I think one reason for the resistance to WavPack in p2p/Usenet is the use of the .wv extension for both lossy and lossless files. Admittedly you can usually work out the nature of the file you're dealing with by the filesize but I think it was a fundamental and IMO inexplicable error not to adopt a different extension for the two compression modes.

I have changed my mind about my archiving/playback formats of choise and i'm know using FLAC images with embedded cuesheets/logfiles for archiving and Ogg Vorbis track files for PC playback and i have just finished a job of transcoding my WavPack images into FLAC images and also transcoded the FLAC images into Ogg Vorbis -q5 track files for PC playback with the Lancer-sse2/aoTuV-b5 compile. I decided that decoding speed would be one of the most important criterias for me and then after looking at Synthetic soul's comparisson for lossless codecs and then compared WavPack -f to FLAC -5, in where FLAC -5 gave both faster decoding + better compression ratio and after reading about the new FLAC v1.1.3 release, then i decided to make the switch. I really think that Josh has done a great job with this release and the option for transcoding from FLAC to FLAC while preserving metadata is just pure genious and also the slightly better compression ratio while not making any sacrifises to the decoding speed and better error recovery support and the new switch for setting e.g. a cuesheet/eaclog vorbis comment field from a file.

CU, Martin.

I use foobar for ripping cds into WavPack high x3. At the time when I started using it it had better compression than Flac, I don't know if that's still the case but I'll keep using it.
As for lossy, since I'm an iPod owner, I'd like to use Nero aac but currently it's easier and better (gapless) to use Lame mp3.

iTunes (blech) AAC for my iPod (for gapless playback) @ 160kbps "VBR"
WavPack for my archives

I'd probably save around 10-12 gigs of space if I could use Nero AAC but, alas, no gapless support yet (on iPods). Otherwise, I'd rather use Vorbis.

Was thinking on going back to FLAC for my archives but... well, I'm lazy.

lossy = AAC (itunes 128vbr)
lossless = Wavpack (might go TAK when released)
ripping = tracks



I don't understand how can you save that much space by using Nero? Couldn't you just lower your itunes bitrate? I don't know of any samples that are better with either one or the other implementation (at bitrates of 128 or above).

There was one person who previously in this thread said that nearly no one where ripping to images and that the evidence of this was shown in this very poll. My personal theory about this, is that among HA newbies, then track file ripping is without a doubt the norm, but then for the HA old-timers(not myself ), then image ripping has a much higher user count and i suspect that this is the explenation we are seing here for the very low image ripping user base, as i suspect that the image ripping results are being somewhat "poluted" by newbies.

In my opinion many track-rippers rip for playing those tracks and image-rippers rip for archiving. I don't use foobar but 1by1 or qcd for playing the audio and my versions can't play images.
Maybe a poll about archiving gives other results. For a week or so I'm experimenting with Wavpak for archives.

Your theory is flawed.
You cannot draw any conclusion about newbies and old timers behaviour because the votes are mixed. The pool shows this: only a few people rip to image+CUE. The vast majority (old timers and newbies) prefer one file per track.

Yeah, of course you are right

I apologise for drawing the wrong conclusions

Sorry mate(s)

CU, Martin.

hm,

maybe the interpretation "flac is so popular, as it is popular" is too simple.
I can find technical arguments & history, why I think, flac is so popular, and the reasons, I use flac myself, though there was a time I ripped to wavpack before !

The reasons are probably, that flac became most popular, are imo: - fast decoding & encoding !
- this leads also to the next very important reason, which could be compared with the "mp3-reasoning":
- non-PC devices for playback, be it portable like for cars, or home stereo.
- the point, that since longer time, users see, that flac is supported by commercial industry.

- wavpack or ape as next popular formats show, better compression ratios in various modes, but mostly on the costs of either en- and decoding speed or both,
while especially the decoding speed is technically important for the industry support, ie. necessary cpu power for the decode, also the argument of battery consumption.
In the end, those little promille or percent compression ratio of other formats don't matter at Lossless sizes and todays/future storage capacities.

the success of mp3 has its reasons also in mp3-encoder/decoder having been "free" to use for everybody (while flac is really free !). And that mp3 can be played by nearly every non-PC audio device.

Apple & co could overcome flac only, if they would start big public campaign for their Lossless formats.
But I don#t see this happen, as for them, they "think", lossy is enough for mass-market, so they implement Loslsess only as additional feature into their devices, but no special marketing.
But this is the great thing for our world of audio, as other smaller or middle sized companies can offer and do already ! alternative good audio devices playing flac eg., not only the monopole formats "BBD" or however they are named.

