I've compared three lossless audio formats: Wave, FLAC, and Monkey's
Audio. Alongside those are lossy formats MP3 (using the LAME codec) and
Ogg Vorbis.

http://www.bobulous.net/misc/audioFormats.html

The aim was to decide which format made the most sense when ripping your
CD collection (or tape, vinyl, etc) to digital audio files.

Sorry if you think this posting does not fit this usenet group.
--
Bob

Robert Downes <nospamplease@see.my.signature.con> wrote in
news:4086e337$0$95316$65c69314@mercury.nildram.net :


Why does it matter? I can't detect ANY difference between .WAV files and
..MP3s ripped at 320 kbps. I haven't ever heard anybody else say they could,
either. I suppose there might be some people who can.

I also can detect almost no difference between a 320 kbps .MP3 and a VBR
..MP3 with the high limit at 224 kbps. The resulting file sounds great to
me, and is entirely acceptable. I might add that I use a high end stereo
amplifier and high end floor model speakers, not computer speakers.

My sound card might be a limiting factor, but I don't think so. The fact is
that the music I listen to now sounds far better than anything I had
previously, be it cassette tape or vinyl. It's just fine for me.

I tried Monkey's Audio and saw no reason to continue. I could hear no
difference.

The one huge factor with .MP3s is support. It's a universal format, has
been for years, and will continue to be for years to come. So far, nothing
has unseated it, and formats like .OGG and .APE that are highly touted
continue to be just that - touted.

I strongly suspect that many who want to discredit .MP3 as "obsolete" and
tout supposedly "better" new formats resent the fact that .MP3s are
universal, cuts into profits that they might otherwise make from their
their touted format, and that DRM cannot be implemented in .MP3s in the
current format.

Now, that last phrase is interesting, isn't it?

On Wed, 21 Apr 2004 22:10:13 +0100, Robert Downes wrote:

It's a perfect fit, and well time for me, as I'm considering the same
lossless re-ripping process when I've chosen a suitable USB2 external disk.

IMHO, comments to the effect that high compression rates are good enough
miss the point; it may well be that newer codecs that provide better
quality combined with reduced filesize *and* lower processing costs for
playback become available. It may also be true that only access to the
lossless format allows these codecs to do their stuff. In other words the
codec may be a great deal less forgiving than your ears when it comes to
source data.

I think Roberts train of thought is that the MP3 format is a licensed format. Everyone who
developes an encoder/decoder must pay a license fee to use the technology. With that said,
it is likely that the MP3 format will be around many years but what if some other technology
comes out that offers even higher compression rates & quality and replaces the MP3
technology. In time, current manufacturers will stop making the MP3 players in favor of the
newer technology. Where does that leave people with their existing MP3 collection?

Robert's thinking is that if a user really has gobs of disk space, a user can archive his
music collection in a lossless compression format so that he/she can avoid the re-ripping
process later in preparation to use the new technology compressed format. Nice idea in theory.

What he fails to realize is the definition of a "gob". If I were to archive my collection
in a lossless format, my "gob" would easily be in far excess of a half terabyte of storage!
In my situation, that would not be practicle.

Your statement about DRM for MP3 format is false. The license owner of MP3 has announce
that they are working on such a revision of the MP3 format that includes some sort of DRM.
It may now be available but I haven't heard of anyone jumping on that bandwagon yet.

The OGG format is opensource so anyone is free to develope products based upon that format.
It is already getting some traction in the PC music world.

donutbandit wrote:

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 13:53:39 +0100, Robert Downes wrote:

I've just read that as well. Good article, except that I couldn't see the
point of using Raw Wav, when FLAC is lossless and can preserve tags,

Spot on. And even if one of the lossy format "sounds" indistinguishable
subjectively, this is a very different thing to presenting suitable
information to a codec. Lossless encoding is excellent insurance.

seani wrote:

That was greatly the point, yes. (Well, greatly the point that Gordon
Laing made in Personal Computer World magazine, and I stole to make a
page about.)

Simply: having a lossless archive, if you can fit it onto a hard drive,
is preferred, even if you can't hear a difference, because you can rest
assured that all the information in the music is found in the file.

It is entirely possible to simply keep MP3s for the next few years, then
mass-process them into the next major file format but, with me not being
a codec programmer, I don't know whether that would introduce a
significant reduction in quality. My guess is that, converting from one
lossy format to another lossy format to another lossy format... will
eventually leave you with inferior-sounding audio.

