people still don't have an Internet connection let alone a computer.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #14 –
I ticked more than one

MP3
~130 lame -V5 (or helix -X2 -U2 -V60 where gaplessness isn't supported and encoding speed helps)
~180 lame -V3
~200 lame -V2

Opus, Vorbis, AAC
~100 kbps or less (Opus ~64, ~80, ~96, Vorbis ~80-96, plus AAC ~72-96 when I need simple Apple compatibility but smallish files)
~Think I also ticked 160kbps as a rough estimate for occasional HQ Vorbis and AAC use, including using an Android or iPhone as a backup to the iPad for live performance backing tracks (never needed the backup so far).

Speech, Radio (not MP3 - I use Vorbis and AAC often on my phone, plus outside the scope of this question, LAME -V7 MP3 for some language tapes at @70-80 kbps stereo partly played in my car):
I think I ticked
~32
~48
and maybe ~64

though I consume more podcast speech than I encode or transcode, and mostly in MP3 on my phone, plus on my PC I listen to some streams in Opus, Vorbis or some codec used in Flash Player for radio, sometimes loopback capturing and transcoding for my phone where a podcast isn't available.

Although I didn't include it, when squeezing down video I sometime transcode MPEG-2 DVB-T TV capture into H.264 sometime at smaller resolution with faac at 80-96 kbps stereo (mostly speech) or 128-160 kbps stereo for music shows. (FAAC is poor, but it's easy to use within Handbrake, which has decent CQ/VBR video encoding)

Beyond these I use lossyFLAC (standard) as near-lossless transcodable, and FLAC for my main lossless except ALAC for backing tracks on an iPad.
Dynamic – the artist formerly known as DickD

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #15 –
I'm not quite so savvy about audio as many in the forum -- I'm a digital media student -- but I thought I might as well throw in my two cents here. Polls are my favorite. 

For the MP3 category, I marked 320kbps and "I don't encode music to MP3". I prefer not to encode to MP3 when I can use something else, but I will use 320 when MP3 is a must, simply because storage capacity isn't a huge concern and it is the standard used by Amazon Music and Google Play.

For other codecs, I like to use Opus unconstrained VBR encoding at around 256kbps, or in the ~260 range. I find the quality is more than enough for my needs. I do this mainly to match "The iTunes Standard ™" of 256kbps CVBR AAC audio to please others who work with my audio and feel insulted when I send them something of a lower rate (some of my professors, sadly). Personally, I begin to lose differentiation around 144kbps or so with Opus codec anyway.

In the speech and streaming section, I would use around ~64kbps VBR mono for music and around ~48kbps VBR mono for raw speech like audiobooks. I don't really have any numbers or studies to backup these rates, just that they sound decent to me and produce acceptable filesizes.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #16 –
Quote from: IgorC on
MUSIC. MP3

.. section (1st) seems to be missing 192kbps, just btw.
:-$
Z68A-G43*i7-3770*Ven. 2x4GB 2133MHz*WD 1TB 64MB SATA*Win7 Pro/64

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #18 –
oggenc2.87-aoTuVb6.03-P4 @ ~185 kbps

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #19 –
QuickTime AAC @256 Kbps VBR for all portable music. (An exception is I often use ALAC for vinyl transfers for the purpose of redundant backups of my FLAC copies. iTunes-matched files are easier to replace.)

QT (HE) AAC @64 Kbps VBR for spoken word stuff. I have a lot of spoken word stuff and I can't imagine how this wouldn't be sufficient and satisfactory even for archival purposes.

When encoding videos in Handbrake I use QuickTime AAC @ 160 Kbps audio (mixed down to 2CH stereo) for the greatest compliance with all devices. (Happily I don't have to suffer the FAAC encoder as I encode video on a Macintosh.)

