A while ago i encoded (flac) my cds to have faster access to my music collection. But now i have the space problem because are too many albums. So i decided to use a lossy one for computer listening and the cds for lossless

So my question is: what codec is better for both hi-quality and less space ? For a 6min track to use 10-12mb. I listen mostly to electronic music, jazz and rock ( boards of canada, hexstatic, cesaria evora, dream theater, system of a down, etc). Some DnB and breakbeat too.

Thanks

10-12MB for a 6 minute track equals ~256Kbps.
At such high bitrates most, if not all, of the popular lossy audio codecs are transparent. Even looking at the 128Kbps listening test show that most tracks are transparent for most of us.

So I suggest you select a codec solely for its features and software/hardware support.

This link shows a good quality test.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=40607

MP3 has the greatest hardware and software support, and the quality is good.
AAC is growing in HW and SW support, and has very good quality.
Vorbis is growing in HW and SW support, and has very good quality.

As far as I know there's no complete listening test results for 200-250 kbps encodings. As a consequence you can't expect a clear, unequivocal and trustable answer from any member of this board. At such high bitrate all modern encoders are expected to give transparent results for most listeners. So you can use LAME MP3, Vorbis, iTunes or Nero AAC, Musepack, and for ~250 kbps encoding DualStream or maybe WavPack lossy should be suitable as well.

But you should be aware that MP3 suffers more from a specific issue than other formats: it's pre-echo. Even at high bitrate smearing is sometimes noticeable. MP3 is also handicaped by an unefficient way to store loud high frequency content which affects some kind of music (metal is the most problematic one AFAIK but other genre are also affected). The problem is not related to quality but rather to efficiency (bitrate is higher than other formats at comparable setting).

MP3 is nevertheless highly commendable because of its wide compatibility with 99% of digital audio players, DVD players, multimedia HDD, etc... If you plan to keep lossless encodings somewhere (what I strongly suggest too) it's likely that you would enjoy a mirrored collection ready to use with most multimedia devices on the market (and of course compatible with all software players). MP3 is here unbeatable for the moment.

All other lossy formats would give you a slightly "better" quality (not always: only on specific point and only if your ears are trained/sensitive enough to detect smearing) but are less user-friendly for several aspects (mainly hardware compatibility). They're not problem-free either and there are reports of quality issue (artefact) at high bitrate with all of them. Well, they're all lossy...


N.B. I'm nearly in the same situation. My Hard Drives are full, and I'm currently thinking about deleting all the lossless stuff from them... after a complete back-up on DVD. I plan to use a lossy mirror on my computer. My choice is MP3 but I haven't decided yet for the final setting. I won't worry too much, simply because the lossless collection will rejoin my HDD in the future: with 1TB HDD coming in the 2...3 next years at decent price my lossy encodings is already doomed


N.B.2: before going for 200...250 kbps encodings, try to do some bling tests first. A lot of people are surprised to discover that ~130 kbps are transparent to their ears and that higher bitrate are not giving them any advantage.

use mp3 BLADE encoder at 32kbps and use ozone izotope

Of course, there's always the possibilty to buy an additional harddrive... but that's often no option for people.

If you have a DVD writer, then I suggest you consider using WavPack. It's a hybrid codec, which means it can work losslessly or lossy or both at the same time, thus the hybrid mode.

When you use WavPack in hybrid mode, you can keep the lossy files for playback on your harddrive and save the correction data to DVD-Rs or CD-Rs. Once the lossy encoding and the correction data is re-united in the same directory, you have the lossless encoding. With the .wvc files you get lossless playback, without them you get lossy playback.

This way you won't have to re-rip your whole CDs in case you want to transcode the audio data, for example to low bitrate MP3s for mobile listening devices. It's a good compromise between not having to re-rip, not having to transcode from a lossy codec and space requirement.

I was in a similar situation and gave away all my lossless encodings in favor of wavPack high quality lossy (most of the time) and high quality mp3. See my signature.
I think the risk of running into audible trouble is next to zero (especially as I'm not sensitive to pre-echo). That's why I don't even bother to keep the correction files.
Has made my life so much easier.

Edited: 'risk' read 'danger' before editing.

You can choose one of these for computer playback:

1) Lancer Oggenc 2.83 http://homepage3.nifty.com/blacksword/
Don't worry about the Japanese, just pick the right version for your encoding CPU. Quality level would be -q 6

2) Lame 3.97b2 --preset fast standard http://rarewares.org/mp3.html

3) Nero AAC Encoder -q 0.6 http://www.nero.com/nerodigital/eng/down-ndaudio.php

If it's simply for computer listening, I'd suggest vorbis... If you plan to share music with your friends, or to get a digital audio player eventually, use mp3.

You probably would be fine at -V5 --vbr-new, but by all means ABX some settings!

Peace,
Tristan.

PS : Francis, Hard drives are cheap right now... Why not buy a new one ? They're cheaper per GB than DVDs anyway.

I agree with Shade[ST], If I were to only use my music on my PC I would deffinitely use Vorbis, it's fast (lancer builds), very high quality, and it's constantly improved.

