Lossy: Tie Between MP3 and Atrac. MP3 is the most common at high VBR's, very easy to listen to. (plus the mass compatibity) Atrac because it sounds the best to me in lower bitrates.

Lossless: FLAC (Compression Level 8): FLAC is really good on space, decent speed encodes, and is very versitile (then again, I haven't experiemented with anything other than WAV and FLAC recently, so that's bound to change).

One file with CUE sheet: I do this for two reasons....

1. There's just the CUE sheet and the Media File...easier to manage than 10-25 files per folder (OK, so not the best reason)

2. Since I can't make up my mind whether to Append or Prepend track gaps with different CD's, I find it best to archive using the one file so that I make as many different combinations as I want....It's easier to manage the CUE sheet/media files from foobar and such....just personal preference really.

Lossy: MP3 V5 --vbr-new
for compatibility and DAPs

Lossless: FLAC --best
for longterm archiving

Rip:one file per disc with cuesheet or chapters
But not for long,
ripping is still a little problematic, I used abcde -1
single flac archives are hard to convert in Linux
for converting I still use foobar2000, runs fine in wine, but I'd rather go native
also cuesheets are not well supported in most audio-players
on the other hand rubyripper is very nice.

grombulk, what is the "problem" you get when converting single flac archives in linux?


later

I've been using WMA standard which, for some reason, sounds very lifelike to me. To me, there is no harshness, and the sound seems natural. I find it amazing that besides me, only 1 other person has selected WMA. I could understand that if it was really bad, but I can't find such a major flaw with it. When I ABX and compare the codec to the original, it is virtually identical (128kz). I know it's not exactly like the original, but the difference is very slight. I'm not pushing WMA here, only commenting on my amazement that only 2 people have selected the codec. MP3 is also excellent, but for some reason I just like the sound of WMA. It's hard to objectively explain it, just a general feeling about the sound.

AAC
WavPack
disc as one file w/ cuesheets

Lossy : MP3 -V5 and Vorbis -q2 but I voted MP3 because it provides a longer battery life on my Samsung player and I love MP3Gain.
Lossless : WavPack -hh -x (I was using Monkey's Audio two years ago but switched to WavPack)
One file per track.

Well, it is done !

Not really. Total votes / 3 = total voters (or voting people).

Wow you see the monkeys audio drop in the graph and the gradual increase of WavPack's popularity? Then (most likely) FLAC has an update and people start jumping bandwagons.

Same with MPC (because development is dead?), looks like the majority went to MP3 and a few to Ogg.
Cool graph's.

Ogg, WavPack, 1 file.

Last year I built my first graphs upon the 1200 (400x3) first votes and published the details... for main lossy formats only.
We just reached the 1200 votes few minutes ago. Results could therefore be compared:


LOSSY: 1200 [400x3] first votes comparison (2007-2008)



The most impressive change is for AAC which apparently gained some users coming from the MP3 and the Vorbis basis. Small progress for MPC too (SV8 effect?).



For lossless formats, I filled the table 2007 final results.

LOSSLESS: 2007 (final results) and 2008 (400 first results)


Flac is more and more hegemonic. Nice beginning for TAK (which was in beta stage when the 2007's poll started). WavPack regress a bit more (and is now far from his peak reached in 2006).

Of course, these results only apply for a small part of hydrogenaudio's community.

Ah yes, it took 6 days to reach 1200 votes last year. This time: same score after only five days.
Next comparison: on 2008 2009, january 4th maybe
___

P.S. my 2008 votes are: AAC - Flac - 1 file per track

I don't understand how can next be on the 4th if you posted this on the 5th?

mp3+flac+1 file/track for music (I use aac in movies, but I see this poll as primarily music)

2009 of course. I'm still in 2007 in my head.

my votes:

- MP3, more than good enough to have my beloved music in the office and on my notebook
- I don't use lossless, I've ripped all my CDs to plain wave files on my main computer's HD
- one file per track

• MP3 for use on my DAP (Cowon D2), transcoded on the fly from my lossless archive;
• WavPack at the moment using settings : -hh -x1, I'm a former FLAC user but have transcoded to WavPack a couple of weeks ago;
• One file per track fits my needs perfectly.

