[Odin]

I guess a MD player would suit my needs. OK, back to the topic, which format do you think is the best? Oh and one thing, Sony's MP3 players support ATRAC, so.......

 

[BlindSeer]

A lot depends on what your personal preferences/needs are. I used to go all MD for portable audio, and I still think MD is a great format. However, I became frustrated that I wasn't able to carry around more than 12 albums with me without a hassle, and recording and labelling MDs was a bothersome process. So I decided to go for an MP3 CD player and got a RioVolt, and I must say that it's suited my needs VERY well. Carrying around 24 CDs gives me access to 240 hours or so of good quality VBR mp3s, so my unpredictable musical cravings are almost always met.

Anyway, just thought you'd like to hear the perspective of an MD fan gone MP3. If you've already got an MP3 collection and a CD burner, you might want to look into MP3 CD players as an alternative.

 

[MacDEF]

LOL, does anyone read the entire thread anymore?

Just kidding blindseer -- you pretty much said exactly what I did above.

 

[Odin]

Well then I guess the debate's over, just wait till someday that there's a "Godly" MP3 player come out, the debate will continue, right now, I'm gonna research which MD player I should get

 

[BlindSeer]

Haha, my bad MacDEF. I could've sworn I read that whole thing... anyway, at least we're in agreement.

 

[Nugen]

What's better? MP3 @ 320 Kb, or AAC @ 128. Is there a program where I can encode AAC @ higher sample rates?

 

[kerykeion]

I don't think there is an AAC encoder available yet .. it's still relatively new techonolgy that may replace mp3 in the future.

As for 320 mp3 ... I think that is an overkill for mp3 ... in fact, you might as well use wav (lossless) compression. However, for archival purposes, I usually rip with EAC, then encode my wav files using lame; average bit rate at ~256. Works fairly well for me.

 

[rickcr42]

Quote:

I don't think there is an AAC encoder available yet .. it's still relatively new techonolgy that may replace mp3 in the future.

actually , AAC encoders have been around for at least four years,that is how long ago i started using mine
Go to
http://dailymp3.org/vqf.html

 

[ff123]

Your participation is invited.

Test of various audio codecs which average about 128 kbit/s:
MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, MPC, and WMA8

See http://ff123.net/128test/instruct.html

for instructions. I have posted RAR'd binaries to the title: "128 kbit/s listening test" in alt.binaries.test. There are also binaries available from my site.

Please do not discuss your results here!

ff123

 

[deranger]

If you want to know which codec is the best, visit http://www.hydrogenaudio.org.
This is a great forum dedicated to audio compression.
There you can meet developers of different formats (MP3, Ogg Vorbis, MPC, etc.)

If you want to know more about mp3 (e.g. why Lame encoder is better then Xing, why use VBR) visit http://r3mix.net. Also you can ask questions about it at another cool forum: http://66.96.216.160/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

If you want to know more about mp3 (e.g. why Lame encoder is better then Xing, why use VBR) visit http://r3mix.net

Be careful, though. While that site may be OK for opinions about which MP3 encoder is better, a lot of the stuff posted on that site is pure junk.

 

[coolvij]

I wholeheartedly second MacDEF (i still grin when I think of that tube-hater quoting an Orpheus test.......

)

 

[lextek]

I had aquestion on AIFF versus WAV files. Which would be closer to CD quality on a HD MP3 player? I'm not sure if the Nomad Jukesbox can play these, but the iPod can.

Bob

 

[MacDEF]

Quote:

I had aquestion on AIFF versus WAV files. Which would be closer to CD quality on a HD MP3 player?

They should be identical. AIFF is the Mac version and .wav is the Windows version of full, uncompressed CD audio.

 

[lextek]

Thanks for the info.

Bob