Hello there, i would like to know for the big brain guys wich of these have the less risk to introduce artifacts into a transcoded file.

1- MPC -q10
2- Wavpack -hb320x (dam i love that piece of software)
2- Nero AAC trancoding profile

Assuming i can't abx them until 2 or 3 transcode, can someone tell me wich is best suited for that work...i read somewhere that nero aac transcoding profile have some switch specificly introduced for transcoding, is it working ?

Soren

Wavpack, according to listening tests done by Den. Search the forums for more info.

Wavpack for sure out of these three. Optifrog Dualstream works well too, but has trouble competing in terms of encoding decoding speed, which can be important if you are regularly transcoding.

One thread with some of my tests is here...

Wavpack vs mpc, ogg and others for transcoding

Wavpack. My test here:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=24592

Thanks a lot guys for your testing, however, nobody test Nero AAC trancoding ?

Soren

I assume qualitywise Wavpack would come out on top.

On the other hand, if you plan to transcode often you should also consider the extremely fast decoding performance of Musepack. Say you have 5 minutes until you have to leave for the bus but want to carry along some music, then MPC would have the edge.

In my personal (unverified) opinion, I suppose it doesn't matter what source format you pick of the three, all being very high bitrate and quality. The absolute number of detectable artifacts introduced by transcoding may be smaller for Wavpack than the other two candidates. However I think the relative amount of artifacts introduced by the transcoding process will be small against the allready present artifact situations in your target format (assuming you are aiming for "portable" bitrates).

I would again have to agree that Wavpack should be the best for this. Having said that, though, I must say that for portable use I find MPC --quality 5 to LAME -V5 more than acceptable. I would also like to add that if you decide on MPC you probably shouldn't use --quality 10. I would be very surprised if this quality level wasn't well into the field diminishing returns --quality 9 or 8 or perhaps even lower would likely be indistinguishable (vs. --quality 10), but you should test for yourself.