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T O P I C     R E V I E W Operandi I've been encoding all my CD's in MP3 via LAME (VBR 220-250k avrg) for a few years now and have been happy with the results but is it time for something new? My main concern is quality but compatibility is a concern too, I don't want to have to rely on 3rd party plug-ins for playback. I'd also like to be able to use an internal encoder for audiograbber for sake of simplicity if possible. Right now I'm looking at either OGG or AAc as a clear MP3 successor, thoughts? [This message has been edited by Operandi on 10 December 2003 @ 10:03] Tomb Just a quick ramble! I would say it depends on what you use your music for. If you are like me and just have a PC rigged to the hi-fi then I would suggest MPC or AAC. As AAC is more widely used on portables now you could kill two birds with one stone as it were by choosing that one. But then what AAC encoder to use? You will not be able to use Quicktime or Nero's with Audiograbber and the others are either no longer developed (Pystel) or not yet quite right (FAAC). There is also Compaact but I have had no experience with this promising looking codec. http://audio.ciara.us/test/aac128test/results.html FAAC can be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/faac/ Ogg Vorbis is excellent at the lower bitrates although it lost to AAC in some recent tests at 128kbs. AAC and Ogg are now the real direct competitors in my view. http://audio.ciara.us/test/128extension/results.html However LAME is still being developed and mp3 is not going to go away just yet so you could stick with that. See Hydrogen Audio for information on all the different codecs: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/ Finally why not encode some tracks in other formats and if mp3 still sounds good to you then stick with it. As for third party plug-ins use Foobar 2000 - download the special version and you will need no plug-ins for any of the major formats. http://www.foobar2000.org/download.html [This message has been edited by Tomb on 09 December 2003 @ 20:06] Operandi Rad post Tomb, thanks for the info I checked those links but didn't find anything AAC encoders would work with Audiograbber. Are there any internal AAC encoders that would audiograbber, and would it be worth while to make the switch from lame? Tomb The encoders that will work with Audiograbber are Pystel, Pystel Fast and Free Advanced Audio Codec (FAAC). As Pystel is no longer developed as the person responsible moved to NERO to develop their codec I would plump for FAAC despite Pystel being the better quality at present. Download FAAC from http://pessoal.onda.com.br/rjamorim/faac.zip and unzip to Audiograbbers directory (not important but for ease of use) Open the mp3 settings tick the external encoder and do the following: 1) Browse to the AG directory and select FAAC.exe 2) Select FAAC 128 k/bis from predefined arguments (or you can select User defined and enter your own argument in Arguments) 3) change the File extension to aac 4) press ok and start ripping! If that does not work use AG to rip to WAV and download a front end for the AAC codecs mentioned from http://home.wanadoo.nl/~w.speek/ivan&menno.htm and use that instead for encoding. At present I say that you should stick with mp3 rather than use faac but when it's is more finely developed who knows? If you buy NERO and use it's own AAC encoder than I would say use that instead of mp3 but it is all down to what sounds best for you, including ogg, and not what i think! I must admit that i only use AG for line-in sampling or ripping at 56kbs with Fraunhofer for my Live 365 station. Hope that helps. [This message has been edited by Tomb on 11 December 2003 @ 12:42] sorak Why are you concerned with the quality? I have also been using LAME for a couple of years. I use CBR 192 for listening and CBR 256 for archive purposes. With difficulty and a decent pair of headphones I can tell the difference between the two (minimal), but between 256 and the original... nobody I know can spot the diff. So my advice is that until you can easily tell the difference, stick to mp3 as it is still the most widely used and most compatible format around. "If it aint broke, don't fix it" Tomb quote: Originally posted by sorak: Why are you concerned with the quality? It's called choice! The same reason why you use CBR 192 and not --alt preset -standard I suppose!!! I have been trying to get Audiograbber to work with nencode recently so I can rip directly to mp4 via Nero's AAC Codec. Has anyone tried this at all and if so what parameters did you use? NeoRenegade If AudioGrabber was still payware, I'm sure Jackie would not like this