[Navyblue]

I am in the process of reripping my music to lossless. In the mean while, I wanted to keep a parallel library of lossy format, but am wondering which one.

OGG/Vorbis is out of the question for me since hardware compatibility is not fantastic, that leaves me with MP3 and AAC.

At 320 kbps, there doesn't seem to be any conclusive evidence demostrating that one format sounds better than the other with human ears. Would it mean that there is no reason to go AAC since DRM can't touch MP3 and hardware support for MP3 is unmatched?

AAC is designed to be superior and to replace MP3, does it look that that is going to happen even in the distant future? Does today's AAC have any theoretical advantage over MP3? There will certainly be more and more device that support AAC, but will there be any manufacturer brave enough to drop support for MP3?

If the answers to the above are "no", would it mean that LAME is the way to go for lossy format?

 

[mnhnhyouh]

From the listening tests at Hydrogen Audio (double blind abx testing) it seems there is no difference between AAC and LAME 3.97 at most bitrates.

If you have the whole library in FLAC you should have no problems converting it to whatever.

I personally use LAME because it is more widely supported.

It also seem that LAME V0 give the same quality as 320bps, but smaller filesizes.

h

 

[majkel]

Hydrogen Audio is indeed a fantastic source of aural comparisons.

Do me a favor - take a big choir recording and rip/recode it to: AAC top VBR quality, ogg Vorbis aoTuV/Lancer Q10, mp3 320kb/s LAME, and mp3 320kb/s Fraunhofer. Tell me what you hear.

To make it shorter - mp3 sucks in terms of resolution with many voice, no matter the bitrate is. AAC and ogg will perform much better, due to more efficient compression algorythm and higher allowable bitrate. Maybe on crappy mp3 players and ibuds all encoders sound the same, but use the iRiver E10 and some hi-enf Grado model, or another decent mp3 player and we can talk. And yes, ABX tests are wellcome which I performed many times actually. It's no big deal to discern the mp3 intrusions on any bitrate, the LAME makes it even easier than the FhG but it's no surprise the mp3 inventors did it better. The LAME alters tonality of everything strating from the bass.

 

[Navyblue]

Frankly, I've never considered or read about AAC until recently, since I am never an Apple user. Is Apple's encoder the go-to encoder for AAC? And the only way to use it is to install iTunes?

 

[spinneresque]

x2 re: an mp3 is an mp3 in the end.

In my experience once you have heard compression, you can never really go back to it. I have noticed that some albums that are exceptionally well-engineered, for example joni mitchell, norah jones, tend to create better mp3s. Some time ago I did a lot of comparing between mp3's and AAC's and higher bit rates. If you have to do lossy, to my ears 320kbps is the lowest you can go and while AAC's sound marginally better that regular itunes-encoded mp3's, lame-encoded files sound best but they are (for me at least) a bit more of a pain to make than the AAC's if you are using a mac.

That said, if I am really listening to music and have lossy files mixed in with lossless ones, say in a playlist, it just makes all my lossy files seem kind of 'wrong' and like a waste of space. If you have good headphones and equipment, the lossy files always have something missing, something you can hear. For a while I thought my carefully ripped high bit rate AAC's or lame-encoded mp3's were ok, but when I went back to them after some time they sounded like crap again. I only use lossy files for guilty pleasure immediate gratification type music.

I joked to my friend the other day that any 'real audiophile' should consider the prevalence of the mp3 in the market/industry to be a crime against humanity.

I was joking, but it's actually only kind of a half joke. I do think it's VERY sad, people are really missing out and maybe they will never realize what they are missing. Maybe we will never go back to 'whole' music, which is in my opinion the way it deserves to be heard.

Sorry I guess I responded to the topic but threw a little rant in there as well. This has been on my mind lately.

(please don't throw things at me)

 

[majkel]

No, you have Nero AAC great for the highest bitrate, and FAAC for something below - I like it more in lower bitrates than the Nero. BTW, Sony mp3 players read AAC as well. The aac and m4a files differ in the file format only, it's a different data container but the AAC stream is the same so you can convert them back and forth from one format to another without any loss of SQ.

 

[Navyblue]

Yes, the AAC/MP3 is meant for the Sony since it won't play lossless (apart from WAV).

The lossless (WMA lossless) would be for archival purpose, and the Zune too.

 

[krmathis]

So many questions...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Navyblue /img/forum/go_quote.gif Would it mean that there is no reason to go AAC since DRM can't touch MP3 and hardware support for MP3 is unmatched?

Self encoded AAC files are not DRM protected, so don't use that against it. MP3 is unmatched when it comes to hardware support though.

Quote:

AAC is designed to be superior and to replace MP3, does it look that that is going to happen even in the distant future?

AAC already have an edge on MP3 sound wise.
Since its based on newer code, and don't have to be backwards compatible for several decades as MP3.
It probably wont ever replace MP3 though. MP3 is far to common for that to happen..

Quote:

Does today's AAC have any theoretical advantage over MP3?

See above.

Quote:

There will certainly be more and more device that support AAC, but will there be any manufacturer brave enough to drop support for MP3?

Doubt it. At least not anytime soon..

Quote:

If the answers to the above are "no", would it mean that LAME is the way to go for lossy format?

Either MP3 or AAC. Either one are safe choices, as long as you have compatible hardware.