2. pc-audio
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What's your favorite audio codec?

I recently installed Rockbox on my iPod. For those of you who are not familiar with Rockbox, it is a replacement OS for portable media players. I recommend going to www.rockbox.org for more information. One of the biggest strengths of Rockbox is that it allows a media player to play almost any commonly used audio codec (including FLAC, Vorbis, AAC, etc).

Anyway, what is your favorite codec?
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tedmbrady
208 posts
 
wav. Storage is cheap, getting cheaper, compression is usually only 50% at best, and may (I say may) have a deleterious sonic effect during decompression. That being said, I use FLAC for my SB3, but find that if I'd want to move to a USB pc (or MAC) based solution I have work to do. Wav!
jc51373
319 posts
 
WAV is the biggest, no compression, but you lose the metadata in iTunes.

Osgorth-what I mean when I say a little compression as possible is would prefer none at all.
jc51373
319 posts
 
"Both of these formats compress the file much more than Apple Lossless can. Check them out."

the question is really...Why would anyone want to compress files more?
osgorth
109 posts
 
Why would anyone want to compress files more? Well, to save hard drive space obviously, and to be able to use tagging, integrity checksums and so on. I've written extensively about this in another thread so I won't go into it again. :)

Short version: lossless compression does not in any way alter the sonics of a file. It can easily be proven as well, and I've done so in the other thread on compression just a few weeks ago.
jc51373
319 posts
 
I personally will buy more storage if it meant improving sonics since it is so cheap, so moot point. Unless your worried about space on an iPod itself or other portable player. This is the very reason I like ALAC. Although in my trials I could not hear any difference between FLAC AND ALAC, if you can you're a better ear than me. Although I feel I heard better with WAV, could be in my head.

Anyway, I have no interest in worrying about compressing my audio files more on my home system, particularly where I have a TB of space.I worry about space-saving for music that travels, which is only worthy of headphones anyway.

Apple Lossless is as good if not better than all you swear are the better here in this thread, sorry to say. I am well versed on the subject as well, and I work very closely with this technology. Also in case you weren't aware, I have a USB DAC with a tubed output, so all my music is HDD based, all ALAC, with error correction, and it sounds better than the actual CD on a Meridian G08 CD player. Go figure...
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