I still prefer MP3, because it seems to be fully developed instead of the other codecs. LAME 3.93.1 @ standard-preset gives me full transparency for all footage, so I use it to archive my music. But I know many people don't think so.
What's your favourite codec/encoder/setting for archiving music with QUASI perfect quality?

Dig the forum.

PC:
MPC --xtreme --xlevel

Car/Portable:
LAME --alt-preset standard -Y --lowpass 16000

MP3 (lame 3.90.3) --alt-preset extreme, transparent, best portability *hug his Panasonic mp3 player*

Soren

Definitely MP3 LAME 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard. it makes me very happy when used with v3 iPOD 15 gb! also, if you really like mp3, you can be re-assured it is close to done with all development and just about all that can be utilized out of the format has been. So the quality is here to stay!


on another note... ..my second choice would be MPC for filesize and quality its purely transparent and would be great for PC archiving. BUT IT SUCKS FOR COMPATIBILITY so if you have future plans for portable stuff, burning cds easily etc. forget this format!

My favorite lossy codecs: MPC (standard) or OggEncGT3b1 (-q 6).

If you read the list of recommended compiles thread, you'll find that the recommended version is 3.90.3.

Haven't tried AAC yet.

cya

Hello Dominik,

I see that u r quite a new member, so it might be useful to tell u this:
basic questions, like "which encoder/format/ripper/whatever is the best"
or "aac vs ogg" or "mp3 vs mpc" have been posted numerous times already.
Perhaps if u use the search function u could find older threads that could
enlighten u on this topic. Otherwise u could browse among the old threads
manually and read topics that might interest u. Chances r that someone has
already asked the same question as u.

"Sticky" threads can be especially helpful for obtaining basic knowledge, such
as which encoder version and which settings to use for a particular format.
The general concensus is that the best mp3 encoder available at the moment
is version 3.90.3. U can find a link to it, in the "Sticky" threads in the MP3 section.
The proposed setting for near-transparent encoding is --alt-preset standard
(In version 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard means --alt-preset standard -Z).

As for which format is the best, u will see that one cannot immediately give an
answer to this question. Basically it depends on your priorities and how good
your ears r. Of course, there's nothing wrong with picking one format over
another for purely theoretical reasons (meaning that u chose X over Y without
actually hearing a difference, but bcos theoretically X is proven to be better).
Never underestimate the power of "that warm feeling inside" At the end of
the day, it is u who is the judge. Just don't go posting "Twin VQF rules!" threads
'cos people here will probably hire a hitman to hunt u down.

Personally, I use MP3, MPC, AAC/MP4, Monkey's Audio and FLAC (yep, all that...).
I don't use ogg 'cos I never encode lower than 180 kbps. I kinda use each format
to reflect how much I like a song, meaning that if I absolutely adore a song, I might
go lossless, whereas if I don't care that much, I might go for MP3. Generally I like
experimenting, but hey that's just me!

Yeah, I think we already had enough threads of people asking "What is your favorite codec and what settings you use"

Search the forum, please.

You are just wasting everybody's time with these threads.

Damn, I thought this would be an in-depth comparison of the different codecs . MPC -q5 --xlevel is what I am using at the moment, and I am very happy with it. Have fun!

Right now it seems to me MPC is the format of choice if you want archive-quality without wasting space.
OK...I'm going to reencode my cd-collection.

Have you even bothered about performing a listening test?

If your collection is already transparent to you, why bother reencoding?

@rjamorim
You know, @128kbps I'm able to hear differences between codecs and encoders. But I have to admit that I don't hear a difference between LAME --preset standard and --preset insane. Also I don't hear a difference between LAME 3.93.1 and LAME 3.90.x. Also I don't hear a difference between MPC --xtreme and LAME --preset standard.
I just have a hard-to-satisfy conscience, so I'm looking for people with golden ears who can tell: "Trust me do this...". Because if I'm going to buy me acapella-loudspeakers or madrigal-amplifiers my audiofiles should be ready to beam me away. blablabla

Hrm... Nothing guarantees that you will be able to pick up more artifacts with better gear.

If lame -aps is transparent for you, I suggest you go with it. You get the added advantage of excellent hardware support.

If you don't care at all about hardware support and want to be (psychologically) sure that your encodes are transpaent, go with MPC.

