Originally posted by: FeuerFrei
I go for maximum bit rate. Quality is most important. I'm in no danger of filling my 20 gig mp3 player, so file size be damned!!
That's the wrong attitude, you'd might as well not even encode your music because shrinking it down into a lossy format results in loss in quality, thus the lossy name. Lossless compression is a different story.
The point behind compressing to lossy is to get it down to a point where you're saving a pretty good deal of space 2x or more hopefully. Last I knew from my browsing around and doing some of my own tests, mp3 is easily the most popular yet outdated formats and thus is actually of low quality but because it is the most popular it has been "perfected" so that you can squeeze out the best bitrates and quality. VBR helps to achieve high bit rate performance when it is needed and low bit rate performance to save on space. Using CBR just seems somewhat silly to me (unless you've got an ancient mp3 player that doesn't support anything but CBR), if you're going to be using a lossy format at all.
Even if you only have 8 five minute songs for your 20GB player, if those songs have any slow portions or silent pauses, you're still going to be playing it @ 320kbps when there is no need for it because there isn't anything or enough there to hear. VBR is definately the way to go. Ogg, Musepack and even every lossless compression format I know of is VBR.
Originally posted by: AnnihilatorX
Hey How does MPC (Musepack audio) and WMA compare?
Both lossy compression
Microsoft originally claims wma offer twice the quality over the mp3 of same bitrate
I've got a few mpc files. They are about the same size as 320kpbs mp3
I've yet to have really look into the quality.
Well on their website with test evidence they claim it's the suprerior lossy compression
Musepack is an audio compression format with a strong emphasis on high quality. It's not lossless, but it is designed for transparency, so that you won't be able to hear differences between the original wave file and the much smaller MPC file.
Last I knew, Microsoft has been pretty full of themselves, WMA is pretty good, but its nothing outstanding.
mp3 is the dog, old yet tried and true. Too popular for our own good, yet popular enough for its own good. It might never die and go away anytime soon, but at least its been here long enough to be "perfected" as I've already mentioned.
mp4 or AAC is better than mp3 (and probably better than WMA) per same bitrate and if it was "marketed" as mp4 it might be able to more easily replace it, but it isn't even THAT great. Then there's the whole mess of file names. It can be *.aac, *.mp4, *.m4a. I guess *.m4a is the best choice because it implies audio (a for audio) whereas *.mp4 can also have video...
Ogg Vorbis is probably the best competition for mp3, better in just about every aspect I believe Ogg is supposed to be the best sounding codec in the bitrate ranges most commonly used such as 128-192kbps (although ogg is variable bitrate only). Better sounding than mp3 and small enough for our portable players, it isn't a shock that many actually support this format, many but not nearly enough.
Musepack, now here's an interesting option. It isn't meant to be lossless, but it is meant to be the best sounding codec at high bitrates. > 192kbps average, as musepack is also variable bitrate only.
FLAC and Monkey Audio loseless compression scheme are simply too big for my liking
I haven't got any audiophile equpiment anyway to spot the difference
Lossless isn't only about sound quality you're going to listen to, its about storage. You have your lossless files and you can then transcode them to any lossy format you choose and won't suffer any nasty suprises down the road. If you use something like musepack, the files will sound very good, almost perfect, but if you transcode musepack to mp3 you risk poor quality files.
Portable players are still very finite, but with 160GB HDDs constantly on sale for < $50 with rebates, space is near infinate for lossless files. Codecs such as FLAC will reduce a full CD to around 250-480MB or so, while that is still alot it is better than copying the CD image (because you've got the files ready for conversion) and its also better than copying straight WAVs because formats like FLAC support tags (unlike WAV) which can transfer song data when converting to another format.