2012 ripping/encoding general poll Options

[C.R.Helmrich]

What I mean was:
from 1 Jan to 2 Jan ( during first 24 Hs) - there are totally 100 results
from 2 Jan to 4 Jan (3 days) - total 200 results
5-13 Jan (9 days) - total 300 results.

I understand. So, after 301 votes, some preliminary data for a nice plot I interpolated the 2010 data using the current 2012 numbers (piecewise cubic Hermite, in case you're interested). I'm not showing the 2012 data, only a trend. Vote, and you can see it. Only one codec gains more than 1 percent popularity: AAC. That's great in my opinion and makes me hope that, after a bit more catching up with MP3 during the next few years, AAC playback will be as widely supported as MP3 playback.

CODE

   Codec   | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | Trend
--------------------------------------------------------
MPEG-1 MP3 | 54.2 | 56.2 | 59.1 | 53.4 | 46.4 | \
MPEG-4 AAC | 12.8 | 16.3 | 16.3 | 19.1 | 23.8 | /
Ogg Vorbis | 22.8 | 17.7 | 14.3 | 15.1 | 16.0 | -
Musepack   |  4.4 |  3.8 |  4.5 |  4.4 |  4.3 | -
--------------------------------------------------------
#Listeners |  920 | 1309 |  923 |    0 |  458 |

P.S.: No surprises with the lossless formats.

Chris

This post has been edited by C.R.Helmrich: Jan 15 2012, 01:39

[shadowking]

I've gone back and forth..

I figured transcoding gives the most flexibility and mp3 is the most supported lossy. This is the one to transcode to and 192 k worked way back then and stands the test of time and compatibility even now. So yes quick and filthy GOGO CBR 192

I have gone back to using wavpack lossy for the source @ 352kbit (-b4hhx) . This is a good solution for PC use. I have tested it over many years and its rock solid 99.9 % of the time inc transcoding to other lossy format. For ultra rare CD I may use 520k (-b6hhx).

[IgorC]

Only one codec gains more than 1 percent popularity: AAC. That's great in my opinion and makes me hope that, after a bit more catching up with MP3 during the next few years, AAC playback will be as widely supported as MP3 playback.

AAC support grows very fast. Windows 7 has an out-of-the-box support of AAC and it's to expect that Windows7/8 will have the biggest userbase already in this year.
http://netmarketshare.com/operating-system...133&qpnp=25

This post has been edited by IgorC: Feb 3 2012, 17:55

[juandhaltrich]

Im progressively getting rid of all the mp3 I got.... for lossless formats, I started with FLAC, then moved to ALAC when I decided I didnt want to have any more mp3, and so I would have to sync the iPod with an accepted format, hence the FLAC/ALAC switch....of course, then I learnt about how you can make FLAC files work in iTunes and I felt like a moron LOL!!! still, Im not going back to FLAC, it took me a lot of time to put the ALAC files properly in order. besides, FLAC and ALAC are Very much alike, isnt that right? what do you think?

[RobertoDomenico]

Flac, Alac and all the other lossless formats are all lossless meaning 100% reproduction of your cd. If you're living in the Apple ecosystem then ALAC is a wise choice.

[LoFiYo]

Lossy: LAME 3.97 -V 4 or 5
MP3 for compatibility for my MP3 player and everything else. I prefer 3.97 at lower bitrates (< 160kbps).

Lossless: FLAC
To me, all lossy encoders are more or less the same (~50% compression), but FLAC seems to be the future safe choice.

My PC has been the same for a few years, so have the hardware/storage restrictions. I still need to use lossy when I rip CDs. But in the last year or two, I have been listening to Pandora more often, so I don't rip CDs as much as I used to.

[gameplaya15143]

Lossy: Ogg Vorbis
-q 0 --advanced-encode-option lowpass_frequency=99
Been using it for years, I see no reason to change. I sometimes use q2 for multi-channel though.

Lossless: FLAC
FLAC seems to have pretty good support, that's why I use it.

1 file per track
/artist/year - album/artist - year - album - num - title.ext
I find it easy to keep stuff organized this way.

[AllanP]

Lossy:
256 kbps iTunes AAC music bought from iTunes Music Store, I using it on my MacBook Pro, sounds great to me! I already have bought more than 2000 tracks

Lossless:
I not using Lossless any longer!

File mode:
One file per track!

This post has been edited by AllanP: Feb 6 2012, 01:09

[IgorC]

Here's a nice graph (including current results of 2012)

CODE

    MP3    AAC    Vorbis MPC
2007    54.2    12.8    22.8    4.4
2008    56.2    16.3    17.7    3.8
2009    59.1    16.3    14.3    4.5
2010    53.4    19.1    15.1    4.4
2011    46.4    23.8    16    4.3
2012    44.5  27.3    15.6    3.6

[Rogee]

I was strictly an MP3 and FLAC guy until November when iTunes Match started. I've been so impressed by the service that I've been slowly upgrading my matched MP3s to AAC and converting my FLACs to ALAC. I now rip to ALAC (one file per track) for albums and purchase MP3s wherever it's cheapest for single songs. I then match them in iTunes.

