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Audio Codecs , Which ones?

M

mac15

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Dec 29, 2001
3,099
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mp3 has been a standard for some time now, but with the new codecs coming in, such as AAC and Ogg Vorbis also mp3 Pro.

I have been watching these 3 for a few months now and I think AAC and Ogg Vorbis are the best ones.

AAC is a nice format but licencing issues have already but a bad stain on it, but I think its the best codec out to date. Have VBR encoding at a low bitrate is amazing and the sound quality is incredible.

Ogg Vorbis is probably my secound choice because its a basically the same as AAC and it has no licencing issues since its open source. Which is great in anyones language. But this codec is hardly being recognised.

mp3 Pro is ok, I don't think it will take off anytime soon. It builds on an already dodgy format.

But which do you think is the best codec?

I do belief apple should support AAC and Ogg Vorbis in their next iTunes update, I'd really like to see them both in there since they are both very nice codecs.
 
the only problem is that everyone that listens to music on their computers uses mp3...it would take a loooong time for people to switch around...sure they could include support for it...but the AVERAGE user wouldn't have a clue what to do with it
 
Originally posted by benixau
itunes can already support AAC and with a simple plug-in, ogg vorbis
Click to expand...

sure it can play it but when you get info on it. Its just a quicktime movie. Plus itunes CPU goes up and visuals and the equaliser don't work.

I'm sure the averga user wouldn't know squat, but how about they do something for the people who do know a bit about it.
 
i guess. and i have compared aiff to ogg.

aiff is clearer but only at super duper shake down the walls sound levels.

ogg is in my opinion one of the best codec out. and with no licences it would do apples standards image very well to fully support it.
 
I don't understand why we can't settle on a lossless format. Ogg may be great, but it fills a niche that doesn't exist. It doesn't make sense to have 3+ lossy formats that all do the same thing. Hard drives are constantly getting bigger. If we could all get behind SHN or another better lossless codec, we'd never have to worry about sound quality again.
 
By lossless, do you mean zbsolutely <no> loss of quality? All right. Import all your .aiff files onto your iPod and try playing your iPod for three hours straight on one solo charge. Not gonna happen. :)

In case nobody noticed, the lower bitrate you have on your iPod, the longer your battery life will last. Also, there is already MPEG-2 support in iTunes. I am listening to MPEG-2 audio right now and I could hardly tell the difference from that and the CD (with quality speakers of course :p).

I think Apple is dedicated to providing MPEG audio support to iTunes for as long as iTunes is around, and I feel AAC will become the new audio compression standard. Otherwise, why is .ogg not a very popular compression setting for Quicktime audio? :cool:
 
Originally posted by King Cobra
By lossless, do you mean zbsolutely <no> loss of quality? All right. Import all your .aiff files onto your iPod and try playing your iPod for three hours straight on one solo charge. Not gonna happen. :)
Click to expand...

Actually if I did that, I'd get better battery life than with any MP3. AIFF is raw and uncompressed audio, so the iPod's CPU or ASIC or whatever it uses would be doing basically nothing but running audio straight through to the DAC.

Shorten could take an AIFF and make it 1/4 its original size. If we were willing to settle for 384Kbps, we could have absolutely lossless audio that would likely use less CPU power than than 384Kbps MP3 to decode.
 
Originally posted by alex_ant

Actually if I did that, I'd get better battery life than with any MP3. AIFF is raw and uncompressed audio, so the iPod's CPU or ASIC or whatever it uses would be doing basically nothing but running audio straight through to the DAC.
Click to expand...
Yes, but the HDD has to spin longer. The buffer memory is only 32MB, so with medium to long-length AIFFs the HDD will have to spin up more than once.

I don't know which is worse on battery life: CPU decoding or HDD spin.
 
HDD spinning.

decoding is all done in tiny ICs (integrated chips). To spin a HDD a motor must be used. no matter how small the motor, it takes more energy to spin a motor that to send a few pulses of electricity through an IC.

BUT, if a format that was raw audio data minus the unwanted spectrum was to be released and made playable on an ipod you may see better battery life.

we can only hope.
 
Well i'm hoping not to get flamed to hell for this, but.... what about something like the Minidisc Codec? The Sony Atrac system. I mean geez I've been listening to it for a few weeks now and it blows the hell outta MP3 even ata high bitrate. just my 2 cents though.
 
I use LAME mp3 encoder and its by far the best one i have come across it makes files that are smaller and sound better than ACC and its free........ new ones that are comming out but right now i think its the best mp3 compatable code and since mp3 is everywhere thats important to me
 
i'm hoping on native aac support for itunes on the 7th if not i think i will re-encode at least all my classical with lame, i ripped at 192 vbr but it sounds dodgy with apples codec.


does anyone the details on apples mp3 codec?
 
I hope they start making some realistic settings for AAC.

By this I mean not limiting the samplerate based on the bitrate. a mono 64Kbps AAC file should be 44.1Khz just a stereo 128Kbps AAC file.

There's no need to lower the samplerate unless the audio remains in stereo. A 64Kbps AAC in stereo is so crap maybe they should called it the LAME encoder instead and the LAME encoder could be called the "quite good for an mp3 encoder" encoder.

I couldn't stop laughing when I kept reading all the posts from total mac zeleots saying stuff like "aac at 64Kbps is SO much better than mp3 at 128, I'll get twice the amount of tunes on my iPod now!" or the classic "I encoded at 64Kbps and it was like CD quality audio". The cloth eared fools!! Maybe they all just had a bad cold at the time or something.

I think AAC being incorporated into iTunes and given the same encoding options as MP3 but dropping the option of turning off or setting VBR manually would be the best option. No more imposed samplerates like QT Pro and you could taylor the compression more to what you want to do with it.
 
AAC is good if you are using an mp4 movie. i do movies a fair bit and mp4 is great for getting that mov file down in size.

but aac is only so good if you take it from the original lossless track (CD)
 
I like ogg, but it has bad name, literally, think about asking someone how many oggs they have in iTunes...it would sound strange, where mp3s or mp4s sounds fine. Maybe its just me but I like the open sourceness of ogg vorbis, but hate its name....
 
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