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Best lossy audio compression codec

E

Evander

Golden Member
It's mp4 encoded with AAC plus. Good quality even at 24 kbps stereo, unbelievable (such low bitrates are great for pda or other portable music players where space is a concern. That's why I started researching this topic in the first place). See my page for details and samples:
ogg vs mp4
 
I've found that mp4 doesn't play so nice with loud piano music, even at 320kbps. I have a Beethoven cd that kept on getting fuzzy at the loud points. I ended up doing it with apple's lossless codec which was fine but I never took much time to evaluate other options...
 
Uhh, the OGG sounded *much* better to me. The mp4 sounded muffled like it was recorded through a pillow or something. Not to mention, to have any good comparisson you always need to have the source material.
 
Did you download the mp4 plugin on the page or use a preexisting one on your system? I think I read somewhere that older dll's don't allow "AAC-HE" features. If that's the case, maybe you should try again with the new dll there. (i had a problem with ogg refusing to even play in winamp unless I used an updated dll) I've tested the files on both winamp and my ipaq PDA and mp4 was the clear winner

Edit: and sorry, I don't have the space to upload a 20+ meg source wav on my puny ftp
 
Each codec shines with certain music at certain bitrates and seems dull with others. The beauty of ogg is that it's free and more widely supported than aac.
 
I checked and tried using a different dll- Nullsoft MP4 demuxer 0.7 [in_mp4.dll] (72 KB) and it sounds like crap that way. Winamp will report the frequency as 22 khz, blech. Use the updated dll on that page, please
 
OGG sounds great, I loved it so much I encoded all 300+ of my CD's in it. Now I bought a Head Unit for my car with MP3 playback, errr no OGG! My suggestion is choose your format wisely. 🙂
 
Wow MP4 does sound a lot better. My previous post I was using the default Winamp 5 DLL. I had to download yours, or else it sounded like dog s**t.
 
Can iPod's play mp4's? I don't use winamp and don't feel like going through the trouble of download/install a bunch of stuff.
 
I guess the bigger questions is- can iPods play mp4's properly with the AACPlus enhancements? I don't know cuz I don't have an iPod (I'm using an iPAQ with Core Pocket Media Player +plugin). There's still hardware out there sadly that won't even play back a vbr mp3
 
Originally posted by: spaceghost21
The .ogg sounded better to me, but what would I know?
Click to expand...

To me the mp4 only sounds better with the modified Winamp 5 DLL on that website. Otherwise the ogg sounds a lot better.
 
Originally posted by: Evander
I guess the bigger questions is- can iPods play mp4's properly with the AACPlus enhancements? I don't know cuz I don't have an iPod (I'm using an iPAQ with Core Pocket Media Player +plugin). There's still hardware out there sadly that won't even play back a vbr mp3
Click to expand...
I listened to the mp4 example and I was surprised by how decent it was for such a low bitrate. I don't have anything to listen to ogg on hand, don't have the original recording and I was using quicktime so I don't know if I heard the good version or not. If I did, I would assume that iPods can do as well as quicktime. I'll put it on later and compare the two.
 
Originally posted by: Evander
It's mp4 encoded with AAC plus. Good quality even at 24 kbps stereo, unbelievable (such low bitrates are great for pda or other portable music players where space is a concern. That's why I started researching this topic in the first place). See my page for details and samples:
ogg vs mp4
Click to expand...

For LOW BITRATE youre right, but since storage is so cheap these days there is little need for low bitrate, unless youre streaming from the net on dial-up. Who has dial-up these days anyway?
 
For a typical pc hard drive OK, but portable device storage ain't so cheap. Today I was looking at Compact Flash cards (what my iPAQ uses), a 1GB unit retailed at about $100 (brick & mortar store). Looking online cheapest I found is $52 plus s/h at NewEgg. That's alot better, but still not what I'd call cheap storage.
I haven't looked at the cost per storage of players like iPOD since I don't have one, but even if it was a great deal cheaper, at least the iPAQ plus compact flash can do a great deal beyond music playback, such as xvid playback, emulators, word, excel, etc. I only just got this ipaq last month and haven't yet bought a flash card (using internal memory now), so I'm really looking forward to finding out just how much I can do.
 
For the record.

OGG isn't a compression method, it's a container like AVI. Vorbis is the most common compression used for audio stored inside of OGG files.
LAME isn't a codec either, it's just a single implementation of MP3. You can find other implementations which might result in better audio, I don't really know since I don't care enough to compare them.
 
I hasn't gone anywhere, nero still sells the mp3 pro plugin:
http://www.nero.com/eng/mp3PRO_Plug_In_InfoPage.html
I tested it when it came out several years ago, yes a 64 kbps sounded not far off from a 128 kbps mp3. But the not-quite backward compatibility made me not wanna use it. Winamp could play it but it sounded like crap (i think 22 khz mono) if you didn't install the mp3 pro decoder, which would then be forced to be your new decoder for regular mp3s. There was something about that decoder I didn't like but don't remember what. And portable devices/other hardware that couldn't play back the enhanced mp3 pro, would play a crappy sounding mp3. IMO it would've been more successful if for example:
- a 128 kbps mp3 pro would sound good on a non-enhanced player, but much better (near lossless?) with the pro enhancements

Also I didn't wanna pay $30 or whatever it was when wma did a pretty decent job at 64 kbps for free. In the end, I never much did low bitrate encoding for years (til now) and stuck with 128 or 320 kbps cbr mp3, and later on lame vbr when I heard how it was the best quality:bitrate ratio
 
Originally posted by: Evander
I hasn't gone anywhere, nero still sells the mp3 pro plugin:
http://www.nero.com/eng/mp3PRO_Plug_In_InfoPage.html
I tested it when it came out several years ago, yes a 64 kbps sounded not far off from a 128 kbps mp3. But the not-quite backward compatibility made me not wanna use it. Winamp could play it but it sounded like crap (i think 22 khz mono) if you didn't install the mp3 pro decoder, which would then be forced to be your new decoder for regular mp3s. There was something about that decoder I didn't like but don't remember what. And portable devices/other hardware that couldn't play back the enhanced mp3 pro, would play a crappy sounding mp3. IMO it would've been more successful if for example:
- a 128 kbps mp3 pro would sound good on a non-enhanced player, but much better (near lossless?) with the pro enhancements

Also I didn't wanna pay $30 or whatever it was when wma did a pretty decent job at 64 kbps for free. In the end, I never much did low bitrate encoding for years (til now) and stuck with 128 or 320 kbps cbr mp3, and later on lame vbr when I heard how it was the best quality:bitrate ratio
Click to expand...

i too messed around with it when it first came out years ago, and even encoded about 200cd with it because i was streaming over my cable connection when i was not at home. i did have the mp3pro codec in winamp, but i think the only hardware tha supported was some philips players. too bad as it thought it did a good job.
 
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