[taffy2207]

How come no one talks about opus?

I convert everything from FLAC to opus 192 kbps. Never have a problem. Used to have AAC 256 before I changed to Android

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/opus-codec.869570/page-3#post-13978445

Opus has been talked about sporadically in other threads as well to my recollection.

 

[castleofargh]

in my case, I only recently started to use AAC for my new rips maybe 2 or 3years ago. most of my library is still in MP3. I'm the man from the past! ^_^
the main reason being that I'm lazy of course. but also that I've been juggling with a bunch of old cheap DAPs, some of which had "compatibility issues"(AKA garbage firmware). nowadays AAC is basically everywhere by default so the inferior MP3 really doesn't make much sense. but Opus isn't exactly universal. so while I'm personally convinced that Opus rocks in term of sound/kb, I'm not planning to use it ATM because my DAPs haven't heard of it.

 

[TheTrace]

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/opus-codec.869570/page-3#post-13978445

Opus has been talked about sporadically in other threads as well to my recollection.

True, but even that thread itself was last responded to more than a year ago. Maybe it's the compatibility issues still. Considering Android having a good share of the smartphone market today I would have thought that opus would have more of a lane by 2019 is all.

 

[stonesfan129]

I ripped all my CDs to FLAC with dBpoweramp Reference on Secure Mode w/ AccurateRip. I rarely buy a CD anymore and 99% of my purchases are through iTunes. I can't tell a difference between 256k AAC and FLAC. I have enough storage space on my FiiO X1 that I do not need to compress anything but I'd say I'm fine with 256k AAC purchases from now on. I have been incredibly impressed with Mastered For iTunes albums. I think the iTunes AAC encoder sounds better than LAME MP3. I don't see the point of using Opus as AAC is already good enough and far more software/hardware supports AAC.

 

[71 dB]

I have ripped + pre-crossfed some music from CDs using 192 kbps mp3 for my portable player, and I have also bought some music files that aren't available on CD, but in general I don't like digital music files. I want physical CDs. Files get lost in my harddrive and I don't even remember what music I have. CDs are there in my bookshelf and remind of themselves everyday. If I can't get the physical things why pay for a file when I can listen to the music for free in Spotify * or Youtube? What's the difference? So, for me the problem isn't sound quality/bitrate, but the "hidden" and "invisible" nature of the files. I want my ownership of music to be more physical than that.

* I do explore music on Spotify and if I like what I hear I try to get the physical CD. Recently I listened to Dua Lipa's Complete Edition on Spotify and liked it enough to get the CD. Dua Lipa has been one of the more consistent pop artists of the last few years and this 25 track 2 CD set is pretty solid without complete duds. You may say pop music like this is crap, but I disagree. Sometimes it is crap and sometimes it's not. It can be great in it's own way and I like to switch between different genres of music, perhaps first listening to Mieczyslaw Weinberg's Violin Sonatas and then some pop music by Katy Perry and then maybe Neil Cowley Trio's concert Blu-ray ending the listening session with cantatas by Nikolaus Bruhns.

 

[RRod]

True, but even that thread itself was last responded to more than a year ago. Maybe it's the compatibility issues still. Considering Android having a good share of the smartphone market today I would have thought that opus would have more of a lane by 2019 is all.

In a sense Opus was probably too little too late to force a quick victory. People are already satisfied with their ~128-256k streaming or download solutions, and at those rates there's very little reason to choose Opus over AAC (or even MP3 if one uses the nearest VBR option). One could argue that being the best option on YouTube is a decent lane, I guess.

 

[bigshot]

I've never used Opus, but my impression is that it is basically the same thing as AAC. It's an MP4 codec isn't it?

 

[RRod]

I've never used Opus, but my impression is that it is basically the same thing as AAC. It's an MP4 codec isn't it?

I think it's registered for mp4 but I'm not sure if anything supports it in the container yet. It definitely uses different algorithms than AAC, so I guess they are only the same in the sense they are both lossy codecs… I would wager that your AAC examples would have different artifacts (or none at all) at the same Opus bitrate.

Edit: ffmpeg supports Opus in mp4 if you allow experimental settings

 

[spbkaizo]

the way it was explained to me, is that a lossy file will open the file, when it opens it decompresses, and in that decompress, there is a "loss" then it saves the file again after the loss.so each time you open thefile, you lose some of the quality, they may be the same "out the box" but overtime the lossy will degrade. from what i understand atleast.

Are you sure your friend wasn't referring to Vinyl?

 

[TheTrace]

Yeah I've never heard of that theory for lossy.

 

[stonesfan129]

That's not how lossy audio works. Lossy audio works by throwing away some of the original data. Different data is thrown away depending on which encoder and bitrate you use. This is how it reduces the file size. It doesn't throw away data every time you play the file.

 

[71 dB]

That's not how lossy audio works. Lossy audio works by throwing away some of the original data. Different data is thrown away depending on which encoder and bitrate you use. This is how it reduces the file size. It doesn't throw away data every time you play the file.

Playing a file is just reading the file, not saving it. If you open the file to a editor and save again, you might lose data, because the algorithm handless lossy data differently than the original data, but I not sure you lose data always. I think sometimes it's possible to lose nothing.

 

[stonesfan129]

Playing a file is just reading the file, not saving it. If you open the file to a editor and save again, you might lose data, because the algorithm handless lossy data differently than the original data, but I not sure you lose data always. I think sometimes it's possible to lose nothing.

If you save a lossy file as another lossy file, then yes you are removing data each time and it will slowly degrade the sound quality.

 

[bigshot]

If you save a lossy file as another lossy file, then yes you are removing data each time and it will slowly degrade the sound quality.

That isn't true. I took a CD and ripped it to AAC then to WAV then back to AAC ten times and there was no real degradation. Once you run a song through a codec, it removes what it's going to remove. If you run it through again, it just tries to remove the same thing again and it isn't there, so it pretty much passes it through. If you changed data rate or used a different codec, it would degrade, but not if you keep re-encoding it with the same codec and data rate.

 

[71 dB]

If you save a lossy file as another lossy file, then yes you are removing data each time and it will slowly degrade the sound quality.

The codec doesn't need to remove data because it fits to the given bitrate already. I believe the only reason why data would be lost is if the codec wants to encode the data differently than the original data, but for that to happen the lossy file must be very different so it perhaps can only happen at the lowest bitrates.