I don't get this!
OptimFrog s listed, but NOT Apple Lossless... Huh!

Imo this poll is pretty much worthless without listing the most popular codecs!
/me vote for resetting the poll and make it as complete as possible.

As explained some days ago, I made a mistake and forgot Apple Lossless. I'm sorry. Users have therefore to vote into « other lossless codec » (category which might include few votes for shorten, LA, ATRAC Lossless or any other rare encoder).
Obviously Apple Lossless votes are comprise between 0% and 3% (2.91% ATM; 2.71% last year), which shows how popular it is here on HA.org. If the score stays the same in the next months, then my mistake wouldn't be a big problem.

Ok, I get it!
Hopefully Apple Lossless will be worthy its own place in the '2009 ripping/encoding general poll'...

Lossy: Nero AAC q0.4 (though I prefer Vorbis, personally)
Lossless: FLAC --best, one file per track

I used to use WavPack (Bryant IS a great chap) but switched to FLAC for its hardware support.

The behavior of new members is hardly predictable.
2007 921 voters
2006 (lossy format poll) 971 voters http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=43254

It's common to see that in first day there are something like 160 votes. Then during 2 days there are +160 votes, 4 days +160 and keep going.
First 1 day - 160 votes
Next 2 days - +160
Next 4 days - +160
Next 8 days - +160

Each time it's get twice longer period to obtain the same number of votes.
Looking at the numbers of this poll there should be something like 1000-1100 votes +/- 100-150. I know it's far from any kind of precision.

• MP3
• Apple Lossless (other lossless format)
• One file per track

Voted a few days back ...

Lossy: MP3 (Lame -V2, although have been experimenting with -V0 lately). Have about 3000 songs
in the library; played on my PC or through a Soundbridge M1000 via Firefly on an NSLU2, and on the
iPod Classic 80 GB that I received for Christmas. Also have a stack of MP3 CDs at work that I play on
an old-school Rio MP3 portable CD player. Everything is one file per track.

Lossless: Don't do lossless at the moment, but am considering trying learn how to rip to FLAC with EAC ...

<sarcasm>I'm sorry; I didn't realize I needed to provide proof in order to use a certain encoder over another. What is the current "approved encoder" so that I can conform to your empirical standards?</sarcasm>

What I mean is that TAK does not (last I checked) support Unicode tags, which I use a lot.

In which way does the lack of unicode tags make TAK not robust? What Greynol was requesting was evidence to back up your fairly ambiguous statement....

Your concept of "robust" is interesting to say the least.

EDIT: Thanks Nick.C. I was asking for evidence in the event that "robust" meant something that actually made sense like not being error-prone.

.- MP3
.- Monkey's Audio (High)
.- Image + cue

With that and Foobar I can go to the end of the world

Lossy: The progress for me has been mp3 -> mpc -> vorbis -> mp3, just switching this year back to mp3. It's just easier, transparent and reasonably fast for me. I hate that I now have old lossy files from previous years that are in different formats, which I have to transcode for different portables. Damnit, should've stuck with mp3 all along.

Lossless: last year I voted for wavpack and the year before that I voted ape but now I voted I don't use lossless formats. I've just gone all mp3 now, everything in v0 and that's it. I decided that I'm not that fussy on quality.

AAC (Sometimes Vorbis)
TAK
One file image

MP3 for lossy
Flac for lossless
Mixed on how I rip, more likely to be one file for FLAC and almost certainly one file for "Live" material.