Anyway, I was not trying to tell people with an MP3 collection that they
are going to burn in the fires of Hell. Just that, if a lossless archive
is something that appeals, it is becoming possible, and it's worth
trying some of the lossless formats to see if any suit your needs.

I happen to like the FLAC format, which is open source (and does not
support DRM according to the chief developer), and already has been
taken up by some hardware players, and many software players. Others are
very fond of Monkey's Audio, though, but that seems to have faded a
little in development terms.
--
Bob
London, UK
echo Mail fefsensmrrjyaheeoceoq\! | tr "jefroq\!" "@obe.uk"

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 04:34:17 +0000, Paul wrote:

That hasn't stopped the Open-Source LAME MP3 people. Same with Open-Source
DVD playback applications like VideoLanClient.

Exactly where they are now. I bet most of these new players will
still support the MP3 format. I certainly wounldn't buy a player if it
didn't play MP3, as I've got over 2,500 MP3s in my collection.

There's no benefit for me to re-encode to a lossless format

DRM sucks.

It's just a pitty that certain manufacturers of *flash* players can't get
their act together for Ogg-Vorbis support.

--
Michael Turner
Email (ROT13)
zvxr.gheare1963@ivetva.arg

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 04:34:17 +0000, Paul wrote:

There's even an Open-Source project underway to got Apple's iPod to play
Ogg-Vorbis together with other formats. By changing the iPod's 'firmware'
over to Linux.

http://ipodlinux.sourceforge.net/

The best thing about this is you can keep your existing
iPod 'firmware' still installed. You duel-boot it, no flashing is needed.

This could be a rather interesting development for hipster iPod
slingers who may want to play Ogg-Vorbis files. ;-)

--
Michael Turner
Email (ROT13)
zvxr.gheare1963@ivetva.arg

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 14:03:03 +0200, seani wrote:

He simply used wav as a point of reference for making comparisons to the
other formats.

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 00:07:11 +0000, donutbandit wrote:

This isn't applicable to FLAC. The FLAC format is in the public
domain, no one makes a profit from the actual FLAC format.

On Sat, 24 Apr 2004 03:54:16 +0000, nick wrote:

Ah, ISTR that he ended up deciding to use WAV as his storage format of
choice. I'll have another look.

On Sat, 24 Apr 2004 14:27:19 +0100, Robert Downes wrote:

Ha, now my head hurts

Yes, you're right. I was referring to the original PCW article, rather
than your value added version

seani wrote:
I think you two may be talking about different articles.

I think seani was referring to the article in PCW, and I think that nick
thinks seani is talking about my page.

Am I right?
--
Bob
London, UK
echo Mail fefsensmrrjyaheeoceoq\! | tr "jefroq\!" "@obe.uk"

Because of the fact that your 320kbps version is still not identical to
the original. When you go to encode those in some other format, you'll
experience generation loss, which can cause very noticeable variations
in only two or three generations.

If you know for certain that you will _never_ want to migrate your
collection to another format (lossy or no), then you have a good point.
But if you're open to the idea that someday, another format might
become the new "universal standard," you might want to keep an exact
copy available for the conversion.


I can, given a high enough quality playback system and a good listening
space.


Are you a sound engineer? Perhaps your ears are the limitting factor.
Critical listening is a skill that requires practice to develop.


..flac and .ogg are open-source formats. There is absolutely no way
anybody can sneak any type of DRM into them without the rest of the
world knowing what's up.

..mp3 is a proprietary standard. Perhaps you're familiar with the .gif
and .jpeg lawsuits... when a single, private organization controls the
format, its future is never ensured.

- Eric

--
~
<http://www.dilvie.com/>

Robert Downes wrote:

Your guess is right on the money, but in this case, eventually means two
or three generations before the audio quality is obviously degraded.

- Eric

--
~
<http://www.dilvie.com/>

I just like to play with music, and wav files are so tediously large, nice
to play with not much use for anything else. My ears hear about 30% less
than they did when I first started listening to music, so I reckon even if
the sound from a compressed file was just as perfect as a wav, I'd never
hear it! And when the files I do have finally get corrupted enough to make
me want to re-rip, that's what I'll do. :-)

M
dilvie <dilvie@dilvie.remove-this-to-reply.com> wrote in message
news:nVfmc.37050$0H1.3280078@attbi_s54...