post, but since he's moving towards the Freeware angle, I think it's safe to say this now... The best way to make AAC files is with Apple's "iTunes." I'm not sure if iTunes does as good a job as AudioGrabber at grabbing the CD tracks, but it has a good AAC encoder, which makes AAC files that will be guaranteed to play properly on an iPod. So if compatibility is a concern, I suggest you use iTunes, since then your AAC's will play perfectly on your iPod should you ever decide to get one. ... Ogg Vorbis is unfortunately not widely supported on MP3 players. Nex players support Vorbis, and so do some iRiver players, but the support isn't complete and there is a new version of Vorbis in the works, which, when released, will most likely not be compatible with the original Vorbis decoders. Operandi After looking at the current state of all the audio codecs I think I'm gona stick with LAME MP3 for the moment. LAME/MP3 is a pretty well established and mature solution right now. Though AAC looks to gaining lots of ground I don't think its ready to replace MP3 just yet.... Thanks for the input all. xanadu1977 iTunes is a horrible ripper for windows. The CD has to be in perfect condition or else it will crash trying to rip and create the aac file. Audiograbber as we all know does a wonderful job with damaged cd's. Ogg vorbis is my format of choice right now. The sound quality is excellent. Now that portable processors and batteries have gotten more powerful (ogg is a processor hog) youll see more and more portables supporting ogg (Rio Karma which i own and the IRIver ihp-20 both support ogg vorbis gapless on the Karma too!) I think that there is more encoding and playback software for ogg than there is for apple. Oggdrop is a great simple easy to use encoder is you dont want to use audiograbbers that tags wonderfully as well. Here is a great link for ogg and mp3 software http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jfe1205/ Mellis ...but... When it comes to converting files I think iTunes does a great job even thou it is a bit slow. iTunes converts both wav files and mp3 files into aac, even thou it sucks as a ripper... hans-jürgen quote: Originally posted by Tomb: As Pystel is no longer developed as the person responsible moved to NERO to develop their codec I would plump for FAAC despite Pystel being the better quality at present. As you probably know, there is a current AAC listening test ending tonight which compares the improved FAAC v1.23.5 to the latest Nero, QuickTime 6.5, compaact! and the brand-new RealNetworks (= Coding Technologies). This comparison does not include PsyTEL anymore like the first test in June 2003 (with FAAC v1.17), because it won't be developed any further and also has some bugs confirmed by Ivan Dimkovic. quote: 2) Select FAAC 128 k/bis from predefined arguments (or you can select User defined and enter your own argument in Arguments) Please do not use the ABR setting of the new FAAC instead of the better sounding default VBR mode, only if you have to define an exact file size or want to stream the file on the internet. See the Audiocoding.com Wiki for more info. quote: At present I say that you should stick with mp3 rather than use faac but when it's is more finely developed who knows? In my personal listening tests during the recent FAAC development I found LAME --alt-preset 128 (v3.93.1) to sound worse than the default -q 100 -c 16000 of FAAC while generating quite the same overall bitrates. But if you do not care for file sizes, it's correct that --alt-preset standard still is a very good way to encode with LAME. Tomb I am waiting the results of the AAC test with some interest just to see how far FAAC has come since the last one and hope we can have a real viable alternative against some of the commercial codecs. Of course other free AAC codecs include Winamp and ITunes but Itunes cannot be used on anything less than Windows 2000 while the free version of winamp restricts encoding to 2x speed and in any case I would rather have an encoder that works with AG! I will post the links to the test results when those good people at Hydrogen Audio publish them. Hans-Jurgen: Do you know what the latest binary (w32) version of FAAC is and where can I obtain it? I have 1.2.5 and got that one through a thread on Hydrogen Audio. Also on Foobar what does the Quantizer Quality on the FAAC encoder settings do? [This message has been edited by Tomb on 28 February 2004 @ 22:21] hans-jürgen quote: Originally posted by Tomb: Of course other free AAC codecs include Winamp and ITunes but Itunes cannot be used on anything less than Windows 2000 while the free version of winamp restricts encoding to 2x speed and in any case I would