Somewhat similar here. Went back to mp3 for the sake of my cheap portable. I hope my next one will support Vorbis too and I can forget transcoding them, because these are my two main lossy formats now.
As for lossless, I quickly became a fan of TAK and converted many of my FLAC files to TAK lately - they still decode very fast and are compressed somewhat better - the difference is enough for me to make TAK look good

Anyway, according to foobar my music library consists of:



Essentially it shows two main formats per category (MP3/Vorbis and TAK/FLAC), spiced with some more exotic formats. Lossy is still in the lead but in the last year I make my rips in lossless. And MP3 is so widely accepted that I probably can hope that I can play them after 20 years or so (but I actually do replace lossy files with lossless if I can and especially if they have audible compression artifacts (For example, I still have 128cbr files here and there)).

Main
Lossy : MP3
Lossless : Flac , wavpack (multichannel , embed cue +pics)


However , i'd like to make 3 mentions :


With the growing storage capacities ,the split lossy/lossless is becoming less important, only the usage can determine to someone to use lossy or lossless. The main issue i see is not to choose between the two , but to convince the musical industry to release quality lossless. If the master is clipped and compressed , the lossy file will be affected even more. Now , i'm scanning the wav's to detect clipping/compressing before taking the decision to go lossy , keep lossless or delete both. I noticed that there was nothing wrong with my lossy settings or codec quality , but the albums that sound bad are mainly because of the poor mastering.

Wavpack has a hybrid mode. One can make a lossy rip , and store also the correction. Lossy + correction can recreate the lossless file. This feature is just terrific . You can have your lossy collection at hand , archiving only the correction. I think this is the way to go for the ideal codec in the future. I'd love to see this hybrid behavior with AAC or others.

I'm using K3b as Gui to rip and transcode. Now that kde4 will be available to windoze too ( 4 day for now) , you will see a lot of quality unix software spreading on windoze. It would be nice to make also pool to see the Gui's people are using to rip/transcode .
My k3b settings for mp3 :
/usr/bin/lame -V0 -q0 --vbr-new --add-id3v2 --pad-id3v2 --nogaptags --clipdetect --replaygain-accurate -p -h -m j --tt %t --ta %a --tn %n --ty %y --tl %m --tc formyearsonly - %f

Then I was probably using the word wrong. I meant "robust" in the "feature-rich" sense. I was under the impression that it did not support Unicode tags. If I am mistaken, I'll take another look. I'll admit that I'm a little slow when it comes to (relatively) new formats and often go based on what I hear from other people who use them.


Similar to me, except it was MP3 --> Ogg Vorbis --> MPC --> Ogg Vorbis (--> MP3 --> AAC for portable).

In my case it's:

- MP3;
- TAK;
- One file per track.

-lossy mp3
I think of MP3 as as very old wide-spreaded audio codec, the only disadvantage that I see is that it doesn't support sound sample rates such as 37800Hz or 32000Hz, I should use the sox's polyphase sample rate conversion because I'm unsure about the accuracy of the resample algorithm used in lame

-lossless: flac -V -8
for archiving I encode one file per disc with embedded cuesheet.
for casual use I encode one file per track.

Lossy: Vorbis. I still love it; what can I say? It's a crime that development has all but vanished as I really thought it would ultimately by able to prevail. Booo for xiph.org! I've greatly softened up on my views of MP3 due to the tireless quality work of the LAME developers. I'm not opposed to using it at all anymore for the sake of making life easier for friends that I send things to.

Lossless: Monkey's Audio. I knew it's numbers would drop again this year for the same reason as Vorbis - a complete lack of development. But it's such a fast compressor and saves me so much disk space over the other options that I can't tear myself away just yet. FLAC has become so commonplace that I do find it useful for sharing damage-free files with people on occasion. WavPack seems to be a victim of its own complacency; I haven't noticed them pushing hard for anything in the past year which I think has caused a lot of people's attention to drift to the more actively ambitious projects like TAK.

Ripper: EAC. The one and only option for me.

Format: One file per song. The most common thing I do with audio files is fire them over MSN. Album-sized files just aren't practical nor do they offer any benefits to me.