And this is similar to the mp3 success, if soon a lot "Korean, Chinese" made priceworthy (ie. you don#t pay for advertisements on TV/radio, if you buy it) audio devices play flac as quasi-standard, we can be happy to not be dependent on 1 big-apple company

Hi. WAVPACK to go.

Well, I am migrating everything I have in lossless to WAVPACK. I was pretty going mad with hundreds of files and tagging, when I found out wavpack has embedded cuesheets, that called my attention. When I tested I really found real cool, and thought: "Hell, I now don't need to go through this file-to-file tagging hassle."

FLAC is becoming the "standard" lossless codec on the net sharing files (The name is catchy, that's the reason I think). But as it happened with MP3, it is not necessary the best. (Read here, OGG is better than MP3). But MP3 was the lossy that stuck! So I think that RIGHT NOW, at this moment... none lossless codec has a good hardware support, like MP3 has. We cannot claim that "this lossless is better over that other" just because a few more devices will play it. No. Until DVD Players, that are for general multi-media use, do not come with those lossless support, I think there won't be a "widespread" hardware support. We're talking here about the Joe user being able to play his lossless onto anything. So it's not worth stick with FLAC when you can only play on a two or three expensive devices. When it's hitting the DVD Players along with the portables, it's gonna stuck.

I can store my lossless archive in single album files, plus the seeking in WAVPACK is damn fast, whereas in FLAC is a delays a bit (and that *IS* irritating). But the main reason to switch to WAVPACK is organization. Like I said, you can go mad with hundreds of files that you need to tag, and if you're a damn perfectionist, then you're definitely go nuts. WAVPACK makes it easy. And you can unwind.

I also have learned that backup CD's are worthless since they will only last for a short time. So I don't burn anything onto CD's anymore. They're dead and they're going late coz I have lost few original CD's over 10 years and they were quite expensive, and yes, there were no replacement for them but download a lossless copy of it laying on the internet. So what's the point spending US$ 15.00 onto something that will eventually wear out. I don't want to go through the ripping hassle, nor worried about a perfect rip CD. Nooo.. not anymore, I have suffered enough with my paranoia. I still think that in a 10 year period, music will be totally digital. If there's something in the shelves, it will be already digitalized.

I really DO HOPE that wavpack hardware support increases with all its features. It's just so nice. Well, thanks for it Wavpack. My musical life would be hell if it wasn't for you. And until that wide support does not show up, I will go with -V2 -vbr-new and stick my pen-drive onto my powerful mini-system.

FLAC, faster decoding to other formats (I use it for archival purposes, not actual playback). I guess if space ever gets really tight, i'll just convert it.

Two or three devices ???

From the supported hardware devices list at the FLAC site :
http://flac.sourceforge.net/links.html#hardware

Home stereo:

* AudioReQuest music servers
* Avega Systems' wireless Oyster loudspeakers
* Digital Techniques' Blackbird Digital Music Players
* Escient's FireBall servers (E2-40/160/300, DVDM-300, SE-D1), networked home stereo components with hard-drives
* Hifidelio, a wireless home stereo component
* iMuse audio/video media servers
* Meda Systems' Bravo servers
* The MS300 Music Server by McIntosh Laboratory (brochure)
* Olive's Opus, Symphony, and Musica wireless digital music centers
* PhatNoise Home Digital Media Player
* Pixel Magic's HD MediaBox
* PONTIS' MS330 Media Server
* Neodigits' Helios X5000 HD network media player
* Netgear EVA8000 HD digital media player
* Numark's DJ equipment like the HDX and CDX turntables with integrated hard drive and CD player, and the HDMIX mixer
* Rio Reciever and Dell Digital Audio Receiver via RioPlay, RRR, tRio, or xPLRio.net clients
* Roku Photobridge HD via plugin
* Roku Soundbridge(*)
* SkipJam's networked audio/video devices
* Sonos Digital Music System (review)
* Slim Devices' Transporter and Squeezebox networked audio players (review)
* Turtle Beach's AudioTron(*) via Bery Rinaldo's Samba VFS Module
* Zensonic Z500 Networked DVD Media Player
* Ziova's CS510 and CS505 network media players
* (*) device decodes FLAC to WAVE/PCM on server-side
* (**) device decodes FLAC to MP3 on server-side

Car stereo:

* Kenwood Music Keg
* PhatBox
* URAL ConceRt CDD
* Volvo's Digital Jukebox

Portable/Handheld:

* Bluedot's BMP-1430
* COWON's iAUDIO A2, iAUDIO F2, iAUDIO U3, iAUDIO M3, iAUDIO M5, iAUDIO T2, and iAUDIO X5
* Green Apple's portable media player: AP3000
* iPod via the Rockbox firmware replacement
* iRiver iHP-120/iHP-140/H320/H340 via the Rockbox firmware replacement
* Iwod G10
* Meizu M6 Miniplayer
* Onda VX737
* Rio Karma
* Teclast TL-29
* TrekStor's Vibez

Btw, i have gone over to FLAC, because of it's fastest decoding speed(not counting the out-dated Shorten format) and also because i was really impressed with Josh's great work on his latest FLAC v1.1.3, which now actually has better embedded cuesheet support than WavPack(a switch for embedding the cuesheet into a Vorbis comment and a switch for embedding it into a CUESHEET metadata block + a switch for decoding single tracks out of the image file and one can choose between any index'es). Also FLAC to FLAC transcoding while transferring all tags by just running "glob -c flac -f *.flac" or "glob -c flac -f ***.flac" for recursive operation in a command prompt is just pure genious also. Finally it's not bad either that it has the best software/hardware support of any lossless codec either

CU, Martin.

I've got a handful more from CES to add to the list when I get the chance...

p.s. there's a newer poll: Moderation: this is the newer poll, now relevant posts have been moved.

In the non-HA DAP world - Ipod, zen, iriver rule, So in that case wavpack and flac have equal hardware support: rockbox. They are both great codecs and I prefer wavpack. The wavpack decoding is very fast unless you run a C-64 . On my PIII 550 even the very high mode runs smooth enough for most tasks. The other modes (high, normal, fast) have no trouble even on portable hardware.

Fast decoding for me personally is nice because of the waiting time savings when transcoding my FLAC images into aoTuV Lancer -q5 track files and which i will do frequently between every new release, or when i change my mind about the used compression setting, like i have just done from -q6 to -q5 and also for FLAC to FLAC transcodings when new versions arrives. I personally use FLAC for archiving and Ogg Vorbis(aoTuV -q5) for PC playback.

CU, Martin.

For every album, I do:

- 1 WavPack copy with embedded cuesheet. It's neat, and you can't mess files.
- 1 MP3 VBR 2 fast mode copy. Only to listen in the computer or a portable/car.
- 1 CD-R with the redbook standard copy. It can be played anywhere. Neat.

I don't think one can get better than this...

In the future? Ahhh....

I'll rip WAV files onto the Blue-Ray.... yeah... not even using lossy or lossless in the future.

I would still argue that DAP market share is not a good indicator of choice, otherwise AAC and ALAC are the most supported codecs because of the ipod.

also, I think where FLAC really shines is in the home stereo, which is why there are so many more devices in that section.

Josh

My choices are based mostly on format versatility. I'm still pretty new at this, so no religion has taken hold yet . I'm also far from the completion of ripping my entire library, learning the ins and outs of REACT2, etc. Ultimately, I want to use REACT/EAC to do everything in one pass, with individual tracks for both lossless and lossy (as long as I can reconstruct a CD with tracks/cuesheet -- not that I've confirmed I can do this yet -- this makes the most sense to me).

FLAC for lossless, because it has broad support not only as a codec format but also for the tag-related stuff discussed earlier in this topic. Slimserver is a driver here. The rumors flying around about iTunes supporting FLAC soon (at least as a transcoding source) are notable, even though I use Winamp instead of iTunes to feed my 5.5g iPod. If something else emerges someday that's a lot better than FLAC, I expect it will be easy to transcode to it from FLAC.

LAME MP3 for lossy, since everything I use for lossy will play it, and lots of things support LAME gapless tags. I can burn MP3 CDs (for car audio systems that don't support direct iPod connections), feed my old Zen DAP, use any playback software where lossy isn't a problem, etc. If AAC or Ogg were noticeably better in both quality and compression in the environments where I use lossless, and had equivalently broad device support (including gapless), I'd consider a change (also assuming I could transcode from FLAC on autopilot with perfect tag fidelity, etc.).

Frankly, I think the whole database/tagging end of things is the most challenging, where current standards (such as they are) are lacking (with useful support for classical tags, for instance) and transparency between all the tag formats is not there yet.

