Which is the best lossless codec?, Discussion thread Options

[unfortunateson]

could somebody post the lossless comparison chart here?  Ever since HA added the extra security measures to the wiki, it doesn't allow me to connect to it anymore.

You really can't access this page via this link?
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...omparison_Table

Not from home. It gives a "Precondition failed" page.

[rutra80]

could somebody post the lossless comparison chart here?  Ever since HA added the extra security measures to the wiki, it doesn't allow me to connect to it anymore.

You really can't access this page via this link?
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...omparison_Table

Not from home. It gives a "Precondition failed" page.

Report here.

[kanak]

RE: Monkey's Audio Entry in the Lossless Comparison Wiki


Under OptimFrog's "Other Features", it is mentioned that:

Includes MD5 hashes for quick integrity checking

This feature is also supported by Monkey's Audio. It stores MD5 hashes within the file, and uses it to "verify" the file.

I have posted a picture of a Monkey's audio file that i have which has MD5 hash stored in it:




I think the "includes MD5 hashes" entry should be added for Monkey's Audio as well.

[rjamorim]

I think the "includes MD5 hashes" entry should be added for Monkey's Audio as well.

Can be surely done. But do you have an idea of what tool added that MD5 to the APE file? I was under the impression the official tools don't offer that functionality. Maybe it was shntool or foobar?


Still on the Monkey's Audio topic: @Skimmer: I see you changed some of the details on Monkey's Audio at the list, namely the error robustness entries. Did you actually test on damaged streams if the latest version of Monkey's Audio got better on that aspect? I know Matt mentions that in his changelog, but so did he in the past, and as it turned out, it was still borking on streams with deleted bytes.


Also, on the pros section, you added "Simple and user friendly. Official GUI provided". I don't think I agree with that entry. For starters, you should have then added "Official GUI provided" to ALAC, Real Lossless, WMA Lossless, LPAC and even LA.

Also, "simple and user friendly" is hardly a feature depending on what you want to do. Some users just want raw power (to run batch jobs, pipe from stdin to stdout, or even run cronjobs!), and in that case, "simple" is not a feature.

Besides I believe "simple" applies more to codecs like ALAC, WMAL and TTA, since they don't even ask the user to choose compression level - just encode losslessly to the only compression setting and that's it.

[Launfal]

I think the "includes MD5 hashes" entry should be added for Monkey's Audio as well.

Can be surely done. But do you have an idea of what tool added that MD5 to the APE file? I was under the impression the official tools don't offer that functionality. Maybe it was shntool or foobar?

Monkey adds the MD5 on its own now. You can even choose through the new GUI to verify using it or by doing a complete decompression of the file.

[Garf]

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?ti...omparison_Table

How on earth is MPEG4 ALS slow to encode and decode?

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=40451

This post has been edited by Garf: Mar 5 2006, 10:45

[kanak]

I think the "includes MD5 hashes" entry should be added for Monkey's Audio as well.

Can be surely done. But do you have an idea of what tool added that MD5 to the APE file? I was under the impression the official tools don't offer that functionality. Maybe it was shntool or foobar?

Monkey adds the MD5 on its own now. You can even choose through the new GUI to verify using it or by doing a complete decompression of the file.

Yup the GUI allows that... no need for 3rd party tools

[spoon]

Tagging:

MPEG4 ALS: MP4 tags
ALAC: QT tags

These two are the same?

[rjamorim]

Monkey adds the MD5 on its own now.  You can even choose through the new GUI to verify using it or by doing a complete decompression of the file.

Ah, thank-you very much. I just added it.

How on earth is MPEG4 ALS slow to encode and decode?

The comparison was moved to the wiki for a reason! If you have more up-to-date information than me, feel free to correct the entries. I was still basing the comparison table on Liebchen's binaries - that were indeed way too slow.

Besides, I would much rather see a comparison among several codecs. Comparing different compiles of the same codec, as presented in the thread you pointed out here, doesn't help finding out how it compares against everything else.


Anyway, I just tested Monkey's Audio 4.01b2 on corrupted streams (3 streams, and at least three times on each stream), and it still borks, so I'm rolling back Skimmer's modifications on that aspect. And I'm still wondering about the merit of adding "Simple and user friendly. Official GUI provided." to the Pros list.

Regards;

R.

[Cosmo]

re: wiki - lossless comparison

1) suggestion: Put the most popular / most used codecs side-by-side in the top row. Would make comparison of the most likely candidates easier (especially for those who have to scroll the page).

2) FLAC's encoding speed is noted as "fast" in the table. Not "slow", nor even "average". Then it's called "relatively slow" in FLAC CONS. That is confusing in the least, and perhaps unfair advertisement one way or the other.