[duss]

Lossless: ALAC
I’m moving away from FLAC to ALAC, on account for native tag support in windows explorer (for m4a container) and because foobar2000 shows me the variable bitrates with ALAC while playing.

Lossy: AAC
AAC -q 0.90
I wrote a long explanation about this but happened to refresh my browser


1 file per track.

[temp1]

my prefer
lossy: AAC (qaac cbr 256)
lossless: TAK (default), i love TAK, fast encoding and decoding,

[mwheelerk]

I use exclusively AIFF. I rip to iTunes using XLD for transcoding (converting FLAC downloads) and extracts (importing CDs).

[AliceWonder]

I rip to flac, one file per trac.

After tagging I then transcode from flac to ogg with q3 for normal listening on my desktop or lame --preset standard for listening from my mp3 player.

To me anyway, with my speakers, it seems that ogg q3 and lame --preset standard are equivalent and going higher quality compression only gets me larger file size.
But if I ever spend more than $30 on a set of speakers, I can always go back through my flac collection and transcode to a higher quality ogg.

[Meeko]

Lossless - FLAC

Lossy - AAC (apple's encoder at about 140kbps)

And I do one track per file. Never liked cue sheets much.

[MahFlac]

lossy: 320 mp3
lossless: flac

one track per file, but I still have a cue sheet to use to burn with burrrn

Not that anyone cares, but I love talking about it, I rip discs with EAC to flac -8, then I convert to mp3 320 (while keeping the flac files for archiving) for the files I actually listen to. I just load all my mp3 320 albums into foobar and and play the songs at random. It's like having my own radio station that plays the stuff I like and I don't have to hear the same song twice for weeks if I don't want to. I use replay gain tags (89) to keep the volume equal so there are no nasty surprises. Sounds great!

This post has been edited by MahFlac: Jul 25 2012, 16:09

[lesswire]

Lossy: V3 using recommended LAME, but currently switching to V2

Lossless: FLAC

Ripping mode: One file per track

[Nichtswisser]

AAC (Nero Encoder @ 220kbps)/FLAC/Per Track

For years now.

This post has been edited by Nichtswisser: Aug 21 2012, 01:54

[Exposure]

Lossless: TAK -p5m

Lossy: Depends on the situation. When I'm out of disk space I use LossyTAK. For COWON products - Musepack. Sometimes when I composite / editing Video with WAV stream, I actually convert the audio stream to LossyFLAC, to be muxed later inside an MKV, (and that's of course, for Win PC playing).

But 95% of the time, I use Lossless TAK. If I happen to download an MP3 / OGG / WMA I leave them as they are. With the exception of AAC which I prefer to convert to Musepack despite of the almost non-audible degredation of audio quality.

[IgorC]

It would be interesting to learn what the split between lossless and lossy is, if you have 90% in lossless and 10% in lossy then there is no way to ascertain as both would be checked on the poll.

Hm, yes.
It should be more useful than "favorite ripping mode" question (one file per track, one file per disc with cuesheet or chapters)


Speaking of polls, it's time to say "I had my time" from my part.
So if somebody has a new ideas ...

This post has been edited by IgorC: Dec 22 2012, 04:20

[DonP]

It would be interesting to learn what the split between lossless and lossy is, if you have 90% in lossless and 10% in lossy then there is no way to ascertain as both would be checked on the poll.

Hm, yes.
It should be more useful than "favorite ripping mode" question (one file per track, one file per disc with cuesheet or chapters)

On that issue, I am now ripping fully to lossless, then converting to lossy for players and cloud. A couple of years ago I answered lossless mostly just for vinyl rips because they are a lot more work to redo. I'm still trying to figure out how much role lossywav should have in the mix.

This post has been edited by DonP: Dec 22 2012, 13:06

[Squeller]

Library: flac plus embedded cue. TAK is great, but sometimes I had to copy lossless files to where it was unsupported- I'm happy my library is now >98% lossless
Listening room: vorbis@q8
Car: lame@v2+Vlevel because often Classical music

This post has been edited by Squeller: Dec 22 2012, 15:29

[Venyos]

After much wandering and awful lot of time invested in the samples, since I use Windows, portable ipod player, my car player plays WMA, MP3, AAC and my home system is very good and I want to do the least possible compromise with quality sound, my last choice of formats is:
1. FLAC Level 5, one file per song for CD RIP via dbPoweramp listening at home Via Foobar with UPnP
2. FhG AAC quality level 5 on my iPod for the car.

This post has been edited by Venyos: Dec 23 2012, 08:49

[jimijabble]

Just found out about OPUS so using that for now as the quality is very good at 96kbps for music and 40kbps for audio books and Podcasts.

[C.R.Helmrich]

Btw, Moderators: shouldn't this poll be closed?

Chris