I think that said user had a stereo separation (or some stereo sound) problem with the iTunes AAC encoder on one of those rare killer samples (that EVERY encoder has).

For me, I use iTunes AAC at 128kbps VBR as my main lossy format. I recently made the switch from Lame mp3 at -V 2 due to hard drive space limitations. I could have just gone with a lower bitrate Lame setting but now my car, computer, iPod, PDA, and gaming console all support AAC so I see no need for mp3 in my situation (even though the Lame mp3 encoder can hold its own).

As far a lossless goes, I use Apple lossless since it is built right into iTunes and I can easily convert from ALAC to AAC without the need for 3rd party software (like going from FLAC to iTunes AAC). I guess you can say that I have sold my audio soul to Apple as I used to be a Lame, foobar2000, FLAC junkie.

I still can't believe that ATRAC received two votes especially since many Sony players can now handle AAC and have been able to play mp3 (Lame) for a really long time now.

What's your *main lossy* format of choice?
MP3, because it works everywhere

What's your *main lossless* format of choice?
FLAC, because it's the most supported lossless format

What's your favorite ripping mode {for your main or archive library if you have several ones}?
one file per track, because of widespread support. cuesheets aren't widely supported and i wouldn't be able to easily send "track X" to a friend, etc.

so as you can see, while the formats i chose aren't the most advanced, they are easily the most headache free formats. my grandma would be able to handle them.

Ogg Vorbis - My Karma supports it so why not take advantage of the better sound:file size ratio?

FLAC - I have 140 GB of FLAC files in my archive, but it has been a long time since I was actively archiving. My eye is starting to wander. OptimFrog is looking pretty tempting. WavPack is also one I'm considering. So I'm interested to see how this poll develops.

one file per disc with cuesheet or chapters - I was a single track guy, but now I'm using images. I don't want to worry about anything hidden in the pre-gap and so I think images are better for me. They also seem easier to manage. Especially with scripts like REACT2 out there to help me create lossy files for the Karma.

I used to use FLAC, but ive recently switched to... WavPack

I did my own unscientific tests and found it to have better compression and better encoding speed then flac, as well as the decoding speed is very similar, most often the same but sometimes very slightly worse then flac.

And since, as far as I know, FLAC and WavPack are the only two major totally free (source code and price, as in linux type free) lossless codecs. Both work well and are great, but I like WavPack better. And as a big plus to WavPack, it has one of those uber type options (x6) that takes a major long time to encode but can get better compression. Sure, not always practical, but still, nice to have

Ive been converting my shorten files to WavPack recently. I really dont like shorten... Sure, fast encode and decode, but not that great compression or seeking. WavPack and FLAC both have great seeking.

Monkeys Audio seems to have better compression then WavPack or FLAC (and it has a nice and useful GUI for it), but id like to support free (see above) software. FLAC is probably GPL, and I think WavPack is BSD.

Im not sure how many people work on WavPack besides the main person (who I think is bryant), but thanks alot for a great product

FLAC is mostly BSD. the command-line programs are GPL.

I only do lossy encodings with lame. I used to use -V0 for everything but since my harddisk died 2 months ago I had to re-ripp everything again! I used -V2 --vbr-new this time. That's transparent to me (mostly Rock/Metal sources).

Unfortunately I did not think of using flac. And I'm just too damn lazy to start ripping AGAIN.

I use flac and mp3.
I like the fact that both are without any sort of drm and that they are not controlled by apple, sony or microsoft (or any other big player). I also like the fact that they are the codecs with the best hardware support. MP3 has defined itself as the defacto standard for lossy compression. No manufacturer will release a portable player that does not support mp3. Hopefully, the same will be true for one of the open source lossless codecs in the future. Currently, my money is on FLAC, as it has the best hardware support. If this changes in the future, I might change to wavpack or something else.

I want lossless audio in my pocket, in my living room, in my car and in my kitchen. I also want lossless audio available in every store. I want to be able to copy my songs to all my different players with no hassle.

Øyvin

I have personally switched to using WavPack(-hm) images with embedded cuesheets/eaclogs for archiving and LAME MP3 track files(-V5 --vbr-new) for playback(i don't use lossless for playback, because i only have a 40GB harddrive, and so i burn the lossless images to TY DVD+R's when they have been ripped and converted to MP3 track files for playback), and that this will be the final decision for me and that i will not change away from this ever again (atleast for WavPack i'm 100% certain about that )

CU, Martin.

