Best Audio codec?

There are many arguments over superior codecs, but I still think that MP3 beats them all due to the fact that EVERYTHING supports it.

Using a LAME-based encoder, the sound is impeccible at any decent bitrate. Sure, AAC and WMA may sound better at lower bitrates, and you may get slightly better compression, but with the size of the collection you are talking about (less than 20gigs) I suggest you stick with MP3.

For a great encoder for Windows, check out CDex at http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/

 

Usually Ogg Vorbis has the best quality to compression ratio, and will usually beat out LAME MP3, but only just barely. There's a really good article about this somewhere, and when I can find it I'll post it. I encode all my CDs to FLAC, then turn the FLACs into Ogg when I want them compressed.

BTW, MP3 is still probably the defacto winner because not everything supports it, but my Karma does and that's all I worry about.

 

You think the arguments among listeners are bad, try the bitrate arguments among audio engineers. There are guys who swear they can hear the difference between 64-bit and 128-bit encoding at a fundamental mastering level and other guys who say that that is not possible considering that the difference is transients outside of the hearing range of the average human.

Of course, they all think analog recording and vinyl sounds better.

 

When deciding on a codec, I think it's also important to note where you want to listen to your music. It's harder to find a car stereo or portable player that supports OGG for example, but as Vengeance touched on, there is large support for MP3. If you only want to listen from your computer, then you'll be ok with whatever codec you choose.

 

Nolen, I spent 6 years selling and installing high-end, multi-roon audio systems, and have got a pretty decent rig in my house. i also now work for a company that makes its living in the digital music space. in fact, one could almost say that w/out us, the digital music revolution would just be a mild insurrection.

anyway, i've started ripping my entire 1500 disc collection to external firewire hard-drives. i'm about 200 discs in, and have only used about 40GB so far on my first 160GB external drive. i rip in iTunes, using the Apple Lossless Codec, which i believe is basically FLAC in an MP4 DRM wrapper.

I'm using a 12" powerbook, with a USB output to a cheap Edirol UA 1-D USB-->SPDIF converter, and from there via coax to a Musical Fidelity CD/Pre24. The latter is a wonderful, if slightly odd unit that never really found its niche. it combines a high-end CD player, upsampling DAC, and analog preamp inone chassis. it's been interesting to compare the sound of the bulit-in CD player with the computer audio. remember, both are using the same DAC and preamp/amp/speakers, so the sound quality difference, if any, should be minimal, and in fact it is. in general, i hear a slight flattening of overall depth in the sound. i'm a space freak, so this could be a killer for me, but in this case it's not that huge a difference, and the ability to make my own playlists is so much cooler than just pressing play on a CD.

lossy audio sucks, it doesn't matter if it's MP3, WMA, or AAC. FLAC or Apple Lossless are the ways to go. the pros on FLAC are that it's an open standard and there are a variety of players that support it. one big con is your favorite player may not.

Apple lossless, like iTunes is cross platform, and iTunes has multi-room support built in, but it is propritary to apple. if you change players, you may have to re-rip your files.

 

APE or FLAC for loseless.

But in the end, you will agreed that MP3 is still the best.

320KB mp3, but at least 192kb.

 

If you're going to encode at 192kbps or above, it doesn't matter what codec you use. In my opinion, any of the lossy formats sound fine above that. So I'd go with MP3, since it's so easy to find hardware that supports it.

 

Y'know, I'm kinda glad I have an untrained ear when it comes to these types of things. Honestly, I can't tell the difference between CD and mp3 in the vast majority of cases. I know Jeff owns a studio, so he listens for stuff like that for a living, but I can't start telling the difference unless it's something like radio vs. CD.

 

What SCF said. I appreciate my music at a very basic level. And a lot of what I like is really old (ie from the 1920s-40s), so the master copies (or whatever you call them), are fairly low quality anyway.

 

speaking of music, I finally got myself into the "cd" age. That is I got a cdplayer installed in my truck. So now, I am begining to see the reason to want cds. Before I only listened to mp3s in my house on my pc and radio in my truck.

