I've been using MPC for some time now and today I realized that Musepack is pretty dead, the forums at musepack.net just seems to be filled with bitter previous MPC-users.

So my questions is:
Is it still viable to use MPC?
Would the quality loss be great if going from Insane MPC to mp3?

I'm certainly not going to reencode my ~2,000 MPCs anytime soon. Maybe if I had the money to get enough storage for lossless...

I only have 750 =P

But to touch question #1
Are you still encoding in MPC?

If you are happy having with your collection in MPC and you don't see any disadvantages in the way you use your music, then there is no problem in using MPC.

I used to use MPC, then I got an mp3 player and a car stereo that only plays mp3 so I had to switch, but prior to that I was very happy with Musepack.

I only use MP3 or AAC since they seem to be the only formats that (still) have a future.

Сonclusion: it's dead.

mpc does support ultra slow seeking, this is why I just used it a couple of times. Now I prefer vorbis/nero aac. I think mpc is more than dead.

i guess i'm one of those bitter "previous" mpc users...

i still use the format

if i didn't i would use lame

but i've never had to switch

musepack is well supported on *NIX, so my collection (100GB+) is safe


later

Dead, cos of hardly any hardware support, very quick encoding though and results are very good

I have my whole collection encoded in MPC, and it will stay this way. As for new encodes, currently I rip everything to lossless until I run out of space.
I am not really happy with other formats, sometimes I encode stuff to Ogg, then AAC, then I think of just using MP3 for compatiblity and stuff, then I end up deleting the lossy ones and think about getting a bigger harddrive for storing everything lossless.
Other formats just lack the farm fuzzy feeling ™ I had with MPC.
I took part in Sebastian Mares 128kbps listening test and found it very hard to spot artifacts, so from a quality point of view I could use whatever format I like, because they all sound transparent to my ears, so in the end, it's just features and speed that make the difference.

I won't encode in Musepack anymore, because as Squeller already mentioned seeking in long tracks is very slow. But I still have many MPC files in my collection, but I'm not going to replace them in another codec, only if I have to (DAP playback).

When I now want to listen to new CDs I rip them to lossless and listen to that rip. Whenever I need the music on a portable or on another computer I encode from the lossless rip to either mp3 or ogg vorbis. HDs are so big/cheap nowadays that I don't have to bother about the size anymore.

How can we the end-users call it a dead format? Such claims need to come directly from the Musepack development team for me to even consider such comments as being true, remember CDex had no version released for years - and yet it's alive again. I have over 20 CD-R's full of mpc's, and I'm surely not anytime soon going to re-rip and encode those audio CDs to a different format which in my case would only consist of Ogg Vorbis (aoTuV builds, -q 6), or LAME 3.97b2 (-V2 --vbr-new).

I do realize that there hasn't been a new release for the encoder, decoder, and Winamp plugin in a long time however the format still has advantages and merits:

• Gapless. Which has to be one of the most important features without having to result to using high bitrate CBR to preserve quality with a --nogap switch.
• Natively supported via foobar2000 out-of-the-box so to say.
• Easily supported via Winamp 2x-5x via the easily downloadable plugin from www.musepack.net.
• I can't (and I reckon others can't either) tell the difference from an mpc encoded at --quality 5 ("--standard") when compared to Musepack's contenders which are still regularly updated; Ogg Vorbis (-q 6), LAME (-V2 --vbr-new).

This isn't a ploy on my part to say keep using Musepack, although I don't think someone can go wrong in using it.

The big advantage of software (compared to human beings): it can temporarily be dead.
Musepack, especially in terms of vital use by the audio community, is dead.

BTW, most of us know the advantages of musepack. To me the slow seeking is a problem and thats why I can't use mpc (I could have mpc on my notebook which serves the amplifier in the living room, but I need quick seeking there, it's not fun to fast forward via remote control and nothing happens...)

not that i had a lot of mpc encodes but they have since been reripped to flac or mp3

Ok, just wondering as I just loaned some CD's from the local library and wondered if I should rip them to musepack or mp3, ATM I don't know which to do ^^'
Not ogg though, I don't want yet another format, but maybe...

