Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-15 Thread Roland Smith
On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 09:42:25PM -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
 On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 08:36:25AM +0100, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
  
  There is a special codec for speech. You'll find it the
  audio/speex port. From the pkg-descr:
  
  actually i use it with asterisk - at about 15kbps (VBR) there are audible 
  differences between this and standard 64kbps a-law - but the differences 
  are POSITIVE - speech sounds clearer!
  
 
   There's something I've been wanting to ask and a web search
   hasn't told me very much.  What is the mp4? Is it == to aac
   or aacPlus?  Some online stations carry the acc format and it
   seems better than mp3.  I can't really tell. 

It's quite complicated. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG4 and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding 

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-15 Thread Roland Smith
On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 08:51:02PM -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
 On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 08:26:02AM +0100, Roland Smith wrote:
  On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 08:05:59PM -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
lame -h -V 3 - nobody could tell the difference, it gives 200kbps 
bitrate
lame -h -b 192 - as above
lame -h -b 128 - they were able to tell difference, but not on all 
music/songs

lame -h -b 96 - i was able to tell the difference on every song, but it 
wasn't really huge deal.
  
 my hearing is exceptionally good and while call myself an
 audiophile,  having all my tunes right here at fingertips is 
 a major win.  having said that, can you point me to a basic
 tutorial on lame? 
  
  man lame
 
 
   GADGOOKS! that's no tutorial, that's *torture*.  After i finally 
   got caught up on miised sleep, a few hours ago I read-thru and
   listened-to (kttsd) the man lame.  Then surfed around; then came
   back to the man page and read the several examples.  So: the idea
   is that lame [just] converts WAV files to mp3. 

Yep. That's what it does. It's the UNIX philosophy; do one thing and do it well.
If you're not an expert you should probably stick with one of the
--preset modes. E.g. '--preset medium' or '--preset standard'. That will
give you variable bitrate files with good quality.

   There is a gnome utility, sound-juicer than turns my CD's from
   wave to ogg-vorbis.  I'm happy with ogg but would prefer flac
   ... but ogg is fine.  mp4 is a dontknow.  What I've got is good
   enough for now.

It looks like sound-juicer should be able to make flac files as well:
http://www.burtonini.com/computing/screenshots/sj-prefs.png, probably
depending on if you have the right gstreamer plugins installed. The
freebsd port of sound-juicer depends on the ogg vorbis and flac
gstreamer plugins.

 i've got 1581620 blocks of mp3 @ 128kbit.
 lectures.  when i tried to cut the quality even by a bit it was
 evident immediately.  rar compresses these file to
 1482404 blocks very very slowly.  it probably makes sense to just
 burn the mp3 files to a dvd and be safe.  
  
  There is a special codec for speech. You'll find it the
  audio/speex port. From the pkg-descr:
  
The Speex is a patent-free, Open Source/Free Software voice codec.
Unlike other codecs like MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, Speex is designed to
compress voice at bitrates in the 2-45 kbps range.  Possible
applications include VoIP, Internet audio streaming, archiving of
speech data (e.g. voice mail), and audio books. In some sense, it is
meant to be complementary to the Ogg Vorbis codec.
  
  This might perform better at compressing lectures.

   Sounds v promising, thanks.  
 
   Given the availability of compression these days, it makes me
   wonder why telephone conversations still sound so 'tinny'.  But
   then, that's another matter.

The speakers in telephones are tiny. That's probably a large part of it.

The codec used to digitize voice signals for current DECT phones, G.726
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.726] dates from 1990, so it was limited
to the technology of that time. Modern codecs like speex probably do a
better job!

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-15 Thread Wojciech Puchar


That's the idea: take telephone/voice @  what? 4kbps? -- it was


standard means between 300-3100Hz. often - sounds below 300Hz are now that 
filtered today.


record your voice at 8Khz sampling rate and then compress with speex 
various options and compare compressed and uncompressed.


as long as only speech is recorded, and not too high compression is 
selected, it tends to improve, not degrade quality esp. when recording is 
noisy.

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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-15 Thread Wojciech Puchar

If you're not an expert you should probably stick with one of the
--preset modes. E.g. '--preset medium' or '--preset standard'. That will
give you variable bitrate files with good quality.


lame -h -V 3 is what i use.


