Been a while since the last one, according to my search, so just curious how the different codecs are doing these days in terms of popularity.

My vote goes to Ogg Vorbis. I will not claim I can hear a difference between a High Quality-MP3 and the newer codecs, but it's nontheless good to know that the latest listening tests have indicated that Ogg Vorbis is still playing at top with the best of them.

So, since most of us don't really hear a difference between the good codecs, at least if we're talking medium bitrates and above, the choice depends on other things than audio quality. For me, the reason to use Vorbis, rather than say MP4, is mostly that Vorbis is free as in both beer and speech. We've been provided this excellent codec for free as a service to the people, by the people, so I make sure to join the good karma. Plus, it's also very easy to both obtain and use, which cannot always be said about the competitors (download and buy nero anyone?).

My vote will go to MPC for all lossy purposes. But in a few years space will be plenty then I'll use only lossless for audio (lossy for video still). Seriously, in 10 years do you think any of us will care which lossy audio codec is better?

mp3 for me, mostly because it is pervasive and I can easily use it on portable players and know it will be supported. And thats the format most of my music comes in its original form, and I dont want to transcode everything. Plus I cant tell teh different between any of them.

As for not caring about lossy codecs in 10 years, I dont agree at all. There will always be room for lossy codecs. With increased space and bandwidth, people will just be able to store more and download more.

Some people may prefer to download one 2gb album in lossless format, or store a few albums on their ipod, but I think more people would prefer to download 40 albums in the same 2gb bandwidth usage, or store many hundreds of albums in their ipod in a lossy format in which they cant tell the difference.

Porn still comes in lossy jpeg format, even though hardrives are big enough to store lossless .pngs. Theres just a hell of a lot more of it, at higher res etc. The same goes for any media.

I voted Ogg Vorbis as that's what I use on my iRiver iHP-120 currently. If and when (looks more like when ) Rockbox gets finished and gives me Musepack support it will be Musepack for my portable from now on.

Can't believe I was the first to vote AAC, where have all the AAC users gone?

Ogg Vorbis just ate my iShuffle fund.

After an ABX party with Ogg Vorbis 1.1 and the AAC contenders I bought a new MP3 player on the strength of that test. It Oggs, and I don't miss Nero's AAC encoder at all

I used to be an AAC user when I got my iPod but now I've been reripping my collection with EAC and LAME MP3. The reason for switching is for the most compatibility while achieving high quality.

I've used Ogg Vorbis and MPC a lot in the past, but ATM I stick with MP3. Compatible with everything, and good enough for me.

MP3 is still king on my opinion.

If you listen to files on your computer, you either use lossless of MP3, AAC of Ogg Vorbis (the only hardware-supported codecs, I do not count WMA). I have an archive of my files on FLAC DVD-R's (that is until I can afford a 200 or so GB HD). For my computer and portable, on both of which I cannot hear a difference from FLAC I use the cutting-edge version of LAME.

Whenever something else comes along that changes things enough or has hardware support, I will encode to it.

As somebody else said already, will anyone care in 10 years? (I say 3-5 years before we see DAPs/HDs with enough storing space/battery to hold lossless files, then this will be non-important).

I would poll on HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU CHANGED CODEC/SETTINGS IN THE LAST TWO YEARS.

I would say most of us have done it two or three times.

Always have, always will use MPC for archiving but I also now transcode to AAC for use with my iPOD.

The time of the floppy disk is finally done; ABS and airbags are standard equipment on new vehicles; MPEG4 plays on inexpensive standalone DVD players.
I think it's time to let go, and not worry about the legacy support so much. Or maybe it's time to FLAC it all, since we're headed there anyways

Word.

(I'm a recent lossless convert BTW, with that insurance, I am willng to try whatever lossy codec comes down the road with hardware support until lossless becomes the standard, it shouldn't be that much)

MP3 for me.

I've used LAME since I started frequenting HA, but a lot of my MP3s were encoded using Radium @ 128kbps. My hearing isn't fantastic, so I don't have any problems with ~128kpbs.

I am quite tempted to switch to OGG or AAC, but I have an MP3 CD player in the car, which is where I get to listen to most of my music. Until I listen to most of my music on something that will play OGG or AAC I don't see the point in a switch.

I now have all my CDs in APE format, so the idea is that I will, sometime soon, get a 250GB external hardrive on which to store them. This will then provide the facility to very easily transcode everything to a lossy format of my choice.

I expect the first run will still be to LAME ~128kbps though. It will be nice to be shot of some of those early mistakes, like Xing and BladeEnc.

About two years ago I finally decided to go lossless (FLAC) after spending the years before constantly switching and reripping my collection (and then some) to the latest and greatest lossy format (mp3, ogg, mpc, ...) of the moment. I think it's a learning process most of us go through. At first I was content just having music in mp3 form (xing ) but gradually I discovered and started to appreciate the recording quality of good cd's and wanted to preserve this as much as possible in it's digital form. Lossless in the end gives me a nice peace of mind that what I'm doing is not for nothing when yet another format becomes popular.