So you think Vorbis has no future? It has highest quality out of all lossy formats at any bitrate above 96 kbps, as many tests (including your's) showed. And also it has another big advantage - no licensing fees, unlike MP3 and AAC. Did you know that LAME is in fact illegal in many countries including USA? If EU will accept SW patents, it will be illegal here too.

We have 2 scenarios that can happen. The first one is, that RIAA will win and we'll have DRM everywhere. This would mean no MP3 no Ogg Vorbis. Only WMA and MP4 AAC would survive.

It can also happen, that DRM will be banned. This would most likely push Vorbis forward because it is simply the best format from every point of view except of DRM.

I'm hoping in the second scenario and I encode all songs in Vorbis ~200 kbps. But I'm affraid, the first one will happen. DRM will be implemented in our brains.

When it comes to portability, MP3 is the first choice. When space is rare, I recommend Vorbis or AAC - I personally stick to the first as it is OSS. Aoyumi has tuned the encoder so well that it is even usable on very low bitrates, while the free Nero encoder also produces very good results. Lossless is only good for transcoding and archiving, as I claim that only very few on this board can even ABX LAME -V 2 (only one example, I could have said Vorbis -q 6 as well). What made Musepack so special when it was new is something that all modern codecs achieve - decent quality at not-so-high bitrates (You see, I'm getting very technical here ), without the drawbacks like slow seeking.

I only have one word for for why Vorbis will remain relegated as an alternative codec behind MP3 and AAC: iPod.

everything has it's time. that is the only thing that I have to say about ipod-thing.

Just because of the possibility to use MPC on IPod, I can't say there's hardly any support!?! There are several ways to play MPC on portable devices, so check it out.
Sorry, this is a lame thread

A format that is no more being developed, performs worse than other competitors and has only few hardwaresupport, none of it from the original manufacturers can safely be considered dead imho.

Couldn't agree with you more.

This leads me to wonder if the iPod will continue to dominate the marketplace after Vorbis is superceded.

I suppose it's possible that Apple will support it in future generations.

...just having fun.

I couldn't let, "...Vorbis ... is simply the best format from every point of view..." go without saying something.

I use vorbis for my lossy needs but I acknowledge that it is a geek's codec.
I don't think it will be mainstream anytime soon. MP3 and AAC are the future.

edit: typo - lossy instead of lossless

Do you mean transparent? If yes, I can only agree.

It was my and John33's combined opinion that the format is dead that warranted removing its section from RareWares altogether (and moving the encoders to ReallyRareWares)


For my part, I have a handful of MPCs on my hard drive, all of them encoded by friends or downloaded from P2P. These days, for my own use, I encode to MP3 exclusively. I only encode to Vorbis, MPC or AAC if I'm sending the files to someone that specifically asked for that format.

Edit: Read here for more of my opinions on why MPC died:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ndpost&p=308437
(I couldn't resist, could I?)

PS. This is not meant as an insult

I guess I'm one of the few Hydrogen Audio denizens that does not care a whiff about portable/hardware support since I've never had or used one. MPC was just the last step in my halted evolution from Blade MP3 -> LAME MP3 -> Vorbis OGG -> Musepack MPC (many many years ago! ). Yes I've seen the listening tests done since then showing the improvements of LAME and Vorbis (as well as newcomers). No, I can't tell the difference myself. I just don't have any reason to go through the trouble of ripping my albums again for nominal at best gains. Sure it seems like I'll have to eventually but for now I'm fine. In conclusion MPC is not 'dead' to me it's more like a dead end.

I'd much rather be seen as controversial than the usual conformists around here.

So, don't worry, no insult taken - at all!