I guess my biggest shock of the year has been the influence of the iPod on people's choices of audio formats. I'm stunned by the power of advertising to overcome obstacles (like less-than-competitive compression, monopolistic closed-source control, poor transferability with the world at large). One has to wonder what the world would look like if Apple had elected to be less overbearing and chosen open formats like MP3 and WavPack as the formats of choice in its world.

Always an interesting poll... thanks for doing the work on it guruboolez.

Lossless:
I ripped my whole CD collection to FLAC, no special reason, more like... it was the first fast thing I came across..

Lossy:
For my own mobile listening: Vorbis Q3 (Aotuv b5). Gapless (Very important for me! Non-gapless playing is extremely annoying!), smaller files than MP3 for similar quality, 'sound signature' more pleasant to my ears than LAME at such bitrates, VorbisGain allows easy recursive ReplayGain processing.
For friends and for demo tracks: MP3 LAME V3.98b6, Q4 or Q3.
Experimenting with Nero AAC these days. Considering the lack of any user-friendly software allowing ReplayGain processing of AAC files, I plan to stay with Vorbis and MP3.

Ripping: EAC or ECDDA. Both work with C2, EAC is more advanced but doesn't allow single-pass album cover art tagging, and ECDDA performs FLAC encoding on-the-fly which saves some time.

One file per song. I never understood the reason for single file + cue sheet, I must be stupid.

From TAK's Readme (updated for the final release):

"By default a seek table for 10 minutes is beeing created. Because it requires very little space and TAK can also compress it to cope with longer files, the default setting is fine for audio files with a duration of about 1 to 80 minutes."

You will hardly notice any delay when seeking in files up to 80 minutes (or a bit more) and the compression penality for short files >= 3 Minutes will be less than 0.01 percent (for 1 minute it's about 0.02 percent).

Although i intend to implement seeking without seektable i probably will nevertheless recommend the usage of the seektable, because it will be a bit faster, especially when reading from devices with slow random access like a CD-ROM.

Thomas

ummm, let's see:
Lossy: OGG Vorbis Lancer(SSE3) [20061110] (based on aoTuV b5 [20061024]) it feels to be less exrteme in clipping high freq's than LAME MP3 at times, i use the CLI for both anyway, so i always specify the desired low/high pass... MPC is pretty loveable ... i'm still waiting for the full 8 release though before using it for main lossy encoding
Lossless: Monkey Audio 4.01 (the CLI still says 3.99!!) faster and better compression than FLAC, i tried TAK for a while, still a bit expeimental i see, but wondering what WavPack has better than APE? it's not giving me better compression ratio anyway?! and APE is well-supported by Music Brains Picard, which i use as tagger, as well as the support for FLAC...
Cue: i use a mix of single file per track + Cue, and sometimes single file per CD + Cue... no specific reason!!

EAC is my only choice for ripping, and for transcoding i always use the CLI versions of whatever encoder there is, it feels much safer knowing exactly what you're doing over there


Francksoy?! is that THE Francksoy from CDF ?!
well, for me, the single file per CD+cue reigned for a while, it makes you feel more comfortable that you have an EXACT image of the CD on your HDD, and it usually keeps the pre-gaps for Track no1, if used with EAC, usually it contains nothing but silence, but sometimes it has this 2 seconds of craziness that's been added for some strange reason

Er... yes.. we met each other there? I see... I guess, then, that I simply never came across a CD specifically needing an image extraction to get a guaranteed 1-1 audio copy... Or that I missed some 'craziness' in one of these, without ever noticing it...

Very possibly. If you have a large collection* you will no doubt have some CDs with hidden tracks at INDEX 0 of TRACK 01. The later versions of EAC show the first track in red if a CD has one of these indices.

* My personal experience appears to indicate that approx. one CD in a hundred will have a hidden track like this.

