The Audio Format Discussion Thread.

[beetroot bertie]

Whatever iTunes does by default - in my case it's an AAC encoded .m4a file at 128 kbps. It suits my needs.

[Napalm-Death]

I believe it is.

I think these are the only non-compatible ipods.

iPod shuffle
iPod touch
iPod classic (6G)
iPod nano (2G/3G)

Hmm, well, I guess mine is the 6G because it's definitely a classic. Thanks for correcting me.

[kcajblue]

i use mp3 because its what everyone uses these days.
and because i really dont like having huge audio files when they arent even that long.
also because i really dont care about the difference in quality, so thats why mp3 is good enough for me.

[quzar]

I use flac on everything. I don't know where a previous poster got that a 5.5g was not hackable. I hacked mine the day I got it, christmas 06.

Also, iPods CAN play the lossless format ALAC, which is inter-convertable with FLAC (as they are both Lossless Audio Codecs, hence they contain the identical information).

[jamotto]

Depends on the "value" of the music.

Jimi Hendrix Philadelphia bootleg, flac

Most music released in the last decade, mp3

[Triv1um]

Isn't ALAC the apple lossless format?

I've heard its exactly the same too, so whats the point of all the lossless formats? Was FLAC the original?

Isnt WAVE, OGG vorbis and that monkey audio lossless to?

All of these are confusing me, I will just stick to FLAC. :P

[quzar]

Isn't ALAC the apple lossless format?

I've heard its exactly the same too, so whats the point of all the lossless formats? Was FLAC the original?

Isnt WAVE, OGG vorbis and that monkey audio lossless to?

All of these are confusing me, I will just stick to FLAC. :P

ALAC = Apple Lossless Audio Codec

The different lossless formats use different tagging systems, compression schemes, &c. ALAC is proprietary. The point of a lossless compression format is to store audio data in a compressed way without modifying it. FLAC was not the original (I believe that shorten was the first mainstream-ish one) but it is the most popular fully open one, hence it is supported by more players.

WAVE is just uncompressed audio data. It is by nature lossless, as it is source data. OGG vorbis is not lossless. It is a more open alternative to mp3. There is however, interoperability with OGG and FLAC, so you can have a FLAC compressed stream inside of an OGG container (OGG FLAC as opposed to OGG vorbis). Monkey's audio (.ape), OptimFrog(.ofr), Lossless Audio (.la), shorten (.shn), &c. are all lossless audio codecs.

This site: http://web.inter.nl.net/users/hvdh/l...s/lossless.htm is a good reference for the different variations between formats (although it is outdated now). Basically, they're like the diffrences between zip, bz2, gz, lzh, rar, 7z, &c. Each has different levels of compression (within the codec) which will give you smaller output files but will take longer to compress and decompress. AFAIK the absolute best for size is la, which can get compression rates comparable to 320CBR or v0 mp3s. The downside is that it's got low compatability and really high processor usage.

Basically the two most commonly used by computer listeners are flac and alac (depending on need, as alac is fully compatible with iTunes, many use it). There is though, also specific usage for other formats such as shorten, which is used by professional audio data recording and wavepack, which can be stored as lossless or lossy but is useful for storing extremely high quality floating point audio(tricky to store losslessly due to differing standards in floating point encoding) and for multichannel audio.

[Mark30001]

Usually my ears can tell the difference between a 128kbps MP3 recording and a 320kbps MP3 recording.

The other day I decided to try out some 24bit/96kHz FLAC samples for the first time (a couple from Led Zeppelin). I compared them with the 320kbps MP3 versions and honestly my ears couldn't tell the difference (maybe it was just that particular album, who knows).

I'm an audiophile myself and I'm all for achieving the highest audio quality possible, but until someone could send me 2 samples of a song (both FLAC & 320kbps MP3) with notable or even minor differences, I will continue to think that FLAC is a waste of hard drive space.

BTW, my sound card supports up to 192kHz samples.

[Napalm-Death]

I use flac on everything. I don't know where a previous poster got that a 5.5g was not hackable. I hacked mine the day I got it, christmas 06.

I was under the impression that the iPod Classic was still a 5.5G, not a 6G iPod; that's why I said it wasn't hackable. =/

[quzar]

Usually my ears can tell the difference between a 128kbps MP3 recording and a 320kbps MP3 recording.

The other day I decided to try out some 24bit/96kHz FLAC samples for the first time (a couple from Led Zeppelin). I compared them with the 320kbps MP3 versions and honestly my ears couldn't tell the difference (maybe it was just that particular album, who knows).

I'm an audiophile myself and I'm all for achieving the highest audio quality possible, but until someone could send me 2 samples of a song (both FLAC & 320kbps MP3) with notable or even minor differences, I will continue to think that FLAC is a waste of hard drive space.

BTW, my sound card supports up to 192kHz samples.

Well, a large component of it is also the equipment. Many a discussion I've seen where people say they can't tell the difference and their test setup is an iPod with iPod official earbuds. Of course you won't hear a difference. On a PC with a dedicated (non-creative) soundcard, floorstanding speakers or high-end headphones, and foobar2000 there's good chance you will.

I've largely taken the simple stance that I don't care if I can in actuality hear the difference because I feel like it's better quality. If you feel better taking a placebo, why not keep taking it?