I agree, I haven't re-ripped the CDs I encoded in AAC during all those years I was an AAC fanboy either. I just don't rip to AAC anymore, and replace the existing rips with MP3s little by little as I need MP3s for my portable or to send to friends...

Amen brother!

Err...

First of all, MP3 patents are perfectly valid in both USA and EU as far as I know

Second, LAME itself is not illegal - what is illegal is its usage without paid MP3 license - but that does not prevent anyone to distribute LAME legally by paying appropriate patent costs for each deployed copy.

It seems i have a hell of a fast machine because i don't really see a problem with the seeking. The seek times for single tracks are ok. Plus i don't really seek that much, mostly i either skip to another track or i listen to the current track.

Concerning development, yeah it's sad that it grinded to a halt, but the last versions were like the final touches to an almost finished painting (SV7). Some people think this is like AAC, needing new versions constantly or it's "dead", no it's not. It can't be perfected much more at this state. The next step would've had to go beyond SV7, seems that's not going to happen.

Knowing that it reached such a high level of "quality maturity" is why i have an extensive MPC collection and don't care much who proclaims MPC dead or not. Sure, it's nice to see the fast development of AAC and MP3, but some people get this feeling that they need to re-encode their entire collection when improved versions of those come out. With MPC, you had stable quality since many versions and it's still the benchmark for other codecs in the transparency range.

P.S. rjamorim i knew i could count on you

...mpc is useless IMHO. I wont re-rip my mpc files (all from p2p networks), but i would never encode my files using this format. It seems that a lot of people use it just to say to theirselves "i use a format that nobody knows, and its better than yours!". It's similar to people still using Win98 and claiming "it's the best system ever!". All encoders are evolving, mpc is stuck to the past. All MPC fans need to face it.

I CAN'T tell a difference between an -aps encoded MP3 with LAME, or vorbis, or AAC. I stick to mp3 because is a standard, everything plays mp3. Vorbis is patent free" but to me as an end user this advantage is useless. Is SO standard that the greta majority of people when download aac files still call them "mp3".

I just agree 100% with rjamorim post.

I generally use MP3 since everything supports it, though I sometimes use vorbis for streaming or for use on my DS (using Moonshell), since I can use lower bitrates with excellent audio quality, letting me put more music on my SD card.

Dead or not, the choice to continue using MPC really falls with the individual; everybody has different needs. Mine are portability, compatibility, and seekability; as such, MPC "died" in my house around 2002. That's not to say that the format won't serve somebody else's needs, though - why re-rip/re-encode your whole collection simply because MPC won't win a popularity contest? After all, there's still people happily using analog cassettes, LP records, and MiniDiscs, all formats supposedly made "obsolete" by modern DAPs.

That said, I might not understand ripping new files to MPC in 2006. Current formats like AAC or Vorbis (and MP3 if using LAME) are of comparable quality/size ratios, much better in terms of compatibility with devices, and infinitely more portable. MPC just doesn't have the appeal it once did, at a time when encoders were slow and the quality of competing formats (like MP3) had yet to be fully realized.

1) It's not dead, I still use MPC frequently
2) I use it because I find it to be the best lossy format for transcoding to other formats. And no, it's not realistic that I store my 2700+ cd's as lossless.
3) You're right, I can't tell the diffence with -aps encoded mp3's, but the bitrate diffence between that and mpc -standard is huge when you're talking about that many tracks.

How so? I seem to remember a test being conducted a while back by Guruboolez that concluded MPC was not the best format for transcoding. IIRC, Wavpack lossy was better suited for this purpose.

*cough*

*cough*

Anyway, I'll stick to the MPC's I have ATM but probably I'll start encoding in mp3 soon.
And if MPC support is dropped or doesn't exist in future software I'll do the big sin* then

*Transcoding =P

Thanks for the info, I didn't know that the MP3 patents are also valid in EU. Btw. how is it with your AAC encoder? How is it possible to distribute it for free?

iPod vs. Vorbis: I would never buy any player that doesen't support Ogg Vorbis. Also I would never buy a player, where I couldn't upload music through UMS. So I would nver buy an iPod and I believe most judicious people won't neither.

