SwingDJs

Bob the Builder wrote:Ok, it's getting quite obvious that MP3 is getting old and is “beginning” to be replaced.

Can we focus in on AAC vs OGG!

Sorry to be contrary, I agree with Yakov. I don't feel motivated to switch, I know a lot of people who feel the same way. DRAM is a big factor and it is not like MP3s sound horrid, if you rip them correctly, they can sound great.

It is not totally because of the no DRAM idealogy. Hard disk drive space is cheap. AAC compataibilty is an issue also.

Bob the Builder wrote:“beginning” to be replaced.

I think some may be missing my reason for my question.
Technology will continune to evolve all the time.
I'm seeking advise on, if soneone believes it's time (now or in 2 or 5 years time) for them to move on from MP3, which direction should they go?
What are the options and which is better, ogg or aac.
Hope that clears things up a bit.

To me the future is cheap storage of uncompressed audio data.
Think a terabyte of data stored on solid state memory that costs around a bill.

Nate Dogg wrote:

Bob the Builder wrote:Ok, it's getting quite obvious that MP3 is getting old and is “beginning” to be replaced.

Can we focus in on AAC vs OGG!

Sorry to be contrary, I agree with Yakov. I don't feel motivated to switch, I know a lot of people who feel the same way. DRAM is a big factor and it is not like MP3s sound horrid, if you rip them correctly, they can sound great.

It is not totally because of the no DRAM idealogy. Hard disk drive space is cheap. AAC compataibilty is an issue also.

I can agree with the sentiment of not wanting to rock the boat unless the choices are really superior. How does highest quality AAC or OGG compare to similar level mp3 in regard to both size and sound? Is either of them lossless compression? Any word on good lossless compression options?

GuruReuben wrote:To me the future is cheap storage of uncompressed audio data.
Think a terabyte of data stored on solid state memory that costs around a bill.

Considering in 93 it cost about $200 for 100MB, and now you can get 120GB for $100 or less, i wouldn't be surprise if you are right. Eventually we'll just all keep uncompressed wav files around. I would if I had the space, that's for sure.

Compression wise, I'd say go with ogg, everything I've read leads me to lean that way. Of course, I'm staying with my VBR MP3 for now.

Here's a very good rundown of eleven (!) different lossless codecs. I only have experience with FLAC, but it looks like from the info there that WavPack edges it out as the best overall choice in terms of features.

To weigh in on the preference topic, I too am sticking with "alt preset standard" MP3s. I have few complaints... One though is that apparently my LAME encoder has messed up what looks like about 1% of my MP3s. When I recently heard a weird digital blip in one of my tracks, I went searching for MP3 checkers and found this tool. You can run the command line version on your entire directory structure to determine if any encoding errors were made. It'll take a while to run if you have a lot of MP3s. Definitely worth it though, it may save you the embarassment of unknowingly playing a damaged file at a dance

I downloaded the Winpck tool and pointed it to a file I found to be bad last week and it checked out fine. So, I am not sure what it is checking, but it did not find this file to be bad and it skips all over the place. I suppose it could have been a problem with the file coming off of the CD and not a problem with the encoding.

GuruReuben wrote:To me the future is cheap storage of uncompressed audio data.
Think a terabyte of data stored on solid state memory that costs around a bill.

Word.

There are basically two ways for an MP3 to be 'bad'... one of them which we are all familiar with is a bad rip off the CD, with its characteristic ticks and clicks. The other, unbeknownst to me until this week, is an error generated when you encode from WAV to MP3. It basically made a second or so of the song sound like Jimmy Witherspoon suddenly turned into a robot, if that makes any sense. So this program checks for the second type of errors, that is, whether it is a valid MP3 or not. So a file with the first type of error will check out okay.

I have 0% "screwed up" MP3's by lame. Perhaps you are using an old version of the lame encoder, or maybe an unstable beta?

I've encoded over 12000 songs using Lame....

It identified 29 out of 10000 songs that had some problem with them. I may be using an older version of LAME, I'll check on that...

My CD players was not working properly at one stage and some of the files at this period, I really should re-rip. But that was a hardware issue and not a software issue.

I recently switched over to OGG and am very happy with the decision. The quality and storage space is absolutely as good as AAC (which I used for a while but got turned off to because of compatibility and DRM issues). OGG is still not as universally readable as MP3, but many major players do recognize it. Plus there's a part of me that really likes the kind of punk aspect of using a format that is intended to kind of spit in the face of the people in the industry who want control over how I use my music.

--Kelly

Unfortunately OGG is not supported by the iPod, which is why I won't be using it any time soon. AAC, on the other hand, is. As I said earlier, there is no DRM issue at all with using AAC unless you are buying from ITMS anyway...

Zot wrote:Unfortunately OGG is not supported by the iPod, which is why I won't be using it any time soon. AAC, on the other hand, is. As I said earlier, there is no DRM issue at all with using AAC unless you are buying from ITMS anyway...

Yes . . I use nothing apple-related so it's not an issue for me, but for itunes and ipod junkies you need to be encoding in mp3 or AAC and the like. I find it aggravating that a lot of players don't recognize AAC, however-- which is what you have to rip to using itunes. There are compatibility issues with both formats, just depends how you use your music.

--Kelly