What bitrate do you use?, MP3,AAC,Vorbis,MPC. Options

[IgorC]

It will be interesting and maybe usefull to see what bitrates people use mostly for different generation codecs like MP3, AAC, Vorbis etc.


I understand I post this poll in wrong subforum as I haven't rights to create poll in Poll section. Please, don't remove this interesing poll.

This post has been edited by IgorC: May 25 2009, 21:07

[Daemon7]

V2

I don't use newer codecs.

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According to the quality vs. file size chart on the wiki page for LAME, V2 is not much lower quality than CBR 320 but massively smaller file size. In fact, it seems to be the best you can do before you start sacrificing more quality for smaller file size reductions.

As for newer codecs, the advantages they offer are fairly dubious, not well supported in most hardware, and they seem to mainly be trying to lure you into more heavily patented codecs (WMA/AAC) or into a religious war over licensing. (Ogg Vorbis).

Really I don't care about newer codecs for those reasons, Lame is a great MP3 encoder, there's plenty of open source decoders, and all hardware supports it, MP3 is probably the most open and universally supported codec there is despite the few lingering patents that have already started expiring that only *some* countries recognize.

People that use "black box" codecs like WMA just bewilder me.

[kornchild2002]

As for newer codecs, the advantages they offer are fairly dubious, not well supported in most hardware...

I don't want to start a war or anything but this statement is technically false. Why? Most portable hardware (that is currently out there and being sold) is taken up by iPods and iPhones. They are 100% AAC compatible. Even Microsoft and Sony are jumping on the AAC board which means that only a few companies are left behind (mainly SanDisk as they don't support AAC in all of their portables and Insignia, Creative has made AAC compatible players for awhile now). Now, once iPods stop taking up over 70% of the market share (ie less than 50%), then that statement will become true. Additionally, support for AAC is growing in other hardware areas. There are over a handful of DVD players at Best Buy that support them, many Blu-ray players, car CD decks, every current generation home console, and every current generation portable console (ie DSi and PSP) all support AAC files.

Sure, AAC may not offer the same "across the board" compatibility that mp3 does but I wouldn't say that the AAC community is being "dubious" especially considering the constantly growing range of devices that can playback AAC files.

[Daemon7]

As for newer codecs, the advantages they offer are fairly dubious, not well supported in most hardware...

I don't want to start a war or anything but this statement is technically false. Why? Most portable hardware (that is currently out there and being sold) is taken up by iPods and iPhones. They are 100% AAC compatible. Even Microsoft and Sony are jumping on the AAC board which means that only a few companies are left behind (mainly SanDisk as they don't support AAC in all of their portables and Insignia, Creative has made AAC compatible players for awhile now). Now, once iPods stop taking up over 70% of the market share (ie less than 50%), then that statement will become true. Additionally, support for AAC is growing in other hardware areas. There are over a handful of DVD players at Best Buy that support them, many Blu-ray players, car CD decks, every current generation home console, and every current generation portable console (ie DSi and PSP) all support AAC files.

Sure, AAC may not offer the same "across the board" compatibility that mp3 does but I wouldn't say that the AAC community is being "dubious" especially considering the constantly growing range of devices that can playback AAC files.

From what I've seen, the current Lame 3.99 tree has already tied up a lot of the loose ends and bugs left in 3.98.x.

MP3 is as resilient as it is because of exactly the reasons that "should" kill it off, you're right that it's not the "newest" or "best", but from what I've seen, the guys behind MPEG-4 AAC are being far more litigious over it than they have been over MP3, the patent issue is even more of a minefield, Apple still to the best of my knowledge tries to sell inferior quality files with proprietary DRM on their standard price level that won't work on anything *but* an iPod.

Also, every device supports MP3, and while technically AAC support is growing, there's not that many legal ways to buy files from online stores in it. I think iTunes is still the only ones selling it, and at a 30-40% pricing premium over what the typical music store charges per track if you want it in the same quality without DRM.

The fact remains that AAC is not widely accepted among users, that M4P may as well be a DRM'd WMA, that even Apple themselves admitted that 97% of the files on an iPod were MP3 files that didn't come from iTunes. (And I'd really like to know how they got those numbers without spying on their customers), and for whatever reason the market is still demanding MP3. WMA, AAC, and Ogg Vorbis are fighting over the scraps, and in that order.

A true ISO-standard AAC file that was acquired legitimately is still very much a rarity unless you ripped them yourself, then you come across the fact that there are no good options for encoding them. You can choose FAAC which is sub-par, or you can use Nero or iTunes and depend entirely on the whims and licensing of the people that make that encoder. With WMA, there is only one thing that can encode them properly.

The fact is that the industry has made a damned mess, Microsoft has a totally non-standard black box format, Ogg Vorbis may very well violate patents in some countries, and there is no heir-apparent to MP3, only a tower of babel, with MP3 as a lowest common denominator. Maybe if Apple, Microsoft, Real, the MPEG group, and the RIAA had been just a tad less greedy, instead of acting like sharks and trying to stab the end user in the back and then go after each other once there was blood in the water....