rather have an encoder that works with AG! Good that you mentioned Winamp, are you sure that their free version is able to encode with AAC? I thought I read somewhere that only the commercial Pro version could do that... and wasn't there some restrictions related to CD ripping or burning? Anyhow, the MP4 container is not supported for encoding, as far as I know. quote: Hans-Jurgen: Do you know what the latest binary (w32) version of FAAC is and where can I obtain it? I have 1.2.5 and got that one through a thread on Hydrogen Audio. I think I also mentioned it in one of my postings from today: the latest version of faac.exe and libfaac.dll is v1.23.5 (the one that is tested at the moment), and you can get it e.g. at Case's site: http://www.saunalahti.fi/~cse/files/?C=M;O=D Sometimes RareWares has an up-to-date version, too, but normally not. quote: Also on Foobar what does the Quantizer Quality on the FAAC encoder settings do? That's the same VBR mode as the default -q 100 setting (in %) of the command line version, and it works similar to quality-based settings in other VBR codecs like Musepack or Vorbis (i.e. more quality = more bits). See the table on FAAC's Wiki page for an overview of recommended settings. Tomb quote: Originally posted by hans-jürgen: Good that you mentioned Winamp, are you sure that their free version is able to encode with AAC? I thought I read somewhere that only the commercial Pro version could do that... and wasn't there some restrictions related to CD ripping or burning? Anyhow, the MP4 container is not supported for encoding, as far as I know Nope - the free vesrion encodes to aac at 2x max! You can change the extension to mp4 but only on single files at a time. quote: Originally posted by hans-jürgen: I think I also mentioned it in one of my postings from today: the latest version of faac.exe and libfaac.dll is v1.23.5 (the one that is tested at the moment), and you can get it e.g. at Case's site: http://www.saunalahti.fi/~cse/files/?C=M;O=D Sometimes RareWares has an up-to-date version, too, but normally not. Yes you did - sorry I was not paying attention. However is that site still going to be posting updates as Case states he has lost interest on the home page. Shame as that is also my fave Musepack resource. quote: Originally posted by hans-jürgen: That's the same VBR mode as the default -q 100 setting (in %) of the command line version, and it works similar to quality-based settings in other VBR codecs like Musepack or Vorbis (i.e. more quality = more bits). See the table on FAAC's Wiki page for an overview of recommended settings. I gotcha. I understand it now looking at the tables. Thanks for your help. Can I suggest that Jackie will incorpates FAAC into one of the next versions of Audiograbber - that would be a great idea to be honest if he can make use of the libfacc.dll! hans-jürgen quote: Originally posted by Tomb: Nope - the free vesrion encodes to aac at 2x max! You can change the extension to mp4 but only on single files at a time. I see, and this is possible with Nullsoft's internal plugin, too, or do you need in_mp4.dll from Audiocoding.com to do the conversion to MP4? quote: However is that site still going to be posting updates as Case states he has lost interest on the home page. I don't know what Case means with that remark, but he still hosts the Special Installer of foobar2000 and the other compiles like faac, libfaac, in_mp4, cool_faac etc. on his site, so I think he would also update them if FAAC comes out with a newer version. He is part of the FAAC project, by the way, and developed foo_faac and the -w switch of the command line version for example. quote: Can I suggest that Jackie will incorpates FAAC into one of the next versions of Audiograbber - that would be a great idea to be honest if he can make use of the libfacc.dll! Yes, this would probably be the easiest way for him to integrate FAAC, since it already works for CDex, too, although using wrong default settings then. See this thread on the CDex forum: http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/boards/index.php?showtopic=1773 And wrapping the AAC file to MP4 isn't possible with libfaac.dll yet which is mandatory for gapless encoding, because AAC files are not gapless, only MP4 files. Also directly tagging the MP4 container with iTunes tags needs more work, so Jackie would have to look at the methods in foobar, Winamp or dBpowerAMP for implementing this in Audiograbber. Tomb .I see, and this is possible with Nullsoft's internal plugin, too, or do you need in_mp4.dll from Audiocoding.com to do the conversion to MP4?