Ok, time for a test, since some codecs have been updated. I'm only testing for compression on the highest settings available, since thats what I'd use for archival purposes. I didn't test for speed, but some impressions are at the bottom.

This test is a bit different, because I didn't test music, I tested samples used for music production. Most of the samples are low complexity compared to the average stereo music mix, so compression ratios are VERY high. I tested some drum samples here. 44100 16-bit stereo, 558 wavs, uncompressed size of: 214.99 mb
Here is how they did:

Monkey's Extra High 3.97: 59.34mb or 27.6%
Optimfrog 4.504b insane -seek slow : 56.71 or 26.3%
Optimfrog 4.504b bestnew -seek slow: 55.7 or 25.9%
LA 0.4b high: 56.46 or 26.26%
Flac 1.1.0 -q 8: 63.26 or 29.5%
Wavpack 3.97 high: 60.6 or 28.2%
Optimfrog insane is horribly slow, even on my p4. Ofr bestnew is somewhat faster, but still is like watching paint dry. LA is alot faster than optimfrog. And Monkey's and FLAC are aprox. the same speed, much faster than all the rest.

Conclusions:
Optimfrog is the best compressor, but requires huge patience and is only about 1.5% better than monkeys, which is exponentially faster. FLAC performs somewhat poorly compression-wise, but is speedy even at -q8. Any are great choices for backing up samples, providing a near 1/4 lossless compression ratio! Now if only sample cd creators would start using lossless compression to pack more on cds (instead of 6 cd sample sets, or even 20 !! cd sets) we'd be getting somewhere.

edit: added version numbers and wavpack 3.97. wavpack was quite fast, close to flac and ape.

Please post the version numbers for all the compressors you tested..

Floyd,

Would you consider adding a test of Wavpack 3.97 to your list? In some tests Wavpack has been pretty competitive, and I've been playing with it a bit lately, so I would be interested.

Thanks,

Den.