[=w=]

.OGG Vorbis, .flac, .WMA, or .Mp3?

 

[Oddball]

For what? They all have different strengths and weaknesses.

 

[=w=]

Umm...general listening basically.

As for the type of music...for me, it'd be bands such as Tool, Opeth, A Perfect Circle, etc. etc. Although, I do enjoy some Holst every now and then...cant beat The Planets.

 

[Gojira]

FLAC is the correct answer. Remember this is head-fi not hydrogenaudio. If we don't defend lossless who will? As far as lossy goes, MPC -insane is the best. You may never find this particular format on a portable player, but you didn't ask about that. As for the rest it depends on whether you are talking about a high bitrate (256+) or a low bitrate and on the type of music and your personal preferences.

 

[Edvard_Grieg]

As you're referring to the different formats for the Karma...

ogg: sounds better than mp3 at lower bitrates (can fit more), native gapless support, however it takes a hit in battery life, you'll see 10-11 hours of play time

flac: obviously the best sound as it is lossless, however you pay a price in the amount of space it takes up, if you don't have many albums this could work well, it will also hit the battery life and yield about 11-12 hours (yes this is higher than ogg because it requires less cpu decoding cycles, even though it requires more disk accesses)

wma: haven't played very much with it, but it is supposed to have similar characteristics as ogg in that it sounds better at lower bitrates, it doesn't suffer from a battery hit though and maintains the roughly 15 hours of battery life, however you will sell your soul to the microsoft devil in the process if that makes any difference to you.

mp3: the original portable format, maintains the high battery life, however it is not natively gapless, even though the karma does a very good job of mimicking gapless for it. You will find countless debates as to how mp3 sounds vs ogg etc and what encoder to use etc.

The main thing to do is look at your usage, if battery life isn't 'that' important go with ogg or flac as they are both open source and will sound superb, and base the decision on how much you are trying to store. If battery life is significantly important look at wma or mp3. One way or the other it is up to you and what your ears think sound best there is a tool called 'abx' [i think] that i believe allows you to compare different files and listen to them back and forth. So pick a track that has strong dynamics in it (quiet and loud passages) and a good frequency range, and rip it to different formats and make the decision yourself.

Also, i don't know your situation, but do not try and transcode any existing files you have to another format or bitrate. You will not 'gain' any sound that wasn't there to begin with, and as such, in those cases leave the files in those formats, and re-rip everything else.

 

[=w=]

Thanks Edvard, that was exactly what I was looking for...the damned Rio support actually reccomended me to use 64 kpbs mp3... I guess I'll reincode my .WMA files to .flac!

 

[Big D]

Quote:

Originally Posted by =w= Thanks Edvard, that was exactly what I was looking for...the damned Rio support actually reccomended me to use 64 kpbs mp3... I guess I'll reincode my .WMA files to .flac!

I hope you are going to use the original source (eg. CD) to encode the files to FLAC. If you use the wma file, unless it is loseless wma, the FLAC will be no better than the original lossy wma it was made from.

I would really recommend using some high quality mp3, wma and ogg files (>200-300 kbps) and really see if you can tell the difference. If space is no object with FLAC then stick with it, otherwise do some blind testing. I'd be surprised if you could tell the difference between q8 ogg (278kbps) and the FLAC of it. It would give you at least 3 times the storage space too.

 

[Jose Perez]

Check out this comparison HERE for some more info. I took their advice and A/B'ed my music which I had encoded dbPoweramp using the Lame codec vs. WMA9 VBR and there were NOTICEABLE differences. With WMA9 cymbal crashes actually sounded like the drummer slammed them, not like some background noise and the dynamics of the music was still there and not fused together especially during the parts of songs where there are many different instruments going at once (or when listening to a symphony). I had to agree with thier findings that with WMA9 I just got more music out of my music (and at only 100-140MB per album I still save storage space on my laptop).

So I reripped all my CD's to WMA9 VBR at 98% quality and just recode them to 75% on-the-fly when I send them to my Rio Nitrus because it can't playback bitrates >320kbps. My $.02

 

[Stephonovich]

As others have said, different codecs for different applications. I have the HD space, so I rip all my CDs to FLAC, if nothing else, for archival purposes. I'm going to be using either LAME 3.90.3 (unless .4 comes out) --aps or --ape once I get a portable DAP, since I'll likely be getting the NJB3, which doesn't support Ogg. Ogg is nicer, IMO, but sucks more battery life. I have absolutely no use for WMA, personally. It offers nothing you can't get with MP3 or Ogg.

