Category computers

Okay, after spending the last half hour doing A/B tests of 160kbps, 192kpbs, 256kpbs, and 350kbps .ogg files, I don’t think my ears are good enough to hear that much of a difference. I think I’m going to go with 256kbps, but I’ll give everything a listen at home through speakers and headphones and then decide. Maybe my ears suck, or maybe it’s the noisy sound card in this machine. We’ll see.

Okay, Monkey’s Audio:
27 File(s) 458,098,103 bytes

Ogg Vorbis 256kBps:
27 File(s) 144,111,480 bytes

Defiantely an advantage on file size. I think there’s an advantage on sound, too. The .ape files (Monkey’s Audio lossless) sounded brighter. Hard to tell. Time to get a spectrum analyzer…

While I was at lunch I decided to use Exact Audio Copy to rip beefcake’s drei down to some .ogg files using Ogg Vorbis 1.0. So far I’m pretty impressed. I went with the standard 256kBps VBR for a first try. At first listen on my notebook here at work it sounds like a 320kBps MP3 but with better high frequency sounds. It also pulled the whole disc down into ~150MB. Not bad…

Lately I’ve been desiring to rip a number of my most listened to CDs into some sort of compressed format. That way it’ll be easier to listen to around the house. I’ve now got a notebook and some Aiwa USB speakers in the kitchen. My I-Opener and a USB->TOSLINK adapter would work well down by the television. Obviously the PCs could act as their own players.

Sounds good so far, eh? Now comes the hard part… Deciding on a format. Monkey’s Audio is a nice lossless codec, but it’s Winamp support is a bit dodgy. Works, but not well. MP3 is just sounding tired. You can always tell an MP3, at almost any bitrate. Ogg is sounding good, has great support from software players, but I can’t find some good recommendations as far as settings go. I think that 256kBps VBR is going to work good. Going to 350kBps VBR will add an estimated 25%, and I’m not sure if it’s worth it. Perhaps I need to do some listening tests, then some decoding (to wave) and run the files through a spectrum analyzer vs. the original wave.

Anyone have enough experience with Ogg or various other codecs that they can make a recommendation? Hopefully I can find a codec that will be good for a few years to come. I know that lossless would be best, but it will also be about 300MB per disc then.