But for portable use and all-around compatibility, go with Lame mp3.

i think that double schema still works fine, like:

a. - very high quality lossy for your pc (AAC, Vorbis, mpc, whatever)
b. - medium quality mp3 for playing on your washing machine (or on any other device)

where "a+b is quite < any lossless"

LAME 3.97b2 -V2 --vbr-new would be my choice (and is my personal preference also).

Use Vorbis at 128kbps/Q4.

That is transparent to nearly anyone, with almost any song. (Try it yourself!) To be on the safe side you could use 160kbps/Q5, for the psychological boost of knowing you have better quality than necessary. (Though I'd bet you almost anything that you couldn't ABX either of them from the original wav...)

Then when you want to share something, or if you get a stone-age mp3 player without ogg support, you use LamedropXPd to easily and effortlessly convert your tracks to mp3. (See http://rarewares.org/mp3.html )

Or WinLame. Or MediaCoder. Choose yer poison

Considering the size my suggestion would Ogg Vorbis aoTuV, found at http://rarewares.org/

-q level for the 256kbps range would be -q 8.0. Q 8 gives an approx. kbps of 256.

For hardware, they do make ogg vorbis PMP players, so just using a codec because most PMP supports mp3 is not a good idea. Samsung Z5 with its latest firmware upgrade to the Z5F. (4gb Flash Player) For Cowon, Flash, its iAudio 6 (4gb) and for Hard drive its the iAudio 5 XL (20gb or 30gb). Just three of the players out there for Ogg Vorbis, granted there aren't many at the moment but it grows as Ogg Vorbis's user base grows.

Considering genres, jazz specifically, you might want to look on the board at the problem samples some of the lossy codecs have as well.

I listen to Cesaria Evora as well. First heard Miss Perfumado years ago and picked up a lot of her records ever since.

- Gow

They are already here.
It's a little pricey yet IMO.

External 1TB disks have been available for 3 years. The new king have 2TB storage capacity!
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10351

I'm not much interested in portability (i have ipod but i use it mainly for podcasts). I also have the cds so i don't have to worry about backups. The extra drive is not a solution at this time because i already have 4 on my computer.

So, I've made some tests on 3 tracks:
- Depeche Mode - Barrel Of A Gun (alot of distorts & some electric guitars)
- Erik Truffaz - Le Soleil D'Eline (acoustic guitar)
- Trilok Gurtu - Expression Of Love (voices&percusion)
Loaded them in foobar 0.92 and converted each to 3 formats:

1. mp3 / lame / 256kbps / -S --noreplaygain -V 2 --vbr-new - %d
2. mp4 / Nero AAC / ~255kbps / -q 0.66 -ignorelength -if - -of %d
3. ogg / Lancer 2.83 / 256kbps / -Q -q8.000000 - -o %d

The settings are standard in foobar, i modified just the quality option. No replaygain and dsp processing. If you know other tuning settings please share.

After converting, i noticed that all the tracks sounds MUCH Louder than the original. There's something i'm missing here ? There must be something i didn't tuned or disabled..

After listening both on headphones and speakers, the winner is ogg. The aac boosted the highs too much or something because somehow sounded a bit distorted. The mp3 was ok, but just ok.

So, now i'm almoust decided to go with ogg but i'd like to listen the aac again - if i can figure out WHY the volume is boosted that much. There are any other settings i should test ?

Here's what you need to do:

Keep an original uncompressed WAV of the tracks you want to compare, and use the ABX test function in foobar to actually test and compare the quality of your encoded tracks with the original WAV. I hope that doing this will make you think a little differently about your claims.

About the volume being higher, compared to the original what? I think there maybe something you missed there.

the volume is higher compared to the .flac. I don't have the waf files anymore, i want to convert directly from flac, because will take alot of time to rip the cds again.

just checked, again, and no dsp was activated in foobar, no replaygain, nothing. This is weird..

Perhaps your flac files have replaygain info while your lossy encoded tracks do not.

Check if foobar is reading RG info in Preferences > Playback > Replaygain.

Anyways, do the ABX tests with your flacs vs. lossy encodes please.

I don't know how the pricing is in your country, but here in Germany this isn't correct at all.

25 DVD-R or DVD+R (cakebox) are 15€ here. That's 25x4GB=100GB (well, actually something more but you have to see that you can't fill up every dvd to 100% because some album could not fit anymore, leaving unused space).

The cheapest hdd's I've seen here (on ebay.de) are 160GB for 44€, so plus porto or some more profit for shops this is realistically seen 50€ for 160GB.

So DVD's are a LOT cheaper here. As you can see, you can get 160GB with less than 2 cakeboxes -- thats less than 30€ for more GB's than that fit onto this HDD, which is more expensive than the DVD's.

Price per GB: HDD 0,31€; DVD 0,15€.
So HDD's are twice as expensive as DVD's!

My bad. They're more durable, though, and not the most pricey. Also, the cheapest per gig should be the 300Gb, actually.

FYI (Though you may already know)
There is Rockbox and iPod Linux that will allow you to play Ogg Vorbis and other formats on the iPod. As well as a Quicktime Component that allows iTunes (if used) to play Ogg Vorbis.

iPod Linux: http://ipodlinux.org/Main_Page
Rockbox: http://www.rockbox.org/
Xiph.org QT Project: http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/