@rjamorim
what is "-aps" equal to ? standard, extreme or anything special?

aps: --alt-preset standard
ape: --alt-preset extreme
api: --alt-preset insane

Vorbis for FREE&EASY (open source) and ACC for standard&support (bright future)


MP3 is the thing from the past, so

If a such bhigh bit-rate like MPC, I will go for loss-less encoding like FLAC or Monkey

It can be confusing that "ape" is also the filename suffix for monkey (a lossless codec)

MPC quality5 xlevel. Sounds transparent to me

I have golden ears. Give me all your money and your mp3s will sound better. Even those really bad ones you downloaded from the net because you couldn't find the tracks anywhere else. They'll all sound even beter than the original CDs. Trust me do this... send me all your money.

Cheers,
David.

(what do you mean "David, you missed the smiley out!"?)

@2Bdecided
I love you!

your golden ears have control over audio-files? They must be at least platinum

He's just being sarchastic. He just wants to say that it's not good to trust so-called "audiophiles" or self-proclaimed "golden ears" in a blind manner.

@KikeG
I was able to understand that
It wasn't 100% serious what I've written also.

But after intensive listening tests especially with these samples
http://lame.sourceforge.net/download/samples/
MPC absolutly convinced me @ standard-preset.
The castanets.wav really had for me audible problems in LAME and also The spectral-view in cool edit of MPC-files really looked symphatic. And the encoding-speed is very high. So in the future I'll encode my CDs with MPC.

I settled on MP3 with LAME --alt-preset insane as my primary encoding choice. I was at first trying to decide between FLAC and --api, because I smugly thought "I need the very best, I'm SURE I can hear the difference!" But noooooo...

I jumped into the wonderful world of ABX and all my misconceptions evaporated. --alt-preset standard sounded transparent to me on 99.8% of my music.

But then...

I ran across just a few "problem" songs in my collection, and even after re-ripping and re-encoding them several times, I still heard what sounded like mild, random noise in the background, and only when I listened at fairly high volumes. I ABX'ed them against the WAVs just to be sure I wasn't "hearing things", and I got over 90% correct responses each time (usually 100%). So I tried other encoding speeds and other formats to try to get even the "problem children" to sound transparent to me.

First, I tried --alt-preset extreme. The difference in some cases was undetectable to me, but on some samples I still got over 75% correct responses on WinABX. So then I tried --alt-preset insane. Transparent to me on all samples.

Then I tried Ogg, via dBpowerAMP. I don't know what quality-level it was using, but I selected 230kbps from the drop-down to give it an average bitrate between --aps and --ape. Transparent on all samples. I had a filesize on average about 15% smaller than MP3 with --api, and had equal transparency (to my ears).

Then I tried MPC (can't remember the exact quality rating I used for that one...only did two quick samples) also via the dBpowerAMP front-end. Transparent as well.

Now...being as anal as I am ...I wanted not just "almost all" of my music to sound perfect to me, but rather ALL of it (that I can reasonably test anyway). And I quickly realized that FLAC was just going to reduce the number of songs I could keep to an unreasonably low number based on my storage capacity (20GB = ~50 FLAC albums). MPC and Ogg, as great as they sounded even with smaller filesizes, are simply not compatible with most of my playback hardware (PC, yes...Phatbox and portable MP3 players, no).

So, for me, the answer was --alt-preset insane. I can still keep 150-160 albums on my 20 GB drive (which is acceptable). And, I even tried transcoding down to LAME -h (128kbps CBR) from --api, and it sounded OK on my portables. It's not transparent, but my demands are lower on the portable devices...128MB Memory Sticks are pretty tight for space. Too bad my portables don't like VBR.

Therefore my primary listening platforms are (as I write this) being encoded with --alt-preset insane and my portables will be transcoded down to LAME-h whenever possible (better to start with --api for that reason too, I think)...unless I run into a song that doesn't turn out so well, in which case I'll encode from WAV or do without it.

If all of my hardware could play any format, and I had my choice, I'm pretty sure I'd go with MPC. It sounded equal (to my non-golden ears) to LAME --api and Ogg (using a medium-high quality setting), but MPC has a smaller file size than the comparable MP3 format, and I see a lot of people generally saying it's the best overall encoding option next to lossless if you have the compatiblity for it.

My second choice would be Ogg Vorbis, again because of the lower bitrates and filesizes yielding the same sound to my ears. I could fit maybe 180 albums into the space 160 or so --api albums take.

MP3 will be my favorite format for a long time to come, though, because it's compatible with practically EVERYTHING, and the --alt-presets with the LAME encoder have made it *much* better than what I was using previously to encode: WMP9, and whatever codec it uses by default (I think some variant of FhG).


P.S...I know proof of bold statements is often demanded around here, so if anyone needs copies of the samples I used to come to these conclusions, I'll be glad to upload them or e-mail them. I had to delete my originals since I'm in the process of filling up my HDD and couldn't spare any space, but once I finish what I'm doing I could re-create the samples easily.


