What music format is the best and why?

[Andreas]

A recent front page article about audio formats recommend MP3 for mainstream consumers due to compatibility, ease of use (ease of use (you can buy and download MP3 while other formats often have to be ripped or at least converted unless you go the illegal way) and the fact that for mainstream consumers the bottle neck is the equipment not the files used. This caused reactions from the part of the community that isn't considered main stream users and are more involed and interested in digital audio than the man on the street with his basic setup.

While the debate wheter or not MP3 should be phased out isn't at all relevant for a "what's what" article for beginners, it is an interesting question generally speaking. The ABi forum has a large number of people that aren't mainstream consumers and care more about their digital audio, and so the question is very relevant for this forum.

A recent poll shows that even if the users of this forum isn't mainstream consumers, MP3 still dominates as the most used format on the forum. What is really the best format, why, and is it worth the extra trouble using it over MP3?

(note that this is not a discussion thread for the article in any way, so please stick to the above question)

[ernie242]

Hi,

Tricky question. Everything depends on which pmp you got. I have iAudio D2, so using flac and ogg vorbis is not a trouble at all. Most my cd's are stored as FLAC (so I have an exact extra copy of original CD). Some are ripped and compressed with ogg aoTuV. And that is it, ripping and encoding is not different than using MP3 LAME or whatever.
If you are obsessed with quality, you will probably want to chose player that supports losseles formats and/or ogg (as for some kinds of music even mp3 320 may be not enough). Or you would like to have bleeding edge player that are likely to support all modern formats.
If you are not such an audiofile, and don't give a damn, you have a huge variety from players to choose, and then mp3 is enough for you. For example, only cowon (from Editor's Choise on a main site) supports flac and ogg. If you have f.e. Sansa Clip, then it doesn't even make sense to talk aobut other formats than mp3. You can additionaly rip your CD's to flac for extra copy, and then before putting to pmp, convert to mp3's. If you use foobar2000 you can do it with no trouble in a few seconds.
So nothing is better or worse, that depends on what you want, and how good your ears are (and how loud do you listen music .

[JK98]

Since mp3 bitrates go up to 320 kbps, mp3 can provide high quality sound. Most people still don't have a player that would give them the song capacity they want if they use FLAC. Most people also don't have headphones or a player that is high enough quality to give them a significant enough sound quality improvement if they switched from 256 kbps or 320 kbps mp3 to FLAC. This is especially true when the player is used in a noisy environment. Considering that 256 kbps holds more than double the music in a given space than FLAC(and mp3 VBR averaging 192 kbps holds more than triple), most who are knowledgeable still feel drawn to mp3. When flash memory players have much higher capacity, and flash memory gets cheap enough, more people may be drawn to FLAC. By then FLAC will be more of a standard than it is today. I hope that the default bitrate for mp3 switches to 192 kbps average VBR from its still widely used 128 kbps. Many who think mp3 sound quality is not good enough have only used 128 kbps.

[ernie242]

Well, I can not understand why in 2008 still mp3's at 128 still exists somewhere. Plus, it looks that there is also importance what mp3 codec were used for compression but listening test show that this is not as significant as may seem (for most users). But anyway, if you are forced to use mp3's generally it is good to stick to LAME encoder. -V2 (~190 kbps VBR) already give transparent results (most people can't distinguish difference from original CD).

Also look at this chart (this is for LAME), it shows that above some settings, quality improvement is rather low comparing to filesize (using 320kbps doesn't pay at all):

[sprockkets]

If people went one step up and used 160kbps mp3, it would eliminate most of the artifacts. But, to be on topic, I would have to say, vorbis and FLAC are the best formats for use.

