(Go to end for the conclusion)
For those interested in compressed audio (mp3, ogg, flac etc) I thought I would share some of my recent experiences so others might be able to save some time in determining which format to use. Certainly the format choice will often depend on the device and system you plan to play them on. For the purposes of my testing I wanted a format that I could tolerate on my high-end home theater and audio system. And since we are dealing with a subjective and individual "perception" of "sound quality" my conclusions may not necessarily match those made by others. And finally, if you listen to music on cheap headphones and a portable mp3/music player, the distinction between the various formats and bit rates will be very negligible.
This recent interest in testing/comparing encoding methods came about from the past week of testing/installing various HTPC systems (Home Theater PC). I have been playing with MythTV, Freevo, myHTPC and SnapStream and will eventually do a review of these as well. From what I have seen so far, MythTV is the way to go if you run Linux, but be prepared for lots of tweaking and time to configure. If you need a mostly out-of-the-box solution for Windows, check out myHTPC but recording doesn't seem to work that well yet. SnapStream is also not bad but is really tied to proprietary 3rd party tools for program guide (but you can use XMLTV) and Internet Explorer.
... snipped ...
Conclusions:
MP3 is crap!! for anything but small, portable and less-than-audiophile-quality listening.
If you need to save space and retain audio quality truly comparable to the original cd, then ogg is the way to go. And using the quality level of q8, you would be hard pressed to notice a difference, even at high levels.
If it is near-perfect audiophile quality your looking for, and plan to play your music on a decent system, and have the disk space to spare, then flac is the best choice, even at the highest (-8) compression level.
Johnny Stork, B.A. Calgary, AB
Wow! Excellent work, Johnny. Thanx 4 posting to the group. You obviously spent many hours testing and it sounds like your methods were exacting enough to make decent conclusions.
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Dave Bourassa at
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"There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who
understand binary and those who don't."
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