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[zones]

Hi,

I am now the proud owner of a RAID array after losing all my APE encoded files. I want to take the clean start as a oportunity to re-evalate the best format for my needs and would like to hear others opinions.

So what do I require.

My media PC is multi zone with some of the rooms having very good quality amps and speakers hence my previous choice of APE format. However I also use an IPOD which means on another PC I run Itunes just to download to the IPOD.

In my new world I would like to rip a cd to my MC pc and have it in a format which is the best quality and still useable with my IPOD.

So with my needs in mind which format would you use or would you encode in a lossless format and "down encode" for IPOD use.

All thoughts welcome
Zones

[jmone]

I re-ripped all my Audio in a lossless format to my HTPC which is hooked up to a reasonable AV Receiver (V2700) / Speaker package (Axiom) as even I could tell the difference between lossless and lossey compression with this setup.  I decided on WMA Lossless (no real reason except it has wider support) and I then use MC12 to sync/coververt based on the devices that get connected (range from a Ipod / WM6 PDA Phone / cheapo MP3 player).   
THanks
Nathan

[Qythyx]

I've also gone with WMA lossless, for no particular reason. If avoiding re-conversion when syncing to your iPOD is important then you're probably best off going with lossless AAC. If you're willing to forgo lossless entirely then you might want to consider a very high quality MP3 (360kbps or so).

Personally the reason I decided to go lossless was not so much because I think I can actually hear a difference between it and a high quality lossy, but because my main goal was to create my digital library with the intention of never having to rip the same CDs again. I expect in the future some new format will gain popularity and have features I'll desire, at which point I should be able to batch convert my library and know that the music quality is as good as the original CD.

[glynor]

I would definitely re-encode for the iPod.  The Digital to Analog converter in the iPod certainly isn't good enough for you to be able to tell the difference between a lossless file and a well encoded MP3 or AAC file.  You'd essentially just be wasting space on your portable device.  MC has a very nice on-the-fly handheld conversion option which will automatically convert from your lossless source format to whatever format you want as part of the sync process.  It can also cache the converted files so that it only needs to do it once per file.

For my Sansa, I have caching enabled (with the limit cache size option set to about double the storage capacity of my device) and it works great.

For the format to store on your RAID, I'd probably go with FLAC if you want to go lossless.  APE would be a fairly good option as well, but they are less portable (there are no readers available for non-windows platforms) and less widespread.  Now that MC includes the built-in FLAC plugins, I don't see any reason not to just use that format, which seems to be well accepted on "the scene".

I too would strongly consider just using a very high quality LAME MP3 rip though.  You save so much drive space, and with LAME set to VBR Preset Fast Extreme it is going to be completely indistinguishable from the lossless version, even on very high-quality audiophile gear, unless you have magical ears or except for certain very rare cases.  If you really don't want to worry, LAME preset insane (which is CBR 320) is the absolute best possible option for MP3 compression.

If you do decide to go with a lossless format for archival purposes, I'd just set MC to convert them to LAME VBR Preset Fast Medium (V4), or use MC's preset High-Quality Portable (which is either V4 or V5, I don't remember anymore) for the iPod and call it good.

If you really want to use lossless with the iPod, your only option is Apple Lossless in a M4A file (ALAC), and that is difficult to encode with MC.  I think you can do it by using iTunes as an external encoder, but I've never set it up.  Try searching for more details.  Again, I would probably recommend against this.  With the circuitry in the iPod, it is really just a waste of space.  The only downside to the conversion is the extra time it takes for the sync, but with MC's caching (as long as you have the hard drive space to throw at it) this is minimized substantially.

Hydrogenaudio has a very good Lossless codec comparison guide here: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_comparison

[glynor]

Also....

Qythyx has a good point in favor of lossless, but MP3 has become the de-facto standard.  And with as good as LAME is, I'm doubtful that something is really going to come along to completely replace it anytime soon.  I could be wrong, of course, but...

The main motivation for creating a new format would be file size reductions.  MP3 and AAC certainly have good enough quality at high bitrates, so quality isn't really a concern.  Because of the ubiquity of the MP3 format, any new future metadata system (tagging standard) would certainly be hacked onto the MP3 format.  I could see potentially either one of the existing containers or a new container becoming popular in the future for surround-sound multichannel encoded audio, but that wouldn't apply to your existing stereo CD collection so there'd be no reason to re-rip them to switch them to the multichannel format.  So, that leaves mostly just making the files smaller as a reason to invent a new standard.