Maybe the story above is a little offtopic here but what it comes down to nowadays is that I have my lossless (constantly growing) archive from which I can generate any file in any lossy format I want. This means whatever the latest and greatest format of the month is I can always give it a try. I still follow the advances made in the lossy formats but I look at it from another point of view : I'm not constantly in search anymore for the ultimate, best commandline or qualitysettings.

Ditto. I more or less switched from AAC back to MP3 because of my Expanium.

@Bylie

I subscribe any single word of you.

The only difference is that (after WMA Lossless and FLAC) I've now gone to WavPack for lossless.

Sergio

I voted for mp3, because its what I mainly use for portable playback.

Maybe we should have a few different polls (iv included my answers ), e.g.:

1. which lossy codec do you use - mp3
2. which lossy codec would you use if all hardware supported all lossy codecs - aac
3. which lossy codec do you think is the most technically advanced - aac
4. which lossy codec do you think is the codec of the future - aac

a few more come to mind, but I think that will be enough for now

For portable player compatibilty with less battery draining, mp3 is my weapon of choice. I do like Ogg Vorbis, but I'd only use it on my portable (lossless on home PC) and it drains too much battery life.

When the rockbox team release their iRiver software, then I'll take a look at mpc (if they support it) and wavpack (for the hybrid).

I never used alternative lossy codecs. MP3 all the way. I still use it for sharing music over the internet. But my own CDs are all archived as lossless wavpacks.

I've voted for MP3. When hard drive space was more of an issue for me I'd use MPC. I'm gradually making the change to WAVPACK lossless for the majority of my new rips and if I go lossy I'll use MPC, this is very rarely. MP3 I use for my car stereo and so is now my most frequently used lossy codec.

ogg vorbis... for the karma reason mentioned in the first post ^^

Ah well some use FLAC, some use WavPack, some even use APE the beauty of it is that it's lossless and that my music will sound just the same if I converted it to WavPack or whatever format I might get in mind.
I do however notice that there's much less negative conversations between the people using lossless encoders. Sometimes people tend to start flamewars over lossy's encoders quality that are just childish (in the sense of mine is bigger than yours). Lossless avoids the quality issue alltogether and imho lays the emphasis on features. I know some lossless encoders might compress better than others but it isn't such a big a deal to me anymore. I want something that does it's job! FLAC does a splendid job for me and WavPack might do a splendid job for you ...
In the end it's all in function of the music I want to hear.

I'm still a Vorbis user. My reasons are excellent support on Windows & Linux, the ability to convert FLAC directly to Vorbis in terminal and keep my tags, and every player worth downloading has support for vorbisgain.

After so many years of band practice in a tiny warehouse all of the lossy encoders are transparent TO ME at their respective recommended settings (and most times slightly below the recommended settign) so it's the features that decided for me.

That being said, I would only be half-posting if I didn't mention OptimFrogDS which I use for 'special' songs. I'm still not satisfied with WavPack's Linux support.

I use MPC mainly because they don't like people having mp3's on our HDs at work! I have more than 10 Gigs worth of music on my HD at work, all MPC.

Yesss! Music archiving nirvana!

ghghghghghgh! ROTFLMBO!

Absolutely!

You're a wise man!

Take care, cheers!

Sergio

That's hilarious!
Alternately, you could always change all of the file extensions of your mp3 files from to .wav and just play them as a wav-embedded mp3 file.

What have you done with Roberto???

Roberto would never stop using AAC!

MP3 it is for me - compatible with everything, APS good enough for most of my listening, no DRM silliness, FLAC version backing up everything in case I need it.

I've voted for vorbis :

- my DAP (M3L) gives me two alternatives: mp3 and vorbis
- I can't ABX vorbis at -q4 mostly (except killer samples), but easily ABX lame at -V4, even -V3 (classical and acoustic jazz music), so it's saving space a lot.
- M3 displays vorbis tags without limitations (not mp3 tags)
- yes, battery life is shorter, but M3L should play 35 hours with 128 kb mp3, so say 20 hours with vorbis isn't that bad.
- maybe I'm still newb in this, but observe progress in vorbis development is still adventure for me and I like it.

Erm, no it hasn't, actually
The August 2004 lossy poll still hasn't even been admin-closed, appearantly.

AAC because I consider my Zen Touch a momentary inconvenience.

Transcoding is so wrong and so fun.

Still MP3. Guaranteed support everywhere, transparent to me at APS. I don't trust vorbis except for narrowband. I may be persuaded to try MPC if it gets more widespread hardware-support - but even when being optimistic this would take at least 3 years. So i will stick to MP3 for quite a while.

Since lossless is growing and slowly getting hardware-support, i'd say that the most probable thing to happen is that i will stay with mp3 for 2-3 more years, and then directly switch to lossless.

- Lyx

I decided to stop being a stupid and unbearable zealot. It would be great if some people in this forum decided to do the same...

Meh, did you really expect the people to know how to use a search button?