The speakers in telephones are tiny. That's probably a large part of it.

The codec used to digitize voice signals for current DECT phones, G.726
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.726] dates from 1990, so it was limited
to the technology of that time. Modern codecs like speex probably do a
better job!


MUCH better. record your voice at 8kHz and then try speex. it's REALLY 
excellent.

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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-14 Thread Wojciech Puchar


lame -h -b 96 - i was able to tell the difference on every song, but it
wasn't really huge deal.




hm.  oh, yeah, my new box has to have a superior soundcard.  and
i'll pony up for even better speakers too.  (so when i'm ready,
i'll ask what's best.  maybe find something on ebay.)

my hearing is exceptionally good and while call myself an
audiophile,  having all my tunes right here at fingertips is


i don't call myself audiophile (rather opposite, but i have normal 
hearing), just wanted to point out how much is really enough.


do use -h -V 3 when compressing.


a major win.  having said that, can you point me to a basic
tutorial on lame?  i've got 1581620 blocks of mp3 @ 128kbit.
lectures.  when i tried to cut the quality even by a bit it was
evident immediately.  rar compresses these file to
1482404 blocks very very slowly.  it probably makes sense to just
burn the mp3 files to a dvd and be safe.




--
Gary Kline  kl...@thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
   http://jottings.thought.org   http://transfinite.thought.org
   The 2.23a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php



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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-14 Thread Roland Smith
On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 08:05:59PM -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
  lame -h -V 3 - nobody could tell the difference, it gives 200kbps bitrate
  lame -h -b 192 - as above
  lame -h -b 128 - they were able to tell difference, but not on all 
  music/songs
  
  lame -h -b 96 - i was able to tell the difference on every song, but it 
  wasn't really huge deal.

   my hearing is exceptionally good and while call myself an
   audiophile,  having all my tunes right here at fingertips is 
   a major win.  having said that, can you point me to a basic
   tutorial on lame? 

man lame

   i've got 1581620 blocks of mp3 @ 128kbit.
   lectures.  when i tried to cut the quality even by a bit it was
   evident immediately.  rar compresses these file to
   1482404 blocks very very slowly.  it probably makes sense to just
   burn the mp3 files to a dvd and be safe.  

There is a special codec for speech. You'll find it the
audio/speex port. From the pkg-descr:

  The Speex is a patent-free, Open Source/Free Software voice codec.
  Unlike other codecs like MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, Speex is designed to
  compress voice at bitrates in the 2-45 kbps range.  Possible
  applications include VoIP, Internet audio streaming, archiving of
  speech data (e.g. voice mail), and audio books. In some sense, it is
  meant to be complementary to the Ogg Vorbis codec.

This might perform better at compressing lectures.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-14 Thread Wojciech Puchar


There is a special codec for speech. You'll find it the
audio/speex port. From the pkg-descr:


actually i use it with asterisk - at about 15kbps (VBR) there are audible 
differences between this and standard 64kbps a-law - but the differences 
are POSITIVE - speech sounds clearer!




 The Speex is a patent-free, Open Source/Free Software voice codec.
 Unlike other codecs like MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, Speex is designed to
 compress voice at bitrates in the 2-45 kbps range.  Possible
 applications include VoIP, Internet audio streaming, archiving of
 speech data (e.g. voice mail), and audio books. In some sense, it is
 meant to be complementary to the Ogg Vorbis codec.

This might perform better at compressing lectures.

Roland
--
R.F.Smith   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
[plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated]
pgp: 1A2B 477F 9970 BA3C 2914  B7CE 1277 EFB0 C321 A725 (KeyID: C321A725)


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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-14 Thread Jan Henrik Sylvester

Gary Kline wrote:
 my hearing is exceptionally good and while call myself an audiophile,
[...]
 lectures.  when i tried to cut the quality even by a bit it was
 evident immediately.  rar compresses these file to

If you care for quality (and call yourself an audiophile), you should 
read up on what you are doing before you start it.


To compare different compression rates, you have to do both from the 
original. Applying lossy compression twice -- even with the same codec 
-- might give you artifacts that will not appear with just one run.


For the same reason, you do not convert between lossy formats. Each 
might give different kinds of artifacts that you do not want to combine. 
(Of course, this does not really contradict the suggestions you got to 
try speex if you want to do a major reduction of bitrate for your voice 
mp3 files to save space.)