The problem is, with how drive storage sizes are going, I just don't see that being a powerful motivation to abandon MP3 for the forseeable future.  If the quality is transparent, and the file sizes are pretty small already with MP3, what's the point for someone to develop a new compressor to make the files smaller 5 years from now when hard drive sizes will be measured in multiple terabytes?  I mean, AAC is clearly superior at low bitrates already, but who cares if you can just buy another 500 GB drive for $90?  That's why AAC has never supplanted MP3 as the de-facto standard.  AAC (or Musepack or Vorbis or WMA or whatever) might be better technically, but LAME is good enough and it is compatible with everything.

[Matt]

When I first wrote APE it cost several dollars to store a lossless album.

Now it's less than a dime.

The warm fuzzy of doing it right and having the best possible quality makes this a slam-dunk choice in my opinion.

Also, I'm scared of proprietary formats like WMA and ALAC.  There are better lossless formats that are free and open.

[glynor]

The warm fuzzy of doing it right and having the best possible quality makes this a slam-dunk choice in my opinion.

Also, I'm scared of proprietary formats like WMA and ALAC.  There are better lossless formats that are free and open.

I must say.... I'd tend to agree actually, despite my diatribe to the contrary.  If I were not too lazy to re-rip all of my albums, I'd honestly probably re-rip them to either APE or FLAC.  FLAC would probably edge Matt's format out.  Not because APE is bad at all, but mainly because of cross-platform compatibility.  FLAC also supports Multichannel audio, and (last I checked) APE does not.  That's not a feature I'd use much now, but in the future it could become important...

If there was an easy-to-use way to encode and support APE on OSX (there is now apparently a Linux build available), I might consider APE.  But, since lossless is lossless... FLAC would probably be my choice, even if the compression in APE is a bit more efficient.

[jmone]

When I first wrote APE it cost several dollars to store a lossless album.

Now it's less than a dime.

The warm fuzzy of doing it right and having the best possible quality makes this a slam-dunk choice in my opinion.

Also, I'm scared of proprietary formats like WMA and ALAC.  There are better lossless formats that are free and open.

I agree that with disk space soooo cheap on PC's there I love that I can keep my tracks in a lossless format then convert as required - I also like the warm fuzzy of knowing that I'm able to cross convert the whole library if I need to without having to re-rip the lot just to keep the quality "lossless". 

Matt unlike yourself, I was more scared to use one of the "fee and open" formats as I saw WMA as being so wide spread that it has every conversion wideget, tool, and app support I'll ever need - so if MS do anything odd I can always cross convert to another format without lossing quality.  I also get some HW support, like my WM6 based phone BUT as I'm limited at present to 4GB (& such device and their HPhones are so poor) I use MC12 to re-encode these to WMA Med/High.  For my own education I'd be intersted in knowing how one lossless format can be better than another.

Thanks
Nathan

[zones]

Thanks for all your comments advice, I did not realise MC would convert from a "Main" format to MP3 for the Ipod.

I have used MC 10 and 11 for several years for the multizone features, which make MC stand out from the crowd. The "main" format to Ipod conversion is yet another distinguishing feature well done guys!

Ok so what will I do,

I will definitely use a lossless APE, FLAC or WMA and will cache the MP3 files so I can quickly update my Ipod. I guess I can put a none raid drive in my media server just to store these if space becomes an issue, they will also be on my Ipod after all.

I agree using lossless on the Ipod is a waste of energy / space, I generally listen to my Ipod when travelling and never connect it to anything other than headphones.

So that leave the lossless format I will a little more reading but its down to Flac or APE, I may if I get board encode to both and do a test using my main listen room kit which is not normally connected to the server (Tag Maclarn Audio processor / amp and Kef reference speakers).
I don't have golden ears and it wont be blind let a lone double blind but it may be fun, let me know if anyone is interested in how I get on or has done similar.

Cheers for all the comments and advice it is all well recieved.

[glynor]

A word of advice.... Don't waste your time on a listening test.   

Lossless is lossless.  All lossless file formats will sound identical in every way, unless your playback application is messing with the bits somehow (MC doesn't).

The entire idea of a lossless compression format is that it can save space on disk, but when "decompressed" and played back be exactly bit-for-bit identical to the original recording.  Anything else would be "lossy" not "lossless".  You can use tools like foobar to test this, if you're really curious.

Suffice to say... Testing different lossless formats in this way, would be like going to the record store and buying 20 copies of the same CD and listen-testing them all to find the best copy.  Digital is digital.  The bits are the same, so the output is the same.

[glynor]

The differences between different lossless codecs are mainly about: (1) portability (can it be read/written by a wide variety of software applications?), (2) efficiency (how much smaller than the original wav file does it make the file), (3) features (multichannel? high-bitrate? tagging and metadata? flexible container?), and (4) hardware support.

