I have a question that may seem blatently obvious to some of you at this forum. But , nevertheless, I was wondering which format produces better quality audio: MPC (at the extreme or insane setting) or AAC (at the archive or ultra setting)? What are some of the pros and cons of each? Could you possibly send me a few samples that could demonstrate the capabilities (as in pros and cons) of each format?

Thanks a lot
Luke

this one is simple : MPC wins, hands down. AAC doesnt even come close. MPC is still the best lossy codec and sounds better by far. forget AAC for high bitrates....

OGG!!!

i havent really tested mpc versus aac but i would go with mpc....

not only do i love the format but i think aac was made for low bitrate anyways...

also mpc takes less cpu power to play and mp3. on the other hand aac uses way more

plus mpc is more accessible... aac isnt really mainstream... and theres always the legal issues

Although generally it is accepted that MPC provides the best quality at high bitrates, I haven't quite seen a blind listening test at that level yet.

Anyway, I would check out Ogg Vorbis. It is catching up really fast and I can't wait for the final release where it will be exciting to see if it can match or even better MPC.

At the bitrates your talking about, oggvorbis is definitely worth a listen.

john33

Wait, I'm a tad bit confused. Ogg Vorbis is a better choice than MPC at high bitrates? I thought that MPC gave a tranparency rate of above 99% at -extreme (which is more than incredible). Can Ogg really defeat such a standard? And I thought Ogg had trouble with lower frequency encodeing and still possessed artifacts. For, archiving, let's say, at high bitrates, which is better: MPC or Ogg? (Or will Ogg perhaps defeat MPC later on?)

Thanks
Luke

A.K.A. The Quality Guru

right now, general opinion seems to have mpc as the best for your needs. At lower bitrates, ogg is definitely better than mpc, but ogg can't yet match mpc's -standard and -extreme settings at similar bitrates... for most listeners. Some people already think that ogg is better, but for most people's hearing mpc seems to more closely match the original wav. I'd recommend that you test for yourself and see if you can tell a difference.

Geez. Where did you get that misinformation about Ogg from? Yes, Vorbis had some problems with lower frequency artifacts back in Beta3 or Beta4, but since then everything has been fixed in RC2 and RC3. Codecs do get better with time you know.

Well for one, it's hard because the transparency "rate" of MPC has never really been tested. For that matter, it's nearly impossible for such a thing to be tested and for it to be meaningful. That having been said.. the "rate" of transparency is obviously very high.. this is evident by the lack of "problem clips" for MPC and the difficulty of finding ones that do not encode transparently for most people. A casual glance through this forum reveals discussions related to this difficulty...

As for Vorbis.. well, when you already reach such a high level of transparency (MPC) it becomes exceedingly difficult to be definitely "better". As it stands, the last time I tried Vorbis was a week before RC3 was released, which I think had most or all of the RC3 code included.. it was just in the testing phase. At that point there were still some clips which could use work in the pre-echo area. The were not "ugly" problems, but again.. MPC is very difficult to beat on pre-echo just due to fundamental codec design.. psychoacoustics aside.

You might want to read this:

http://www.uni-jena.de/~pfk/mpp/timeres.html

For more information.

I do have faith in the fact that Vorbis can continue to improve in sound quality (it's already very damn good..) but I'm not sure it will be able to edge out MPC in pre-echo (probably the most annoying artifact to me) until wavelets are implemented. There may be some more interesting possibilities that will arise before then though.. my discussions with Monty have revealed developments in the past that took me by surprise (impulse frames for example) which have lead to large improvements in this area. Maybe a tool similar to TNS or something even better is possible...



Just about every "known" problem with Vorbis, aside from some pathologic pre-echo issues, has been fixed quite awhile ago. RC3 is a huge improvement over past versions.



Right now, MPC for sure. Vorbis may "definitely" best MPC in the future but being the skeptic I am, I doubt that *if* this happens, that it will happen before 2.0. That being said, any possible difference may be small enough to make the whole thing moot and the extra compatibility (Open Source) that Vorbis affords may make it a more worthwhile choice. In my opinion it basically boils down to how anal you want to be about quality. It might seem ironic for me to say this, but I truely believe there is a point when it's "good enough". For me this is reached with MPC.. maybe because I don't have another "better" option, but I'm more than happy to archive in this format at least.. and if I didn't have MPC, I'm sure I'd feel the exact same way about Vorbis Both of these formats perform pretty well even on difficult clips, unlike some other formats like MP3 which still can have big problems.

One thing to keep in mind is that Vorbis is still very much in development, and I believe everyone accepts the fact that there is still room for improvement quality wise. On the other hand, Buschel, the author of MPC, has stated that MPC is basically "done" in the psychoacoustics department and that further development will be a matter of functionality improvements and possible bug fixes (which may improve that last very very small percentage of clips that may not always be transparent).

In my honest opinion, it may be a matter of splitting hairs now when deciding which codec to choose out of these. I'd say it'd have to rely on other factors as to what would say my decision either way. If I wanted to be more "sure" about quality I'd go with MPC (my preference at the moment), if I wanted to be more sure about widespread acceptance and possible hardware support and other compatibility, I'd go with Vorbis.

After all that, I'm not sure your question is answered any better, but at least it may offer you a slightly different insight

that's new for me too - you think ogg will once be better, or at least equal? - maybe not that new, I'm trying to hear differences between AAC, mp3 (lame) and mpc at 192 kb/s and believe me, with most samples - its very difficult. ok, sometimes its still clear, but with most music you wont hear it. esp when listening on pcspeakers - forget it

and ogg is/will be more supported? hum... maybe I'll switch once.. never thought that before

Jos

True, if you listen on PC speakers, you may not notice too much depending on the listener, but what about the future? Surely someday you may want to output those files to a stereo system or something like that? Even if you don't think you will, I'm of the opinion that you might as well encode it a little better now so that you won't be mad at yourself later if the time comes where you'll get better equipment. But then again, if you really can't hear any difference, maybe it won't matter... it's a toss-up.

Just my opinion

Nick