The difference between lame with good settings and a bad mp3 encoder is 
probably bigger than between some better codec and mp3. Considering 
that, you should always stick to some --preset * options with lame, if 
you do not know better.


Are you sure you can hear the difference between your flac originals and 
--preset standard lame encoded mp3? Consider a double blind test.


This is probably all in the lame FAQ or similar sources.

I do keep flac files after ripping CDs, too, but not because I think I 
can hear the difference between them and the ogg vorbis files I produce. 
I rather like the option to go to a different lossy format someday. (I 
must admit that I have never tested if I can hear the difference between 
an mp3 that come from the original or an mp3 that comes from a higher 
bitrate ogg. Actually, I doubt it.)


I really do not see the point in saving one or two percent space by 
applying lzma/7z, rar, or similar compression. The savings in 
electricity by not doing that are better invested in a new hard drive. ;-)


BTW: lzma is the default compression of 7z. GNU tar offers lzma, too, 
but without the 7z container. If you look at archivers/gtar history, you 
will see that it seems not to have finalized on the library (and 
format?): 
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/ports/archivers/gtar/Makefile.diff?r1=1.63;r2=1.64


I am not an expert at all. You better read the lame (and ogg, speex, 
...) manual and FAQ yourself that is hopefully written by some expert.


Cheers,
Jan Henrik
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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-14 Thread Wojciech Puchar
For the same reason, you do not convert between lossy formats. Each might 
give different kinds of artifacts that you do not want to combine. (Of


especially true with mp3 and ogg

Are you sure you can hear the difference between your flac originals and 
--preset standard lame encoded mp3? Consider a double blind test.


i'm almost sure he can't.

I have never tested if I can hear the difference between an mp3 that come 
from the original or an mp3 that comes from a higher bitrate ogg. Actually, I


for me - hearing the difference between mp3 @ 128kbit CBR (compressed with 
lame) and uncompressed is on the edge of detection.


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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-14 Thread ChenLong

I use ape :)
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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-14 Thread Gary Kline
On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 08:26:02AM +0100, Roland Smith wrote:
 On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 08:05:59PM -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
   lame -h -V 3 - nobody could tell the difference, it gives 200kbps bitrate
   lame -h -b 192 - as above
   lame -h -b 128 - they were able to tell difference, but not on all 
   music/songs
   
   lame -h -b 96 - i was able to tell the difference on every song, but it 
   wasn't really huge deal.
 
  my hearing is exceptionally good and while call myself an
  audiophile,  having all my tunes right here at fingertips is 
  a major win.  having said that, can you point me to a basic
  tutorial on lame? 
 
 man lame


GADGOOKS! that's no tutorial, that's *torture*.  After i finally 
got caught up on miised sleep, a few hours ago I read-thru and
listened-to (kttsd) the man lame.  Then surfed around; then came
back to the man page and read the several examples.  So: the idea
is that lame [just] converts WAV files to mp3.  There is a
gnome utility, sound-juicer than turns my CD's from wave to
ogg-vorbis.  I'm happy with ogg but would prefer flac ... but ogg
is fine.  mp4 is a dontknow.  What I've got is good enough for
now.


 
  i've got 1581620 blocks of mp3 @ 128kbit.
  lectures.  when i tried to cut the quality even by a bit it was
  evident immediately.  rar compresses these file to
  1482404 blocks very very slowly.  it probably makes sense to just
  burn the mp3 files to a dvd and be safe.  
 
 There is a special codec for speech. You'll find it the
 audio/speex port. From the pkg-descr:
 
   The Speex is a patent-free, Open Source/Free Software voice codec.
   Unlike other codecs like MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, Speex is designed to
   compress voice at bitrates in the 2-45 kbps range.  Possible
   applications include VoIP, Internet audio streaming, archiving of
   speech data (e.g. voice mail), and audio books. In some sense, it is
   meant to be complementary to the Ogg Vorbis codec.
 
 This might perform better at compressing lectures.


Sounds v promising, thanks.  

