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]

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]

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?

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]

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"

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Originally posted by sorak:
Why are you concerned with the quality?

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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?

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.

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.

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/

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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.

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2) Select FAAC 128 k/bis from predefined arguments (or you can select User defined and enter your own argument in Arguments)

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At present I say that you should stick with mp3 rather than use faac but when it's is more finely developed who knows?

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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]

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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!

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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.

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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.

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Also on Foobar what does the Quantizer Quality on the FAAC encoder settings do?

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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.

quote:

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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

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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!

quote:

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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.

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quote:

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However is that site still going to be posting updates as Case states he has lost interest on the home page.

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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!

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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.