Edit: I just checked and the MPC encoding quality I used in my test was q8. The filesize was just a little larger than the same file encoded with --alt-preset extreme, but well below that of --api.

?? I don't understand what you mean.

MPC's bitrates are less than -aps, for more transparency.

Musepack (MPC) at standard (--quality 5) with --xlevel enabled is considered a benchmark for transparency. It's designed to be completely transparent at exactly that setting, and usually comes out at 160-180 kbps. Samples that produce artifacts are very rare, and usually fairly subtle, but a few do exist. Because of this there is only very rarely any audible difference between Musepack standard (at around 170 kbps), and your --quality 8 files (at around 250 kbps), so the extra storage space used seems virtually wasted.

That might change your decision or it might not?

Although Lame --alt-preset insane is very hard to ABX and is still a good choice for you if space isn't all that important and you'll also use the files on a portable device in this format.

If you intend to transcode anyway, to achieve lower bitrates (e.g. for your 128 MB MP3 player), you might actually be better starting with MPC (--standard --xlevel) and transcoding from that, than starting with Lame --alt-preset insane or --alt-preset standard and transcoding to lower bitrate MP3, even before you consider the space saving and encoding speed advantages of MPC standard. In part this is because MPC is a subband encoder, not a transform encoder like Lame, and in part it's due to better time resolution of MPC, both of which should help reduce transient smear and pre-echo artifacts.

Another advantage of Musepack and Ogg Vorbis is gapless playback and integrated ReplayGain support. MP3 is not gapless between tracks (live and DJ mix albums).

I'm not trying to lead you in a particular direction, but presenting the options more fairly by not penalising Musepack with excessive bitrate. (Also, Ogg Vorbis GT3 at -q 6 is being tuned to be as transparent as possible, though it's not widely believed to be as easy to tune as Musepack, and it comes out near to lame -aps bitrates)

It's clear you're being careful and objective in ABXing, and you seem to have done well at picking out artifacts if you can ABX lame --aps from the original occasionally (usually pretty difficult except on killer samples).

While on the subject, you might even want to consider Wavpack lossy mode (a lossless-type compression algorithm with a certain amount of allowed noise to lower bitrate), which some people support as a medium-sized format suitable as a source for transcoding (particularly to MiniDisc). You'll need at least 256-320 kbps to get hiss down to an acceptable level most of the time. There's some unresolved controversy over whether the hissy artifacts are worse than transcoding artifacts from Musepack at similar bitrates, but it may have some value to you, if 320 kbps bitrate isn't too big of an issue.

Your original choice of api will provide a highly satisfying quality (at least until you transcode to something smaller for a portable, when I'd imagine it might disappoint), and if that meets your needs best, that's cool.

With MPC and Ogg, I just wanted to compare file sizes of the higher quality encodings, but I couldn't really consider using either one because of compatibility. But in terms of quality/size, I am *very* impressed with what I've heard in those formats. Granted, my PC can play virtually anything, but here's my criteria...

My primary encodings all have to be able to play on my PC *and* in my car when I copy them to the Phatbox. I don't have the space to keep WAV's to encode from, and I'm not going to have time to re-rip and encode into a different format every time I want to change the music in my car. High-bitrate to lower-bitrate lossy transcoding is an option for my portable MP3 player, but *not* for my car. The Phatbox only speaks MP3, WAV, FLAC, and WMA. I'd love to keep all of my music in MPC format and regain some 10% or more of my disk space, but alas, the Phatbox is blind to MPC.

The same goes for Ogg. I even sent PhatNoise customer support an e-mail asking whether they had plans to support the Ogg Vorbis encoding format. They said "no plans at this time".

And I was very un-impressed by what I heard from WMA9. I don't know if I used a bad compile or something, or if there was a bug in its psychoacoustic model, but it completely failed my "Kalifornia" test even at 373kbps with a file size 900kB larger than the Lame --api one! Scored 20 out of 20 in WinABX...*easily*! (I use Fatboy Slim's "Kalifornia" as one of my several baseline tracks for testing, since it's typical of my listening taste. If it can't get close on "Kali", then I've got no use for it.)

So, dropping WMA narrowed everything down to WAV (too big), FLAC (maybe too big), and MP3. Did some math, figured I could have about 50 albums on 20GB in FLAC, 150-160 in --alt-preset insane, 180 or so in --alt-preset extreme and just over 200 in --alt-preset standard. Gotta have more than 50..so FLAC's out. Now it was down to which Lame quality setting for MP3. Transparency was of the highest importance since I could live with as few as 150 encoded albums just fine, if that's what it took.

