Which is the best lossless codec?, Discussion thread Options

[kotrtim]

1. LOWER COMPRESSION BUT HIGHER CPU USAGE
2. NO COMPRESSION MODE TO SELECT

EDIT : But compared with Monkey's Audio, WMA still use more power.

WMA = 34.0MB = ~13% CPU Usage
Monkey's Audio - High = 33.7MB = ~7% CPU Usage

This post has been edited by kotrtim: Nov 26 2004, 06:17

[kurtnoise]

For TTA :

Encoding Speed : fast
Decoding Speed : fast
Compression : ~55%
Flexibility : bad
Error Handling : I don't think so
Seeking : yes
Tagging : yes
Hardware Support : yes ~~> available in standalone player
Software Support : good
Hybrid/Lossy : no
ReplayGain : yes
Streaming : no
OpenSource : yes
Multichannel : yes
High Resolution : yes
OS Support : All

[rjamorim]

Excellent. Thank-you for the info. I just updates the table and the post.

Compression : ~55%

Actually, according to Hans Heijden's comparision, it's closer to 57%.

Unless you take into consideration their own highly biased (and badly outdated) comparisions

Hardware Support : yes ~~> available in standalone player

Hrm... OK, if people consider DVD player support as "hardware support"

(I don't think it's much different than claiming WMA Lossless has hardware support because it can be played on the XBox)

This post has been edited by rjamorim: Dec 9 2004, 19:57

[buzzy]

Nice work.

As some of the comments here suggest, the point of this is for a given person to decide best not in some theoretical sense, but best for a specific use they have in mind. So, for example, the best format for file sharing (like etree) is clearly flac. But someone in search of the best format for archiving their CDs might decide that the absolute best file compression is the only criterion that matters.

So some intro / comment to that that effect - that best depends on how you weight the factors you've listed - will probably help the thousands of newbies who will read this thread.

Also, the table might need a bit of a key or explanation of what some of the items mean, rather than expecting people to read the whole thread.

As for hardware support, it's much more about whether the codec lends itself to that application - which will matter much more over time than it does now. Even with faster / cheaper hardware, the codecs with high complexity decoding don't look like good bets.

Ease of use / interface is a little different than what you might have in mind for "software support" - but has always been a strong point of Monkey's and should be for ALAC. And is a relative weakness of flac, for widespread (as opposed to "technology enthusiast") use.

But "software support" is a bit unclear - people would keep using shn forever for music sharing if someone was maintaining GUI tools for it on Windows. But that's not the case. mkwACT, for example. In practice, the lack of easy to use software tools for shn are what's going to kill it. And if the tools were better for flac, the shift tfrom shn to flac would happen a lot faster.

This post has been edited by buzzy: Dec 9 2004, 21:06

[rjamorim]

As some of the comments here suggest, the point of this is for a given person to decide best not in some theoretical sense, but best for a specific use they have in mind.  So, for example, the best format for file sharing (like etree) is clearly flac.  But someone in search of the best format for archiving their CDs might decide that the absolute best file compression is the only criterion that matters.

So some intro / comment to that that effect - that best depends on how you weight the factors you've listed - will probably help the thousands of newbies who will read this thread.

Good point, I'll work on an introduction.

Also, the table might need a bit of a key or explanation of what some of the items mean, rather than expecting people to read the whole thread.

Well, I would expect people to know at least a little about lossless codecs before coming to this thread. And I think most features are pretty self-explaining: open source, multichannel, hardware support, streaming, seeking, tagging...

As for hardware support, it's much more about whether the codec lends itself to that application - which will matter much more over time than it does now.  Even with faster / cheaper hardware, the codecs with high complexity decoding don't look like good bets.

That would then becoming mostly speculation about wether a codec is probably going to become supported in hardware or not. I think the current format - where only codecs that already have hardware support are mentioned - is more clear.

Ease of use / interface is a little different than what you might have in mind for "software support" - but has always been a strong point of Monkey's and should be for ALAC.  And is a relative weakness of flac, for widespread (as opposed to "technology enthusiast") use.

"software support" means how many software apps are able to deal with that format -be them players, encoders, frontends, replaygain calculators, splitters... It's not supposed to mean ease of use.

But "software support" is a bit unclear - people would keep using shn forever for music sharing if someone was maintaining GUI tools for it on Windows. 

I disagree. People are leaving SHN because it's featureless, compresses bad and is overall badly designed. It's not because people aren't maintaining GUI tools, IMO.



Edit: Shit, 6000 posts and I didn't even notice it.

This post has been edited by rjamorim: Dec 10 2004, 22:53