[scottder]

Has anyone tried sitting down and seing which of these is the best "compressed" format? Perhaps tinkering with Variable Bit Rates and higher static bit rates to get better quality sound.

Scott

 

[kin3tix]

interesting post and topic to bring up. i would try, but my soundcard is craptastic. i think my friend on the second floor has one of those really nice terratec soundcards, might go bug him for this test.

 

[scottder]

I was also going to try the outer limits of MP3 and WMA on my Rio Volt, just for kicks. The question is what are fair bit rates to try on various formats, since they all come at sound from different angles.

 

[JaZZ]

I'm using MP3 exclusively for my portable MP3 Jukebox and feel no need to try other compressed formats, since I usually go 256 and 320 kb/s. When I listen from my Computer HD via SB Live Platinum HP out, which is similar in quality to my Archos Jukebox' HP out (= quite good), I can't hear any clear difference between 320 kb/s and wave and only a marginal one with certain critical recordings between 256 kb/s and wave. So what!

But that's not what I actually want to say. From what I've read – especially in a broad comparison in the German c't magazine – MP3 is only beaten when it comes to higher compression below 128 kb/s. Then e.g. OGG Vorbis seems to have its advantages. While MP3 Pro even seems to be worse than MP3 at 192 kb/s and above...

 

[scottder]

Well I have heard that WMA at lower bit rates sounds better than MP3 at slightly higher, thinking in terms of space on portables.

I just downloaded and tried out Monkey Audio, really nice.

Scott

 

[scottder]

BTW Here is another thread about various formats.

 

[Watchdog]

I have not done a comparison myself, but I have read the following:

many people think Ogg is superior to mp3 in terms of sound quality. If I recall correctly people were saying that Ogg using the same amount of data as a 128 kbps file sounded like a 192 kbps mp3

I also read that at low bit rates, below 100 kbps that WMA sounds better than mp3

I haven't experienced this myself but thought I'd pass on what I'd read.

 

[mikeg]

This thread is a real coincidence because I just used MP3 and WMA for the first time. Using a Latin jazz CD, I compared MP3 at 256 kbps and WMA at 128 kbps, with the original CD. I used Roxio's Easy CD Creator version 5 Platinum software to convert several tracks from the CD to the compressed formats. I used a SlimX as my CDP, and listened with a Grado SR325 headphone connected directly to the SlimX. By comparing the same jazz bands using MP3, WMA, and the original CD, it was clear that the WMA version sounded much better than the MP3 version, but also that the original CD version was still noticeabley better than the WMA version. As a result of this test, I will reject use of compression, and listen only to regular CDs and SACDs.

 

[scottder]

While ther is no doubt an uncompressed fornat is best, I was thinking of looking which has the least amount of noticable loss for portable use.

Scott

 

[tktran]

Really, for portable use 64Kbit Ogg or WMA 8 seems ok.

Gone are the days of weird and obvious artifacts like ringing/flanging.

To be honest when you've got portable phones on and in a noisy environment the difference between these and uncompressed PCM is hardly noticeable.

 

[mikeg]

Etymotic ER-4P/S headphones will show up the difference, and the loss may not satisfy.

 

[scottder]

Could also get into "lossless" compression, like Monkey Audio

 

[Ebonyks]

MP3 is far too general to say offhand if it's good or bad. LAME mp3 compression is great, IMO, slightly better than OGG. WMA is better than mp3 at 64 kps, but above that, it's not a great format.

 

[mikeg]

Quote:

Originally posted by scottder Could also get into "lossless" compression, like Monkey Audio

But, will it play on SlimX?

 

[mtillman]

SlimX plays mp3 and wma only.