Steve Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 How many of you use portable mp3 players to listen to music? What is your preferred file format and bitrate for audio? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rygon Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 depends...i try and record all my stuff into wav format cos it gives the best quality. but as i post things on websites/boards ppl dont wanna wait forever to download it so i use mp3 (and wma for my g/f mp3 player) mp3 seems the best most of the time as ppl no of it and have software to run it..also i dont know enought to realise what is the best software to use for small but good quality files Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rick Flarez Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 I do. MP3 is my shit. I'm not really bothered about quality. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chee Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 Yeah, I prefer mp3 purely for the convenience factor. Although on my Nokia 6230 I have the files as .aac format, just so I can squeeze as much as I can onto my 1GB MMC card. Â The quality of 64kbps AAC is certainly discernable from 192kbps mp3, but it's about half the size and is still very listenable, especially when as I get a lot of background noise (eg traffic, etc) anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Deeswift Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 My preference is lossless. I don't use a portable player, I use my PC to listen to audio these days. My preference is FLAC (.wav is totally pointless, wastes space, and the exact same quality can be achieved with FLAC except the average album is around 200 MB smaller in file size).  If I am pushed for space (like I currently am), I use Musepack (.mpc) as it's the best of the lossy encoders. My FLAC's get burned to disc, but first I transcode to mpc. My mpc settings are q8, with an extra command line of --ms 15 which allows the bitrate to go higher than the preset if needed.  I'm OK with .ogg, and I'm OK with LAME encoded mp3 if it's VBR, and preferably using the --alt-preset's. If I post audio on here, I'll encode strictly with LAME 3.90.3 modified. This way everyone can use it and there's no confusion. I won't use any other LAME version, they weren't as well tested and fine tuned as 3.90.3 modified. So... 1: FLAC (q8)2: Musepack (q8 --ms 15)3: 4: LAME mp3 (--alt-preset extreme)4: Ogg (better than than anything at low bitrates, 128k and such) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Deeswift Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 also i dont know enought to realise what is the best software to use for small but good quality files<{POST_SNAPBACK}>  Small file size and best quality = mpc at "standard" (q5). This is roughly the equivalent to mp3 @ 320 kbps (highest quality for the mp3 format). Only problem is, mpc / Musepack gets little or no support for anything other than PC listening. For portables, it's out of the question. Otherwise, .ogg is good (Ogg Vorbis). It excels at around 128 kbps, plus it's highly supported.  For all-round compatibility, file size, and quality, nothing beats LAME encoded mp3 @ preset standard (or --alt-preset standard as it's also known for certain LAME versions). Standard is considered transparent, meaning you would have a difficult time telling the difference between the encoded file and the original .wav source. Only certain types of music, such as 2000 year old harpsichord music!) give LAME aps any trouble. There are a few other problem samples though, so I use --alt-preset extreme to try and be on the safe side. Whatever, if you use mp3, ALWAYS use VBR (Variable Bit Rate) encoding. CBR (Constant Bit Rate) encoding is a waste of bits and bumps up the file size. If the birate is allowed to vary, this is the most efficient way of encoding. Then the bitrate can adjust to go higher and lower when needed. No point throwing 320 kbps at music which only needs 100 kbps, for example, just as it's a bad idea to strangle the audio and force it use a low bitrate when it needs to go beyond your preset. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted April 19, 2005 Author Share Posted April 19, 2005 I'll upload in mp3 format from now on then. It's a shame there's not more support for Musepack though cos I can tell the difference in quality even on my pretty poor system. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Deeswift Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 It's a terrible shame. Musepack is brilliant. I will sometimes upload audio in mpc format though. If people can't put it in their portable, that's just tough. I certainly wouldn't transcode from mpc to mp3 though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted April 19, 2005 Author Share Posted April 19, 2005 I dunno man. If I'm uploading, the audio's not for me so I'd be better off picking a format that others want. I'm gonna email iRiver and ask if there are any plans to support MPC. I fucking doubt it though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Deeswift Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 Yeah fair play man, catering for everyone is nice. Â You'll never get support for Musepack! People have been trying for years man, but it's worth trying anyway! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted April 19, 2005 Author Share Posted April 19, 2005 An old post on HydrogenAudio linked to a page where a guy had hacked firmware that supported it, but I clicked it and the site had gone. I'd love it though. Mind you, iRivers support Ogg so that's pretty good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Posted April 19, 2005 Author Share Posted April 19, 2005 BTW, you ever tried APE files for lossless? http://www.monkeysaudio.com/comparison_compression.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Deeswift Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 Yeah, I tried it, but I prefer FLAC for lossless. Both are good formats, but I think FLAC just pips it. It does for me anyway. I have a fair amount of .ape files and they sound great though. To be totally honest...  ...I don't like the name, Monkey's Audio!   Sound stupid? Well it probably is! I'm happy with my FLAC's anyway.  Cheers for the link. Gonna check now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Max Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 Yeah FLAC is definitely the best for losless compression. It's like the JP2 of sound. AIFF is obviously best for uncompressed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Deeswift Posted April 19, 2005 Share Posted April 19, 2005 .aiff is Apple's format, is this correct? Well anyway, I am impressed by that comparison chart Steve, it looks good, but there's one thing that niggles me -- they used an ancient FLAC codec (v0.1). FLAC is currently at v1.1.2, so I wonder how much things have improved since then. If it's still about the same, then Monkey's is impressive.  Another reason for me using FLAC is Pedro's BT site. I think it's about 99.9% FLAC releases, with some .ape, and some SHN files (Shorten, another lossless format) occasionally. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infinite Posted April 23, 2005 Share Posted April 23, 2005 My favoured is 192 CBR, LAME encoded MP3s, as final scratch reads them most easily and its probably the best balance between quality, space and compatibility. I prefer quality VBRs normally though, much better idea. Mediamonkey supports MPC and APE files but i've not actually got any audio files of that nature so I can't compare. Quick question, AAC @ 128kbps...what sorta quality (well-encoded) MP3 would that respresent? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deft Posted April 23, 2005 Share Posted April 23, 2005 My audio player supports .flac, .ogg and gapless LAME MP3 and my stuff revolves around that. Every CD I own has been ripped to .ogg Q6 though in retrospect I should have probably ripped them all to .flac first for storage.If encoding for public I'd probably do LAME with individual tracks. So people would need to use Foobar really if it needs gapless support. This can mean the majority of people who have other HD based audio players will get hiccups between tracks but that's tough shit! Get a better player or buy the album yourself! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Deeswift Posted April 23, 2005 Share Posted April 23, 2005 Yeah! You should add a to that too. @ Snatch -- I think .aac at 128-ish is not bad mate, at a total guess I'd say it was possibly equivalent to 160 - 192 CBR mp3. I dunno though, don't quote me. You'll find all the info you could want here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?act=idx HydrogenAudio's aac section: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showforum=54 Or look here: http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&clien...nG=Search&meta= Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Infinite Posted April 23, 2005 Share Posted April 23, 2005 Cheers for the hook up Dee. A lot of that is way over my head but it seems there's not a definitive answer to the MP3 vs AAC debate.  It's almost impossible to say which bitrate is equal to --aps MP3. Sound quality of one lossy format depends on how well the encoder is tuned and the different codecs can't be tuned in same way. Especially with VBR encodings the tuning issue is much more significant so the result depends on the music that you encode and how well the encoder is tuned to that and what kind of sound quality issues you are most sensitive to. I wanted to know cuz the stuff at iTunes is at 128 and certainly with mp3s it ain't good enough to play out with. shame cuz there's a few decent albums on there, but at that quality paying money would be foolish. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Deeswift Posted April 23, 2005 Share Posted April 23, 2005 I agree. If I bought music online I'd want lossless, then I could encode to whatever format I needed, but then I wouldn't buy compressed audio, I'd just go buy the CD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deft Posted April 23, 2005 Share Posted April 23, 2005 You'd think with connection speeds increasing and stuff that there would be more availability of lossless formats.Majority rules though.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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