< Yep it uses the Nullsoft's Internal Plug-in. I am sure Menno stated on Hydroegn Audio that if you use the in_mp4.dll from Audiocoding.com (which would overwrite the Nullsoft one as they have the same name at present) it would not affect the conversion - I have not tried yet! Dex4now Well, I hope my response is keeping with the intent of the original poster, (Operandi). (BTW - Love the screen name.) My music listening nowadays, falls into two distinct catagories, each with two sub-catagories: Home and away. Home: Serious listening: Thats done with the original CD or album on a decent stereo system. Casual listening: Thats done using either Winamp or QCD, with either the iZotope Ozone, or OSS/3D plug-in, using Lame encoded MP3's exclusively. (More on why later.) Away: In the Car: Hardware limitations make it MP3 or WMA. I'll take MP3, thank you very much. Everywhere else: Hotel, cycling, jogging, walking: again its MP3 for hardware compatibility. So . . . it boils down to MP3 for hardware compatibility. And, to be honest, nothing else seems to be better in "casual" listening situations, such as mobile and portable apps require. MP3, using lame 3.90.3 (Libron's compile) with the -alt-preset standard switch. My 2cw. (two-cents-worth) Dex Operandi Dex4now, Thanks man... Yeah, your post helped out. I think I'm gona stick with LAME for awhile as I think i have a pretty good setup using the internal encoder with audiograbber and MP3s work pretty much everywhere... WMA is deffinetly out.. (microsoft) I'm thinking evutally either AAC or OGG/or both will gain some momentium and be a more of a viable alternative as subsitute for MP3 with better quality to size ratio. Tomb quote: Originally posted by Operandi: I'm thinking evutally either AAC or OGG/or both will gain some momentium and be a more of a viable alternative as subsitute for MP3 with better quality to size ratio. It could be that AAC is the choice now. Both the Quicktime (itunes) and Nero Codecs are mature enough to use and FAAC is catching up. Two online music stores now sell their digital downlaods in AAC format (Apple and Real). Reading the comments of those who took part in the recent Hydrogen Audio test many stated that AAC had reached transparency at 128 k/bits on certain tracks. You certainly couldn't say that about mp3s! On another note I have now got Audiograbber working with the Nero AAC Codec. Just now need to work out how to tag them automatically! [This message has been edited by Tomb on 05 March 2004 @ 19:28] Operandi quote: Originally posted by Tomb: It could be that AAC is the choice now. Both the Quicktime (itunes) and Nero Codecs are mature enough to use and FAAC is catching up. Two online music stores now sell their digital downlaods in AAC format (Apple and Real). Reading the comments of those who took part in the recent Hydrogen Audio test many stated that AAC had reached transparency at 128 k/bits on certain tracks. You certainly couldn't say that about mp3s! On another note I have now got Audiograbber working with the Nero AAC Codec. Just now need to work out how to tag them automatically! Hmm.... sweet So we should see internal AAC codecs supported sometime soon? I'm kinda unfamilar with FAAC, I'm guessing its what LAME is to MP3? [This message has been edited by Operandi on 07 March 2004 @ 10:16] hans-jürgen quote: Originally posted by Operandi: I'm kinda unfamilar with FAAC, I'm guessing its what LAME is to MP3? I answered some questions about FAAC in this and other threads on this forum already, but maybe you missed these answers. If you mean the open source status of FAAC and LAME with your question, then yes, FAAC is the only available open source AAC codec. Concerning its improved quality you could have a look at the recent listening test comparing it to four other commercial AAC codecs. Regarding the difference to Nero you should keep in mind that Nero used a 10% higher bitrate with the 12 test samples, i.e. ~140 kbps instead of the 128 kbps that were to be tested. So a fair comparison between FAAC and Nero should use an equivalent setting for FAAC (e.g. -q 130 -c 17000), but this was not the purpose of the test. [This message has been edited by hans-jürgen on 07 March 2004 @ 16:03] Tomb You can download FAAC from the Rarewares AAC page (you will need the FAAC Binaries for Win32) http://www.rarewares.org/aac.html To use it select the external encoder tab. Set FAAC as the external mp3 program In predefined arguments select user defined In arguments type the following argument: %s %d -q 100 -c 16000 -w Set file extension as mp4 or m4a Note the above argument gives an average of 128 k/bits. Er, that's it! More can be found at the draft guide I am putting together at: http://www.arax12.dsl.pipex.com/ Operandi quote: Originally posted by hans-jürgen: I