Best music format


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I'm still fairly impressed with MP3, I've tried alot of formats and MP3 seems to be the best way for me to encode music. Problem with me is I can't use anything else anyways, everything I use (plus some programs I bought) only utilizes MP3 and WMA, and I hate WMA (not for the quality, it ain't that bad, it's the hassle of using it)

Meh, personal preference, everyone has their favorite format.

Cheers

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I'm still fairly impressed with MP3, I've tried alot of formats and MP3 seems to be the best way for me to encode music. Problem with me is I can't use anything else anyways, everything I use (plus some programs I bought) only utilizes MP3 and WMA, and I hate WMA (not for the quality, it ain't that bad, it's the hassle of using it)

Meh, personal preference, everyone has their favorite format.

Cheers

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What hassle? It works just the same as MP3 for me. :D

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WMP does NOT encode WMAPro NOR do portable devices support it.

AAC is NOT a proprietary codec.

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Funny, I just copied a WMA 9.1 Professional encoded audio file to my cell phone and it played fine (Y)

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meh, WMA seems to want to play slower and with more resources too, it's not just a key protected file hassle. Any WMA file wants to hog my system, moreso than a video file. Now that's wack.

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If you want lossless, FLAC is the way to go. I believe it can acheive a 1:4 compression ratio, which is pretty good for lossless.

As far as lossy goes....

-MP3 VBR. Variable bitrate means that if you have a soft piano intro to a rock song, the piano intro requires less bitrate to sound good than a full rock band playing, so it lowers the bitrate for that part, then raises it for the full band. This is effective is saving harddrive space while retaining quality. If you think you're going to get a portable music player anytime soon, this is a good route. MP3 is also good because anyone that has a player installed on their comp can play MP3, it's good for sharing with friends etc, compatible with the most programs.

-OGG. Personally, I feel this is the best sounding lossy format. It's prettymuch a tie between this and MPC with me. I go with OGG because my iRiver HP120 supports it and I already have a good chunk of my files in OGG anyways. In my experience, it beats MP3 in sound quality by far. I'm the type of person that when I hear a 128k mp3 played, I can tell without looking at the bitrate. I don't even keep files of that low quality on my computer for the most part. OGG, from my experiences seems to be about the same, or slighter larger in file size than MP3. For a 4mb MP3, an OGG might be 4.12 mb, so it's not a big difference (This being a comparison between 192 VBR MP3 and OGG).

So, as far as lossless goes, MP3 is good for it's cross compatability, and OGG trumps MP3 in sound quality. Choose which is more important to you and go with that.

EDIT: DJ...how the hell can you stand an 80k mp3? Do you use speakers fromt he dollar store or something? :huh:

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  • 2 weeks later...

Personally I go the .AAC way. I have 2x 250GB hard drives, Creative Soundblaster Audigy 2ZA Platinum Pro with 7.1 surround speakers and AACs sound perfect!. I use iTunes aswell, I much prefer it over WMP. That's another reason why I use AAC. Also iTunes lets you choose the channels, Kbps and sample rate. I personally use 320Kbps at 48Khz.

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Well, for cross platform compatibility MP3 or AAC would be best, OGG on OS X is niggly, as is WMA. With iTunes on Windows and OS X AAC would be a nice choice. As for WMA better than MP3 and AAC, this would suggest otherwise:

http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/results.html

http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/plot18z.png

One of many blind listening tests performed where WMA was quite low down.

If space isn't an issue then AAC at a reasonably high bitrate would be really good. If compatibility could be an issue (say you wanted to get a portable music player in the future) then perhaps something like MP3 at 192 VBR is still a good choice.

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Many people give this link often not realizing that the comparison is pretty old and predates WM9. Windows Media 9 as it turns out is better than apple's AAC & mp3. I've experienced it myself (use pc &mac) no idea about ogg though.

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I think WMA is too much of a closed/restricted format to gain my support, I'ld rather something with no DRM attachments. [...]

Sounds good, If I rip with AAC, I assume I would be able to encode down to MP3 if I did get a portable music player.

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Neither WMA or AAC need to be DRM-protected, but they both support it.

If WMA is too closed for you because it supports DRM (Janus), I don't see how AAC is any better (Fairplay).

I personally still use mp3 (192/256k) since it's compatible with the largest number of devices and platforms, and the quality/size ratio is just fine.

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