this is my first post... so don't call me a troll. i've seen that there've been several "which format is the best" threads. but none were conclusive for my liking.

anyways, i'll get to the point. till now i've mainly used the LAME codec with --r3mix preset & WMA9 (don't ask:'( ). i've tried both mpc & mpeg4 aac. honestly, both are really good. i encoded a 55MB wave file & got around 7-10MB files using both those format encoders. i'd like to encode a 55MB file (obviously it'll depend on the content) to a 7-10MB file. we'll talk about the presets later but what i'd like to know is which would be the best format. obviously it'll use variable bit rate. so gimme a plain answer please....

There is, in general, no such thing as "the best" or "the one and only format" ... but you have a plain target ... 55MB uncompressed PCM should be compressed to 7-10 MB which leads to a compression ratio of about 7,9:1 to 5,5:1 ... and you want to use VBR.

Which format you choose mostly depends on what you like to achieve ...

MP3 still is (at this time) the most compatible format, regarding portable/car stereo/DVD hardware ... LAME 3.92 or 3.90.2 with --alt-preset standard should get you where you want to be, while still sounding transparent (at least, if you have some piece of music that isn't too "problematic").

Musepack could be an alternative ... most people claim that musepack sounds transparent at average bitrates that are much lower (compared to mp3-compression with the same result) ... I couldn't clearly ABX this, though (my ears are somewhat deaf anyway )

I would recommend to download some actual codecs with the appropriate frontends (like LAME, Musepack, OGG Vorbis) and listen for yourself ...

Oh god, not another one! Well we didn't answer your question satisfactorily the first 1000 times but this time since your such a swell guy and you asked in such a clear, well meaning way we will tell you that the 100% guaranteed best sounding, smallest size, most compatible, fastest encoding and decoding, best tagging, most supported, cheapest, audio compression format is...

If you were happy with the quality of --r3mix, basically any of the formats targetted at the bitrate range you're talking about will sound transparent to you. The only way to really tell is to download them and try them out yourself though. The candidates I'd pick are probably:

LAME --preset standard (or --alt-preset standard in older versions)
Ogg -q5 or -q6
MPC (Musepack) standard profile

Of those, LAME preset standard and Ogg -q6 are both in the 180-200kbps range, while Ogg -q5 and MPC are more usually in the 160-or-so kbps range. MPC is generally considered to have the best quality of those, though all sound transparent to me, so your mileage may vary.

Other factors you might want to take into account are portable support (if you have or plan to get one), in which case MP3 is the clear alternative (with Ogg perhaps being a possibility in the near to mid-term future). If you want gapless playback, Ogg or MPC have it and MP3 doesn't. There's a variety of other considerations, but I think these are the main ones.

Thanx for your replies, but I didn't say I was satisfied with the quality of --r3mix. I did like both the MPC & MP4 formats. I want to find out which one is better? I'm not looking at these formats for lower bit rates.

Both sound similar to me at similar bit rates & presets. Compatibility issues for hardware and other things aren't an issue for me. I'll encode'em & use Winamp to listen to them. That's all.

So if you guys can tell me which one to stick to...

And then if you could suggest the presets, settings, options to use...

It'll be highly appreciated! B)

MP4.

As they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, "better" is relative to your own preferences, requirements and what sounds good to you. Everybody has their favorite encoders, try a few out and see what you like.



Maybe answered your own original post there ?



Like I said it is your choice, there are more than enough formats here to try out and more than enough posts with settings to try out for those formats. Have fun with it and eventually you'll find something that you like.

A lot of the guys/ gals have their personnal encoder preferences and settings as a "signature" that shows up when they post, it's always worth a look.

MPC --standard --xlevel

Somehow I think this thread will have no definitive answer either. AAC looks to me (biased) like a pain in the rectum... no competitive free commandline encoder like with lame/mpcenc/oggenc, only commercial ones in bigger apps with confusing options. No tagging standard afaik. Format confusion (.aac. or .mp4?). Still under heavy development.

No, don't listen to him its MPC.

???????????

Have you ever heard about Psytel AACenc?



Not heavier than Vorbis, for sure.

For a format that nearly "stabilized" in development, your only choice will be MP3.

Use mpc at quality 6 or higher (--quality 6 --xlevel). MP4/AAC ain't bad, but
the Psytel encoder is very slow...

IMO, MPC - end of story.

yes... pystel encoder IS slow!!! but the sound quality for a similar sized aac file is better than an mpc file.. me thinks!

i'll do some more experimenting & finally decide! i'm using the pystel encoder to make the aac file. but how do i get a mp4 file? i got this mp4creator from the rareware site. is it this one or is there some other program that can do it? plus how do i use it?

MP4 is really only a container format, like AVI.

You can put your AAC file inside it (using MP4creator, as an example), but that won't change the audio quality or anything like that.

If you got a MP4 file and wants to play it, do it with in_mp4 (Winamp plugin). It's also available at RareWares.

Yup...



A wise man indeed...



You also should have a look at "Ivan & Menno", a GUI that will make things a lot easier for you. See http://www.audiocoding.com/wiki/index.php?page=PsyTEL for more infos.

There you will also find that PsyTEL FastEnc exists and that Speek's GUI can use it...

