Firstly, I use AudioCatalyst 2.0 for my personal ripping/encoding needs. Sure, it's only a Win32 app... but the encoder does a very nice job of high bitrate and VBR files. While it ocasionally produces hiccups in the music, encoding is so fast that it isn't really too much of a hassle to re-rip the CD.
That aside, there seems to me to be about three our good compression formats available out there aside from MP3.
In no particualr order: Micorosft Audio 4.0: On the demos on the microsoft webpage, one can easily hear the difference between a MP3 and a WMA file, with the WMA sounding much better. But, for some reason, on my machine at home I cannot get such positive results. I find sounds like cymbal crashes and flanges to be weirdly distorted. It may be my low system specs (P166) that cause the encoder to preform so poorly (it seems to encode only in real-time).
VQF: People have said it elsewhere here, but I'll say it again - VQF rocks the mid range bitrate world, but, get it out of the ~80kbps range and other formats just simply sound more true to the recording.
RealAudioG2: This codec is suprisingly good. It is far better than MP3 at equivalent bitrates. I think Real liscenced some tech from Dolby or something because the endoded output sounds different from previous versions of the codec. You know the feeling that, after you've listened to your entire MP3/VQF/RA collection, you can tell which song has been encoded with which encoder without looking at the screen. Well, this new version just doesn't have the same distortion characterstics (like when people sing 's's in MP3 you get those neat little sound granules) as the last one did, which is good. But, the main problem with this format is that you need to use the realplayer to listen to the encoded output. I don't know about a Linux ver of realplayer, but the windows version is extremely unstable.
With all of these formats, it's easy to see why people stick with MP3... there are simply too many other (and occasionally superior) formats from which to choose.
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Firstly, I use AudioCatalyst 2.0 for my personal ripping/encoding needs. Sure, it's only a Win32 app... but the encoder does a very nice job of high bitrate and VBR files. While it ocasionally produces hiccups in the music, encoding is so fast that it isn't really too much of a hassle to re-rip the CD.
:)
That aside, there seems to me to be about three our good compression formats available out there aside from MP3.
In no particualr order:
Micorosft Audio 4.0: On the demos on the microsoft webpage, one can easily hear the difference between a MP3 and a WMA file, with the WMA sounding much better. But, for some reason, on my machine at home I cannot get such positive results. I find sounds like cymbal crashes and flanges to be weirdly distorted. It may be my low system specs (P166) that cause the encoder to preform so poorly (it seems to encode only in real-time).
VQF: People have said it elsewhere here, but I'll say it again - VQF rocks the mid range bitrate world, but, get it out of the ~80kbps range and other formats just simply sound more true to the recording.
RealAudioG2: This codec is suprisingly good. It is far better than MP3 at equivalent bitrates. I think Real liscenced some tech from Dolby or something because the endoded output sounds different from previous versions of the codec. You know the feeling that, after you've listened to your entire MP3/VQF/RA collection, you can tell which song has been encoded with which encoder without looking at the screen. Well, this new version just doesn't have the same distortion characterstics (like when people sing 's's in MP3 you get those neat little sound granules) as the last one did, which is good. But, the main problem with this format is that you need to use the realplayer to listen to the encoded output. I don't know about a Linux ver of realplayer, but the windows version is extremely unstable.
With all of these formats, it's easy to see why people stick with MP3... there are simply too many other (and occasionally superior) formats from which to choose.
That's my $0.02