Which music and video compression types are better--MP3, WMA, etc.?

[maikii]

Can people compare the different types of music and video compression formats?

For instance, in music--there is MP3, WMA, and now I read here one called OGG. (I never used the third one before.)

If compatibility is a consideration, then the hands-on winner is Mp3, as it is still far more in use by far more people, more supported by devices, etc. (Although it's clear that Microsoft wants WMA/WMV to become the standards, they certainly aren't at this point.)

But putting compatibility issues aside, can people compare the advantages and disadvantages of these different formats?

For example, if one compressed a .wav file with mp3, .wma, and .ogg, and all three resulted in the same file size, which one would have better sound?

Conversely, if all three were compressed to have very similar audio quality, which would have a smaller file size?

Or--all very similar???

I would appreciate any input people can give regarding the advantages and disadvantages of these different formats.

Same thing for compressed video formats--. MPEG, compressed .AVI, compressed .MOV (QuickTime), .WMV, .ASF, DIVX, etc., etc.?

[spursdude]

For audio, either WMA or OGG is better for lower-bitrate quality. WMAs sound quite good at 64kbps, and awesome at VBR around 70 or 80 kbps. WMP9 for XP allows you to select a range to encode your VBR WMA, and that's what I do - use the option second-to-the-left. Ogg files sound great from what I've heard (wow no pun intended) and are great at 64kbps. As for MP3 files, you'll need to keep them at least at 128kbps, most likely more. I use WMAs because they play nice with Windows Media Player - a lot of other people use ogg with other programs.

As for video, I don't know too much - my gut instinct is that DivX has the best quality to size ratio.

[jeffmd]

wma is for people who have no ear for music. mp3 is middle of the road but really requires a large bit rate, and even then it cannot sound perfect, there will allways be artifacts. mp3 is easily the worst of the 3 at 64kbits, but no compressions is really enjoyable at that bitrate. Ogg is the best of the 3.

keep in mind however that if you are playing music you just downloaded, it is most likely in mp3 form and therefore best to leave it as mp3. You won't get any quality back by compressing to another format.

[spursdude]

wma is for people who have no ear for music.
Whoa hey now... I have an ear for music. I don't think that's a true generalization. Seriously, the quality to size ratio of WMA files is pretty good... oggs may sound better, but in my confident opinion, WMAs sound better than MP3 files at the same bitrate... like a 64kbps WMA will probably sound better than a 128kbps MP3 file, although I don't listen to WMA at 64kbps as I notice glitches.

[Jason Dunn]

I was just responding to your post in the public newsgroup, so it's nice to see that you found this forum as well. ;-)

Can people compare the different types of music and video compression formats?

I don't use OGG, so I can't speak to that point. I use WMA and MP3 a lot though. :-)

> For example, if one compressed a .wav file with mp3, .wma, and .ogg, and all
> three resulted in the same file size, which one would have better sound?

Between MP3 and WMA, WMA fill always have better sound at a lower bit-rate. For instance, a 64 Kbps WMA will sound about as good as a 96 or 128 Kbps MP3. WMA has a better psycho-acoustical model.

> Conversely, if all three were compressed to have very similar audio quality,
> which would have a smaller file size?

It's all a matter of bit-rate. It's a common misconception that a 128 Kbps WMA will be smaller than a 128 Kbps MP3 - both are 128 Kbps, and hence, both will be the same files (within a few KB). The real question is "Which file type will give me the quality I want with the smallest possible file size?". Between MP3 and WMA, the answer is VBR WMA, which you can create with the 9 Series Windows Media Player.

> Same thing for compressed video formats--. MPEG, compressed .AVI, compressed
> .MOV (QuickTime), .WMV, .ASF, DIVX, etc., etc.?

This is a much harder comparison, because it varies so much based on codecs, what type of video you're talking about, etc. Myself, I just stick with WMV for the most part because it's simple and fast to encode with the free encoding tools from Microsoft.

[Jason Dunn]

wma is for people who have no ear for music.

Dude, that's just a stupid statement. :roll: If you had said "WMA at 32 Kbps", I might agree with you, but to claim that the entire WMA format is for people with tin ears is ignorant and offensive. Right now I'm listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack on Klipsch speakers, ripped to 240~355 Kbps VBR WMA, and I would challenge you to give me a better audio experience. :wink:

Ogg is the best of the 3.

Are there any sites out there that take the same song, compress it to MP3, WMA, and OGG, then compare them? I'd like to hear the proof. :-)

[KayMan2k]

Audio ---

WMA uses a slightly differnt compression technology and in SOME CASES an MP3 file of the same bitrate may actually sound better. It is more of a question about encoders than formats at this point. WMA has a more effiecent algorithm, but in some cases - for those with a really strong ear - might be able to notice a difference. This is just like a FEW people complain about the fidelity of MP3 files. However, in most cases subtle annonyances will not matter - they will never be noticeable to an average person listening to a normal music file. Now you have a trained ear and listening to classical music you might hear a difference. There has been a lot of research in this field (of encoding) on MS's end so its usually the best bet. OGG is less of a modification of MP3, but enought to squeeze out slightly better quality. Again, depends on the encoder.