Given the availability of compression these days, it makes me
wonder why telephone conversations still sound so 'tinny'.  But
then, that's another matter.

gary


 
 Roland
 -- 
 R.F.Smith   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
 [plain text _non-HTML_ PGP/GnuPG encrypted/signed email much appreciated]
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-- 
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http://jottings.thought.org   http://transfinite.thought.org
The 2.23a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php

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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-14 Thread Wojciech Puchar

listened-to (kttsd) the man lame.  Then surfed around; then came
back to the man page and read the several examples.  So: the idea
is that lame [just] converts WAV files to mp3.  There is a


as every good unix tool - it does exactly what is supposed to do.

nobody forbids you to make your script that do what you want with lame and 
say cdda2wav



Given the availability of compression these days, it makes me
wonder why telephone conversations still sound so 'tinny'.  But
then, that's another matter.

with right configured speex codec phone talks sounds actually better than 
uncompressed :)

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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-14 Thread Gary Kline
On Sat, Mar 14, 2009 at 08:36:25AM +0100, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 
 There is a special codec for speech. You'll find it the
 audio/speex port. From the pkg-descr:
 
 actually i use it with asterisk - at about 15kbps (VBR) there are audible 
 differences between this and standard 64kbps a-law - but the differences 
 are POSITIVE - speech sounds clearer!
 

There's something I've been wanting to ask and a web search
hasn't told me very much.  What is the mp4? Is it == to aac
or aacPlus?  Some online stations carry the acc format and it
seems better than mp3.  I can't really tell. 

anybody?

gary


-- 
 Gary Kline  kl...@thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
http://jottings.thought.org   http://transfinite.thought.org
The 2.23a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php

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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-14 Thread Gary Kline
On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 05:18:06AM +0100, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
  listened-to (kttsd) the man lame.  Then surfed around; then came
  back to the man page and read the several examples.  So: the idea
  is that lame [just] converts WAV files to mp3.  There is a
 
 as every good unix tool - it does exactly what is supposed to do.
 
 nobody forbids you to make your script that do what you want with lame and 
 say cdda2wav
 
  Given the availability of compression these days, it makes me
  wonder why telephone conversations still sound so 'tinny'.  But
  then, that's another matter.
 
 with right configured speex codec phone talks sounds actually better than 
 uncompressed :)


That's the idea: take telephone/voice @  what? 4kbps? -- it was 
something very narrow bandwidth so the phone companies could
squueze more speech into each wire.  Anyway, given 4k or whatever
bits/sec, built in a single chip into each new phone to compress
and uncompress.  And up the quality of the speaker!  

-- 
 Gary Kline  kl...@thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
http://jottings.thought.org   http://transfinite.thought.org
The 2.23a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php

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Re: best archiver?

2009-03-13 Thread Nerius Landys
guys, this is for any compression experts on-list.  my main desktop is 
 nearly
full.  i'm looking for the best means of compressing [mostly] audio 
 files.
mp3, ogg, and .flag.  i cross backup among my servers and would like 
 to have
the most reasoned approach to compressing my ~/Music/ files.  is 
 rar/unrar
better that bzip -9?  is there any new/forthcoming archiver on the 
 horizon?

actually, i am looking to buy/build a dual or quad system with two 
 1.5TB
drives.  but need help with that ... if anybody inn the seattle area 
 can come
over and help me.  for now, i just want to be as sure as possible that 
 my
files are saved on at least two systems.

thanks for any insights here.

gary



 --
  Gary Kline  kl...@thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
http://jottings.thought.org   http://transfinite.thought.org
The 2.23a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php


The audio files you mention will not compress well.  While .wav
(uncompressed waveform) audio compresses pretty well, MP3 files are
already highly compressed and will not compress much further.

As far as the best compressor, I vote for bzip2/bunzip2.
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Re: best archiver?

2009-03-13 Thread Thomas Abthorpe
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On March 13, 2009 03:15:24 pm Gary Kline wrote:
   guys, this is for any compression experts on-list.  my main desktop is
 nearly full.  i'm looking for the best means of compressing [mostly] audio
 files. mp3, ogg, and .flag.  i cross backup among my servers and would like
 to have the most reasoned approach to compressing my ~/Music/ files.  is
 rar/unrar better that bzip -9?  is there any new/forthcoming archiver on
 the horizon?

   actually, i am looking to buy/build a dual or quad system with two 1.5TB
   drives.  but need help with that ... if anybody inn the seattle area can
 come over and help me.  for now, i just want to be as sure as possible that
 my files are saved on at least two systems.

   thanks for any insights here.

   gary

Try archivers/rzip, and when compressing pass -9 on command line. I have been 
using it for some time, very happily.


