Format War: Your Favorite Lossless Format
 

We all know MP3 is easily the dominant lossy format (with WMA, AAC, OGG and MPC far behind), but amoung the lossless it's a slightly different story. Lacking any widespread mainstream adaption, it's at best a 2-4 way war. Which comes to the question, what (if any) is your preferred lossless format? Give some explaination, what makes you choose Real Lossless (probably not :)) over FLAC?

Monkey's Audio is by far my favorite format. I've heard people whine about decoding time and seeking, but what other lossless format encodes so quickly and with such high compression raitos (the 'fast' mode compresses just as good as FLAC under almost any circumstances)? MAC was designed as a syncronous codec, meaning it compresses/decompresses equally fast. This may sound bad for decoding, but 10x encoding/decoding is not bad on a 1st generation Athlon, especially considering that FLAC (at its best compression settings), spits out files larger in size and takes an extremely longer time to encode.
Yes seeking on APE files is slow (especially in APE/CUE files compressed with settings greater than "High"). Even the argument that FLAC is better because it can be played on more platforms is slowly starting to be untrue (with the somewhat loose closed source nature of the program).
So while I'll accept a FLAC file from someone else, MAC is my cup of tea for my lossless needs.

WavPack does everything FLAC does and more. The only drawback is that it's not supported on many devices. But I mean, if you want to listen to it off your computer you can burn it to CD-R as audio or transcode it to 320 (which contains as many frequencies as the human ear can hear).

Rockbox supports FLAC and Wavpack. Rockbox is alternative firmware for a number of portable audio players. I got it on my iRiver H140 and it's awesome.

They wanted to include the Monkey's Audio format but they stumbled on these problems:
That's a good reason not to like Monkey's Audio, i'd say.

I voted for FLAC, since it's the only one I have used that I have liked. It's also the most common lossless format people are using, in my experience...

FLAC, because in a comparison done some time ago (on HA, I think) it was found to be the best lossless codec overall - good compression, low CPU usage, fairly robust......

Another nice thing about FLAC is that you can put it in an OGG container.

I chose FLAC, mainly because other people use it over APE and those other formats. I rip CDs in FLAC as well and so I hope other people will be able to play and enjoy them to the max.

For those wanting to know how almost all known lossless formats stack up, check this comparison.

Also of particular interest to FLAC users: use the attached FLAC compressor. It's known to compress/decompress faster and produce smaller FLAC files, while maintaining 100% compatiblity with all FLAC decoders.

Which Flac encoder from that comparison is that? "Flac - CVS" or "Flac - Garf"?

The Garf encoder. The CVS one is unstable (based on latest builds) while the Garf encoder is stable. While CVS gets more compression than Garf, the difference is so extremely tiny (less than 500KB on all but the slowest settings), it doesn't even matter.

Although I still don't know why you would want to put any lossless file directly onto a portable device when you can transcode to mp3 and save space.

Maybe because you value audio quality on the go or use the thing as a portable hard drive for a car audio player or something? There would be many legitmate uses for lossless on the go, Eleo.

And FLAC is by far the superior format. Sure, it takes longer to encode than it does to decode, as mentioned above, but that's good because most of the time I'm only encoding something ONCE, and listening to it a lot.

And encoding really doesn't take that long anyway in my experience. You're not really wasting much time with the medium settings.

I wonder who voted for OFR?

But the audio quality of a 320kbps mp3 is audibly identical to a lossless file; ie no normal human can hear the removed frequencies. Thus I can think of no reason why you would want to place lossless audio on a portable device when mp3s accomplish the same ends and save disk space.

Oh hey look, that's my rationale

Those are also reasons why I use it, that, plus it's open source IIRC...

So which lossless format did you vote for?

Actually, there are plenty of instances where a lossy encoding will sound very different from the original. To put it really simply, these are cases where the encoder screws up.

Search HydrogenAudio and you'll find a list of "problem samples" which are known to give encoders trouble.

"Plenty of instances", or "a small chance that"?

If I recall correctly, LAME (and the mp3 format itself) has trouble handling audio data above 16kHz. 320kbps is a waste of space for me, VBR or Lossless.

