Many of the standard reasons, really: better quality at similar filesizes, being open-source, and being patent-free. And being more likeable in some intangible way. Honestly, I wasn't even really aware of MPC's existence at the time. Do you ask for a reason other than curiosity?

Just to throw you a TOS#8 reminder for bold quality related statements!

Just joking... never mind!

I understand (and apreciate) your subjective considerations; as I said I think the "freedom factor" is important. I don't use Ogg/Vorbis, but I'm happy and somehow re-assured by its existence. I was asking just to be confirmed that this factor had an important weight in your (and probably most other's Ogg supporters) decision. I can't (and wouldn't) comment on quality. I'm sure it is good enough for most people/applications, wherever/whenever a lossless codec is enough.

Sergio

Edit: unforgivable typo: bald/bold

Ogg as well, because it's made for small-capacity flash players! It maximizes minimal space the best if you don't require transparency (HE-AAC does well in this regard too, but hardware support is minimal itself)

IMO, space will always matter to me. I have an 80g Neuros, and already I'm at the limit and I'm not even close to finishing encoding my collection. Not to mention needing capacity for all the great music I'd like to discover in the future.

I'm using mp3, because although the Neuros supports vorbis, there are a couple things that keep me away from it:

1) reported buggy support on the Neuros at Q6 and higher
2) increased processer demand = lower battery life
3) issues (HF boost, reported acoustic/classical sources sounding artificial) seems less attractive than potential artifacts with LAME -aps IMO
4) based on the threads I read, having a standard setting for transparency seems less clear for vorbis than with mp3. Leading to increased confusion re compiles, switches.

And so far, the non-open status of mp3 has not hindered my listening pleasure at all. The Neuros is trying to adopt MPC support, and if/when that happens I'll probably switch to MPC at that point, but not reencode my previous rips because they're good enough.

I only use Wavpack for rips I've made from rare vinyl-only releases that really need to be preserved.

Space will always matter as long as obsessiveness exists. Why settle with a month of continuous music if you can have a year? Who knows when you will get stranded on a desert island and not be able to get to your computer to load the music you'll want to hear for the next month? (Nevermind the need for recharghing the battery)

Ogg Vorbis for me though I probably have more AAC and mp3s (for my iPod). But I'm working on Ogg Vorbis so I guess I do Ogg Vorbis too

When I first came to HA I exclusively used Ogg Vorbis at -q3. After experimenting with Musepack and AAC for a while I borrowed my sisters mp3 player for a hospital appointment, then I reripped my music colection to mp3 when I bought my own afterwards (originally I transcoded my collection, I didn't have time to get my cds out before going to hospital).

I now use MP3 aps for most of my music. I still have a couple of rare cds encoded in Vorbis because I lost them when I moved house , I use FLAC with my other rare cds so I don't make that mistake again.

LAME 3.96.1 here, encoding with --alt-preset standard.

The main reason is compatibility (I can play it in iTunes, on my car stereo, and on my portable CD player) and they sound good enough.

I envison in a few years re-ripping to a lossless format, but I don't have the hard drive space (120 GB) nor the backup means (CD-RW drive still) to rip my whole collection.

So in the meantime, I'll stick with the tried and very true method.

Add another vote for mp3 from me. I've tried a few other formats and must admit that I really liked Ogg Vorbis, but in the end mp3 is the only format that's compatible with everything that I want to play it on.

Also I found that in order to get encodes that are transparent (for me and my equipment) I needed mp3's that are larger by only about 10% as compared with the best of the other formats I tested. So I switched back to mp3 for better compatibility, and the slightly higher bit rate I need to get the quality level that's suitable for me is really not an issue.

BTW, I'm really glad that Lame is still being developed and tuned. I'm currently encoding with 3.96.1 -V4 and have no problems with the quality at about 165 kbps, though I also have most of my stuff archived in lossless format as well.

Primarily i use mareo to create flac -6 which i burn to dvdr and lame 3.96.1 --alt-preset standard which i store on my pc and copy onto my ihp-140, i also have some oggs and mpc's encoded but mpc has no h/w support yet (maybe rockbox soon) and oggs drain my battery more than mp3 at similar quality.

So for now its MP3, untill another format can cover all my bases.

I second DreamTactix291 on this one. Vorbis because of the H120... Otherwise I'll probably do some serious ABXing of AAC and MPC once Rockbox is useable and supports them both - though I don't think FAAC/FAAD can beat MPC, but we shall see.

mp3 only for me.

