Hi,

first: I am new here . I signed up because in here seem to be many, many people with more clue of encoders than I have. So I'm gonna ask some questions, in hope of an answer. And sorry if that post is really, really, really much to read. First I wanted to be precise, second I have a it time and am a bit bored right now

BACKGROUND

First some little background. I am about to encode my music collection, and I don't want to reencode all that stuff ... ever. To achieve this I would of course like to use the "best" encoder available, with a few prerequisites.

Some research resulted in the informatin that encoders for one format seem to have little to massive encoding differences over the different versions. They produce artifacts from time to time, they alter the sound image, they have different strengths at different bitrates ... to make it short: They seem to have non forseeable quality variations in all imaginable area while going through development.

I of course would naturally like to use an encoder which is tested to be "good" by people who know what they're talking about to save myself the trouble of doing that again.

The music we're talking about is mostly Rock, Metal, Pop. There is also some (growing) classical stuff. Still (although that might be naive) I would like to encode EVERY music with only one encoder. I could live with one for classic and one for the rest, but if that could be avoided ... I think you know what I mean.


THE REQUIREMENTS & THE QUESTION

1) I want hardware player support. So it's either OGG or MP3, preferrably OGG because of gapless playback.

2) I want a good compromise between file size and quality, so I have decided not to go over 190 kbit/sec, which really should be enough. 160 kbit/sec would be preferred.

3) I don't want lossless. That's too big - and I still do have the CD's in case of an emergency. (I think you got that out of no. 2 )

The resulting question of course is: Which encoder do you guys use and - MOST IMPORTANT - for what reason? And don't feel obliged to limit information to OGG and MP3 - I have no clue about AAC and MP4 as well, and some basic information about encoders and their qualities / advantages / disadvantages / states would be very much interesting, I think. Does anyone actually use that for big-time encoding?

FURTHER QUESTIONS AND ANNOYINGS

(if the next few sentences sound a bit harsh I apologize. I did research for quite some time without getting some usable results I could understand. I have the impression that either web pages just say "that is that way" or they don't say anything at all)

What is really annoying is that XIPH for example does not provide information about different OGG versions. There simply is no changelog. Also there is no "official" version, neither from LAME nor from OGG - if you read through the changelog (if present) you get the impression that each improvement is life-saving, and using an old version is stupid. Yet people like the Ubernet creators require a very old version of LAME for the quality.

That is annoying.

Also annoying is that there seem to be different versions of the encoders. Some people know what the difference is, others seem not to, but still that knowledge is not written down anywhere (... where I could find it ...). The OGG encoder with its aotuv versions is again a good example. What IS actually written down on that page is not understandable to me

Also there is no central site which sums up all the experiences of users with the different encoder versions in a SHORT, READABLE FORM (hint, hint ). I mean, no one expects a detailed description of every version ever created, but one or two versions tagged "good" and some progress about the recent code (CVS, alpha, beta, whatever) would really be helpful to many people, I assume. Nothing special, only in the form "current CVS develops improvements in area XYZ. Still version ABC is recommended for all who favor stability/best results/best overall results".

A LITTLE SUGGESTION

Couldn't there be a sticky thread in "audio general" which does reflect the current opinion of most users, with a little summary of the most used encoders? That would be a really, really, really good thing.

finally ...

should I have overseen just the site, post, forum with exactly the information I request from you I apologize. In that case I promise to stand in the corner for not less than 15 minutes while feeling ashamed.

If you have the space you can encode lossless: FLAC or APE. If not you can go with MP3 as it is playable on more hardware than other formats. It also seems likely that it will be the lossy compressed format of choice for the forseeable future.

That said, LAME APS/V2 is the common wisdom for quality and economy of space. If Ubernet does not like the most recent release of LAME, who cares? Are you encoding for yourself or Chris Myden?? He is one voice. The folks here who I believe know better opt for a recent release of LAME. I use the most current beta. The next release will be better. That is called "progress."

I would recommend you rip with EAC. A search of this board will recommend lots of advice on how to set it up. Good luck.

Given the requirement for ~200kbps and good hardware compatability, I think you're pretty much left with LAME. Nothing matches it for hardware compatability, and qualitywise format is largely irrelevent at that bitrate.

The basic problem is: I don't listen to every encoded piece after encoding. So if I copy that thing to a player I want to be reasonably sure that it has no artifacts, and if using beta encoders has the risk of producing those ... .

I mentioned the Überstandard just as an example, because it struck me as a surprise that these guys do require a very old LAME version as encoder. That's all . Of course I encode my music for me ... .

Still I'd like OGG, cause MP3 is not gapless and does not seem to have a quality as high as the OGG one. I'd buy OGG players in that case, of course

I would recommend using Vorbis aoTuV beta 4 or the just relesed beta 4.51 at setting -q 6.

The v. 4.51 has changes (probably improvements) below -q 3 so it doesn't matter which one you select. Beta 4 has been out for some time and no problems have been reported.

b4.51 at -q 6 produces these bitrates with the same test track set I used in my LAME 3.97b1 VBR bitrate test:


Average 191
Median 186

Other reasonings can be found in these forums, but as far as I know the audio quality is excellent. Just on yesterday I tried to ABX test some samples that I thought would be difficult for Vorbis, but I failed. I couldn't hear any difference to the original. (I used -q 6.25, which is almost the same as -q 6.)

You could also use iTunes with AAC VBR 192 if you ever want to purchase an iPod of any flavour. This, Vorbis -q6 and Lame -V2 are very competitive in the ~192 kbps bitrange, it doesn't really matter which you choose quality-wise, all three should be transparent, especially on portable players. I'd base my decision more on useability or other features (hardware support, gapless playback etc.)
Still, I'd go for lossless as the primary format if you plan on encoding all your CDs now. Otherwise you might regret your codec choice at some point in the future and might have to go through all the painful, unnerving ripping procedure all over again

I would recommend LAME 3.97b1 -V2 --vbr-new or aoTuV b4/4.51 -q6 for that bitrate range Both will playback gaplessly on players that support it. And there are hardware players that do play these back gaplessly, namely the iRiver H1xx series with Rockbox, which are hard to find. But there is a good point to this. The first version of the Rockbox bootloader for the H3xx has been released, so it won't be too long before it's got full functionality, including gapless playback.

Just throwing some more opinions out