Simple - you choose to pay maximum annual cap to the essential patent holders (there is an annual-cap possible for PC software) and then you can distribute as many of the AAC encoders you want - for price or free, it's irrelevant.

More details are available here: http://www.vialicensing.com/products/HE_AA...ense.terms.html - check out the "Maximum annual payment" for PC software.

High quality alone doesn't make a codec popular. I doubt John Doe would encode his tracks to Vorbis if he cannot play them on the go or on his DVD player at home. Most players and cell phones that come out these days focus on AAC and not Vorbis.

And thinking that DRM is going to die soon is only stupid IMO.

I switched to ripping to LAME 3.97 b2 --preset standard only a few days ago. Reripped most of my collection to mp3 for much better compatibility and no perceptible difference for me.

He means that Vorbis has a future for him & Vorbis fans. Same as mpc will always have a future for mpc fans (and nobody else). It is interesting (ok it's not) to see the codec zealots come out every several weeks to fiercly defend their idea of the future and their codec's relevance in it.

To the post that wondered if the ipod will still maintain dominance in a few years, I think that until we see another corporation approaching the advertising/marketing budget that Apple spends on the ipod, we won't see a serious market share competitor. I don't like it either, but it is reality.

Rockbox will resolve those particular qualms (not that I like the iPod, but still).

I subscribe fully to Citay (and seanyseansean's opinions),
and emphasize a little bit above^^

Moreover:
+ MPC:
+ portable hardware support:
+ Rockbox
+ mobile Phones
+ Ipod
+ laptop, Linux, *NIX etc.
+ no seek problems
+ no problems with transcoding to mp3
++ the stable quality, which makes MPC to an archive quality format behind Lossless, to save space, eg. as backup for Lossless collection on different media.

transcoding from high bitrate lossy-wavpack instead from MPC, might be theoretically with less artefacts, though practically, the lossy-wavpack would not serve a good purpose (for me).
I have my collection as Lossless Flac or wavpack, the backup is MPC at quality 7 - 8 (--ms 15 --xlevel) + some MPC encodings I did in the pre-Loslsess era.
I achieve transparency with lower bitrate MPC than with higher bitrate wavpack-lossy.
The transcoding to MP3is as good as transcoding from Loslsess to mp3 in this respect, which i do only for portable usage, ie. 1 GB USB stick for running outdoors, or car radio.

So yes, I encode each month several (new) albums to MPC !

It rocks.



As the Ogg,mp3/lame,aac lovers give their opinions about MPC, I tell now mine about ogg,aac,lame-mp3:

The big disadvantage of aac, ogg, mp3, even mp3-Lame:
There are no secure stable encoder versions, especially in the high bitrate range, sorry, but a lot of other encoder versions.
Obviously, the target of developers is now in the low-mid bitrates for phones eg., 32k, 48k, 64k, already 128k seems to be out of the focus, as 128k is already at a higher level than in some years before, see Lame !
(But you see also with lame, that it's still not perfect at high bitrates, see the findings of halb27 eg. with 320k und unused bits)
There are no public high bitrate tests, besides 1 ! single test at 180k by Guruboolez with classical, 1 genre.
The latest 128k test was done without testing latest MPC. (Though the result of that 128k test is quite unspecific, all encoders were rated nearly same, close to transparency, so including mpc, or not, would not have changed anything). This is coherent with often uttered personal opinions at HA, that people cannot ABX or listen the difference between 128k vbr modern format and the original.

Well, I don't need to write more, everybody should get what he likes & prefers
And everybody who is curious, should take the MPC challenge, not only on headphone, but also with speakers...


There are other aspects regarding the quantity of the formats:

here on HA you have most people in high quality formats, Lossless, mpc, ogg, aac, mp3 only as Lame.
But in real life ?
MP3 dominates, see the portable players, which are cheapo.
Though, the cheapo players offer also WMA...