I have voted Wavpack again this year. The points in its favour are not only its impressive encoding speed but also the fact that it's able to encode 32b float files and will preserve the non standard RIFF sub-chunks. It's definitely a plus when backinp up my own samples(that often contain loop points and other kinds of information) and audio tracks. I really hope this format will get even more attention this year for it's really unbeatable for music makers.

Encoding to FLAC for archiving, and to Vorbis for general use (both at the computer and with my imaginary iPod ). With big HDDs these days, I could use only FLAC, but I prefer to have this under lock and key, and save space at the same time, in case I need the extra space. I'm not thinking in changing the compressors for a time, maybe FLAC is TAK is good enough.

As for the settings, -6 for FLAC (improved compression and the drop in encoding time is small) and -6 for Vorbis too, which is quite good quality at a fair size. I used -8 in the past, but I realized that it was a bit too much. Also, I'm encoding track by track, because it's the only way to preserve all the custom tags I add to the files in the post-encoding phase (at least the most practical way)

I'm going with:
lossy: mp3, to interchange with friends
lossless: wavpack (my evolution: monkey -> FLAC -> wavpack); lossless only for temporary storage
ripping: album -> one file per track using foobar, just to be able to take (handle, share) any track without further processing


for parties: cool guys always have cool music on discs (a la carte), operating with playlist-and-files is for teens - but still the right choice for home/portable-listening
(opinion my change with regard to professional equipment)

the comments don't seem to match the graphs... for whatever reason (maybe related to advocacy), I think it's interesting. my quick count about what people explicitly said in comments that they used:

I imagine that people are more likely to make a comment if they are not voting for the most popular choices. It would be interesting to see of the same thing applied to MP3.

i use flac over wavpack because it feels better designed. this includes details such as embedding the md5 sum per default instead of having a flag for it that's off per default. also, wavpack is more a compressed wav than an independent audio format. if i had any use for custom riff chunks, i might be using wavpack instead.

for lossy, i chose none, although that might change if i ever decide to get a portable player. if i do that, flac's faster decoding also comes into play, as i would be transcoding albums as needed.

for listening at the pc, i use flac with complete images and cue sheets, serving as both a 1:1 archive as well as a direct access format.

I didn't vote / here's my comment:

In the lossy segment no format is clearly superior to all others, IMO. I tend to use MP3 for compatibility although I own a portable that can play Vorbis. I'd like to use AAC in the future once I get a portable player with AAC support because I consider its design to be better than Vorbis and MP3 -- from a technical point of view. But this isn't as important as other features I expect from a good portable player so I'm gonna stick with my rockboxed H120 unit until it dies.

I don't use lossless formats a lot. I don't back up CDs losslessly. I mainly rip music to be able to listen to it and I like the files to be small. Though, I purchased two losslessly encoded albums (flac) to have at least one high quality version. WavPack seems like a good overall solution. I'd make more use of it if I cared more about lossless formats.

Edit: I forgot. Here's my take on the last question: It's single track files for me even for DJ mixes and other stuff with non-silent track transitions. Why? Well, MP3 can be played back seamlessly with proper players but also because I've at least one HQ version (Flac, WavPack or CDDA) I can always rerip/transcode in case I need something to play back seamlessly on other devices...

Cheers!
SG

You can use AAC with current Rockbox version on your H120 if you don't care much that battery will run down earlier.
I got aware of the AAC playing ability last week but it seems to be possible since last November.
I've tried it (using current Nero CLI encoder) on my H140 and it's great. I consider using it in practice but I'm not sure yet. Technically speaking and with regard to supposed future hardware support I also favor AAC. mp3 however has some practical advantages, and it can produce very high quality too.

Last time I checked it didn't play AAC in real-time. Also, I've been told that the Rockbox firmware doesn't use variable clock rates on the H1xx yet (==> Vorbis/AAC playback shouldn't drain the battery more). But maybe this has changed. I gotta check this ...

edit: typos

What are you basing this on, it's name? WavPack is a pretty robust lossless format, check the comparison table.

A relevant quote from David Bryant about this issue :

Source : http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=340767

AAC as Lossy is just for my iPod and iTunes is a natural choice for the iPod and AAC is better than the nasty MP3 encoder in iTunes.

MP3 would be my codec of choice for lossy were it not for iTunes integration as MP3 is universal. LAME rocks!

FLAC is my lossless choice which I use to both archive and play on my Squeezebox. Perhaps the greatest inventions since Penicillin! Better still I'm not allergic to Penicillin.

