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[StarBand Guy]

Believe me when I say that I know the answer is highly subjective, but I respect the users opinions.

I'm re-ripping a lot of our CD collection. I used MP3 in the past but now have plenty of disk space so -

What's the preferred format these days? Ogg-Vorbis is the way I was leaning, but there are a couple in MC which I'm not even familiar with.

Suggestions?

[modelmaker]

Matt of JRiver developed the lossless Monkeys Audio (.ape).

[johnas]

I would go lossless - Monkeys Audio is good. I personally prefer FLAC.

[thenoob1]

Yes flac has some advantages but makes bigger files. But I also prefer flac.

[jkrzok]

I would also consider any other hardware you may be using the files with. If you have an mp3 player that also plays a lossless format (there are some that play flac for example) I would consider ripped to that format. This would avoid having to convert file formats. Even though MC does an outstanding job at conversion, it would save you time and CPU cycles in the long run.

If it's just for play on your PC, I would use ape. But that's just personal I guess; I can't really tell you why I like it more.

[Magic_Randy]

I would also consider any other hardware you may be using the files with.

jkrzok makes a good point.  I've been using MP3's and will stay with that format for the near term.  MP3's can be played on anything.  If you are more focused than I am on the target devices you want use to play music, that consideration may help you decide what is the best alternative to MP3 files for you.

[AustinBike]

It depends on what you are doing with it.  If you are going to spend the majority of your time listening on portable players, then MP3 is the best. If you want to have true portability, not just for today, but for the future, then MP3 is the best bet.

If you listen to music on a computer or a computer connected to a stereo then MP3 is not the best choice.

I listen to my music on an ipod and tivo, so MP3 is the best choice. 

Anybody that answers this question without actually asking you how/where you listen is not going to give you the right answer.

[NickM]

Anybody that answers this question without actually asking you how/where you listen is not going to give you the right answer.

I disagree.

If you have storage space available, ALWAYS store in a non-lossy format.  Inevitably, your listening devices, set-up, even your aural capabilities may all change over the years.  Whatever happens as these change, you can always go back to the non-lossy format and re-encode into something else. 

Whether it's very low quality to put on a small device for going to the gym, or a medium quality for use whilst driving, or best quality for listening to on audiophile equipment, you'll have all of these covered if your main storage is non-lossy.

Of the non-lossy formats around, I prefer APE because of the tagging and association with Media Center...

[benn600]

I have, wow, EXACTLY 300 GB (reported by Windows), of FLAC music.  It really is preferable.  I always envisioned something like this...where your desktop (with tons of storage space) stores all your music at perfect quality and then the quality is reduced on-the-fly for less storage-capable devices or for streaming over the internet or whatever.

I have my UPnP server setup to re-encode to extreme MP3 because I mainly use MP101 music players and even on a B network, they stream fine.  And that's basically the best quality I'm able to get since they don't support FLAC.

FLAC is my personal choice because it just seems to be the most popular and common lossless format.  It's the first lossless format I heard about.

With that 300 GB, I have 11,807 FLAC songs (all directly from CDs) which averages to 25.4 MB per song.  I have some very long pieces mixed in there, but just a few.  That's a reasonable estimate.

The way I look at it, I always have those few songs that I absolutely love.  Back when I have iTunes, I would pull out the CDs from time to time just to listen to the best copy...there was some difference, I could tell, and there's some difference in what you can't hear--but your mind notices.  Why can't I devote twice the space to my music?  Suppose I used a very high quality MP3 bit rate, I may get 12.5 MB per song...that's a very high bitrate...probably 320.  But anyway, twice to get exactly the original?

GO FLAC AND SIT BACK

[InflatableMouse]

I would not go for lossless because the latest bestest lame with -V 2 is absolutely transparent. I have a very good sound system and have done multiple blind tests myself and with others (even audiophiles). -V 4 was picked twice out of ten songs by me and another person. -V 2 wasn't picked once. Moreover, I have yet to see an independent blind test picking -v 4 or higher. Both me and the other person picked the song on the same thing, sound stage. The difference was very subtle and so minimal. It's just that we knew the song so well and knew that a particular sound had to come from a certain direction that we were able to pick the -V4. The sound was there, it just wasn't so typically defined as in the original.

So just because you have enough space isn't reason to waste it on lossless. Backups become inconvenient, sharing can become inconvenient (transcoding) and a lot of mp3 players do not support lossless (whats in the name?) or wouldn't have enough storage to conveniently carry all your favorite lossless songs.

I would say rip em with MC on secure and make sure you got the latest bestest lame encoder installed and use -V2 on the custom parameter line and don't look back! Saves space and keeps it convenient! 

[Osho]

What's the preferred format these days? Ogg-Vorbis is the way I was leaning, but there are a couple in MC which I'm not even familiar with.

Suggestions?

FLAC. It is a loseless compression with wide variety of support on different OSes. It is Open Source so no worries about it being controlled by a specific company in future.

Osho

[glynor]

I would say rip em with MC on secure and make sure you got the latest bestest lame encoder installed and use -V2 on the custom parameter line and don't look back! Saves space and keeps it convenient! 

+++

Couldn't agree more, InflatableMouse.