[rpp3po]

MP3 is as resilient as it is because of exactly the reasons that "should" kill it off, you're right that it's not the "newest" or "best", but from what I've seen, the guys behind MPEG-4 AAC are being far more litigious over it than they have been over MP3, the patent issue is even more of a minefield,

That's not true. AAC licensing is straightforward, it's a one stop shop.

Apple still to the best of my knowledge tries to sell inferior quality files with proprietary DRM on their standard price level that won't work on anything *but* an iPod.

Not true. DRM-free is the standard for quite a while. Perfectly spec compliant AAC.

Also, every device supports MP3, and while technically AAC support is growing, there's not that many legal ways to buy files from online stores in it.

Well just the biggest online music outlet in the world.

I think iTunes is still the only ones selling it, and at a 30-40% pricing premium over what the typical music store charges per track if you want it in the same quality without DRM.

0,99 per DRM-free track and 8,99 for an album is a 30-40% premium? Over what?

The fact remains that AAC is not widely accepted among users,

Got a reference?

A true ISO-standard AAC file that was acquired legitimately is still very much a rarity unless you ripped them yourself, then you come across the fact that there are no good options for encoding them. You can choose FAAC which is sub-par, or you can use Nero or iTunes and depend entirely on the whims and licensing of the people that make that encoder.

Well besides buying ISO compliant AAC at the iTMS directly, what is it that is so enslaving about Nero's free command line encoder? That it doesn't run natively on Puppy Linux?

And BTW, the reason I prefer AAC is the really high number of LAME problem samples, that could never be fixed, even at 320kbit/s. Because the devs should not be less talented than Nero's, which could fix about anything in the past, I conclude that the format itself has too many constraints to compete with modern AAC.

This post has been edited by rpp3po: Jul 16 2009, 00:19

[Daemon7]

MP3 is as resilient as it is because of exactly the reasons that "should" kill it off, you're right that it's not the "newest" or "best", but from what I've seen, the guys behind MPEG-4 AAC are being far more litigious over it than they have been over MP3, the patent issue is even more of a minefield,

That's not true. AAC licensing is straightforward, it's a one stop shop.

Apple still to the best of my knowledge tries to sell inferior quality files with proprietary DRM on their standard price level that won't work on anything *but* an iPod.

Not true. DRM-free is the standard for quite a while. Perfectly spec compliant AAC.

Also, every device supports MP3, and while technically AAC support is growing, there's not that many legal ways to buy files from online stores in it.

Well just the biggest online music outlet in the world.

I think iTunes is still the only ones selling it, and at a 30-40% pricing premium over what the typical music store charges per track if you want it in the same quality without DRM.

0,99 per DRM-free track and 8,99 for an album is a 30-40% premium? Over what?

The fact remains that AAC is not widely accepted among users,

Got a reference?

A true ISO-standard AAC file that was acquired legitimately is still very much a rarity unless you ripped them yourself, then you come across the fact that there are no good options for encoding them. You can choose FAAC which is sub-par, or you can use Nero or iTunes and depend entirely on the whims and licensing of the people that make that encoder.

Well besides buying ISO compliant AAC at the iTMS directly, what is it that is so enslaving about Nero's free command line encoder? That it doesn't run natively on Puppy Linux?

And BTW, the reason I prefer AAC is the really high number of LAME problem samples, that could never be fixed, even at 320kbit/s. Because the devs should not be less talented than Nero's, which could fix about anything in the past, I conclude that the format itself has too many constraints to compete with modern AAC.

http://www.tuaw.com/2009/04/13/billboard-i...-up-sales-down/

"The iTunes Top 100 chart has 40 different songs with a new price of $1.29, and one day after the changes, those songs dropped an average of 5.3 places on the chart, while cheaper songs moved up on average. And on the second day of the price change, ten of the tracks that saw their prices rise within 24 hours dropped a huge 12.4 chart positions on average."

The last time I used iTunes was in like 2004, back when they *only* offered crippled 128-bit CBR, non-standard AAC, but I have played around with Nero. Anyway, last I heard the normal pricing for an iTunes track which wasn't crippled was $1.29, with 99 cents for crippled files being their norm. I just won't have it on my computer for a multitude of reasons including the fact that I've seen spyware infestations that didn't damage Windows as badly. (Or start as many system services)

I can't really tell the difference between a Nero AAC file and a Lame MP3 file of the same bitrate (CBR) or around the same size (VBR) until you get to ridiculously low bitrates and Nero HE-AAC kicks in and goodbye to most of the hardware that plays AAC.

AAC for me just kind of seems like a headache to fix a few trivial design oversights in the MP3 format. If you *have* to pull out a spectrogram to tell the difference between two files, two formats, two encoders, or two bitrates, chances are that you've gone into overkill somewhere.

By my estimation, precisely every legal store that isn't iTunes isn't selling AAC anyway. AAC is what? Almost 10 years old now and it has one backer?