And since Monkey's Audio is slowly picking up again (with Linux decoders working), I see a bright future for it. All I want now is native ReplayGain and better seeking, and I'll never need to see FLAC on my HDD ever again. Though I'm curious about MPEG-4 lossless as well, the tests I saw had good compression with fast decoding, a lossless standard would help get more lossless rips out there (we badly need an mp3 of lossless).

Good luck getting many to make the move from FLAC to APE... :D

If you're referring to mac, I've barely gotten that thing to work, and no player I'd consider using (Musik or MPD exclusively) supports it. mac was also the biggest pain in the ass to get installed, since the usual make chain didn't work for me with it (much less a lacking of documentation); this was all about one month ago, by the way.

I voted FLAC, for the simple reason that my players support it, and the decoder on Linux works perfectly. Add to that the really low decode time compared to APE when both run with high compression, and I find it to be the winner by leaps and bounds.

The only reason I even have mac installed anymore is to rip things from APE and dump them to FLAC so my players can use it.

A very real chance.

Correct.

Never gonna happen. That's how APE squeezes the extra 1 or 2% out of its encodings: by completely neglecting to have the kind of structure that makes fast seeking possible.

Black people are hilarious.

i know this is off-topic but what's the difference between ALAC and FLAC?

Main difference (besides for lossless encoding): ALAC is a proprietary format, only officially decodable on iTunes and iPods. This is in contrast to FLAC which is open source and is decodable on nearly any media player (if not directly, then with plugins), but since FLAC is not officially decodable on an iPod (or many other hardware digital music players), it has an uphill battle.

Furthermore, though I've noticed I'm the only person saying anything positive about Monkey's Audio, it's still in 2nd place with six votes. While it's dwarfed with FLAC's 22 votes, it still crushes the nearest competition threefold.

ok, thanks for the clarification kaiten.

Cal has been banned from the thread.

I'm never going back to .APE again. MAC's faulty integration with Explorer managed to completely lock up my CPU a few times, and honestly, encoding .FLAC at normal compression isn't much slower. FLAC lags considerably less than APE too.

The only thing APE has going for it is slightly smaller file sizes. The thing is though, if you are going to go lossless anyway, you might as well use FLAC for it's better implementation and support. So you are using slightly more HDD space, the pros outweigh the cons...

Question then: If there are people who think that even at 'perfect MP3 quality' (as in, 320 kbps) MP3 can be rubbish, why do we have 90% of proper quality VGM albums, plus game rips, only in MP3 format and not in a better lossy or lossless format?

It baffles me that a smart community that purports to care about game audio and quality thereof doesn't really give a shit whether they have a file in 128 kbps Mp3 or FLAC or high quality OGG or whatever. There are differences, it's been proven time and time again, just go to Hydrogen Audio.

Of course, if you own a Sound Blaster card, then get 64 kbps Mp3 files and who cares. ;) (Kidding.)

Regards,
- Spike

Simple answer: everyone uses mp3. How many digital music players don't support mp3 (very few)? Now list the number that don't support Ogg, Musepack, AAC, or WMA; you'll notice the number to be significantly higher. I think that until multi-terabyte iPods become common, you won't see the majority of scene rips being lossless.

On top of that VBR mp3s encoded with LAME 3.97 sound very good, other formats may have gotten around mp3's limitations, but LAME has proven mp3 still has room to improve.

Well, I know that. VBR MP3 to most people isn't a big deal. But my point is, although we're starting to get VBR rips, most simply AREN'T- they're 128, 160 or 192. Which to me is not great.

So it's kind of unfair to say, most people don't care if it's VBR, because the fact is most rips are done in 128 kbps, a far cry from VBR LAME MP3.


But anyway. iRiver playes support OGG and are cheap.

I also personally think that if you have an ipod and crappy headphones, you can't tell the difference between much. But personally, I record VGM as a hobby, and good quality is important to me. Besides, (in my opinion), if you settle for second or lower best, your ears adapt and you lose you discernment and real ability to tell quality and basically hear as well. To me that would explain all the people who have been listening to crappy MP3's for years and saying "I don't hear the difference between 128 kbps MP3 and FLAC" or whatever.

