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

[adlai]

my take as a dumb end-user.

MAC is the best. Best encoding speeds, best compression, easiest to use. and, it's integrated into EAC pretty well.

FLAC is good enough so that I don't convert them to MAC files. But it's clearly inferior, with the exception of seeking (it seeks alot faster than MAC) and portable support (which really is pretty much useless).

SHN is horrible. bad compression, and no tagging!

[buzzy]

MAC is the best  .... [etc]

This is not a flamewar, just underscoring what is all-too-often missed: The whole point is, best for what uses and users?

For example, as a music sharing format across OS platforms, shn is still a widely used format because it's well understood. flac is rapidly replacing it.

And think a bit harder about what you care about - you might think you don't care about hardware playback or streamability - but lots of people will soon enough. That's definitely where a large part of the lossless users are moving.

Anyway:

Given the sheer amount of lossless audio compressor choices available, it is a very difficult task to choose the one most suited for each person's needs.

Several people only take into consideration compression performance when choosing a codec. But as the following table and post shows, there are several other features worth taking into consideration when making that choice.

An example or two might help the users understand that, especially newer users.

Also, in the Pros for alac - by far what's driving the rapid growth of this otherwise somewhat lackluster format is the integration - iTunes/iPod provides a total solution for users: ripping, database lookup, tagging, playback, portable / hardware, transcoding to lossy. All in a pretty usable interface (as long as you don't need control or need to know what's going on). So it might be worth adding "integration with software and hardware" or something.