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Non-MP3 Codecs?

Posted by Cliff on from the those-other-audio-codecs dept.

Vanth Dreadstar asks: "While MP3 is okay, I have begun researching other codecs that would be suitable for my home music use. Lossy codecs such as Ogg Vorbis, AAC, and MPC all seem to have promise, not to mention the lossless codecs such as Shorten (otherwise known as .SHN), LPAC, and FLAC. I would like to know what non-MP3 codecs people are using out there, and why."

3 of 544 comments (clear)

  1. Vorbis and flac by Jeffrey+Baker · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I'm writing a new application and I have chosen the supported audio formats based on practical concerns: license, patent status, and API. MP3 is nice but technically you need to a license from the patent holder to make an encoder. Vorbis has no such limitation so I use it. I use flac for the same reason. Its license agrees with mine.

    Another consideration is the straightforwardness of the API for the library you intend to use. Vorbis has a somewhat reasonble API with a liberal addition of quirks. Also you can easily add metadata to Vorbis files. Ever tried adding metadata to an MP3 file? ID3v1.1 is trivial but ID3v2 has a 95,000 line reference implementation. Uh? UH?

    Any application has to support PCM audio also, since most music collections are primarily on CD.

  2. Re:Windows Media Format... by orbital3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I recently bought a Rio Volt MP3/WMA CD player, and compared WMA8 with VBR LAME, and LAME won hands down. Both encoders are set to come out around 128kbit, and while both of course have artifacts, the artifacts in WMA are MUCH more noticeable. I guess I'm just alot more sensitive to the type of artifacts WMA produces...

  3. Arguments for shn by guygee · · Score: 5, Interesting



    After collecting 60 Gb worth of mp3s, I switched to almost strictly shn format
    over 2 years ago. Here is my reasoning:

    1. Stick with a lossless format if you can afford the bandwidth and storage
    space. Plan for the future, when bandwidth and hd space will be much
    more plentiful.

    2. I can definitely hear the difference between lossless and any compressed
    format at 128 kb/s (that annoying wavery sound), and even at 256 kb/s (barely)
    on very delicate passages and high-end speakers.

    3. Also, if you want to reprocess the music (dehiss, dehum, equalize, normalize,
    respatialize, etc) you experience a much more noticeable degradation in the
    sound if you start with a lossy format.

    4. shn is the standard format for trading music.
    It is a lot less work to store in shn then have to decode and reencode every
    time you make a music trade.

    For lots of good links on shn format, see my trading page at
    http://www.vsl.ist.ucf.edu/groups/vtb/TradeList_ 20 01-11-25.html

    (Now that I've come this far, what the hell, trade requests here

    .
    ;-)