Finally, MPC kicks arse. Period

(-:Stephonovich

 

[kunwar]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephonovich Finally, MPC kicks arse. Period (-:Stephonovich

Heary Heary
I fully support that statement.
As far as the mentioned formats go, Ogg for Good quality with more songs and Flac for CD quality with less songs.
Think About It.

and Congrats Stepano you just made the right choice,, the NJB3 is a superb player which definitely gives some of the better PCDP's a run for their money
Cheers
Kunwar

 

[Stephonovich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kunwar and Congrats Stepano you just made the right choice,, the NJB3 is a superb player which definitely gives some of the better PCDP's a run for their money

Yeah, I was looking at DAPs, and originally was thinking I was going to get either a Karma or an iHP-1xx, but then I realized I'd never use half the stuff they had, and they were much more expensive. I can get a 40GB NJB3 with a Creative warranty on eBay for under $200. Or used for around $100.

Besides, I've heard too many good things about it's sound quality. It seems Creative did something right

(-:Stephonovich

 

[austonia]

just about every major lossy codec can sound near-transparent, at the right bitrate. some take more information (higher bitrates) that others to do the same job. i still use MP3 despite its inefficiency because its ultra-compatable. all portable players support it now and for the forseeable future. if i just needed music for use on my PC, i hear MPC is probably the best. but I'd actually go with oGG since portable devices are starting to use this codec now. The compromise would be to rip your CDs to MP3 (see www.bestmp3guide.com) for now & OGG for the future.

 

[Damage]

Quote:

Originally Posted by =w= .OGG Vorbis, .flac, .WMA, or .Mp3?

OGG Vorbis
-Pros:
One of the better lossless codecs, especially at lower bitrate ranges
Open Source: think you can do better, go for it. And someone did.

Great software support: A lot of software programs has OGG playback, such as Winamp, Foobar2000, etc.

-Cons:
Few Hardware supports OGG (iRiver and Rio Karma's are the only major players).

FLAC (and other lossless Codecs)
-Pros:
Lossless, that means you can transcode this to whatever format you like without loss of quality.

-Cons:
Lossless, so it takes up more room (you see about 40%-55% savings). If hard drive space is at a premium, think long and hard about this.
Only Rio Karma's have the ability to play FLAC natively.

WMA 9
-Pros:
High hardware compatibility, if it plays MP3s, chances are it does WMAs too.
Lossless mode. Yep, WMA does lossless, if you so choose.

-Cons:
Sounds rather bad vs. OGG at lower bitrates (< 128kbps).
Does not play on couple of major hardware players, including iPOD. If you have an iPod, WMA should be automatically disqualified.

-wildcard:
Microsoft (depending on your POV)

MP3
-Pros
Ubiquitous. All major DAPs plays MP3s (except that oddball Minidisc and HiMD formats.

). Ah hell, even COBY's got a MP3 player.
Flexible Codec solution. You can go fast and crummy with BladeMP3 (God forbid!) or high quality with LAME and/or Fraunhauss and feffer (Fraunhofer).

-Cons
We should know this by now, bad performance and bitrates less than 128kbps.
VBR support with hardware players are still flaky as hell (not surprising, since MP3s are CBR first and foremost).

a few more for chuckles:

MPC:
Pros
-Very good performance, on par or exceeding OGG
-Open source, see OGG

Cons
-No hardware support. Zero, nada, zilch. Dunno if it ever will, but it looks likely...

AAC:
Pros
-Good sound quality with lower bitrates (~128kbps).

Cons
-iPods are the only player that plays AAC natively.
-DRM, though it has been bypassed for iTune AAC files recently.

ATRAC3/plus
Pros:
-Decent sound quality, especially with lower bitrates (vs. MP3s aroudn 64kbps). Highly Debatable, liable to start flamewars or other bad forum thingies. Approach this topic with caution

Cons:
-Draconic DRM
-Limited to Minidisc Players and Sony Digital players currently.

Did I miss anything?

 

[sanvara]

I go for the battery life and compatibility and stick with mp3. I tried OGG, but it drains battery life at a very high rate vs mp3 = BIG CON. At that price it's just not worth it vs a lame encoded vbr MP3. I also have 1500 CD's and I want to fit as many as I can on my player at a reasonable bitrate. FLAC just takes up too much space.

 

[pic9809]

what about AAC?