I am currently ripping a lot of LP's to make a digital archive of all my music, and I am really interrested in what people have to say about the different codecs when it comes to this type of music.

The thing is, this "electro" I listen to is mostly made of long stretched out bass-loops and quite a bit high-hat/clap sounds.. Only some songs have voice, and then it's usually passed through a vocoder.

I have read that mp3 cuts out some of the high and low range of the audio spectrum and that ogg should be better for this. However, all my rips sound fine in mp3 and I am not really able to distinguish the difference between LAME --APE or Ogg -q 6.3.. These give me almost the same filesize (1kb difference) for various samples I have tested and with my setup I can't hear the difference.. But then my sources are not exactly perfect

If anyone has any interrest in helping me, please respond..

I can deliver source files (from LP or CD) if necessary, with some really, *really* strange sounds.

For an example of what I listen to, here are some links:
http://www.globaldarkness.com/audio/audio_...ker_records.htm -- Bunker/Creme Records
http://www.fischerspooner.com/music.jsp -- Fischerspooner
http://www.xs4all.nl/~awolfe/ -- Legowelt
http://www2.hku.nl/~brian2/mp3.htm -- Orgue Electronique
http://www.diskob.com/c/mysterymen/db118.html -- Mysterymen (Electromode is a GREAT track!)

snek_one,

You seem to have answered your own question. You can't tell the difference between the two at the same file size, so either one works quality-wise (and that shouldn't be a big surprise at the bitrates your using). Now your only issue is which format you want to use for other reasons, such as portability, access, etc.

Incidentally, if you didn't already try using Garf's tuned version (GT3) for Ogg, it should make things even better!

Cheers, Paul

Better, but bigger. I would recommend GT3b1 Ogg at -q5 or LAME Mp3 at --alt-preset standard (I bet you can't tell aps from ape).

This is not true with Lame and the settings you are using. Other MP3 encoders however may very well do this...

Lame doesn't cut low frequencies at all. I encoded Lustmord - Dog Star Descends, and according to the spectrum analysis, the 14 Hz tone was there, in the MP3.
It removes high frequencies as part of its encoding process, when they are not necessary. There is also a general lowpass applied, but it is high enough not to be audible (19000 Hz with Alt preset standard).

Just wanted to clarify that I did not mean that Lame does not remove high frequencies at all, as Pio kindly clarified... All lossy codecs do. What I meant wasn't true was that at the settings mentioned the lowpass frequency should be so high for both lame and ogg, that ogg shouldn't be considered that much "better" in that respect. Don't know what lowpass ogg uses but any difference should be inaudible... Ogg may very well be better in overall sound quality still.

Sorry to be a nittpicker, but I think you can only say all suband lossy codecs do. As transform, I believe doesn't (or at least not always) and non-psychoacoustic (eg. wavepack lossy, ADPCM) certainly don't.

?? I'm insanely confused. AFAIK, there are Musepack settings that have the complete 0-22050 Hz bandwidth. There's neither high nor low pass there.

I stand corrected! I didn't know that about transform codecs, but I should have thought of ADPCM... And as Canar is indicating, you can often disable any high or lowpass filters.