Anyways, I'm getting a little thereotical. But it does piss me off that people harp on about wanting good quality audio yet most rips are done badly and also then converted to 128 kbps MP3 files. To me that's a sad reflection on a very intelligent group of fans who should care about music quality.

And I'm trying not to be a quality nazi, but seriously. It's not fucking hard to rip a quality 7 OGG file instead of using a MP3, or alternatively rip both the OGG and MP3 soundtrack, or FLAC and MP3 if you want. People have huge shares online anyway (think: VGM Central).

I think we need proper guidelines and 'best practice' guidelines. To me, everyone doing whatever and everyone else having to put up with that isn't good enough, since every fan doesn't have time to rip all the audio they want (hence, being stuck with bad gamerips if that's all that's available). Like me, and I hate that.

Anyway, enough ranting.

- Spike

Double Post:
Update:

Just so I don't sound entirely like a dumbass ranting person who makes stuff up, here's some comparisons. (You'll have to copy/paste into your browser since I don't have enough posts for URL's, or whatever stupid rule it is.)

The game is Ys 2 (Eternal version), and the track is "Ice Ridge of Noltia" (note that any track could have been used to prove the point, the logic applies to all, I just like this one best ;) ).

Anyway. Ys 2 has WAV files on the game CD/DVD, right? So originally it sounds like this:
smc.sq7.org/assorted/12ys242.wav

Then, I converted it to OGG, quality 7 (which has been proven to my satisfaction to be about as close as you can get to CD quality without going lossless):
smc.sq7.org/assorted/12ys242.ogg

Finally, here's the MP3 rip (don't know who did it), which is in most people's VGM shares:
smc.sq7.org/assorted/12ys242.mp3

It's in 160 kbps.

Can you hear the difference?

.. No, seriously. :)

- Spike

I guess the link to the mp3 should be: smc.sq7.org/assorted/12.%20Ice%20Ridge%20of%20Noltia.mp3

I don't know what happened to that mp3 but the soundstage is much narrower than the ogg. It's encoded with Fhg instead of LAME. Although the fhg enocder is worse than lame, I don't believe the Fhg encoder gives such bad mp3s as this one. So i think the source wav was just not the same.

If you encode your wav with Fhg or lame @160cbr the soundquality will be much better and much closer to that ogg.


But still VBR is better than CBR, although the difference is not as big as your example.

Well, you could be right. The difference was the WAV file I used was from the YS 1/2 Eternal DVD, and the Mp3 was from those games' "Original Soundtrack". Not sure if the soundtrack was separate. If so, I don't see why they would be so much worse!

I'll try and find a different file and see.

Either way, I think there should be a requirement (or really, a 'best practice suggestion' that people adhere to) that people who encode using MP3 use VBR LAME MP3, or whatever the best proven codec is (MP3 isn't my field of knowledge, since I don't use it).

- Spike

Well, Spikey, there is a "best practice suggestion" as you mention: http://www.gamingforce.com/forums/be...3-ripping.html

It's just that a lot of people tend to do it their own way, regardless. *shrugs* You can't expect everyone to be as enthusiastic about high quality VBR MP3 / Ogg Vorbis files as you are. And Vorbis isn't exactly a miracle format, either. You can encode Ogg Vorbis files so that they sound just as terrible as low-bitrate MP3s.

Many albums were just ripped and uploaded by an anonymous person back in 1998 or so and those rips are circulating ever since. Since these albums can be rare, hard to find, out of print, etc., no one did a better quality rip ever since. Compression technologies improve day by day, what was considered a good quality mp3 (at, say, 160k) may not be considered equally good nowadays. Thats pretty much why many albums are only available in lower bitrates.

Speaking of rare/OOP albums that are encoded in great MP3 quality... www.slightlydark.com ^_^

Oh, and to be actually on topic, I support FLAC over the rest. It has great support on all sorts of platforms, is efficient in CPU usage, and supports ReplayGain (a must for me). While Monkey's Audio and some other codecs may have higher compression ratios, it's usually only by a slight percentage. Plus FLAC is now integrated natively into the latest versions of Winamp, my PC media player of choice.