Hello everyone,

(I hope this is the right topic…). Those questions will probably be asked here more, but I am looking for a good lossy codec (Near lossless quality)... A lossless codec takes too much space on my hard drive. What should I use Lame, wma, mpc, ogg, aac or ... I can’t figure it out. I searched here, but I can’t find the right answer. I want to use replay gain option in the codec.. I want to play the music files on my squeezebox (great device). I rip my CDs with EAC. I can then convert my CD’s with different tools (dbpoweramp, foobaar2000…) or with EAC. Which method do you use? Already thanks for replying, and sorry for my English.

Greetings...

High quality - small files (128~192 k )

- MP3, Ogg, mpc, WMA Pro, AAC. LAME mp3 is most compatible and also competitive quality wise.

Near lossless extreme high quality - larger files (400 ~ 550 k )

-LossyWav / lossyflac, Wavpack lossy, optimfrog dualstream. Lossywav can be used with most lossless formats.

Did a google search from the top of this page using "listening tests" and "listening tests results". Came up with these. Hope they help

multi codec
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=39448
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=40607

aac
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofive...php/t53340.html

Personally I use lamev3.97 setting v4 for my music. Sounds good, works everywhere basically.

cheers,
herefornow

The definition of good is entire subjective to how perceptive your ears are. To me, OGG Vorbis at Q2 sounds transparent. Q1 and Q0 are even transparent transparent for some of my music.

Your best bet for low bitrate codecs that sound good would be AAC, MP3, and OGG. MP3 is the most widely supported, then AAC, and finally OGG.