By the way, using MP4 instead of AAC enables tagging and ReplayGain support if you take foobar2000 instead of Winamp. Maybe Menno will update the Winamp plugin some time, but for now this is only possible with foobar.

yeah i did use the Ivan & Menno batch encoder. i used this option --> "-vbrhi -br 320 -c 19500 -qual 9 -profile 2 -low_ath -ihsc"

what am i doing wrong here? if i am doing anything wrong that is. the presets "-extreme" to "-ultra" what do they actually consist of? cause for LAME i read that "--r3mix" stands for "--nspsytune --vbr-mtrh -V1 -mj -h -b96 --lowpass 19.5 --athtype 3 --ns-sfb21 2 -Z --scale 0.98 -X0"

flames are most welcomed...

AAC better than mpc? That's the first time I hear someone say that...

Duh. It all depends on the bitrate you use, man.

Read again:



Duh!

Duh! Duh! Duh! Jesus jumping Christ!

Haven't you ever heard that MPC theoretically starts to degrade quality below 150~130kbps?

I would expect a 96kbps AAC to be better than a 96kbps MPC. (Due to subband vs. transform, etc.)

Edit: sure, beyond 150 kbps, MPC will almost surely be better than AAC at same bitrates.

I'm no expert like u rjamorim, but I know that quality depends on bitrate,
and I also know that mpc is suited to high bitrates. From what I've been
reading all this time in HA.org, I've come to think of mpc as the best lossy
format for bitrates higher than 160 kbps. I do not doubt that aac can do
better than mpc at low bitrates, but that's entirely different from saying
that an mp4/aac file sounds better than a mpc file of similar size, without
specifying bitrates, as SafirXP did. For the record, I am not an mpc zealot,
and I would be more than happy to switch to aac if it proves to be better
than mpc at high bitrates. Safir's post just made me wonder if I was missing
something, that's all...

Word of the month: Zealot

i thought the main reason for using a lossy compression was size. quality came second.

my main priority was getting the best sound quality on a specific file size.

i've decided to stick with aac/mp4 now. maybe some actual comparison test might convince me to change my mind.

anywayz, hello all... nice welcome you've given me

Another happy customer...

I can see from his avatar what you sold him... the good brazilian stuff, eh?

Sure. The best your money can get.

Want some?

Well, not currently, but Frank Klemm's page comparing time smearing of various codecs claims that MPEG-4 AAC is theoretically superior to MPC (MPEGplus), and should, once tuned correctly, result in equivalent quality to MPC at 30-40 kbps lower bitrates. From here:

hmm, I wonder who wins in the AAC vs. OGG battle at bitrates below 160.

I'd also be very interested in this. I'm currently using vorbis to keep low bitrate copies (112 kbit) on my laptop for when I'm travelling, and sometimes I transcode these to Minidisc. Quality is OK, not great, but perhaps for the same bit rate, AAC/MP4 (which I know nothing about) is better?

I'd consider testing this myself, but I'm just getting over a heap of tests I've been doing with Wavpack lossy, and would love to hear other users opinions on this. Until now, I was under the impression that the fairly consistent HA line was mpc > 160 kbit, vorbis for everything below.

I know what happened when I questioned this last time... I ended up adopting a new format!

Den.

It was considered, some time ago, that Psytel AAC and Vorbis are somewhat on par between 96 and 160kbps. On some samples Vorbis wins, on others AAC wins.

Below 96kbps, Vorbis constantly wins. At that point, the competitor to Vorbis is MP3pro.

Thanks for the conclusion. I'll have to confirm this for myself when I get the inspiration. For now, I'll take your word for it because I am quite content with Vorbis, especially for low bitrates ( < 96kbps).

And Den, I'm not surprised that transcoding from a lower bitrate OGG would create a mediocre-quality ATRAC file. That's the nature of the transcoding beast, of course. On the subject of MD players, I need to eventually replace my Sharp MD-MS702 (still works like a charm even though the lithium ion battery is dead).

Vince H.

Absolutely. I was hesitant to admit to my low bitrate transcoding habits on this thread, because it is so not what this forum is about... I am now only transcoding from Wavpack lossy whenever possible after my recent transcoding tests. I only use the low bitrate vorbis stuff when I am away from my desktop PC. I travel for work regularly and if I get sick of the recorded MDs I have with me, I can zap some fresh tunes from my laptop across when I am on the road.

If you are curious about my transcoding tests, check out this thread.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ST&f=32&t=8416&

I found that I am getting ABX'able artifacts with high bit rate files, even LAME 3.90.2 --insane and MPC q10. Only Wavpack lossy was artifact free.

Or course, they are even worse with vorbis q3, but it's better than nothing.

Den.

Almost everything...



1. There is no --r3mix preset for PsyTEL, and this is one of its biggest advantages.

2. To combine LTP with such high bitrate settings would even be nonsense if LTP did work in PsyTEL (please read other current threads, too).

3. Enabling Improved Human Speech Coding for encoding music at high bitrates is complete nonsense.

4. Quality 9 is the default in all presets and other settings, as far as I know, so it would only make sense to use a lower value in order to increase the coding speed (but like I mentioned already it's better to choose FastEnc for this purpose if you want it faster than AACEnc).

5. What do you want with a low Absolute Threshold of Hearing?

6. There might be some sense in defining an individual cutoff together with -vbrhi (or -vr), because that's the only way of doing this for a VBR setting in PsyTEL. The presets all use fixed cutoff that will ignore the -c switch. So for very special problem samples this might be a cure, but definitely not for all files.

7. The recommended settings on the Wiki page are recommended... So the only useful switch for AACEnc additionally to any preset is -resample 32000 for everything below ~96 kbps and/or -internet.

No way...

Den, thanks for the link but, being the lurker I am, I already read most of your findings in that thread.

i saw that you can make tags using foobar for mp4 files. is there any other way of doin it?

& is this the APE tag ppl are talkin about?