Right now I'm listening to the Lord of the Rings soundtrack on Klipsch speakers, ripped to 240~355 Kbps VBR WMA, and I would challenge you to give me a better audio experience.


Jason - at that high of a bitrate any decent audio compression will sound excellent (unless your using 5.1 sound?). If it is normal stereo I highly doubt you could tell a difference between a WMA and MP3. Technically speaking, at that high a bitrate WMA's and MP3's alogrithm are quite similar. At lower bitrates, WMA is better because of how it segments audio data and performs physco-acuostic optimization.

I don't want this to turn into a flame thread.. just explaining the facts.

Video ---

First off, to my knowledge there is no Quicktime application for PocketPC. So that's out already.

Also, please understand that AVI is NOT a compression type. It is simply a file structure. There are several codecs that AVI can use (including Windows Media 9), however only the DiVX codec currently plays on PocketPC. (actually, there is another 3ivx or something like that, but its not really supported and not proven better than Divx).

Technically, Real Media is the best video format - but it is not standard and doesn't play well on Pocket PC. I suggest using either Windows Media or DiVX. Both are free with free encoders (althoguh DiVX encoders are more customizable and support filters). DiVX is more sensitive to noise (but sharper detail for noise-free encoding) and WMA tends to create video which appears "smooth" in areas instead of blocky. They are both based on the MPEG-4 standard and use extremly similar compression techinques. DiVX is the current format of choice for most people especially since its player is faster than Microsoft's - but Pocket MVP currently has issues under WM2003. So I suggest just using Windows Media for now.


Hope this helps...

[Pat Logsdon]

Are there any sites out there that take the same song, compress it to MP3, WMA, and OGG, then compare them? I'd like to hear the proof. :-)
Here's a page that does just that (http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/listen.html). 8)

The page was created by the organization responsible for the .ogg codec (so it's just a tad biased), but it still has examples of the same files encoded at the same bitrates for ogg, wma and mp3...

[Jason Dunn]

Here's a page that does just that (http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/listen.html). 8)

Cool, I'll check that out when I have time. :-)

[famousdavis]

This is an interesting thread I just read, as I'm interested in squeezing more songs onto my storage card -- avoiding having to buy another storage card and then losing/breaking the card not inserted into my PPC.

Whenever I rip an MP3 from an audio CD, I set the bitrate to 192kbps -- that is noticeably better than 128kbps, especially with the sizzle of drum cymbals.

Jason (or others): If someone wants a 192kbps/MP3-equivalent experience with the WMA format, what bitrate would be best?

I suppose it's not a good idea to rip an WMA file from an MP3 file, yes (even when the MP3 is encoded at 192/kbps)? Eg, I have to go back to inserting the audio CDs into my desktop and re-rip, yes?

Also, since I use WMP 9 on my desktop, I'm assuming that whatever I rip on my desktop will work flawlessly on WMP 8.0 on my PPC, yes?

[Jason Dunn]

Jason (or others): If someone wants a 192kbps/MP3-equivalent experience with the WMA format, what bitrate would be best?

I'd say 128 Kbps would give you a good experience. Remember that WMP9 now supports VBR WMA files, so that will give you an even better sonic experience. :-) The best thing for you to do, honestly, is to take a song you know well, and rip it at 160 Kbps, 128 Kbps, 96 Kbps, and 64 Kbps, all in WMA format. Listen to each song, and decide which one is the right blend of quality and small file size for your ears.

I suppose it's not a good idea to rip an WMA file from an MP3 file, yes (even when the MP3 is encoded at 192/kbps)? Eg, I have to go back to inserting the audio CDs into my desktop and re-rip, yes?

Correct. Transcoding is generally not a good idea, unless you were ripping 320 Kbps MP3 files, in which case I'd say that at 320 Kbps the MP3 codec keeps a lot more data.

Also, since I use WMP 9 on my desktop, I'm assuming that whatever I rip on my desktop will work flawlessly on WMP 8.0 on my PPC, yes?

Correct, yes.

[famousdavis]

Jason, just for that great reply, I'm signing up to be a subscriber of this site. I've obtained many great tips on effectively using my PPC in just the one month I've been hanging around here. Many thanks for all your work -- 12 posts a day on average!! 8O

[famousdavis]

I experimented a little bit tonight. I ripped two WMA VBR files using the same song -- one ripped at a mid-quality (up to 145kbps, I think) and the other was one notch below that (up to 95kbps). I compared the audio playback to my 192kbps MP3 file of the same song.