Quality is far beyond my listening abilitites at any bitrate > 128 kbps. Its hardware and software support are unchallenged. mp3 is, I think, the only lossy format I'll ever use : I've already switched to lossless for most music on my pc, and mp3 is good enough for portable players.

after all mp3 seems to strike back

vorbis having more votes than aac? funny to see that happen on HA

Are you really that surprised?

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=24678
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=2404

It has always been that way.

indeed

Basically I'll use what I feel like that day. My setup and hearing is not that great I'm able to really distinguish LAME MP3 from Vorbis, AAC, etc. and its not like my computer blows up when I mix Vorbises (whats the plural of that anyway?) with MP3s in one folder....

Codec. That's a hard choice... Because I'm still experimenting with different formats. But I vote for MPC, as it is the format I use for keeping my all CD's on HD since year 2000...
At these days it was the only transparent format with such bitrate/quality ratio for me.

Now I am also encoding to OGG, for portable player usage. About a year ago nothing at 128k could beat OGG for me, and now Lame came pretty close, but still I'm kinda allergic to MP3's preecho and flanging watery sounds (OGG's artifacts sound different).

Ogg Vorbis, only on my Iriver H-140. If i need lossy on other devices in the future, I get back to my FLAC files and recode.

EDIT: Quality Setting 6. Different compiles, due to the constant developing. Nowadays I go with aoTuV b3 SSE optimised version - sufficient for me and the sound reproduction of my Iriver.

According to those previous polls, mp3 is more popular than before... But is it also the case out of HA?

wma hardly gets 1-2% here, though I wouldn't be surprised if it got 30% among "basic" users

I started out with Fhg MP3, then WMA, then OGG, then to LAME MP3. (For maximum compatibility)

I'd like to use OGG more, but Vorbis development has been lacking. I'd like to use AAC, but lack of VBR in iTunes AAC turns me off. (I know Nero AAC has VBR support, but iTunes did slightly better in the last test). So it's LAME 3.96.1 for me!

Is MP3 still being developed?

Do a forum search and make yourself familiar with a community (by reading-only for a while) before posting.

- Lyx

very much: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=290

and lame4 is comming

@ J44xm : means yes

LOL. Thanks, Zurman. But I will make myself more familiar with the forum, as suggested.

here is the latest 3.9x testin thread

I'm suprised that Vorbis only has 21%. Oh well, its what I use for my lossy needs.

I like to use only ogg and flac on my Karma. So when people ask "how many mp3s you got on that thing?", I can reply "none, just flac and ogg."

Why not MPC? Just curious.

Personal preference I guess.

Plus I have positive placebo effects with aac and negative placebo effects with mpc. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t know why.

either way, because of placebo, aac sounds much better "to my ears" then mpc!

Maybe its got something to do with how cool the extension .mp4 looks LOL!!!

You can't seek for logic in lossy codec zealotry Even if XYZ proved to be higher quality I'd be using MPC.

BTW wasn't MPC #1 the last time? It's interesting it can't make it to the top spot in HA community, full of people that knows what is good. Maybe we need a table showing the change in HA figures for every poll compared to earlier ones.

Nice avatar by the way. Évariste Galois was one of the missing geniuses represented as avatar in HA community. Alexander Grothendieck is another one who I'd like to see as an avatar.

hehe.. I do not really, per say, feel that way about vorbis; if another format came along and it was open source like vorbis and flac I'd try it.

ok thats some wierd grammar.. whatever

MPC is open source: See Musepack.net

Compared to a few years ago, Vorbis development has picked up quite a bit, esp. how it managed to climb the rankings in the 128 kbps listening tests.

So is LAME, FAAC and so on.

Being open source is hardly a selling point to any format.

Disc Playback Formats
Video DVD, DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/-RW, VCD, SVCD, MPEG-4, DivX 3.11/4.x/5.x
Audio CD, CD-R/RW, MP3-CD (-256 kbps) <<<<< Where's the MPEG4 Audio playback?
I wonder if the MPEG4 video player would just the AAC audio stream, since it has to support AAC.

Maybe there is a way to create a blank MPEG4 video track at a very low bitrate?

Winamp supports user defined extension in its mp3 input plugin too!

The wonderful thing about reripping to mpc is it's encoding speed makes it a magnitude less painful than Lame 3.90.3. Instead of ripping 5 albums a day I can rip about 10.

Ever tried 3.96.1? And maybe even -V 2 --vbr-new ?

I've got the same thought. May it be because of increasing popularity of lossless formats (due to the grow of HDD space) in cost of HQ lossy ones?
Mp3 just can't be unpopular as long as 1) it's heavily developed and tested, 2) it's the only format that every mp3 player can handle.