He didn't even provide enough options in his poll.

Please don't! I've had more than a fistfull of laughs at your I/O.

I voted Vorbis even if recently i came back to Lame for my latests encoding (due to my iHP batery decreasing life)
Anyway i wish to use MPC in quite near futur thanks to Rockbox... Even if it will mean reripp most of my AudioCDs... :/

My CD deck indirectly supports Ogg, just plug the YP-MT6 into aux input. I do foresee official AAC support coming to car audio sooner than Ogg tho...

Same thing for me. MPC was my lossy codec of choice, but now I'm using lossless for listening/archiving on my PC, and mp3 for my portable player. That's why I'm currently so interested by LAME development (3.97alphas).

I voted AAC, even though my entire audio collection is in FLAC Matroska. I was about to vote "other" until I remembered that I encode all my video's audio with HE-AAC. It seems to do quite well with voices, even if it's nowhere near the quality I expect from my music collection.

I'm not really worried about compatability because the videos are designed to play back on my computer and my computer only. If I was worried about compatability, I wouldn't encode to VFR anamorphic Matroska files either (Yes, I am a Matroska lackey... sue me.)

I shouldn't, or so it seems.

Well, that remains to be seen. If you take a look at how few supporters Atrac, MP3pro, RealAudio and the likes have amongst HA members in the August 2004 poll, then I'd say the limited choice of AAC/MP3/MPC/Vorbis/WMA only is not entirely unjustifiable, be it for the sake of overview. There's still that other radio button to tick too, if you want or must.

Well, he should at least have provided an option "I don't use lossy, I prefer lossless"

I'd advise people with that kind of preference to place a null vote, since this poll seems to be intended as lossy-only.

It's quite interesting to read about the number of people who have returned to MP3.

Obviously portables have a large part to play in this, however kudos must also go to Gabriel/the LAME team, who seem to have injectected a little more faith in LAME recently. People would be less inclined to return if LAME wasn't still a serious contender.

I don't pretend to understand the full story, but it seems that only recently has any development been taken seriously in favour of Dibrom's 3.90.3.

I personally use 3.96.1 (-V 5 --athaa-sensitivity 1) in an attempt to support the continuing development, and in the belief that it is at least equal to 3.90.3. I'm looking forward to future stable releases also (3.97a seems very promising).

I completely agree. Another reason I switched to 3.96.1 is that it is much faster than the effete 3.90.3

mp3 lame extreme

I voted AAC, although most of my collection is aps-encoded mp3's.

I switched over with iTunes 4.7 since I can finally trust the quality with that. The main reasons is that it's transparent to my golden ears (although I have pretty good ear-hygiene), it encodes at over 26X, mass tagging is faaast, and all my gear is compatible.

Ogg Vorbis Aotuv b2 at Q7.

Because it's free, open and has excellent sound quality for the bitrate.

This is just a comment of an "amateur" who isn't so much into the technical intricacies of the various codecs (I just struggle to understand something) and my experience is mainly limited to MP3 and various lossless codecs. This is just because I've started archiving music when MP3 (and WHAT MP3!!! ) was the only option, I'm a bit lazy and I'm quite stuck with my procedures, tools and legacy of archived music. Only since about a year I've decided that it is wise for me to keep at least a lossless copy of my music. Beside this safety procedure, I find LAME MP3 at -aps and neighbours totally transparent for me and thus more than enough quality wise and an insurance in terms of compatibility with current and future hardware and software.

All this given, and assuming similar if not identical qualities between the other codecs (haven't always been said that ABX tests at high quality levels are extremely difficult because of the transparent nature of all codecs?), I'm quite surprised by the results of the poll, so far. What I see is that MP3 still occupy the first position, and this is what I expectd, but I expected that the second an third position would be a tie between AAC because of the widespread support by the iPod and his aura of recognition as a "standard" and OggVorbis for its very much apreciated "free nature".

I was badly wrong: the very second encoder (and almost in a tie with MP3) is by far MPC, which I don't use and don't directly know, but of what I've heard only positive comments from the quality point of view. It is my understanding, anyway, that it is the least (if any at all) hardware supported codec and one for which developement and support only recently resurrected. I thought those factors would had a more important negative impact in its popularity and thought that the "iPod and iTunes factors" would have a more positive impact on AAC.

There is no conclusion in this: just wild, freerunnig thoughts.

Sergio

Edit: nothing important

I'm honestly surprised to find that so many people still use MP3. I switched to Ogg Vorbis months ago. I understand the hardware variables, though, as I'd be pretty reluctant to give up usage of a nice portable player solely to support an improved codec. To be honest, though, that's just what I did: I bought a used MP3 CD Discman several months back, but I've barely used it because I prefer Vorbis. I'm a man of principle to a fault. Still, I hope Vorbis will continue gaining support.

I do think that in within 10 years, lossless will be the standard audio format. We'll have so much space and bandwidth that it simply won't matter. Lossy will be the "other choice." My opinion.

For what reasons, If I dare to ask?

Sergio