Audio Compression Comparisons

[Chris Gohlke]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://nigelcoldwell.co.uk/audio/' target='_blank'>http://nigelcoldwell.co.uk/audio/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"I've compiled a table containing the same audio sample compressed into different bit rate using several common compression techniques. Namely MP3 (canstant bit rate and VBR,) windows media audio, ogg vorbis, AAC and flac. My intention is that you can use this to work out the lowest bit rate at which the audio sounds clear to you. this will depend on the equipment you're using, and your hearing. I firmly believe that if you can't her the difference then there is no point wasting space."</em></p><p>I think we've all spent time deciding what format and bitrate is the best for encoding our audio. &nbsp;If you want to do a bunch of side by side comparisons, Nigel has put together a sample file encoded in multiple formats and bit-rates. &nbsp;Basically, you keep working your way up until you can't tell the difference anymore and that is the sweet spot to maximize the quality while minimizing the file size. &nbsp;Before you go crazy downloading all the files, please see the notes on the page regarding bandwidth and take care not to blow his site out of the water.</p>

[stlbud]

Hasn't Nigel heard about spell checkers? I know it sounds anal but it hurts my eyes and trips my brain to see things like "canstant" instead of "constant" and "her" instead of "here". These days, even my browser has a spell checker. Please use it!

[Soundtweaker]

I would say its better to just rip at 320 mp3.
With 2TB hard drives becoming commonplace and media players adding more capacity by the month, theres not really any reason to rip at a lower quality.

[jdmichal]

I would say its better to just rip at 320 mp3.
With 2TB hard drives becoming commonplace and media players adding more capacity by the month, theres not really any reason to rip at a lower quality.

I second this. I just rip everything to the maximum VBR whatever ripper I'm using can handle. I figure using VBR alone is enough of a compromise for space concerns.

[David Tucker]

Unfortunately our PMPs aren't so generous in capacity. Even the largest players would quickly be overfilled if everything was ripped at maximum VBR. Now, that said I do use that for my initial rip but that's only for archival purposes. The value here is to figure out what is a good size to use for your library so when you transfer to a device you can maximize your storage.

[jdmichal]

Unfortunately our PMPs aren't so generous in capacity. Even the largest players would quickly be overfilled if everything was ripped at maximum VBR. Now, that said I do use that for my initial rip but that's only for archival purposes. The value here is to figure out what is a good size to use for your library so when you transfer to a device you can maximize your storage.

Hrm. I guess that never really applied to me with the 120GB player. I mean, even my harddrives are only 320GB, so I can carry more than a third of all my information. I think right now I use up 90GB or so, and that's with 5 seasons of TV shows.

I was going to say that I wasn't that convinced that the size difference would be substantial. But then I just went ahead and ran the numbers. I got about 5MB per song for the average 200-second-long song at 192kbps, given that 37 seconds was 900kb. Then, given a difference of 300KB per 37 seconds between 192kbps and 128kbps, that's about 1.6MB per song saved.

Then, using (PMPSIZE / SONGSIZEOLD) * (SONGSIZEOLD - SONGSIZENEW) / SONGSIZENEW:

(120000MB / 5MB) * 1.6MB / 3.2MB = 12000 more songs in 120GB.
(8000MB / 5MB) * 1.6MB / 3.2MB = 800 more songs in 8GB.

Those numbers are nothing to sneeze at...

[Jason Dunn]

I've done a lot of audio testing over the years, with different audio codecs, different speakers, headphones, etc. My choice? MP3 in VBR, either 256 kbps or 320 kbps. I started with 256 kbps a few years back, but switched to 320 kbps earlier this year. No real reason other than "just because". :) Thankfully I only have 88.4 GB of music, so even at the high bit rates I can keep my entire collection on a 120 GB Zune. Of course, that's a dead product now, sooo... :eek:

[David Tucker]

Unfortunately most of my music is in 192 kbps format. The only reason I'm sure I don't notice the degredation in quality is that its almost all in that format. I have very few audio CDs. The few I do have are mostly soundtracks which actually probably benefit more from the increased bit rates that I rip them at.

[jeffd]

Ahh yes, the venerable table of audio compression quality comparisons... and a new one to boot which is strange since there hasn't been a new audio compression in nearly a decade.

In the end I have found that these tables don't help to much when it comes down to figuring out how best to put your music on your DAP, chances are high your player dosn't support the top codecs.

From my travels, OGG is the best highly compressed format (128-192kbytes), and flac is the most widely supported format for loss less audio.

But we arn't quite left with the bottom feeder codecs, AAC at 192kbit is very good, and I am pretty sure its quality loss is inaudible at around the 320kbit mark so apple fans should be happy. This is one of the reasons I hate mp3, I will never compress anything to mp3. Even at 320kbits or more, there is still major distortion of very high frequencies, cymbals (It's sort of like how converting dvd's to divx, even if you use a huge bit rate there is always a noticeable quality drop. This quality drop is not noticeable with h264 which can make some amazing rips).

Unfortunately my ZVM dosn't do anything but mp3, wma, and I think rm (yuck), so I end up using WMA. WMA 9.x is pretty good if you use the 90 or 98 quality rate (90 is vbr vetween 320 and 500. I use 90 now because my car audio deck chokes on songs compressed with 98). I havn't felt my audio files suffered any loss in quality using it.