That's when the ABXing started. As for my results, I think most people could hear much of what I did for themselves...

> The Beatles - Rubber Soul - Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown). Listen to the passage between the timemarks from 5.0 to 7.8 seconds. It's the very hard guitar strum by John that's so fierce that it's a little out of key. The WAV version (to my ears) returns to key in the split second as it fades, and in the --aps version the effect lingers a little longer...very faint, but I was able to detect it on almost every try. WinABX gave me a <0.1% probability of guessing.

> Fatboy Slim - You've Come A Long Way, Baby - Kalifornia. From what I've read, one of the hardest popular songs to encode, mixed by "King Codec Killer" himself. Anywhere you choose among the first 14 seconds of the song...'nuff said. The --aps-encoded file I tested had a faint crackling noise under the synthesized voice in this passage. Scored 100% in WinABX...20 out of 20. But it sounded *much better* than the 192 kbps FhG version I had been listening to before. It was harder to detect in the --ape file...scored <1.8% probability of guessing. --api was transparent to me, and was the first MP3 that was ever able to reproduce this song this well (to my ears, anyway).

> The Beatles - Sgt. Peppers - A Day in the Life. The peak amplitude note almost at the end of the song (can't remember the timemark), where all the instruments are building up to it. Right after the note, there is an echo prevalent even in the WAV. Compared to --aps, I could just barely detect less lingering tendency. --ape and --api were transparent to me. Probability of guessing when I tested --aps against the original WAV was <0.9%.

> Nine Inch Nails - Deep. (Track 2 from the soundtrack for Lara Croft: Tombraider.) Timemark from 14.3 seconds to 17.0 seconds. It's very faint, but the original WAV has a little more "liveness" than --aps. --ape and --api are transparent to me. My probability of guessing for the --aps one was <0.1%.

I haven't ripped either of my "On the Floor at the Boutique" albums yet (Lo Fidelity Allstars and Fatboy Slim). I'll test more tracks from those albums, as well as Pretty Hate Machine, Downward Spiral, Fat of the Land (Prodigy) and some classical as well.



As for gapless playback...it would be nice, but it's not important enough to me yet. Integrated replaygain is not something I really need either as my method is to have EAC run all of my ripping and --api encoding, then as each album is finished I dump it into MP3Gain...a manual step, but nothing for me to complain about. (And, of course, I never gain test tracks.)



It's very hard for me...I must have gone through 10 songs (that I thought would be likely to artifact) for each *1* that I could ABX aps from WAV on. And I'm definitely not aps-bashing...like I've said before, it's far better than my previously used MP3 codecs at equivalent bitrates to my ears. I can say that it's not quite as hard to find complex, high-transient, special-effect-ridden techno/electronica songs that will "break" a codec vs. many other music types...except, strangely enough, The Beatles, some of which I discovered (almost by accident) I could ABX. Then again, no one ever said that there is any such thing as an infallible MP3 configuration.



Again, the compatibility thing...2/3 of my devices won't like .wv files. Then again, if I had 80 GB or more, I would probably go FLAC or WavPack lossless...compatibility requirements would point to the former.

As for --api, I don't hear many people considering/discussing it in most HA threads where it might otherwise be discussed. I'm starting to think that --api gets short-shrifted because it's not as compact as --aps or --ape, but lossy and therefore not comparable to FLAC, APE, etc. My contention is otherwise...if your space requirements demand lossy, your lossy compability requirements say "MP3", but you want the *best* possible quality (and if you listen to music in which you can tell the difference), then I think that a 22% compressed file size is a very reasonable compromise for the highest MP3 sound quality possible (by ISO standards, anyway)...

I was going to say that, but you beat me to it. I think my MPC's probably avarage around 200kbs. Quite acceptable for PC/Hardrive.

Dude, burning CDs is fine. The Nero MPC pluggin works like a dream.

Suuuure, it works like a charm.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=11093

If you are looking for compatibility and transparency look to AAC perhaps ScorLibran. I don't know if support for it is planned for the PhatBox but it is probably more likely to support AAC in the future than Ogg Vorbis sadly.

Thanks...I will. I just registered at the PhatNoise forum, so I'm going to try to get the scoop on future compatibility plans.

AAC is a format I haven't tried yet, but I've heard only good things about it, so it's something I'll definitely keep in mind..

foobar2000 works fine for me when I burned a copy of an album that I tested MPC with.

Are some people unable to get it to work with foobar?