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Apple's Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) Now Open Source
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Thanks!
That's what I went with myself. I am shocked at how pleasant it sounds, even on my "good stereo" (not audiophile, but better than the average bear's...).
Mark
That's what I went with myself. I am shocked at how pleasant it sounds, even on my "good stereo" (not audiophile, but better than the average bear's...).
Mark
It is shocking, isn't it? (In a good way of course!)
There *may* be some trade off in very high frequency content, but on my daily listening rig I do not notice it except potentially on tracks with lots of very high frequency information pervading the whole track (like if somebody hits a triangle and lets it ring out for example), but even then I have to be listening out for it to notice it, and generally speaking I *much* prefer HE-AAC's handling of compression artefacts to absolutely anything MP3 can offer at any bitrate.
There *may* be some trade off in very high frequency content, but on my daily listening rig I do not notice it except potentially on tracks with lots of very high frequency information pervading the whole track (like if somebody hits a triangle and lets it ring out for example), but even then I have to be listening out for it to notice it, and generally speaking I *much* prefer HE-AAC's handling of compression artefacts to absolutely anything MP3 can offer at any bitrate.
I'm sorry, but in my experience this isn't even remotely true. Do you have anything to support that claim? Having spent a good deal of time researching the codec your attitude doesn't seem to be the consensus either.
Just because it's designed for low bitrates and streaming, that doesn't mean you have to compress to the lowest possible bitrate for it to have value. Whatever theory happens to be informing your opinion, my ears would disagree, and frankly, when we're talking about something that works for me, then that's all that matters.
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No need to burn me at the stake.
I just said it's not useful at higher bitrates, never said you aren't allowed to use it.
HE-AAC also needs considerably more CPU-time (aka battery, even when hardware-decoded like on iDevices), which is precious on portable devices.
I'm just saying that HE-AAC (specifically the feature of SBR) is only useful at lower bitrates for the restoration of missing frequencies due to the low bitrate, because at higher bitrates they're covered in LC-AAC anyway. So it's basically restoring information which is available anyway, but at a higher cost of CPU-time.
Have you ever made an ABX-test (double-blind) to confirm your impression of HE-AAC being audibly better than pure LC-AAC at the same bitrate (> 64kbit/s)/quality-setting?