First, vorbis achieves good sound quality as low as 110kbps for good general use. I use quality 2 with a 32khz sample rate for about 77kbps, and it works great for tv shows. Even then, you would be pressed to hear the usual artifacts.
Second, it doesn't suffer from the deficiencies of the mp3 format, being a format from 1990s.
Third, and most important, and this applies to FLAC as well, it is patent and royalty free. While the other MPEG players (as in players in the market) are skeptical about this, the ziph community has not been sued yet. Still, not having to worry about whether you need to pay someone for either encoders, decoders, or music encoded with the format, makes this the choice for me. Unfortunately, it seems to scare companies away, since patent losers have a habit of suing those that use the "illegal" format rather than the format body itself.

While I cannot verify all FLAC's claims, it does say they their format is the easiest to decode, compresses very well, and verifies that the encoded file is bit for bit the same as the input.

And btw, ernie242, the Sansa clip supports Vorbis and FLAC now.

The only format that beats vorbis is HE-aac v2. The HE part adds SBR and the v2 part adds parametric stereo. Those parts alone add a lot more to the mess with patents and royalties though. And even then, the patent pool that is created to licence the original aac format does not guarantee protection from others claiming aac infringes on other peoples patents.

[chengdude]

I know Chinese players don't get much love, but these days almost anything put out by a Chinese name brand will play FLAC and APE in addition to the usual suspects. Players from Meizu, Oppo, SmartQ also support OGG as a rule, while there a few other scattered models from various companies using the Sigmatel 3700 chip that will do the same.

[davidw89]

FLAC all the way, future proof too!

[fabarati]

Originally Posted by ernie242

Well, I can not understand why in 2008 still mp3's at 128 still exists somewhere. Plus, it looks that there is also importance what mp3 codec were used for compression but listening test show that this is not as significant as may seem (for most users). But anyway, if you are forced to use mp3's generally it is good to stick to LAME encoder. -V2 (~190 kbps VBR) already give transparent results (most people can't distinguish difference from original CD).

Also look at this chart (this is for LAME), it shows that above some settings, quality improvement is rather low comparing to filesize (using 320kbps doesn't pay at all):

This is quite true. Here's Hydrogen Audio's information on A udio Transparancy. If you think you can hear the difference between a 256Kbit VBR MP3 and FLAC, I suggest you try the ABX test. If yes, then congratulations, you're amongst the very few who has the ear and equipment to detect the very minor differences there is.

Unless the MP3's have been badly encoded. Which happens.

[kornchild2002]

I have a disagreement with the article and a few praises. First the praises: I applaud you for recommending mp3. People tend to think that mp3 is bad, produces terrible quality, and so on. Many of these critics are the same people who would spend $100 on analog RCA cables that are 4 inches long or are dumb enough to put out $300 for a Monster HDMI cable from Best Buy (HDMI is digital, a $3 cable from Monoprice will give the exact same quality as long as the cable isn't physically damaged).

The Lame mp3 encoder has proven itself over the years and is still able to keep up with more technically advanced encoders such as iTunes AAC, Nero AAC, and the various OGG releases. Even the iTunes mp3 and FhG mp3 encoders are able to provide adequate results at higher bitrates (all encoders begin to sound alike at 192kbps).

My only complaint is that you make 128kbps mp3 out to sound like it is terrible when in fact the majority of people would fail a blind ABX test comparing FLAC files to -V 5 files. The Lame mp3 encoder has been improved since the previous released with both 3.97 and 3.98 (3.98.1 and 3.98.2) producing higher quality files at the same bitrate when compared to previous versions of Lame. In fact a seasoned member over at hydrogenaudio said that he would recommend -V 5 to anyone who doesn't have trained ears and/or is listening to music in a portable environment.

So I would suggest one thing: instead of making 128kbps out to be bad, why not just recommend to people that they make their own decisions using blind ABX tests? The Lame mp3 encoder is very good at bitrates between 128kbps and 192kbps and many people over at hyrodegnaudio are now agreeing that -V 3 is the new -V 2/preset standard. In other words, with the release of Lame 3.98, people no longer need to go up to -V 2 in order to obtain transparent results. They are saying that -V 3 (~170kbps VBR) produces the same results. Also, Lame won't suffer the bitrate bloat at -V 3. Lame 3.98 (and 3.97 to an extent) has an issue where it will use an abnormally high bitrate especially when it comes to music in the metal genre. It doesn't need to use a high bitrate but it does. A metal song can come out with an overall average bitrate of 260kbps VBR when encoded at -V 2 or 300kbps when encoded at -V 0 even though the quality increase from the bitrate bloat is slim to none.

