[hogger129]

Hi guys,
 
I am deciding on a format to use on my portable devices which can support both formats so compatibility is not an issue here.
 
Which would be the best balance as far as size and sound quality?  I am leaning towards Vorbis.  I am pretty sure these are the two formats I want to decide between.
 
 
What would be your pick here?  Thanks.

 

[jfaaz]

You should stay lossless.  Use FLAC, APE, or ALAC.  APE can reduce the file size the most.  Some of my FLAC files are almost the same size as MP3 320; however, my lossless files tend to sound less harsh than MP3 or ACC.

 

[hogger129]

  You should stay lossless.  Use FLAC, APE, or ALAC.  APE can reduce the file size the most.  Some of my FLAC files are almost the same size as MP3 320; however, my lossless files tend to sound less harsh than MP3 or ACC.

 
Right.  All my CD backups are lossless.  This is for use on my portable music player.  I have a lot of music but only 72GB (64 + 8) to work with on my portable.

 

[adisib]

Which AAC are you considering using? I hear Nero AAC is currently the best, though I still prefer Vorbis to all AAC myself, though both are outstanding. Vorbis seems to retain bass better in my opinion. And of course the fact that Vorbis is open-source and patent-free is always a plus in my opinion.

 

[A_Man_Eating_Duck]

Since you have all your sources in lossless why not try Vorbis out for a week, then try AAC out for a week on your portable? Let your ears decide?

If you decide to go down the AAC road use the Apple AAC Encoder (using QAAC) or use the fhgaacenc with the winamp FHG encoder, both are very good. Nero hasn't been updated in a very long time and certainly is not the "best" anymore. Nero has already removed links to it from their website.

 

[jfaaz]

XLD is a great encoder for OGG Vorbis, FLAC, and just about any other codec.

 

[hogger129]

  Which AAC are you considering using? I hear Nero AAC is currently the best, though I still prefer Vorbis to all AAC myself, though both are outstanding. Vorbis seems to retain bass better in my opinion. And of course the fact that Vorbis is open-source and patent-free is always a plus in my opinion.
 

 
If I use AAC, I will be using the FDK AAC encoder built into dBpoweramp - reason being is because I don't use iTunes for anything (got rid of it after I sold my iPod).  The Ogg Vorbis encoder I am using is aoTuV SSE3 that is built into dBpoweramp.  There are two others but I heard that this one is the most up-to-date.
 
I played the Vorbis encodes and the FLAC source and tried to scrutinize the Vorbis version a lot, and I was surprised at how good Vorbis sounded @ 192kbps VBR compared to the original FLAC I encoded from.  
 
As others suggested, I will do a few albums with both encoders, listen to them on different systems, and see which one I prefer.
 
Lastly, are there any technical reasons to use one over the other? 

 

[adisib]

Thanks for the info on AAC formats. Tried QAAC as opposed to Nero, and did find it slightly better. Vorbis still barely tops it at high bit rates for me though, and just looking at it in Audacity before posting this has Vorbis giving much less clipping (QAAC is giving me even more clipping than mp3).
 
Not sure of any technical differences besides compatibility and encode time. Vorbis is giving me a faster encode time (and much faster decode time) if I remember right, and is natively compatible with things like Audacity where AAC compatability requires FFMPEG due to its free and open source nature, though there are still some cases where things (e.g. Spotify for local files, which you should never use it for) have AAC compatibility and not Vorbis because they want to follow Apple. AAC and MP3 encoders also often cannot be distributed with free softwares because of patents when OGG Vorbis can because of its free and open-source nature, so has better compatibility in general, if it matters.

 

[eahm]

  I hear Nero AAC is currently the best

 
Tested one year before you said this: http://listening-tests.hydrogenaud.io/igorc/aac-96-a/results.html

 

[hogger129]

Just wanted to close out this old thread.  I decided to go with AAC just because it was more compatible, but tbh I could not hear a difference between the two.