Thomas

- -- 
Thomas Abthorpe | FreeBSD Committer
tabtho...@freebsd.org   | http://people.freebsd.org/~tabthorpe
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Re: best archiver?

2009-03-13 Thread Eitan Adler
Gary Kline wrote:
   guys, this is for any compression experts on-list.  my main desktop is 
 nearly
   full.  i'm looking for the best means of compressing [mostly] audio 
 files.
   mp3, ogg, and .flag.  i cross backup among my servers and would like to 
 have
   the most reasoned approach to compressing my ~/Music/ files.  is 
 rar/unrar
   better that bzip -9?  is there any new/forthcoming archiver on the 
 horizon?
man shar

Just kidding!

I would look into archivers/bunzip and archivers/p7zip.  I recall
reading that the 7z format produces better compression rates than RAR
for already compressed audio files but I don't remember the source.  The
file formats you mentioned are already compressed and depending on the
contents you probably won't get /much/ better than you have now.

-- 
Eitan Adler
Security is increased by designing for the way humans actually behave.
-Jakob Nielsen
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Re: best archiver?

2009-03-13 Thread andrew clarke
On Fri 2009-03-13 12:15:24 UTC-0700, Gary Kline (kl...@thought.org) wrote:

 guys, this is for any compression experts on-list.  my main desktop is nearly
 full.  i'm looking for the best means of compressing [mostly] audio files.
 mp3, ogg, and .flag.  i cross backup among my servers and would like to have
 the most reasoned approach to compressing my ~/Music/ files.  is rar/unrar
 better that bzip -9?  is there any new/forthcoming archiver on the horizon?

.mp3, .ogg and .flac files are already compressed.  You won't get them
much smaller.  Maybe 1% with rar or bzip2, if you're lucky, eg.

2009-03-06  08:38  22,524,903  FLOSS-059.mp3
2009-03-14  06:37  22,135,433  FLOSS-059.rar

If these sorts of files could be made significantly smaller than they
already are, people would be regularly transmitting them over the
Internet in that smaller format.

Possibly the only thing you'll gain from using rar instead of something
more primative like tar/bzip2 is marginally better error detection.

Personally I just burn all my media files to DVD-Rs, using Nero
Burning ROM under Windows.
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Re: best archiver?

2009-03-13 Thread Wojciech Puchar

guys, this is for any compression experts on-list.  my main desktop is 
nearly
full.  i'm looking for the best means of compressing [mostly] audio 
files.
mp3, ogg, and .flag.  i cross backup among my servers and would like to 
have


mp3 is already compressed as ogg

flac is lossless compression, you may convert to mp3 with lame so it'll 
get few times smaller.


lame -h -V 3 is actually higher quality than anyone could hear.


the most reasoned approach to compressing my ~/Music/ files.  is 
rar/unrar
better that bzip -9?  is there any new/forthcoming archiver on the 
horizon?


for compressible non-media files, i use grzip (ports/archivers/grzip)
grzip -b8m -m3 usually gives best compression, and always better than 
bzip2 -9, and packs faster

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Re: best archiver?

2009-03-13 Thread Wojciech Puchar

already highly compressed and will not compress much further.

As far as the best compressor, I vote for bzip2/bunzip2.
in my tests i found NO case when grzip would not compress data better than 
bzip2

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Re: best archiver?

2009-03-13 Thread Wojciech Puchar

I would look into archivers/bunzip and archivers/p7zip.  I recall
reading that the 7z format produces better compression rates than RAR


7zip is comparable to grzip (sometimes sligtly better - difference in 
order of 1%), while much slower

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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-13 Thread Roland Smith
On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 12:15:24PM -0700, Gary Kline wrote:
 
   guys, this is for any compression experts on-list.  my main
   desktop is nearly full.  i'm looking for the best means of
   compressing [mostly] audio files.  mp3, ogg, and .flag.

All of these are already compressed. Trying to compress them further is
a waste of time. See below. You can make smaller mp3 or ogg vorbis files
by encoding them at a lower bitrate or quality setting.

I did a test on compression some time ago.