So why not suggest that people determine what setting is best for them instead of making 128kbps out to be so bad when it actually isn't. Pretty much all the public listening tests are limited to 128kbps as most people think that is transparent enough. As fabrati pointed out it is rare if someone can properly ABX a song at 245kbps VBR (using Lame) from the source lossless file unless that file exploits one of the limitations of the format/encoder (pre-echo, bitrate bloating, etc.).

[denemigen]

also note: the more sounds, differences, highs and lows are included in an original audio file at the same time, the more you need a way to compress it without losing the overall 'sound' itself. with a good quality player and a good quality headphone/speakers even at 320 kb/s alt. preset insane, you will have noteable 'jams' and loss of dynamics in a largely orchetrated metal songs or classical symphonys, where the dynamic range (of the original) is very wide.
a good way to find out what fits the best is trying it out.
it depends on your source, your hardware and your ears.
most of my musical collection is ok at 256 kb/s mp3, but there are times when more is needed if i want to preserve the sound that would be destroyed by mp3 compression, that's what FLAC is for. imo.

[roebeet]

The article was a good read, and certainly would help the uninitiated with a base understanding of the formats out there.

However, I don't agree with all your opinions. I'm not a big fan of MP3 anymore, and I wish it would be superseded by something like OGG Vorbis for lossy, and eventually FLAC for lossless (when disk storage gets to a price point that lossless makes sense). I don't like MP3 because it's not royalty-free, plus you need to increase the bitate to make it comparable to a smaller Vorbis file. It still amazes me that, with a royalty-free format like Vorbis out there, why more companies don't support it. And by "companies", I mean Apple and Microsoft. As long as people still use MP3 as the defacto standard, and accept its limitations, we're not going to move on.

Second - although I am a big supporter of Vorbis, I don't agree that WMA or AAC are inferior. My only complain with them is that they are proprietary in nature. Kudos to companies like Sandisk and Cowon, who add Vorbis to their players (and keep me as a customer, in return).

[ozzyoswald]

Reading this thread I got curious and downloaded an audio comparison tool to compare some GnR flacs that I got with their Wma counterparts (192kbps use them for mp3 player)

1 st time I tried it out it took me a while since I was thinking it would be very obvious ; however I knew something was missing in the track ( the program places them randomly so you don t know which is which ) then I noticed bass and treble weren t near as punchy i have to say the midrange was quite undistinguishable.

Soon after I was throwing tracks at it and guessing them in the first 10 seconds and these are 192 kbps WMAs let alone mp3s + I ain t got special hardware : Dell Laptop with Sigmatel soundcard (Intel HD standards) which i consider rubish compared to my Pioneer Home Stereo and with that a pair of Sennheiser HD202 which are good but not impressive.(I m sure you can get much much better ones)

So if you got better hardware and some better headphones (with a wider audible range - the HD202s only reach 18khz) I m sure wmas and mp3s would be extreeemly unsatisfying. Dunno about Vorbis you ppl made it seem gd so I might give it a try.

[ozzyoswald]

Hey ppl I tried encoding Under Pressure of Queen from flac to mp3 cbr 320kbps

Tried the above test again with same hardware

IT WAS RUBBISH cummon I noticed the difference from 1 st second the cymbals (or wateva -- drums) in the beginning were sooo different it seemed as if I was hearing through a cardboard box compared to the flac 100% not lying. (The wma s were much much better and they were only at 192kbs VBR)

So if you can t hear a difference either it s your hardware or you gotta have your ears checked no offense. (or its me which hears too much which is kind of true cos I can even hear the noise made by tv s and electrical plugs -- very high pitched)