What's the best digital audio format?

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Taking into account quality and compression?

LPCM is the hands down the best, but only becasue it's not compressed.

For compressed formats, MP3 is my favorite, but the bitrate needs to be 160K/sec or higher becasue below that, there are quality issues with complex and high frequency sounds.

I'll echo the preference for .mp3, although I have never had any sound quality-related problems (other than just plain bad files to begin with) with everything in my iPod being at 128 kbs. It is approximately CD-quality and, IMHO, has the best balance of sound quality vs. file size. I also like the fact that I can edit .mp3 files at will (right now I am busy chopping dead air off of the files in my .mp3 collection) and that they are not caked with artificial restrictions on whatever else I might want to do with them.

Mike

OGG.

I prefer mp3 also, purely for the size. I tend to rip at 192k/sec minimum, variable bit rate, which gives good sound quality without the file size being too large. Ogg vorbis is a good quality lossy format, but is roughly twice the size of an equivalent mp3. I haven't come across LPCM - not that I have the disc space for uncompressed music files - but I have tried FLAC and was frankly unimpressed.

Hands down the worst has to be WMA both for digital licensing hassles and piss poor sound quality - the trade off in file size really isn't worth it.

LPCM is what *.wav files are.

As for WMA, it sounds all right to me... But with DRM issues I can't play even half of the files I bought legitimately offline, and the I haven't been able to get any help on it either.

Oh... I knew that, honest... and yep, is best quality for obvious reasons but massive...

As for WMA, personal preference perhaps - they always sound a bit tinny and 'pixellated' to me. And DRM is evil...

I agree. Definitely superior to MP3 and without the encryption DRM crap that WMA has. However, if we were to be talking about what was the best lossless audio format I'd have to go with FLAC.

How were you unimpressed with FLAC? It is a lossless format which means it doesn't lose any quality. It is a large format, I will grant you that, but it is better than a raw WAV.

I dunno, it might be my crappy CD drive but it seemed a little 'crispy'. Would try again if I used much uncompressed audio, as it is half the size of WAV.

What did you use to encode it ? Oggdrop encodes 96kb/s OGGs that sound better than any 192kb/s MP3s I've ever heard, plus it's without any licensing or DRM nonsense.


Agreed. Some supposedly "Hi-fi" WMAs sound like they were recorded in a public bathroom.

...while it's being used.

Er, they came that way...

Will have to test out a couple of converters/rippers then - the OGG files I had were all around 320k/sec. Oggdrop looks pretty cool - I don't see a Linux version on the website though.

Agreed, I'm listening to a HI-FI DRM WMA file right now encoded at 128k through a good pair of headphones attached to a good stereo amplifier. It does indeed have a rather tinny sound to it when I listen closely to it.

Which brings me to an after thought I had on DRM, macrovision protection of CD's and other schemes being used to protect digital content from being copied.

In the case of my DRM files, I don't need to hack them to get at the content, all I have to do is lug out my dad's reel to reel HI-FI tape deck, hook it up to my computer. record on to that, turn around and record the tape back into my computer.

It won't be the "perfect digital copy" RIAA is so adament about stopping, but it will sound pretty close to it, enough that average person won't notice the difference.

RIAA is waisting their time and money trying to come up with ways to stop people from duplicating music on their computers, as long as their is a way to listen to it, their is a way to copy it.

For MP3, it all depends what you use to create the MP3.

I use Adobe Audition and Magix Audio Cleaning Lab

In Adobe Audition, I use 192KBPS for the highest priority (songs I like a LOT of listen to a lot. Or for production)

For music that is a lower priority, I use 112KBPS. Audition does a GREAT job in encoding 112KBPS MP3s. Little if any digital noise. The only difference I notice between 112 and 192 in Audition's encoding is that 112 is a tad bit quieter.


Audio Cleaning Lab is a different story. I do not recommend encoding anywhere lower then 192 otherwise you'll be full of digital noise and junk. Back before I got Audition about 2 years ago I was loading in 320KBPS in Audio Cleaning lab which made the files about 9MB each.

Your average Adobe Audition 112KBPS MP3 is about 2MB each. Great size, decent quality.


Radio stations usually use some sort of PCM format because apparently MP3 doesn't sound all that good when being fed through a processer.

WAUH-102.3 Wautoma, WI uses some type of compressed PCM (WAV) format making each of the files about 15MB. Others probably do as well.

I like WMA's quality when using it in ACL but WMA has major compatibility issues.

Having listen to WAUH during the semester in Oshkosh, I can say that WAUH sounds pretty good (when I could get clear reception).

If I had to guess at what kind of compression they were using, I'd have to say something like ADPCM which is a 4:1 compression scheme and would make roughly a 15 meg file for each song. I did a quick test of my own with ADPCM and it sounds like a good canidate.

There is an easier and better way to record audio to your computer. Get yourself a lineout cable with two male ends on it and hook one end to your line in jack on your computer and the other to the headphone jack on a cd player then play the cd and record the audio to the computer using a program like Audacity which can be found at http://audacity.sourceforge.net

Audacity is cool and lets you record directly to the format of your choice.


EDIT: Maybe I misread your post when I replied. I think it is possible to record whatever sound your computer is making, including playing DRM content, through audacity without the use of cables but I'm not sure.