Now, I was just listening to the music through my computer speaker system, but the sizzle of drum cymbals was definitely lackluster on the lower-quality WMA file, when compared to the other two files.

However, I couldn't tell an appreciable difference between the WMA file encoded up to 145kbps, and the corresponding MP3 file encoded at 192kbps.

What's nice, then, is the 91MB audio CD in MP3/192kbps is only 64MB in WMA-VBR/145kbps! About the same quality of music, at 2/3 the filesize!

This is just what I wanted -- more music of the same MP3 quality I was accustomed to!

Thanks for this and other threads concerning Windows Media Audio. I had never considered any other audio format other than MP3 when I moved songs onto my PPC. :)

[rustywallace]

correct me if I am wrong, but in my limited and learning state - When you rip a file from a CD, doesn't it turn it first into a WAV file anyway before you can then turn it into an MP3


:roll:

[famousdavis]

Hi Rusty

No, the file can be ripped directly from the audio CD into whatever file format and bitrate you wish (limited only by the ripping software itself). If everything were changed first into a WAV file -- even temporarily -- it would take enormous disk space.

[rustywallace]

So is webopedia.com no good for finding information? That is where I got my info - unless I read and understood it incorrectly?

[famousdavis]

rusty -- what article in webopedia were you looking at?

[Mandrake]

my two cents...

I tend to convert my music to VBR MP3 on my desktop at around 160-256kbps, usually averaging around 200 (I haven't checked these numbers. This is good enough for casual listening, and I'm someone who is very picky about compression artefacts.

For the PPC I tend to transcode to WMA at 128k. I know transcoding is a bad thing, but the effect is not so bad as if transcoding mp3-mp3 since the artefacts won't be compounded by a second pass of the same algorithm. Either way, I tend to listen either through small earbud type headphones or in the car through a cassette adapter, so I'm not using the highest quality reproduction anyway.

Of course, if I want to listen to music in top quality then I'll just stick the original CD into my thousand pound hifi system. :D Compressed audio is always a compromise - there's no point pretending any level of compression can give "perfect" reproduction. Except possibly lossless techniques, but since they're not very effective or available for pocket pc that's not really important right now.

[Jason Dunn]

Jason, just for that great reply, I'm signing up to be a subscriber of this site. I've obtained many great tips on effectively using my PPC in just the one month I've been hanging around here. Many thanks for all your work -- 12 posts a day on average!! 8O

Cool, I'm glad I could help, and even happier that you see value in subscribing and supporting the site. Thank you! :-D

[Jason Dunn]

Now, I was just listening to the music through my computer speaker system, but the sizzle of drum cymbals was definitely lackluster on the lower-quality WMA file, when compared to the other two files.

What sort of speakers do you have on your computer? Unless they're quite good (Klipsch-level), it's hard to know if the quality (or lack thereof) you're hearing is from the file or your speakers. The best way (IMO) is to use the same pair of headphones that you'll use on your Pocket PC - emulate the listening experience as close as possible. I'm a little surprised that the 95 Kbps didn't sound good enough, but cymbals are especially vulnerable to lossy data compression, so it's certainly possible.

However, I couldn't tell an appreciable difference between the WMA file encoded up to 145kbps, and the corresponding MP3 file encoded at 192kbps.

Yeah, the 145 Kbps WMA and a 192 Kbps MP3 are about the same in terms of quality. You ripped in VBR right? That means 145 Kbps is the peak bit rate, and the lower-end is 85 Kbps I think.

Thanks for this and other threads concerning Windows Media Audio. I had never considered any other audio format other than MP3 when I moved songs onto my PPC. :)

Glad I could help. I actually switched over to WMA for all my music now - I only rip in 240-355 Kbps VBR WMA now. I figure with hard drives being so big and cheap, I might as well rip at an insanely high quality. :-) With the initial data rate being so high, transcoding to a 96 Kbps WMA for Pocket PC playback won't be quite as bad. I try to avoid transcoding when possible, but sometimes I just don't care. :lol:

[Jason Dunn]

correct me if I am wrong, but in my limited and learning state - When you rip a file from a CD, doesn't it turn it first into a WAV file anyway before you can then turn it into an MP3

Depends on the ripper. Some of the older rippers did that (CD > WAV > MP3), but most of the newer ones now rip to a RAM buffer, then encode to the MP3/WMA format. It never touches the hard drive in between.

[Jason Dunn]

So is webopedia.com no good for finding information? That is where I got my info - unless I read and understood it incorrectly?

It might simply be out of date. :wink:

[Jason Dunn]

Compressed audio is always a compromise - there's no point pretending any level of compression can give "perfect" reproduction.

Exactly! You have to pick the level of compromise you're comfortable with. If I had unlimited storage, I'd just rip to WAV. Now that I have more storage on my music server, I rip to 320 Kbps WMA VBR. And when I have a 512 MB CF card, I transcode to 128 Kbps (sometimes 96 Kbps) because I want to cram a lot of music on there.