 

figure a FLAC file is about half the size of an uncompressed WAV (CD) file. so if a CD is roughly 700MBs, the Flac File would be 350-400MBS. x 200, say 80-100GBs?

another product you might check out is the edirol UA-5, which combines the USB digital interface converter w/ a good DAC. i've used it w/ a pretty high end system and had very good results. price is about $350.

and it's nonsense, those who say they can't hear the difference between MP3, at whatever bitrate, and uncompressed audio. it's like saying you can't taste the difference between dewars and the Macallan. there's a place for both, but to say they taste identical just isn't so. now, you may not appreciate the difference, or feel it's worth paying for, but that's a value judgement, not an imperical one. you just need to learn what to listen for, or perhaps listend through a better system. after all, good music wasn't meant to be heard through a three inch speaker.

 

Truthfully, most audio engineers don't care at ALL about how people listen to records. They sort of thumb their nose at "audiophiles" because a really good pair of Genelec stuido monitors will blow away pretty much any home stereo speaker as far as superior sound quality.

Plus, in the studio you are hearing the unadulterated raw audio, not something that has been sent through effects and multiple compression algorithms just to get it in sync with today's trends in music. What people hear on the final master is quite different from what you hear when you are in the middle of a mixdown.

In reality, most really good engineers go for recordings in this order:

1. Quality of recorded individual sounds (drums, guitars, vocals, etc).
2. Quality of performance.
3. Quality of mixdown.
4. Quality of final master.

A lot of engineers make two mixdowns - one for themselves and one for the record company. This is because they often differ in what they want to hear.

I'm in the category with most music lovers in that audio quality is not terribly important to me. In the days before digital, I didn't mind tape flutter or analog distortion from overdriving a microphone. I didn't care too much about squeaks or buzz from a noisy guitar pickup. Mostly, I just wanted to hear a great performance.

Unfortunately, digital brings out some of the most horrid sounds. It is quite unforgiving when it comes to things like distorition or noise. So, to compensate, you often have to remove the offending sound, but that tends to take life out of a recording. You compromise.

 

I find those compromises a bit frustrating. Often I'll buy a CD from a band after I have heard them live. Then when I actually hear the CD I feel it doesn't really do justice to their live show(s). I know they are quite different animals, but sometimes those compromises really take away the power of the music. A fairly recent example would be the Dead End Angels. I would have preferred a bootleg of the show - crowd noise and all - to the CD I bought.

 

except the "live" sound is also artificial to a certain extent. it's amplified, and the sound you hear is determined by the mics, cables, amps, speakers, hall, and sound engineers manipulating the signal chain. there's only one true reference, and that's the sound of acoustic instruments, or the human voice, unamplified in a natural space, recital hall, opera house, etc...

 

Yeah, but that isn't what makes a great performance. Great performance comes from players. I know guys who could pick up a piece of crap, toy guitar and play it through an amp that was falling apart and still make it sound terrific. It's the reason why a bad player, no matter how good the gear, still sounds bad. You can put a tuxedo on a turd, but it is still a pile of ****.

Live bands - particularly one's that have no record deal or one's built specifically for live performance (jam bands, etc) - have to be good live in order to win an audience. They spend all their time focused on the goal of being great in a live setting. They don't have to be great on record because that isn't how they make their money and it isn't how they improve.

On the other hand, bands on labels don't have to be good live. They just have to make great records that sell. It's why, quite often, the best local bands are better live by a wide margin than your average band signed to a major label. They work on it harder.

But, getting back to performance, there is HUGE difference between performing in front of an audience and performing behind the glass of a studio. It effects EVERYTHING from how you play to how you sound. Not only is the energy that comes with an audience gone meaning you have to manufacture that energy on your own, but recordings are mostly done a piece at a time.

Unlike what movies would have you believe bands don't set up and record all at once in a big room. Usually, you get drums and bass first and then go back and add guitar, vocals, etc. one at a time. It is a lot harder to get an energetic performer when you are standing in a room with headphones on than it is on stage. You can get cleaner, mistake-free performances, but it is difficult to reproduce the energy that comes from performing live.

That really alters the sound and can make for bad recordings.

 

all the more reason you want to capture as much of performance as possible. if you're using a lossy format to encode audio, you won't be able to hear all the emotion and energy that went into a particular performance- it becomes much more just a collection of notes that a true document of the event.

good audio equipment, and by extension a digital file format, should be just a means to an end, not the end itself. that end is the experience of a great performance, whether a great rock band caught on the fly, or an intimate classical guitarist in a studio. you throw away half, or more, of the data, how can you expect to hear what the artist intended?

sound for sound's sake isn't moving, although it may opccasionally be interesting as an intellectual exercise.