Lossless and Lossy Codec of Choice

[Gow616]

I see this type of poll asking this question yearly on HydrogenAudio (audiophile heaven and hell) but I was curious as to what do people on Zuneboards use.

I didn't want to do poll options as I want people to type a response.

FYI for those who don't know.

Lossless: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless

Lossless compression is a compression methodology in which the result of the compression can be restored faithfully, i.e. bit-by-bit identical with the uncompressed data.

In a nutshell, it is somewhat like compressing a Waveform file with ZIP or RAR.

Lossy: http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossy

Lossy compression is a form of compression that significantly reduce multimedia file size by throwing away information imperceptible to humans.

Human audio perception is not perfect. Lossy compression takes advantage of this characteristics. By selective discarding, much unnecessary information is thrown away. The amount of information discarded is usually adjustable, giving a compromise between small size bad quality and high quality large size.

The downside to this is that waveform reconstructed from compressed information will never exactly match the original waveform.

With out of the way we can get down to the nitty gritty and deal with the realness. (Lady S.O.V)

I personally use TAK (Tom's Lossless Audio Codec)

Because it can be played and encoded in foobar2000. Has a very high rate of compression like Monkey's Audio without the slowness. It encodes and decodes as fast as FLAC but unlike FLAC it has a higher rate of compression.

For lossy, I use iTunes AAC

Through the iTunes encode command line executable. Why? Well I like AAC since it does have a few less problem samples than Lame Mp3, can be Album Gained unlike WMA Pro and is a pretty decent codec all around. I use iTunes over Nero as iTunes seems to develop their AAC version more often and after Nero AAC 1.0.7.0 Nero went downhill. The only downside to this is iTunes Encode can only do one file at a time AND iTunes software leaves silly processes running like iTuneshelp and iPod plus the Bon Jour service and Apple Software update that keeps trying to install Safari on my computer.

[jackluo923]

Lossy: Windows Media Professional 10- 192kbit/s 24bit VBR
I use this codec because It's supported by majority of windows mobile devices and the zune. When i tested different codecs from encoding them from original HDCD, 192kbit/s 24bit WMA pro 10 VBRabout the same as 320kbit/s lame mp3. I use Dbpoweramp to batch convert any format to WMA Pro 10.

Lossless - Windows Media 9 Lossess because zune support this. I generally don't use this because 192kbit WMA pro 10 VBR sounds the same when i play it on Hifi home theatre speakers.

[Hostile]

For lossless I would prefer flac or wavpack. Flac is very well accepted and many things support it, it also is open source.

For lossy, I use good ole mp3s, 192kbps and up are good. VBR (Variable Bit Rate) is also nice. The LAME encoder is the only way to go. 320kbps MP3s, sound awesome. AAC is also good, just not as supported.

[jackluo923]

I use windows media lossess because I think it's the most widely supported lossess codecs. Who cares if its closed source. You're not benefiting from a open source codec anyways.

For lossless codec, WMA 10 Pro VBR is the 1st or 2nd most efficient audio codec. I believe it's a tie between WMA 10 Pro and AAC-HC which isn't widely supported. All windows mobile phones with WMP 10/11 can play WMA 10 PRO codecs. The zune fully supports both the WMA 9.2 Lossless and WMA 10 Pro (variable or constant bitrate).

Lame MP3 is definitely not as good as WMA 10 Pro in terms of sound quality.
When I listen to songs encoded with 64kbit/s WMA 10 Pro VBR, it sound much better than 192-256kbit/s lame mp3. Some people might not like the sound of 64bitkit/s wma 10 pro vbr because they say it doesn't sound exactly like the original. But i think i like the 64bit/s wma 10 pro vbr better than 256kbit/s lame mp3 because it sounds fuller, the bass is stronger and generally sounds better according to my ear.

[Robb4248]

I use WMA more than FLAC, but I prefer FLAC

[jackluo923]

Since almost all windows computer, and windows mobile devices and most importantly, ZUne supports all WMA codecs, why not use WMA codecs?

[HipHopScribe]

The truth is that MP3 is an ancient codec, and even with advancements like LAME, it can't match the compression on advanced codecs like Ogg Vorbis, AAC-HC, WMA Pro or others, but these codecs have a very poor device support base. My preference of these advanced codecs would be Ogg Vorbis, since it is open source, and I believe more widely supported among DAPs right now, and I do use it for my Sansa Clip now that they added support, but that's because the capacity is low, so I really could use the saved space, and it's not much of a chore converting that small portion of my FLAC archives to the format. I've toyed with the idea of using WMA Pro, since the Zune supports it, but it's the only MP3 player I own that does, so I'd have to maintain separate libraries, and I don't know if a future player I get will support it.

So, the only real choices for me are MP3 or WMA, since they're widely supported lossy codec. WMA requires more processing power to decode than MP3, that's one consideration. In addition, while they are both technically proprietary formats, MP3 is much less closely guarded, resulting in projects like LAME to improve it, and a number of programs that can losslessly edit MP3. And, the fact that the most popular portable media player in the world doesn't support WMA is a consideration, I don't know what player I'll get in the future, but I know it will support MP3. Normal WMA, especially at higher bitrates, doesn't have an advantage over LAME nearly big enough to warrant converting my FLAC archives to WMA, to replace the MP3 files.

As for lossless, FLAC seems to be the most widely supported on DAPs, and its open source, so it would be my choice. I do have FLAC files burned to DVDs, purely for achiving purposes. I wouldn't use any lossless format on a portable player, the space restrictions just don't make it worth it to me. Once I get a high quality home sound system I will use lossless, but that's a while off.

[Locke]

Well, for lossless, I prefer .flac, and for lossy, .mp3 for sheer compatability. Though I've recently been getting into .mp4's; those things are damn tiny little files.

[Gow616]

Originally Posted by jackluo923

Since almost all windows computer, and windows mobile devices and most importantly, ZUne supports all WMA codecs, why not use WMA codecs?

My Desktop computer is not a Zune device and I use foobar2000 instead of the Zune software to play audio files. TAK is supported in foobar2000 and since I always use foobar2000 for creating a CD Collection archive on DVDs I go with the best compression and speed.

Tom is looking at making his work more open source and has even released source code for it. Still there has to be some control to the whole process. FLAC although open source is really only developed by two groups at the moment, FLAC and FFMpeg.
Ogg Vorbis is in the same boat, Vorbis and aoTuV.

Other lossless codecs I can suggest would be Wavpack (also good for lossy) and maybe ALAC but I reccommend using TAK, FLAC or Wavpack before going to ALAC unless all you use is iTunes and Mac OSX.