Hi all, this is my first post in hydrogenaudio forums. I want some help to choose the audio codecs for different perposes.


1. Heavy Metal codec:

I am a big metalhead and I listen to Metallica, Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, SOAD, Megadeth, etc etc etc. I have lots of freebies from their websites, as well as CDs of some albums. I noticed that Heavy Metal generates more problems in audio quality than other types of music.

which is the best audio coder for heavy metal? I heard MPC and AoTuV b5 are good. (I need audiophile qualty for them)

can I use them at low bitrates safely?

I also have lots of stuff from metallica's vault(its a place where you get free downloads of pre 2003 live shows). its usually 192 to 160 kbps cbr mp3 audio. I plan to reduce their size by transcoding for giving to my firends. Can I use vorbis? will it create any loss in quality?

2. codec to rip dvd audio at 448 kbps

I have dvd movies with ac3 audio. what format must I rip them to to get high clarity and small size?


3. how can I batch convert all my CBR mp3 files to VBR? (I want lossless conversion please)

I would like to drag and drop all(about 200) of my mp3 files into a window, click a button or two, have dinner, watch a movie and come back to see the work done....

I'm pretty sure choice of music is pretty much irrelevant to codec use: they're all tested with a number of different styles (Opeth has been used for a couple of tests in the last few years.)


Every single time you compress anything (unless you use lossless compression like FLAC) you will lose a little bit more quality.


Lossless conversion to MP3? You can't. It's possible to batch convert using LAME, but it'd be a much better idea to re-rip or, if that's not possible, leave them as they are.

then what is this I hear of some software that can do CBR to VBR? like how flac does for wav?

Maybe you're talking about this?

exactly. thanks.