[Synthetic Soul]

1) Excellent suggestion. NB: Any registered wiki editor could do this!

2) I would say that Fast is correct for default settings. It could be called relatively slow when encoding with -8.

[DARcode]

I subscribe to Cosmo's first point too.

[pepoluan]

2) I would say that Fast is correct for default settings. It could be called relatively slow when encoding with -8.

I guess that means we'll have to be more specific...

Perhaps, having 2 judgments: one based on recommended setting (e.g. flac -5) and one based on maximum-compression setting (e.g. flac --super-secret-blah-blah-blah or flac -8)

[rjamorim]

1) suggestion: Put the most popular / most used codecs side-by-side in the top row. Would make comparison of the most likely candidates easier (especially for those who have to scroll the page).

Good suggestion, I'll work on it.

If only editing wiki tables wasn't so painful. >_<

What formats go to the top row? FLAC and WavPack obviously, then Monkey's, Frog, ALAC and...?

YALAC bothers me somewhat. I'll have to make the table bigger because of it :-B

2) FLAC's encoding speed is noted as "fast" in the table. Not "slow", nor even "average". Then it's called "relatively slow" in FLAC CONS. That is confusing in the least, and perhaps unfair advertisement one way or the other.

That was indeed an error. I will fix it when I update the table.

2) I would say that Fast is correct for default settings. It could be called relatively slow when encoding with -8.

I guess that means we'll have to be more specific...

Perhaps, having 2 judgments: one based on recommended setting (e.g. flac -5) and one based on maximum-compression setting (e.g. flac --super-secret-blah-blah-blah or flac -8)

Just under the table:
"Encoding speed, Decoding speed and Compression ratio are based on each encoder's default settings."

[rjamorim]

I just went ahead and fixed FLAC. Also took the opportunity to change Frog's OS support to Win/Mac/Linux

So, what codecs should go to the top row? I think the ones that must be there are WavPack, Flac, Monkey's and ALAC. Anything else is negotiable. Please post your opinions soon, so that I can work on it this weekend.

This post has been edited by rjamorim: Apr 28 2006, 12:36

[kwanbis]

What formats go to the top row? FLAC and WavPack obviously, then Monkey's, Frog, ALAC and...?

you could use the last lossless poll as a guide.

[rjamorim]

What formats go to the top row? FLAC and WavPack obviously, then Monkey's, Frog, ALAC and...?

you could use the last lossless poll as a guide.

I'm using it as a guide

But other than the four most voted codecs, there are too few votes. Fifth place is Frog, with whooping 3 votes!!

This post has been edited by rjamorim: Apr 28 2006, 13:41

[Cosmo]

For now, I would either
replace Real and Shorten with WavPack and WMA,
or just replace Real with WavPack.

If/when YALAC is added, I would favor it over Shorten and WMA.

[rjamorim]

If/when YALAC is added, I would favor it over Shorten and WMA.

I want to see it pick up popularity first :B

I would still bet more on ALS than YALAC for widespread support.

This post has been edited by rjamorim: Apr 29 2006, 05:55

[Cosmo]

I agree. And I think it's fair to wait before adding YALAC at all, until it at least reaches the release phase.

[rjamorim]

I agree. And I think it's fair to wait before adding YALAC at all, until it at least reaches the release phase.

Sure, sure. Specially because, as it is now, we know nothing at all about it, other that it runs on windows and is able to compress audio data

[boombaard]

I agree. And I think it's fair to wait before adding YALAC at all, until it at least reaches the release phase.

Sure, sure. Specially because, as it is now, we know nothing at all about it, other that it runs on windows and is able to compress audio data

and that it does so more quickly and better than both wavpack&flac

[rjamorim]

and that it does so more quickly and better than both wavpack&flac

I'll only believe that after I see it in Heijden's graph

[rjamorim]

OK, I reworked the table somewhat. WavPack went up, Real lossless went down. I didn't touch Shorten yet because I'm waiting to see if it should be replaced with WMA, or if YALAC will really become wildly popular and should rather take Shorten's place.

[Mr_Rabid_Teddybe...]

Not that I think there's too much good to be said for the Shorten format, but in the naime of fairness, setting "hardware support" to "yes" for WavPack and "no" for Shorten in the table isn't (quite fair).
The difference are one device called "Roku PhotoBridge HD" in favour of WavPack. Apart from that, they both share the same hardware support, and it's called RockBox....

Lossless codecs currently supported by RockBox are ALAC, FLAC, WavPack and Shorten.

Infact, I'm right now listening to a Henry Kaiser gig in Shorten format downloaded from Archive.org on my iRiver H340.

This post has been edited by Mr_Rabid_Teddybear: Jun 2 2006, 03:37