For what it is worth, i belive the MPC format is still way to "unknown" to the masses. Sure you got mpc support in the most used soft. players, but from a user point of view, the mp3 format will still be the favourite as hardware suport goes.
MPC is in my mind the best a lossy compression can do, regarding quality,
but as long the format can`t provide wildly covered portable support, people
will still use mp3.
Regarding mp4, it would have been interesting to see a test report on high bitrates.
ATM. mp4 (especially nero) audio seems to have a brighter future as hardware suport, i know nothing about what goes on in the mpc camp. but i pray to god
that this format doesn`t "die".

Why is there no mention of either Dolby Digital or DTS?
Both these can be used on DVD, with DD 2/0 you will get 60 albums onto a single DVD-R.
It is definitelt lossy compression, and deserves to be included.

Forgot to mention also that DD as well as DTS will go on CD as well as DVD

At the moment i rip all my cds to FLAC. Then I transcode the FLAC to LAME .90.3 APE.

The FLACs go onto DVD, the MP3s stay on my hd. No doubt if I had a desktop I'd have bought a few 320 gb disks to keep the lossless on disk. Good thing I can't.

Yes I could use mpc but: my crappy sony mp3 discman (yeah yeah I know impulse buy at the airport what do you wanna do?) only does wma (urk!) and atrac3 (cue sounds of slughter), so I'm stuck with mp3 if I wanna hear them on the move... not that LAME is bad. Far from it. I just finished verbally berating a friend of mine who's a buddying techno artist and was encoding his tunes @ 128 with Fhg. Now he's doing it at APE... but mp3 has it's limitations.

As soon as I see a good hard-disk player that does mpc and mpc goes to sv 7.5 I'll switch tho... there's really no comparison between the 2 at the omg-i-know-standard-is-transparent-but-i-wanna-make-sure-even-if-its-a-waste-of-data-quality-freak levels I'm at

Heh maybe people at realmedia should take a look at the poll :-)
RM [0]

that was beaten by VQF even waaay back when this poll was young.

I think this thread should be locked and this poll should be re-started as it is almost 2 years old. Please can a mod lock this and can someone start a similar poll I can bet that the change in the results would be huge!

Agree... and add some new formats in new poll...

I still use mp3 for portable use, I only use lossless for backups and home use. However, I think mp4 is the best

I've just started to use MPC....i'm really impressed......sounds very to the orginal....

Honestly, been used to use IMA-encoded AIFCs on an old Mac. I thought I was going to sing and dance when my parents got me an old 400 mHz G3 iMac 2 years ago (thanks a lot...) with something BETTER than the 1 GB hard disk I was used to. Now its 50% AAC, 45% OGG, and some Apple Lossless and Mp3.

aacenc -ultra -profile 2 -nh

It would be interesting to start a "version 2" of this poll and see if habits have changed over the past 2 years.

It would, go for it.

I vote LOSSLESS (even if it's contradictory with the question (which lossy format -> lossless)) lol...

Else, I use MPC for lossy

I make lossless FLAC backups and then transcode to 192-320 VBR LAME MP3 (I have space to burn).

my most listened to CD's go in monkeys audio, which i transcode to lame --aps or --apx for my ipod, other than that, it's mostly --aps

New poll here.