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

[jmcguckin]

it's amazing how a thread could start off asking what each user's preferred format/bitrate is and somehow manage to turn into a heated debate between those loyal to a dated format and those who prefer to use a newer, more efficient one... and yes, I am referring to MP3 and AAC, in that order.

but since the debate came up, my $0.02- if I'm going to take the time to convert my entire music library to a portable, lossy format, the first thing on my mind is which format will allow me the highest quality vs. filesize... and considering I'm in the Apple camp and use a device with full capability of playing back both MP3 and AAC (i.e. an iPod), it doesn't seem all that advantageous to use MP3 when in my experience the quality gains of using AAC at a portable filesize/quality far outweigh any compatibility-based advantages to MP3. don't get me wrong, I'm all for listening to arguments toward either side, but I have to say I'm a little annoyed that I opened this thread wanting to read about people's preferred formats/bitrates and instead had to trudge through a slew of arguments about them just to read a few posts actually related to the original topic.

meanwhile, back to the topic at hand... I've been using QuickTime AAC (True VBR) for just under a year now, and while I've gone back and forth between -q 95 and -q 120, I've eventually settled on -q120 since I was able to ABX roughly 5% of the files encoded @ -q 95, whereas everything @ -q 120 is completely transparent to my ears. plus it's still moderately portable with an average bitrate of ~163kbps (my library, at least), so that's a perfect quality/filesize point for me.

[kornchild2002]

it's amazing how a thread could start off asking what each user's preferred format/bitrate is and somehow manage to turn into a heated debate between those loyal to a dated format and those who prefer to use a newer, more efficient one... and yes, I am referring to MP3 and AAC, in that order.

It was never a debate regarding mp3 vs. AAC. This thread turned sour whenever Daemon7 started to spread false information (and bad logic) regarding mpeg-4 AAC audio. My replies were not to say that mp3 sucks as a modern format, it was just to disprove Daemon7's statements.

Funny that after all of that, he decided to pick out my open-source WMA statement instead of actually examining my statements regarding AAC adoption and AAC hardware that is out there. They also managed to completely ignore my iTunes Store sales numbers which are a lot newer than the 3 year old ones (which they never linked to). Oh well, I guess that is why they haven't really come back.

This happens a lot at hydrogenaudio where someone will ask a simple question and another person will stir things up. The end result will be a few pages of debate going back and forth between both sides (or, in this case, one person and a slew of others).