MUSIC QUALITY (Compression vs. Quality and Variety)

[Perk]

My profession is Custom Home Entertainment. Music is very important to me and I really enjoy the current digital transition and how we can now carry so much good quality sound in such small devices.

I am proud to say that I do NOT own an iPOD. I do enthusiastically own a Pocket PC and listen to music on it most every day. So the tough part is storage. I want to load enough music so I'm not compelled to change it in a week or so. I also want to hear every detail, or at least as much as a portable device with a really good headset will produce.

I've compared codecs and compression rates. The newer ones are better but some are propietary and that means I can't use my favorite soft player. None of them sound as good as a wave file. So, I'm looking for your opinion of what "open codec" and what rate seems to be the best tradeoff.

I'f you're not really into music on your PDA, please don't reply. If you are, I know you must be facing the same challenge and I'd love to hear where you're at with this.

Many thanks,
Mike

[Don Tolson]

Actually, I realize there is a tradeoff to be made between the recorded quality and what I will hear out of my headphones. It also depends on what I'm using the music for.

If it's just background while I'm working, or something to help me relax, then I don't fuss as much about the quality and instead, opt for decreased storage requirements (so I can get as much on a card as possible). In these cases, WMPlayer's variable bit rate seems to work just fine. I've found I lose too much on .MP3's, but I do produce those for overall compatibility with other units.

If it's something important to me, such as a piece of music I really care about and expect to hear all the nuances (such as a live concert), then I worry more about the quality and 'hang the space requirements'. But I understand, too, that I can't afford studio quality headphones or a professional listening room, so you have to balance the amount you record vs. the equipment's ability to reproduce it faithfully.

You also have to be concerned with compatibility of the format with the equipment you want to play it on. The iPAQ 2215 is good, but it's certainly not going to produce concert-hall quality sound no matter how the music was digitized or what the iPAQ is attached to -- the D/A converter just doesn't have the oomph required.

[Kowalski]

i am an amateur musician for 10 years and i can say that i have "trained" ears. i cant live withouth listening to music thus my 2215 is my valuable companion when coupled with a good quality headphone.
i dont worry about mp3 decreasing the quality, because i know that even if i encode my music files with 1024 kbit/s, my device has a limited sound quality.
in the end i find the sound quality produced with a 2215, windows media player and headphones which ship with ipod good

[Perk]

I must have asked the question the wrong way. PLEASE KEEP THIS DISCUSSION ABOUT CODECS AND COMPRESSION.

What is the best codec and compression rate for very good sound quality while creating a smaller file?

NOTE: You would have experimented with importing the same song in several different formats and rates and own an aftermarket soft player and $50 or greater headset that plays them all back on your PDA in order to have an opinion here.

Newer codecs use perceptual coding which is the combination of psychoacoustics and digital signal processing. This provides a HUGE advantage over the older formats.

My current findings:
WAV is not a codec since it is not a compressed file. However, it is reference quality and sonically identical to CD. The problem with WAV is the file size.

MP3, (MPEG 1, layer 3) sounds a little sterilized even at the lowest compression settings but is a pretty small file and most compatible with other devices. I'll assume that the sound quality is due to its age and the wide compatibility is because it is an "open" or free codec.

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is a newer codec and sounds about the best to me. It sounds really good at 160 kbps and they say that near CD quality is at 96kbps! That's a 14.7 compression ratio. It saves more space than MP3 but won't play everywhere. Maybe the compatibility issue is because it belongs to Apple?

WMA (Windows Media Audio) at 192 sounds like a good compromise so far. It belongs to MS but seems to be compatible with more devices. It saves room over WAV but is larger than AAC. (WMA at 160 also sounds pretty good. It is still “smooth” and has less detail but only subtle sounds are missing.)

Right now, I’m transferring newer music as WMA 192 and older music as WMA 160. I have some Audiobook recordings I’m doing as MP3 128.

What’s your favorite codec and have you tried some of the others I didn't mention?