What determines which encoders/settings you use. (2011) Options

[antman]

Isn't this a new years tradition.

I thought instead of doing yet another "which lossy/lossless/bitrate do you use" poll, we'd do something a little different. I'm more interested in the reason why people use which encoders and settings they do.

And to start:

Lossy: Compatibility, MP3 (AAC tags have given me problems in the past, mostly on cell phones).
Lossless: Compatibility, FLAC (if a media player doesn't support FLAC, there's a plugin somewhere that will make it).
Encode: Absolutely pack out whatever mp3 player/cell phone I got. I can't ABX for shiznit. V5 most of the time, V4 when I'm feelin fancy

Compatibility can also be read as: compatibility with the devices I own.

I know there's gonna be a firestorm for leaving a quality as an option on lossy, but we're adults here. Let's be civil.

And maybe this way we'll a trend not just within codecs but for everyone that's on here.

[dyneq]

Agree with DonP that the poll is not well designed (I choose my encoders for both compatibility and quality reasons), so I'm not going to participate in the official poll, but here are my current strategies:

1) LAME. Apple made me 'upgrade' my old iTunes files to get rid of their DRM and even though I now use Rockbox on my portable, I no longer use Vorbis because LAME does a good job and is universal.

2) FLAC. I did experiment with WavPack and liked it alot, but use FLAC for the same reasons I use LAME: works great and is the most universal codec out there.

3) I can ABX some of the well-known, difficult-to-encode samples at V 5. Instead of using fractional increases in quality to find my sweet spot, I decided to just go with V 4 and enjoy the music!