I almost never encode to MP3. No particular hate as it definitely has its advantages for most. (An exception is if I encode something for a friend's portable usage. In which case it's V0 with the latest LAME encoder. That would likely be the setting I used if I did encode to MP3 for personal use. I struggle to ABX LAME MP3 @ 128 Kbps CBR from its lossless source. I can do it in most cases but it requires a good deal of attention and concentration. IOW V0 would be more than sufficient IMO.)

The Loudness War is over. Now it's a hopeless occupation.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #20 –
I actually do a lot of music encoding, most of it is intended for broadcast, or high quality storage.

I've been talking about my problems and solutions with recording very long recordings on this forum, one or two people might remember...

So when I do recordings intended for broadcast, I try to encode into FLAC whenever possible and then post-recode them into whatever is suitable (I'm beginning to move to mostly Opus ready-sets, but that's gonna take a few years). The bog standard is still MP3. And that isn't a bad thing, MP3 isn't a bad codec or anything.

For me, capacity constrains are - or have never been to this point - a problem, I could very well max-out the MP3 recordings at 320kbps, but that would be nonsensical.

The limiting factors are the recording equipment, that is, the transducers or ADCs used in the setup. The second thing to keep in mind is the ease of playing back a recording, and seeking in a track, I usually go back to CBR and use 196kbps and be good with it. It's the best of those three worlds. It kinda caps at the maximum the recording equipment gives me, when the encoder gets the data. Also, it works without problems on older players and it is even quite space saving.

The broadcasting itself is being remodeled for Opus. It works already, but testing is a slow process, and we absolutely have to make sure, we don't break anything that's running well as it is. What kind of quality settings I'm gonna use in the end, I cannot say that. the process will not be finished until the end of this year, but you might imagine: It has to match the quality settings of the recordings.

I was - actually I was forced to - look into encoding into AAC. It was pretty pointless, and to be honest, I was almost annoyed by it, since it didn't work well with the rest of the DSP filter software. Anyway, I implemented transcoding into AAC at one point, but I don't remember the quality settings. I've since moved to developing a new DSP stack, which incorporates Opus.

When it comes to speech, I tend to use the same settings as I do for music, as we don't do "just" speech, it's usually mixed with some background music or whatever. But we are experimenting with very low audio compression for news casting. It is around 32kbps Ogg/Opus, but my personal Gremlin that I'm feeding and growing in my secret basement, is Codec2. If we ever succeed to produce a ~1.2kbps Codec2 stream for news, that would be just awesome.

I don't know if my rant helps at all. For personal use, I never do music encoding, I just listen to Youtube videos or things on Spotify.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #21 –
I think the second category should be distinguished to Opus and Vorbis, AAC, and possibly other formats, since what I encode to Opus at ~96kbps I can almost rely this will sound almost transparent while when I convert to AAC or Vorbis at nearly transparent quality I have to choose bitrate around 192kbps which is more than twice of so.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #22 –
Can you rephrase that in a way that makes sense?

From what I can decipher, you’re asserting that AAC and Vorbis require double the bitrate of Opus to sound transparent to you. Firstly, let’s assume generously that you can provide double-blind evidence for that statement. Next: One would imagine that, because of this claimed difference, you think AAC and Vorbis should be categorised separately from Opus. However, you then appear to say that all three should be in a single category. Which they already are.

See why I’m confused?

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #23 –
No that much. I really meant that at least Opus should have it's own numbering because aside from other codecs it needs lower bitrate to achieve comparable transparency than other codecs.

What bitrate do you use? (MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus etc.)

Reply #24 –
Quote from: Anakunda on
I think the second category should be distinguished to Opus and Vorbis, AAC, and possibly other formats, since what I encode to Opus at ~96kbps I can almost rely this will sound almost transparent while when I convert to AAC or Vorbis at nearly transparent quality I have to choose bitrate around 192kbps which is more than twice of so.

While Opus is very good at 96 kbps, the differences are much smaller  than that. Acording to my personal internal tests Opus is ~+15 kbps better than Vorbis at 96 kbps and only recently 1.1 beta version could make slightly better than best AAC encoders with just a several kbps of advantage at best.