I started with a track ripped from CD by cdrecord. I used 'lame -V 2' to
convert to mp3, 'oggenc -q 5' to convert to ogg vorbis, and 'flac -6' to
convert to flac.

File sizes were (in kilobytes, using 'du -k'):
20256   track01.flac
4592track01.mp3
3792track01.ogg
37584   track01.wav

The mp3 and ogg files are small because they employ 'lossy'
compression. On the other hand, flac is lossless compression. I tried
several (obviously lossless) archivers.

First I compressed them all with 'gzip -9':
20240   track01.flac.gz
4560track01.mp3.gz
3760track01.ogg.gz
33840   track01.wav.gz

As you can see these sound files don't compress well. The first three
because they are already compressed, and the wav file probably because
the gzip algorightm isn't a good match for sound data.

Then I tried with 'bzip2 -9':
20336   track01.flac.bz2
4560track01.mp3.bz2
3776track01.ogg.bz2
32080   track01.wav.bz2

Next up is 'rzip -9':

20240   track01.flac.rz
4560track01.mp3.rz
3776track01.ogg.rz
32080   track01.wav.rz

And finally 7zip '7z a -mx=9':

20448   track01.flac.7z
4576track01.mp3.7z
3760track01.ogg.7z
31424   track01.wav.7z

My conclusions were:
- The general archivers can compress the wav somewhat without loss, but
  none do as well as the dedicated lossless compression program flac.
- Trying to compress mp3, ogg and flac files further is a waste of time.
- If you want smaller files, use lossy compression like mp3 or ogg
  vorbis, and pick the lowest quality level that sounds acceptable to you.

Roland
-- 
R.F.Smith   http://www.xs4all.nl/~rsmith/
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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-13 Thread Wojciech Puchar

- The general archivers can compress the wav somewhat without loss, but
 none do as well as the dedicated lossless compression program flac.
- Trying to compress mp3, ogg and flac files further is a waste of time.
- If you want smaller files, use lossy compression like mp3 or ogg
 vorbis, and pick the lowest quality level that sounds acceptable to you.


i did actual hearing blind-tests with 4 people that title themself 
audiophile, on their hardware THEY tell have excellent sound output (actually it was 
really good for me).


results

lame -h -V 3 - nobody could tell the difference, it gives 200kbps bitrate
lame -h -b 192 - as above
lame -h -b 128 - they were able to tell difference, but not on all 
music/songs


lame -h -b 96 - i was able to tell the difference on every song, but it 
wasn't really huge deal.

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Re: best archiver? (for music)

2009-03-13 Thread Gary Kline
On Fri, Mar 13, 2009 at 09:31:50PM +0100, Wojciech Puchar wrote:
 - The general archivers can compress the wav somewhat without loss, but
  none do as well as the dedicated lossless compression program flac.
 - Trying to compress mp3, ogg and flac files further is a waste of time.
 - If you want smaller files, use lossy compression like mp3 or ogg
  vorbis, and pick the lowest quality level that sounds acceptable to you.
 
 i did actual hearing blind-tests with 4 people that title themself 
 audiophile, on their hardware THEY tell have excellent sound output 
 (actually it was really good for me).
 
 results
 
 lame -h -V 3 - nobody could tell the difference, it gives 200kbps bitrate
 lame -h -b 192 - as above
 lame -h -b 128 - they were able to tell difference, but not on all 
 music/songs
 
 lame -h -b 96 - i was able to tell the difference on every song, but it 
 wasn't really huge deal.



hm.  oh, yeah, my new box has to have a superior soundcard.  and
i'll pony up for even better speakers too.  (so when i'm ready, 
i'll ask what's best.  maybe find something on ebay.)

my hearing is exceptionally good and while call myself an
audiophile,  having all my tunes right here at fingertips is 
a major win.  having said that, can you point me to a basic
tutorial on lame?  i've got 1581620 blocks of mp3 @ 128kbit.
lectures.  when i tried to cut the quality even by a bit it was
evident immediately.  rar compresses these file to
1482404 blocks very very slowly.  it probably makes sense to just
burn the mp3 files to a dvd and be safe.  




-- 
 Gary Kline  kl...@thought.org  http://www.thought.org  Public Service Unix
http://jottings.thought.org   http://transfinite.thought.org
The 2.23a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php

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