Definitely read through that HydrogenAudio link above!

[zones]

Glynor,

Thanks I guess I am cynical and was thinking some are more lossless than others.
Anyway I am going to go for FLAC sorry Matt, I have always suffered from occasional stuttering durring playback, maybe the faster decoding of FLAC will help. The main reason is it seems to have a wider acceptance / support.

I download FLAC enc 2.2.2 for source forge as I could not find it in the stanard install of MC12 is this correct ?
Any suggestions on the settings?


Cheers

[jmone]

Any suggestions on the settings?

Yup - WMA Lossless, built right in, lots of SW and HW support....

[glynor]

I download FLAC enc 2.2.2 for source forge as I could not find it in the stanard install of MC12 is this correct ?
Any suggestions on the settings?

The FLAC plugins are built-in to MC now.  I'm not sure if you need the ones from scthom anymore, or if they are any different.

If you want to make sure you have the current JRiver provided version, simply close MC, find and delete enc_flac.dll and in_flac.dll in your plugins folder here: C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center 12\Plugins

Then reinstall the current build of MC.  MC will install the current FLAC plugins as part of the install process.  The current JRiver versions are:

enc_flac.dll: v2.2.4
in_flac.dll: v2.4.2

[glynor]

I figured I'd also address your other questions (regarding settings)...

Using the built-in FLAC encoder, MC gives you these options for a FLAC encode:



I'd probably recommend leaving them alone for the most part.  But, here is a rundown:

Quality: This setting is really a misnomer.  Since FLAC is lossless, the quality of the music coming out will always be the same.  It is a setting of how "hard" the FLAC encoder will work to try to squeeze the files as small as possible.  The higher the number, the harder it will try and the slower the encoding process will be (it doesn't affect decode speed directly) but, it might also make the resulting file a bit smaller.  I leave mine alone.  You can turn it up if you want, and the encode will take longer.  You can turn it down and it'll be quicker (but the files might be a bit bigger).  It's much like the compression ratio setting for ZIP files.

Verify Encoding: This will run a separate thread of the FLAC decoder during the encode process and will verify that the output from the FLAC matches the input WAV data bit-for-bit.  If you're paranoid, select this.  FLAC has been well tested and it is really unnecessary (as long as your computer is stable and doesn't make math mistakes).  However, this will slow down the encode but will give you piece of mind.  It throws up an error and stops the encode if the output doesn't match the input.  If this happens a lot, your computer or your optical drive are not working properly and should be checked.

Add 4K Padding Block:  Keep this selected.  This makes the in-file tags in the FLAC file work better.  From the FLAC FAQ:

Since metadata is stored at the beginning of a FLAC file, changing the length of it can sometimes cause the whole file to be rewritten. You can avoid this by adding padding with flac when you encode, or with metaflac after encoding. By default, flac adds 8k of padding; you can change this amount if you need more or less.

I don't know why MC uses 4k rather than 8k, but you want the padding so leave it checked.

Add Seek Table: Keep this checked.  This allows fast forwarding and rewinding on some hardware devices and software players (some use another method and don't need the seek table).  I don't know if MC needs it to be able to seek, but I doubt it somehow.  It adds a tiny bit to the file size, but not substantially.

Use Ogg as Transport Layer: Leave this unchecked.  All this would do is wrap the FLAC data in an OGG container file, rather than the native FLAC container.  You don't need this, and it tends to make the files less compatible rather than more.  If you're curious, read this: http://flac.sourceforge.net/faq.html#general__native_vs_ogg

[zones]

Ok I am all set to start ripping thanks once more.

I did how ever have to install the FLAC Enc and Inc from sorceforge again. I uninstalled MC 12 and re installed and found no FLAC Support. All is fine and I guess I dont need the MC12 bundled dlls, anyway below are screenshots after the re-install.

Cheers

Well I would attach the Jpg but embarassingly I cant figure that out.
MC Version 12.0.329

Options-Encoding-Encoder
External Encoder
Monkey's Audio (APE)
MP3 Encoder
Musepack (MPC)
Ogg Vorbis
Uncompressed Wave
Windows Media (Checked)

[zones]

Ahah I found the dowmload trail is not the upto date version I am now running 12.0.375 with the built in versions of flac.

I get ther eventually.

[glynor]

Yeah.... They don't always "promote" the current build to the one that is available on the main download page.  They wait until one particular build has been deemed "very stable" before doing that.  It's always a good idea to try the newest build from the forum though (new ones come out here about once per week), because they constantly add new features, and the builds in the public forum have been tested and are usually quite stable.