[fguihen]

ok, i have all my music in mp3 format, at mostly 160 - 192kbps which sounds fine to me as i dont have expensive headphones that will show up any loss of quality. i hear everyone talking about lossless formats. what i want to know is this, if you encode a song in mp3 at the highest bit rate possible, and loose no data, is that not lossless? what makes something like ogg vorbis different from mp3? im not trying to promote or denounce any format here, i simply want to know, in case i might be just as well encoding in lossless rather than mp3?

 

[nspindel]

even at the highest bitrate, mp3 is not lossless.

take a wav file, convert it to mp3 at the highest bit rate possible. then convert the mp3 back to a wav. the wav you started with and the wav you end up with will be different. do that 20 times, the wav will sound like cr@p. do it as many times as you want with lossless.

with lossless, you get back to the same wav, sort of like winzip except for audio files.

 

[jonnywolfet]

any lossy format like ogg, will have shortcomings on the original file, even converting from a wav (original cd file) to a supposidly lossless file format will lose quality because of the digital convering process responsible. its worth encoding a familiar and loved song to as ,any file formats/bitrates you have to your disposal, to see which one is the best (discernable) compromise.

 

[fguihen]

what in your opinion is the best close to lossless format, that offers good compression also?

 

[nspindel]

Well, the whole point of a lossless codec is that you can compress without losing anything. You just can't compress as much as with a lossy format.

I use flac, I love it. Files come out to be about 50-60% the size of a wav, and it's taggable. Plenty of choice of players, too.

 

[rextrade]

At 224 kbps AAC you probably won't notice a difference from lossless, but you should try it yourself.

 

[anyatinagan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nspindel Well, the whole point of a lossless codec is that you can compress without losing anything. You just can't compress as much as with a lossy format.

Exactly. I personally use lossless (wavpack, ape) to archive or backup my discs in case something bad happens to them at least i can reproduce a copy just by burning onto a disc. Generally i can fit 2 full albums in 1 CD-R. I will move up to using DVD-Rs in the future though.

Having lossless backups makes it easier to convert to multiple lossy formats because it elminates having to rip your audiodiscs all over again. You may wanna check out hydrogenaudio.org, it's been talked about so many times over there.

It's hard to talk about the level of compression that one should use when converting songs into a lossy format, but trust your ears, if you can't tell the difference between a lossless file and an mp3 file encoded in 160kbps then stick to that setting. If your're not satisfied, then bump the settings up a notch. Try different formats. I prefer mp3s because to me it's the most portable format.