While I'm here:

• MP3 (LAME -V5 --vbr-new)
• WavPack (-hm)
• One file per album (I still think it's the easiest way to archive)

Lossy: MP3 still does it for me, playing it safe (yup, a tad overkill in most cases) with 3.97 --pfe I can enjoy my music anywhere (DAP, CD/DVD players, mobile), I'm only waiting for a broader stand-alone CD/DVD players and DAPs support to switch to AAC.

Lossless: extremely happy with WavPack, enjoy the hybrid feature a lot, basically that's the only codec I use on the PC, tho TAK's speed is tempting.

Ripping: one file per track, I often DAP a selection of my fav songs as opposed to whole albums.

My votes:
- Lossy: MP3
- Lossless: WavPack
- Ripping strategy: Mix

Alright... those of you who knew me will perhaps be surprised by my votes, so I think an explanation is in order...

I no longer have my iPaq 2210 (farewell, old buddy ) so I can no longer listen to Vorbis on my commutes. In addition, I also lost my Nokia 6230 (it's been really nice to me ) and am now forced to use this crappy BenQ-Siemens EF51 which only support MP3 (some AAC files I made for the 6230 indeed play, but not all. And heck I've tried making new AAC files for it, but none played).

If I can lay my hands on a device that's capable of playing Vorbis, I'll switch over to Vorbis again. But ATM, I'll have to be content with MP3.

On the lossless department, I no longer have the luxury of spending all day & night for OptimFrog compression, so I'll go with WavPack.

I have no change in ripping preference. I do Image+cue if the CD is completely gapless, or per Track if it's not. No bit-perfect obsession here

I believe 4.01 involved GUI-related changes only, your compressed files should be exactly the same.

Thanks for this info.
As I ripped 90% of my original CD collection (441 discs) with EAC 0.99 PB3 and never noticed a red track, I guess I haven't missed much, if any at all, which good to know.
Maybe it's because half my collection is classical/baroque and only the other half is pop/various, which reduces the statistical odds of coming across such hidden tracks I guess...
But enough with the Off-Topic now (sorry guys )

ummm, i'm Headquarter84 there, well, i doubt that you might know me as we've never really discussed anything in the forums, but i've always noticed your existence anyways glad to see some fellow freaks over here too

and i think there's nothing i need to add about hidden tracks , Synthetic Soul have summed it all in the least number of words!!;)
though i can't deny that i haven't got ANY CD of my collection (800+ CDs) that contained anything in INDEX 0 of TR01... well, at least nothing that i checked since i started using EAC



i believe that to be right, at least in the case of the MAC.exe file, it's the exact same size in bytes between 4.01 & 3.99, with different creation and modification dates, don't have any tool to compare it bit-to-bit though.. but the improvements include a new version of WavPack compressor included (4.31 instead of 3.4) and the lack of RKau and Shorten encoders, all in the external folder.. as well as for the lack of the MakeAPL, QuickRenamer and the CoolEdit/Audition APE plugin, or the winamp plugin...

i've noticed that the new version of MusicBrainz Picard tagger (0.9.0) supports WavPack, maybe i should give it a second try then!! if it proves to have better compression over APE, then 2008 might become the WV year for me ... in addition to the fact that i love the red .WV foobar icon far more than the pale grey .APE one ... and i'm still using Foobar2000 v0.8.3... so i guess there's no TAK for me... at least until i feel comfortable about the new buggy 0.9.x foobar...

Hi,

one question: Is HE-AAC also part of the AAC category? If yes, it is not obvious. If yes, shouldn't it be mentioned somewhere in the description?

Regards,

Christian

How is user's preferred way ?