[richard.e.morton]

I rip to 320kbps avg ogg vorbis and even with a good stereo connected over coax digital to a quality decoder/reciever/amp I can't tell the difference to the original. You get the benefit of open source, better quality than mp3 - which even with modern codecs (I can still tell the difference) - but smaller files than FLAC or APE, and better support, iRiver media players tend to support it for instance.

mp3 is an old format which is beyond its days. yes it has a lot of support, but its at the end of it's life. I agree with the lossless argument, you can always go back to the original - but when I started media was too expensive, and with large libraries it still is, and small media players it still too limiting.

Rockbox, the opensource firmware for mp3 players enables ogg vorbis on lots of media players. I have it on my iRiver and it's great.

Lossless is, in the long term the way forward. m4a, wma, ogg, aac are based on my experience all superior to mp3.

[gappie]

it not only depends on your equipment, but also on your ears, as this thread shows.

[JimH]

One word of advice for you: APE.

[benn600]

Did you read this:

mp3 is an old format which is beyond its days. yes it has a lot of support, but its at the end of it's life.

That is a great reason to go with any form of lossless -- GO FLAC --.

Who wants to hear, oh, your music files are outdated.  A new format is much better now that replaces the format you spent months ripping your music to.  Go re-rip to get the new features and quality of the new format.

I'd rather do it right ONCE and for all.  I've ripped my collection only once in MP3 before FLAC for a good reason.  I didn't want to make another mistake and end up doing the whole process again.  And now with 1,000 CDs, it's a huge endeavor to rip my collection.  Even getting 30 CDs in at a time is a burden.  I rip less than 4 CDs per hour on a Core2 because of the secure/high compression settings.

I'll never have to re-rip my favorite Greatest Hits album again.  It's done!  I'm thankful every day when I listen to music and hear the FLAC goodness pouring out, via watts, though my speakers.  They cry FLAC goodness every day.

[StarBand Guy]

Wow. Great response. Thanks to all.

I should have made my usage requirements know, I suppose, but one never knows what will change.  That's one thing I've learned over the years. I sure wish I'd never ripped all that stuff to MP3 with some of the junky rippers I used. Oh, well.

Same with photos, really. I've tried to keep pristine jpgs of photos, wish RAW support had been around longer. Anyway, thanks a lot. Looks like FLAC or APE for me.  I've probably "only" 60 Gig or so of MP3s now with about 10 of that to re-rip. Haul all the discs out of the attic.

Most of our listening is at home. What little we do on devices we can convert as needed.

[jmone]

Space is cheap.  I re-ripped all of my music as WMA Lossless (started the process pre-MC using Windows Media Player).  MC does the conversions needed to sync with other devices. 

[InflatableMouse]

One word of advice for you: APE.

[off-topic]
Why? Honestly. I don't want to start a useless for/against or anything.

I know its developed by one of your developers (reason enough some would argue) but I'd really like to hear it from you. Convince me

My reasoning is simple: Flac is open source, community supported with codecs for almost every platform imaginable. It has community supported cpu/platform optimized compiles that outperform any other codec I know (no only ape). With the latest version, files got even smaller and they were already smaller than apes. Ape does not support error handling, no streaming support, no multichannel. Last but not least, Flac is more and more being supported by hardware devices (like my Cowon U3 ).

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison#Comparison_Table

I see Ape is open source according to that table, I stand corrected. I thought the last time I checked it was proprietary format but I guess I was wrong.

[benn600]

Perhaps the table is wrong.  That layout really supports FLAC. 

Here's my question: since the new version is better with better compression, should I select all in my library and re-encode to the new FLAC?  Probably no reason to do so but I'm curious.

I especially like the low CPU requirements.  I wouldn't have a hard time setting up a really old music player device with a 133 MHz computer (if I had the need).  I have done it in the past as a free alarm clock...it was a long process but the results were great.  I have a wireless remote with numbers that I could enter to setup various things: sleep timer, wakeup times, etc.  I used a macro program to (very complicatedly) setup everything.  It was a ton of work and had issues, but was really neat.  I had a playlist in iTunes for each day of the week (M-Sunday) and playlists were automatically exported on my server from my iTunes database (stored on server) to standard .m3u playlists.  The music player then had a macro to execute that .m3u playlist at a certain time...WMP would launch and start playing my tunes.  A few numbers would slowly lower the volume and snooze for 3,5,10, 15 minutes...etc.  It was quite nice!

[Osho]

[off-topic]
Why? Honestly. I don't want to start a useless for/against or anything.

I know its developed by one of your developers (reason enough some would argue) but I'd really like to hear it from you. Convince me

I am not trying to convince you as I myself use FLAC and not APE. But one thing that APE has over FLAC is support for embedded cover art inside the file. Someone correct me if I am wrong. That is the only thing I find missing in FLAC from my perspective.

Osho

[JONCAT]

I am playing APEs on my portable DAP now....

Lossy is lossy...why archive rare vinyl & CDs, any music for that matter, in a lossy format. The CD may be dying as we speak, but I want the original format for my discs or vinyl archiving.

Ape does have error correction on the fly. Better GUI. Verify function of MD5 built into the GUI (we should get this IN MC!). Cover art support.

Space is getting cheaper by the nanosecond; file sizes of FLAC vs. APE files are neglible.

Long live the MONKEY!

I have FLACS too......until I convert them to APEs 

To each his own though.

DC