best audio file format?

[android6011]

I know people these days seem to be obsessed with their audio and I would like to get in on that action. What is the best audio format to look for when downloading (legal) audio files? What is the best method for ripping cds and to what format (program recommendations?).

[branchex]

With so many digital music stores closing I'd stay away from DRMed songs. For music without that and in a good format look at iTunes Plus. The songs are ACC, which is supposed to be better than MP3 and many music players support it including the Zune. The only downside is the number of plus songs is limited so for other songs try Amazon MP3.

For ripping songs you can go lossy, which are small files but decent sound quality or lossless which has bigger files but the quality is supposed to be as good as a CD yet not take up as much space as the files on the CD. Lossy formats include MP3, WMA and what I recommend again, for ripping is ACC. For lossless their are many formats out there but they are much more proprietary so what software and hardware you use matters. Just look up what they support.

iTunes allows ripping in ACC, MP3 and a lossless format, simply called "Apple Lossless."

Hope this helps.

[white]

The best format would be any lossless format. There are many of them, but the one you want depends on what you want to do. For example, apple lossless can play on ipods and flac is open source. I prefer flac and use EAC to burn my CDs. If you want to get really geeky check out the the forums here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php

[xcorvis]

I know people these days seem to be obsessed with their audio and I would like to get in on that action. What is the best audio format to look for when downloading (legal) audio files? What is the best method for ripping cds and to what format (program recommendations?).

Them's fightin words. ;)

It's pretty much a spectrum with quality on one end and portability on the other. If you can find things in a lossless format, have the bandwidth to download it, the space to store it and a way to play it, then you don't need to worry about other formats. Because of all that, Apple lossless is probably a pretty good choice if you have an iPod. You can always convert it to another format.

For the lossless formats, I don't have the ear to tell the difference. There are some sites that do comparisons of the formats, but you should probably do your own test and see what comes out the best for you.

[white]

I should add that 192mbps MP3s are what 99% of people are happy with. That's because it creates small files, plays everywhere and it's very difficult to tell the difference between it and a higher bitrate.

[Mal]

You have to essentially compromise somewhere between a lossless and a lossy format. Then after that, decide on the bitrate. Personally I went with MP3s encoded with the LAME standard presets - this is what emusic do too. MP3 gives you more portable player choices, whilst using LAME gives this somewhat inferior format a bit of an increased lifespan.

[therage800]

I know people these days seem to be obsessed with their audio and I would like to get in on that action. What is the best audio format to look for when downloading (legal) audio files? What is the best method for ripping cds and to what format (program recommendations?).

Everyone already has pointed out the difference between lossless and lossy but as for downloading legally you'd have a hard time finding a good selection in lossless...

[argopo]

The best is 24/96 Flac or WAV. Downloadable from various sources, but probably not the the kind of music you guys listen to.

I do have NIN The Slip in 24/96 WAV thanks to the free download. But, difficult to tell the difference between Apple Lossless.

Except for Trent Reznor, I am unaware of downloadable Apple Lossless, but I do rip all my CDs to Lossless to my HD.

I have also set my audio settings on my Mac Mini to upsample my files to 24/96. The files are played back through firewire to an external 24/96 M-Audio device then to my CI VHP-2 headphone amp to Sennheiser HD650 or AKG K501.

[jdhore]

There is no "Best format", however, for myself, i use:

To listen on my PC (or on anything but my portable devices): FLAC, preferably 24-bit
To listen on my iPod (or portable devices): 256kbps CBR or V0 VBR MP3...The simple reasoning behind this is because every device can play MP3's...Not every devices can play OGG or AAC.

[tehboris]

The best format is FLAT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLAC) for the reasons it's name states: "Free Lossless Audio Codec"

The only arguable reason it isn't the best is the lack of support and the lack of willingness on the part of manufacturers of media players to support it. If you have a player you can install Rockbox (http://www.rockbox.org/) on your sorted.

[elisa]

I've got a question about FLAC. I'm using a program called Easy CD-DA Extractor (11.5) and it's got some extra settings when you use FLAC. Could someone tell me what the various packing settings mean, I thought that since FLAC was a lossless format there was no packing or compression involved? Maybe I'm understanding it wrong, but there's like various levels of packing and I'm confused as to which to use.

Also, I'd also be interested to read what kind of formats and bitrates you guys use to encode your audio libraries. MP3, AAC, FLAC or multiple for multiple purposes (at home and on a mobile player)?

[tehboris]

If FLAC didn't compress audio it would be the same as ripping a CD to PCM WAV files. The result would be each CD takes approx intimately 700MB of space. FLAC can usually compress the audio of a single CD to 400MB and without loosing any quality (hence loss less).

When using FLAC you don't have to worry about bit rates as the codec does this for you. There are different compression levels however. From what I understand higher compressions levels involve more processing time and nothing more.

[evogage]

I should add that 192mbps MP3s are what 99% of people are happy with. That's because it creates small files, plays everywhere and it's very difficult to tell the difference between it and a higher bitrate.

lol thats way beyond 'CD quality' what codec do you use to encode? I bet the file sizes are huge!

p.s only joking

[fishtoprecords]

I've got a question about FLAC. I'm using a program called Easy CD-DA Extractor (11.5) and it's got some extra settings when you use FLAC. Could someone tell me what the various packing settings mean,

Flac is lossless. The compression switches only control how long the encoder will try to find ways to compress is a bit more. The savings are usually small, and the time increases are big. But since you generally only compress once, and play it often, if you have a fast system, set it to a high level.

The compression level has no (repeat zero) impact on the audio quality.

All of my 800 + CDs are encoded as FLAC. I play them on a number of SlimDevices players.

[fishtoprecords]

If FLAC didn't compress audio it would be the same as ripping a CD to PCM WAV files. The result would be each CD takes approx intimately 700MB of space. FLAC can usually compress the audio of a single CD to 400MB and without loosing any quality (hence loss less).


Actually its rare for a CD to end up as 400 MB of FLAC. I typically get about 50% reduction, plus or minus. Very few CD albums really fill the CD. A few classical do, and some box sets. Many pop/rock albums barely hold 35 minutes of music, so they only start with about 400 MB of music, which FLAC turns into 200MB.

Flac is lossless. Period. Its trivial to take a PCM/Wave file, run it through FLAC, and run it through again de-compressing it. Then run a file comparison on the before and after. They are bit perfect.

Occasionally the uncompressed output will have a couple of empty blocks of zeros, so the file may not have the same SHA1 checksum, but the music and meta data are exactly identical.

There are other lossless formats, but only Flac is open source, free, and patent free. And of course, DRM free