answered some questions about FAAC in this and other threads on this forum already, but maybe you missed these answers. If you mean the open source status of FAAC and LAME with your question, then yes, FAAC is the only available open source AAC codec. Concerning its improved quality you could have a look at the recent listening test comparing it to four other commercial AAC codecs. Regarding the difference to Nero you should keep in mind that Nero used a 10% higher bitrate with the 12 test samples, i.e. ~140 kbps instead of the 128 kbps that were to be tested. So a fair comparison between FAAC and Nero should use an equivalent setting for FAAC (e.g. -q 130 -c 17000), but this was not the purpose of the test. Yeah, sorry I missed that in your ealier posts. I checked out that v2 AAC test, looks like FAAC has improved nicely. quote: Originally posted by Tomb: [B]You can download FAAC from the Rarewares AAC page (you will need the FAAC Binaries for Win32) http://www.rarewares.org/aac.html To use it select the external encoder tab. Set FAAC as the external mp3 program In predefined arguments select user defined In arguments type the following argument: %s %d -q 100 -c 16000 -w Set file extension as mp4 or m4a Note the above argument gives an average of 128 k/bits. Er, that's it! More can be found at the draft guide I am putting together at: http://www.arax12.dsl.pipex.com/ Thanks for the info Tomb but I'd rather not mess with external encoders for various reasons. Any idea when/if there will be internal encoder support for audiograbber? Also how dose AAC fair in the higher bit rates?, like I said earlier I’m using LAME vrb stereo with bit rates varying between 200-300k/sec. Is AAC (FAAC?) still a viable alternative to LAME in a situation like that? [This message has been edited by Operandi on 08 March 2004 @ 03:56] Tomb Not sure about internal support with Audiograbber. Hopefully Hans-Jurgen has e-mailed Jackie to mention it! I am sure the FAAC project want as many pieces of software supporting their enocoder as possible. I did request, on this or another thread, FAAC being given the same support in AG as Ogg Vorbis so hopefully something may happen in the future. Rippers supporting FAAC internally include Bonk http://www.bonkenc.org/ and Foobar as previously mentioned. As for FAAC competing with Lame at the higher bitrates it has been mentioned that on other forums that FAAC (and AAC) may be a better bet at 128 k/bits it still may not be ready to compete against Lame's --alt-preset standard but I am sure that it is only a matter of time. My feeling is that you don't need such high bitrates with AAC to achieve transparency as you do with MP3. Somewhere between 160 and 192 should be good enough - it is for me. Of course it is all down to what is good for your ears and if you are happy with Lame at 220-250vbr then stick with it. MP3 will be around for a long while yet. [This message has been edited by Tomb on 08 March 2004 @ 08:49] hans-jürgen quote: Originally posted by Tomb: Not sure about internal support with Audiograbber. Hopefully Hans-Jurgen has e-mailed Jackie to mention it! I am sure the FAAC project want as many pieces of software supporting their enocoder as possible. Not yet, because I got the impression that he reads and answers in his forums quite regularly. And Audiograbber is of course interesting, because it is freeware now, so there would be another free CD ripper with FAAC support besides CDex, BonkEnc and foobar2000 (EAC with command line .exe, too). [Edit] Damn, forgot to mention dBpowerAMP and Poikosoft's Easy CD-DA Extractor (though not freeware) again... quote: As for FAAC competing with Lame at the higher bitrates it has been mentioned that on other forums that FAAC (and AAC) may be a better bet at 128 k/bits it still may not be ready to compete against Lame's --alt-preset standard but I am sure that it is only a matter of time. I've read these claims, too, and you have to realize that they are all based on hearsay or on stupid assumptions ("Why doesn't AAC at 128 kbps sound as good as LAME at ~200 kbps?"), because there are no public group listening tests trying to examine any codec at such high bitrates. And the reason is of course that it's pretty hard or close to impossible even for trained listeners to come up with reasonable results, meaning that you won't find enough people to validate such claims statistically. And concerning a direct comparison between LAME and FAAC it was interesting to read what Gabriel Bouvigne (one of the main LAME developers) had to say on Hydrogenaudio about the quality and "inner values" of FAAC... Back on topic, hurray! [This message has been edited by hans-jürgen on 08 March 2004 @ 19:00]