Yeah thanks. Really, I just totally adore the uglyness of his face, lol!

Edit: gr.

If mp3 players couldn't handle mp3 files, they wouldn't be called mp3 players then would they

I think they call them mp3 players for a reason!

(NO OFFENSE MENT - JUST COULDNT HELP MYSELF)

Mp3 for me - mainly cause its the only thing handled by my mp3 player

also - is there that much difference really? I definately cant tell the difference between any of them


first HA post!

LOL Yes I knew that, just used a not-so-correct word construction.
Anyway, you DID get my point, didn't you?

Yes I got the point you were making!

The fact that 3.96.1 is recommended by the developers must also be taken into consideration. By the way, I just use --preset standard to keep it simple.

As you know I found that the two version of LAME were mathematicaly indistinguishable in my article that got me in so much trouble. BUT this was true only at the higher quality settings (standard and extreme). So if someone still wants to use VBR 128 they should try 3.90.3 IMHO. Always test for yourself kids, never take anyone's recomendation on blind faith.

Since I don't care about lower settings, I will stick with 3.96.1 until 3.97 comes out. Then I will test it with listening tests and with my correlation program to make sure it has not regressed.

In response to Synthetic Soul, the fact that portable players all support mp3 is a serious practical consideration. However, if I thought Ogg (or MPC, AAC, or ...) was better I would make the effort to use it (hacks are even available for iPods to play Ogg Vorbis). Right now Ogg is very close IMHO. However, to get comparable results you have to accept slightly less compression with Ogg compared to LAME.

As a fan of open source, I will keep rooting for Ogg. Considering that it started later and has fewer people working on the code, it has come a LONG way. It may still win in the end

One last thought: I wish I had ripped my CD collection to FLAC as several people have mentioned. What an idiot I was! This would make switching to Ogg or whatever comes next soooo much easier. I guess I have another weekend project.

See my response to rjamorim with my thoughts about why I still use MP3. I really like Ogg Vorbis too.

I have to disagree with your prediction about lossless. I think it will grow in popularity, but I can store at least 3 times as much music with LAME --present standard vs. any lossless I have tried. Even though terabyte hard drives are just around the corner, there are other considerations:

1. When you do your regular system backups it will go 3 times faster.
2. When you download to your player it will go 3 times faster.
3. If you stream over the internet it will be probably even faster because you can compromise on quality.
4. I don't support file sharing, but people will continue to do it and this will still encourage lossy codecs.

Remember that lossy is a relative term. I can not tell Ogg Vorbis -q 7 apart from lossless with my ears. Why should I throw away disk space when I don't have to?

That being said, I still plan on making a master backup up my CD's using FLAC. This will keep my CD's backed up and support any kind of technology I might switch to later (e.g. Ogg).

Well said, Turing. I was rather brash in my other post there. I do think that lossless probably will become much more popular over the years, and might one day become more popular than lossy, given huge unknown technological advances in the next decade or three, but your considerations are good ones. Thanks for the feedback. It will undoubtedly be interesting to see where we end up in 30 years.

Shame there is no »all except WMA« option.

My answer depends heavily on what exactly is meant by the question. I listen a lot to MP3s because that’s how I encoded my CD collection a long time ago. New music becomes mainly Vorbis (voted for that), though lately I’m more and more attracted to MPC. For movie backups, however, I only use HE-AAC or the unprocessed AC3.

Why not AAC for music? Dunno. Somehow AAC doesn’t have the feel of a »transparent quality music backup format«. I know that’s wrong and I tried encoding music to AAC. Well, a few days later I re-encoded everything to Vorbis, though I could never ABX either one.

No.

I use MPC at standard for computer playback. I can reencode these to mp3 when I get a portable music player.
I encode classical and jazz at xtreme, just to be safe.
My cheap Apex dvd player plays back mp3, but I never use it for that.

I might just get an iriver and use the Rockbox firmware which will supports MPC.

i still (gladly) use mp3 for my lossy purposes. i am very happy with it. it just amazes me what lame has done for mp3. nevertheless, i would love to switch to ogg or mpc, if it wasnt for the popularity of wmp and itunes, and their limited support. you see, i love to share my music w/ friends, just to let them try stuff out, and see what they might like, and 90% of the people i know either use wmp or itunes. its very unfortunate, because i want other people to be able to listen to my music w/o me having to transcode.

oh well, i guess all i can do in the meantime is try to convert my friends to more versitile player, and hope that the proprietary "jukeboxes" will become more versitile (i doubt it tho). until then, im very happy w/ mp3.