Let's start with the beginning:

ripper: EAC 0.9b4 , it simply rips anything , so no needs to update, alternatively EAC 0.95pb3 might work also.
EAC secure mode, accurate stream, no c2 usage, Test & Copy , to single tracks, EAC's non-compliant cue sheet.

ripping to 3 formats in different target bitrates & purposes at 1 time during EAC's ripping&tagging&encoding step:

by mareo.exe:

1. Lossless: FLAC (v1.2.1 at the moment) -8 -V , best compression & quick enough for P3 @ 800 MHz, Win XP.
Purpose is listening at home in HiFi, which means High Fidelity, listening music as natural as possible like played live without amplifiers, speakers.
And yes, iirc, my 1st and only Lossless encoding to Monkey's audio was a long time back,
then switched to FLAC, then had a time, when I used WavPack,
and now since some longer time already again, back to FLAC,
which I will keep as Lossless format, because it has the broadest hardware/industry device/playback devices support.
So: No propietrary formats like SoNever, VerySmallSmooth or Oranges,
because their devices are and have been too expensive, and even too low quality, bugs and even less playback features than no-name Al-Cheapo Asian devices for USB & MP3

2. Lossy as small sized (ca. 265 kbit/s vbr bitrates averaged) and cheap backup for the Lossless, as transparent as possible, even after transcoding to mp3 or playing by Logic7/DPL2 DSPs, as Lossless replacement, in case the Lossless data is lost. Additional small = reasonable sized on laptop HD for having perfect music on the run.
My favourite is here MPC (v.1.16 atm) --quality 8 --ms 15--xlevel

3. Lossy MP3 for daily usage in noisy environments, fast food music, ie. listening in car or during running/sports outdoors.
This means MP3 Lame 3.97 (only stable versions, previously 3.90 Dibrom compile)
-V5 --vbr-new , ca. 125 - 150 k VBR.
This due to simple usage and widely support by cheap but good players like USB sticks, think of running through the woods and hills outdoors with earphones and USB-stick or connecting the USB-MP3-stick to your Kenwood car-radio system, maybe via Cassette-adapter or via FM-radio frequency, or directly via Aux connector, or directly the USB connection to modern car-radios.

Sizes are MP3 V5 ca. 130 - 135 k vbr, to MPC quality 8 ca. 265 k , to Flac Lossless 700 - 1000 k, maybe 800-900 k average, but very dependent on the albums/music collections.
This translates to sizes of MP3 Lame V5 / MPC quality 8 == 1 / 2
and
MPC quality 8 / Lossless FLAC == 1 / 3 --- 1 / 3.3

mp3 mp3 mp3 wohoooo

and some flac even though I only ever listen to mp3s.

I think I first started seriously ripping when Vorbis came out (at -Q6). Ripped CDs straight into Vorbis for listening off the computer.

Recently aquired a Cowon D2 so that gets Vorbis as well, but lower quality (still experimenting) ripped directly from the CDs until ...

Now also acquired a car with an MP3/WMA CD player (and no DAP or aux-in hookup). I use LAME/MP3 for it and try to target an artist's studio discography to fit on to one CD, so the quality varies as I try to maximize it by making the CD as full as possible. It's really a bit of a pain, so I've been doing a lot of experimentation and learning. As a result I've been reripping my collection to FLAC as needed (I also just bought a 1 TB drive) and then use Foobar to transcode, destructively replaygain, and make prerandomized track number ordering for burning tracks randomized (as the randomization feature in my player is a complete joke).

So lately I've been spending more time creating and listening to MP3s for lossy, but I still vote Vorbis because I still use it for the Cowon, and if I had the choice I would only use it. I use Flac because I'm well aware of it through Ogg and it is free, but I might switch if something else compressed more that was also as free to use and was reasonably standard.

Glad to see that TAK is more popular than Monkey's Audio now And this is just the beginning..

For 2008:

Ripper: FB2K 0.9.5, WMEncoder 9
Lossy: WMA Standard, VBR ~80kbps
Lossless: FLAC 1.2.1B, Level 5
Ripping: One File Per Track

All WMA bashing aside, my cell phone only supports MP3 & WMA. I can get smaller files out of WMA and my ears can't tell the difference.

Like others have posted this is around my fourth time I've changed lossy codecs.

this is true


later