Fairy

I don't think AAC playback has been completely optimized yet, but Rockbox was able to play the small sample of files I tried recently. Officially, it is supposed to play AAC realtime on iRiver targets:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main...#Current_status

Also, I'm pretty sure that Rockbox supports CPU boosting on the H100 players. I have an H320, which uses the same Coldfire CPU, and it's definitely boosting the CPU when required. You can test this by going to the menu, then Info > Debug > View audio thread. Boost ratio was around 70% for the AAC file I tried.

Ripping on an Apple PowerBook here, so my main lossless codec which I use for "archive" purposes is Apple Lossless, which I store on an external hard drive and back-up to DVD-R. All of my listening is done with LAME MP3s.

I initially had some concerns about using ALAC as a long-term lossless format, but, especially now that Mac users have Max, I figure I can always batch convert to FLAC if I need to.

Ogg Vorbis & Flac. Since i got into lossy compression somewhere in 1999/2000 (damn it's been a long time!) and days of "128 kbs MP3 is cd-quality" i have wanted to compress my music so that 1 minute music would result in about 1 mb file and it would be qualitywise as close to original audio as possible. It felt like a good size/quality ratio and i knew that it would be someday possible with mp3's successor AAC being developed.

But i never seriously thought that Ogg Vorbis would someday achieve same level of quality with Xiph's development speed.. luckily Aoyumi came along and made Vorbis competive against AAC and others with his incredible tunings. I am a Open Source fan and i think Ogg Vorbis is a great project with lots of potential. It's been my preferred format and i want to use and support it everywhere i can.

Nowdays Vorbis & AAC give great quality in even lower bitrates and thanks to LAME even mp3 is very much transparent to me, as last 128kbs test showed which i did take part and couldn't abx any of them except low anchor! But i use -q 4.25 because to me 1 to 1 (with other formats too) is practical ratio with small files and very much transparent quality for listening and general archiving.

For archiving important songs or general lossless use i use FLAC. It's actively developed, well supported in hardware & software and all around good lossless format.

However, Wavpack is very interesting and i've been thinking to use it on my Rockboxed iHP-120. I understand that Wavpack lossy gives good quality on 256-300 kbs range and lossy files use less cpu power for decoding. It would be cool to archive my cd's to harddrive in lossless wavpack and encode them in lossy for my mp3-player and have more playing time from battery than with mp3 and other formats! Even better if Squeezebox and others would support Wavpack, but unfortunately not yet...

I must qualify my vote.

I use Ogg Vorbis for my computer.
Since I use a vanilla iPod, I have been using 128kb/s CBR AAC lately for that. I used to use LAME -V4.

Mp3 with Lame preset R3Mix (with CD cover and Unsynced Lyrics) for my player

Monkey's Audio ExtraHigh

One file per track

You are outdated.

I use Flac and an external cue sheet.

I use Foobar as a player and I expect that I will eventually use Foobar to extract and encode individual files for my iPod Shuffle as well; once I have the time to figure out how to make Foobar do it.

R3Mix, LMFAO! Dude, the Viet Cong won, the 20th century is over, and R3Mix is history. What version of LAME are you using?

Vorbis, because:
- It's proven over a long time now that it's one of the best quality-wise, at every bitrate.
- Flexible for metadata
- It's open source, gratis and patent-free. And suits my linux very well thankyou
- It has the coolest name damnit... !

lately I've been trying to get a better idea of lossless codec usage and I have some stats that may be interesting. what they say exactly is more open to interpretation but I think one thing that seems clear is that the polls here don't extrapolate to the outside world (nothing wrong with that BTW).

(data gathered some time througout apr/may 2007, also included some mp3-related stats for some perspective)

answers.yahoo.com results for query:


del.icio.us results for tag:


inlinks (via siteexplorer.yahoo.com)


google hits for query: (approximate)


site traffic/month (I only have sourceforge estimates for my site, others I got from trafficestimate.com 30-day estimates which could be wildly wrong)

(monkeysaudio.com may be inflated since spammers have assaulted the forums)

lossless-only web search query volume estimate


edit: typos, clarity

I use Exact Audio Copy for ripping, and I now prefer to rip track-by-track with the correct offset, the 'non-compliant' Cuesheet, Secure rip, Log, and 'Test & Copy'.

For lossless audio, I use FLAC at -8 -V.

For lossy audio, I prefer Ogg Vorbis after over 5 years of using MP3 for a number of reasons, such as it being a gapless format, as well as native VBR and excellent tagging capabilities (this works great with Foobar2000).