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Author Topic: OT - Encoder comparisons  (Read 1405 times)

dedidio

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OT - Encoder comparisons
« on: July 15, 2003, 10:12:32 am »
Hi,

I have about 25gig of mp3's - all 128.  Originally I chose this format a few years ago as it made sense.  mp3 was somewhat the only option I knew of and the 128 was chose because of limited space.

Now I have tons of space and a little thought annoying the back of my brain.  Should I have gone with mp3-128?

I'm now thinking of re-ripping my collection with a higher sound quality in mind.  Now I believe APE would be the format to go with, am I right?

How does ogg compare (I have not heard much about it)?

What about the various quality settings?  I presume these affect filesize?  This is confusing in itself because I thought APE was lossless, so how can there be different quality settings?

I know this argument rages (so sorry in advance), but if people could contribute their experiences and thoughts to help me decide what to go with that would be great.

Cheers.
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Matt

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Re: OT - Encoder comparisons
« Reply #1 on: July 15, 2003, 10:30:40 am »
APE quality is size vs. speed -- not size vs. quality like lossy codecs.  Think Winzip -- it's always lossless.
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lee269

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Re: OT - Encoder comparisons
« Reply #2 on: July 15, 2003, 10:31:24 am »
dedidio, you have read my mind, every question - except that I dont have enough space for an all-ape collection and no prospect at the moment of getting more disk space.

One thing Im sure of is that ape is the way if you can, because its lossless you can if you want convert to anything and still retain a perfect copy. But when you go with a compressed format, thats where the confusion starts...

Ive heard good things about WMA VBR on the 'WMA - default encoder' thread, but Im a bit worried about DRM. Ive been using mp3 128 also and am reasonably happy but Im beginning to think I could get better results for similar filesizes. Im not an audiophile (given my hifi setup anyway :)) but I wouldnt mind some more 'oomph'. Whilst I know encoding is the eternal question Id be particularly interested in being able to set my mind at rest that WMA VBR with no DRM is a safe and reasonably future-proof option.
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rocketsauce

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Re: OT - Encoder comparisons
« Reply #3 on: July 15, 2003, 10:50:18 am »
Well, there are a couple of questions you should ask yourself. Are you satisfied with the sound quality of you 128kbps MP3s? Also, do you want to spend the time reripping?

You said that you now have tons of space. How much space do you have? There are a lot of options for higher sound quality.

The first choice would be lossless, like Monkey's Audio (APE). The different settings are not quality options, but compression options. Higher compression settings take longer to compress and more of your system resources to playback. A drawback to lossless is that it requires a lot more hardrive space than lossy compression methods. While an MP3 might be around 10 times smaller than the original WAV, and APE file will compress to only about 50-75% of the size of the original WAV. For example, a 100mb WAV compressed with Monkey's would probably range from 50-75mb, depending on the type and loudness of the music. Loud rock/metal will compress much less than quieter, simpler music. Another drawback is that hardware support for lossless is virtually non-existent. You will most likely only be able to playback your lossless files on your computer. The benefit of lossless is that you have an exact copy of the original WAV, which you can use to burn to CD or transcode to a lossy format for use on a portable device. Another thing to think about before using lossless is can you actually hear the difference between the original and a high quality lossy file. If you can't, then lossless might just be a waste of space.

There are also high quality options for lossy formats. The main benefit being that they will use much less drive space than lossless. MP3 is great for compatibility with portable players and sharing. Ogg Vorbis is an open source lossy encoder. It's main focus, though, is quality at lower bitrates. Also, at this time, there are no portable devices that play Vorbis. MPC is generally considered to be the highest quality lossy encoder, but again, hardware/portable support is vitually non-existent. WMA could be an option if you're willing to trust your rips to the future whims of Microsoft's DRM policy.

Check out Hydrogen Audio Forums for a lot of info on audio comression:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?s=175e56778ace0ab6d2a09e4275d97b09&&act=idx

Rob
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Kharma

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Re: OT - Encoder comparisons
« Reply #4 on: July 16, 2003, 05:46:54 am »
Another vote for MPC.  Sounds better to my ears than MP3 at similar size, but limited to desktop/laptop as no portable players handle the format.
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