As long ogg/aac aren't implemented on every cheapo Joe Doe player, they will not replace mp3 !
And considering the decreasing prices for memory, and increasing support for portable Loslsess players, even in cars, probably Loslsess, Flac, might win the race!
So, a discussion about aac/ogg vs. MPC is moot, a dead discussion before starting here.

So is MPC I would also say:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....topic=34911&hl=
I wouldn't use the latests MPC encoders, except maybe for fixing some old gapless issue.

On the other side, it makes no doubt that the best Vorbis encoder is aoTuV and that LAME 3.97 or 3.98 is the best MP3 encoder.

Did halb27 reported an ABX test for 320 kbps encodings? If not, there's no quality issue.


That's true. But MPC claimed superiority over other formats, including the famous claimed "subband vs transform" format for transcoding purpose, is proved by nothing, not even a public individual testing procedure. The only existing ABX tests for MPC were all done with two or three killer samples - known to be representative of nothing. The supposed superiority of MPC is pure mythology (from a scientific point of view): there's no proof for it, but people are still believing in it.

I refuse to conform to Roberto's opinion as so many of the conformists here do

I still use Musepack but not as much as I did some years ago. Slowly a nagging feeling starts creeping in that it might (or has?) become obsolete due to lack of interest (which might happen to a lot of other codecs too eventually).
I regret that that seeking in foobar2000 has become so slow (was it from 0.8.2?) as it was fast before. Unfortunately, it was fast because of a hack with on the fly seek tables and there was apparently a problem in some cases, so it was removed .
Some reasons I use it occasionally are,
- the encoders/decoders are among the fastest
- the quality that was good in 2002 is just as good now
- fits about 5 times as much as lossless on a disc
- It's just for personal use (no portable, no need for DRM)

The alternatives (from my pov) are going lossless (the end of quality testing and psycho acoustics, the peace of mind that you can switch codec later without loss, but on the other hand overkill most of the time) or conform to mp3. All free (lossy) codecs, maybe except mp3, are somewhat of a niche and might suffer the fate of Musepack.

edit: spell check

Funny how problems are addressed with MPC: there is an obvious seeking issue, yet they say 'no seeking problems'.. On foobar 0.9x its worse even on P4 2.x G, 512MB PC

- Bitrate has increased but not quality and they say 1.15 is better.

- No listening tests outside 3 problem samples and they say mpc has no problems while other encoders are inferior. What is wrong with toolame mp2 at 250k or more ? - it seeks good and will transcode to mp3

- No transcoding tests, yet mpc subband is superior. In reality probably no better than vorbis or mp2

- MPC proponents recommend 250k (and not to trust --standard) , but tell you 320k is a waste.

- Developers that deny problems. You can nearly always get better response from wavpack, optimfrog, mp3 devs

The vorbis lancer encoders are faster, Wavpack encoder is faster, Dualstream encoder is faster. Wavpack / Dualstream quality has been stable for years (no psymodel wiz required). LAME has been stable since 2002 and where are these 250k tests in 2002 showing that vorbis / aac / mp3 are defective ?. In musepack forum they told me hybrid encodings are dumb, yet they happily use 280k mpc. Can they abx 280k dualstream (quality 1) - probably not.

The same here, I've never noticed any seeking problems on my WinXP machine.

True, the encoders may be faster, but decoding takes longer/more power. MP3 may be okay (though slower than mpc), but Vorbis and OptimFrog are very ressource hungry or, said differently, need a lot of time to decode.

So mpc has still something very good. It's blazingly fast decoded (faster than mp3 ) and has quite good quality.

I am not a fan of mpc in any way, as I encode all my albums to flac -5 and lame 3.97b2 -V 5 --vbr-new, but I do understand why some people still want to use it. Personally, I wouldn't use Vorbis because of it's slow/complex decoding. MP3 is the best for me.