The key is to be educated about the comproises you're making, which is why this thread is so helpful. ;-)

[rustywallace]

famous davis,

here is what I read on Webopedia


http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/ripper.html

[famousdavis]

rusty -- Interesting read. As Jason wrote, that may have been the way older programs did the work, but I'd doubt that's the way things work today.

Jason, you wrote:

What sort of speakers do you have on your computer?

I have a simple pair of Boston Accoustic speakers that came with my Gateway desktop. They're decent, certainly not like a pair of real hi-fi stereo speakers, but better than a boom box. Even still, by playing the same song at different formats and compressions, I could very definitely notice a lack of brightness in the tones of the high-compression format. I've always loved bright, sizzling cymbals and I'll pay the extra disk space or RAM space (on a PPC) to get that.

You ripped in VBR right?

Yeah, when I first read this thread and I saw "VBR" I didn't know what that meant. Only when I went to change my WMP options to WMA format did I see an option to use variable bit rate (ah-hah!) did I know what VBR meant.


I only rip in 240-355 Kbps VBR WMA now.

Great idea! I'll have to test what happens when I rip at that high bit rate, then "transcode" to a lower bitrate for my PPC. I don't have an extensive audio library anyway, so re-recording my favorite audio CDs into WMA format wouldn't be a big deal if I do it over time.

[Blackjazz]

Hey...this is my first post but i thought it might be useful to someone...

I've just started experimenting with ogg vorbis and i have found it to be absolutely awesome! I don't think people have talked about it much in this thread, but it is awesome at low bit rates....I've encoded my songs down to 44 VBR and its pretty good! Its not TOP NOTCH quality, but i find it good enough and having songs at about 1 - 1.5 mb each on my 128mb sd card and fitting about 100 songs on there far outweights the artefacts that i can pick up in the music. I think you should give it a go if quality isn't the main issue for you (eg; i compare it to tape quality, although i hate these kinds of comparisons (eg; to FM and CD quality)). Also, its natively part of CD-EX, which is by far the best ripping software out there (and if you're not using it you should be!) and on my Cel1.7 ghz machine it only takes about 15 seconds to convert a song from mp3.

Also, if you want to support open source formats ... think ogg!

[maikii]

Compressed audio is always a compromise - there's no point pretending any level of compression can give "perfect" reproduction.

Exactly! You have to pick the level of compromise you're comfortable with. If I had unlimited storage, I'd just rip to WAV. Now that I have more storage on my music server, I rip to 320 Kbps WMA VBR. And when I have a 512 MB CF card, I transcode to 128 Kbps (sometimes 96 Kbps) because I want to cram a lot of music on there.

The key is to be educated about the comproises you're making, which is why this thread is so helpful. ;-)

I read (perhaps on this thread a while back, I forget) that 64 Kbps in WMA or OGG format is supposed to produce quality equal to about 128 Kbps MP3, with a much smaller file size, due to the smaller kbps. True?

Yet, can you hear the loss in a 64 kbps WMA music file?

[Jason Dunn]

I read (perhaps on this thread a while back, I forget) that 64 Kbps in WMA or OGG format is supposed to produce quality equal to about 128 Kbps MP3, with a much smaller file size, due to the smaller kbps. True?

Unknown - I haven't touched OGG in a while.

Yet, can you hear the loss in a 64 kbps WMA music file?

I can, but everyone has different ears. It also depends on the type of music.

[dean_shan]

I'm going to stick with 128kbs MP3. It sounds just as good to me as CD and it would be a pain to re-rip again. Plus MP3 can play on almost anything.

[jasonc]

I've converted my whole music collection over to the OGG format and I must say that I'm extremely satisfied with the quality. The quality of a 64 kbps OGG file sounds almost as good as a 128 kbps MP3 or Windows Media file and only takes up half as much space. On my 512 CF card, I can store roughly 20 full albums in the OGG format whereas with .MP3 or .WMA I can only store about 10 albums.

[nic]

I encode (reencode) to 64 to 90 kbits/s VBR Ogg file (avg ~80), and use WinamPAQ. They sound great to me and I can cram a BUNCH of them on my 256 SD card.

WMP9 at around ~70 sounds pretty decent too...but i hear high pitch artifacts. I don't like Windows Media Player's interface either (PPC 2003). Whenever it is running in the background i can't use the word autocomplete from the keyboard/blockrecognizer because hitting the word I want doesn't give me the word it just stops my musc (like WMP is in the forground and I hit the stop button). piece of crap.

when i do a reencode it's usually from a ~220 kbit/s VBR MP3 to an OGG. I can't hear a difference between reencoding and encoding from the CD to ~80 VBR ogg file..and I've done LOTS of hearing tests.