What's your favorite audio codec?

07-19-07: Shadorne
AAC 128 is darn good...AAC 256 is almost undetectable from uncompressed CD quality, IMHO

On a portable player, yes (I use 224 AAC on my iPod when not using Apple Lossless for well-recorded stuff), but on a music server played through a hi-end home system, discernable 100 out of 100 times easily. That's the problem; a resolving dedicated home system can spot lossy compression a mile away.

S-VHS looked great on a 19" monitor, but on my 110" Stewart screen it was basically unwatchable.

I have to agree with Osgorth here. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying Jc51373, and I think you may have been mislead.

ALAC is not 1:1, it is lossless compression, just like FLAC or Monkey's. (That's why it's called Apple Lossless Audio Codec, like FLAC is called Free Lossless Audio Codec). WAV and AIFF are uncompressed. However, all lossless compression is MATHEMATICALLY IDENTICAL to uncompressed audio. That means that WAV sounds EXACTLY like ALAC which sounds EXACTLY like FLAC which sounds EXACTLY like Monkey's. So the only difference between these is encoding speed (how quickly your computer can convert the file into ALAC or FLAC or whatever) and size.

This being said, why wouldn't you go for the smallest lossless compression? It's smaller, and still sounds IDENTICAL to the original WAV. ALAC already compresses, but just not as well as FLAC. Sure storage space may be cheap, but it's not free. Lossless compression will save you a lot of money and will still sound exactly like the CD.

There is absolutely no difference in how WAV sounds compared with lossless compression.

Ledhed2222- I am not sure you have read all of what I have said if your misunderstanding, or this entire thread for that matter-I use LOSSLESS..How am I misinformed? I am not the one who said ALAC sucks compared to a format that has little mainstream support and sounds the same. And if the three (ALAC,FLAC,Monkey) are the same as you say, how can you think that ALAC sucks (sonically speaking)? Like I said, I can't hear the difference between the three lossless formats. And here on an Audio forum, we care more about sonics than having storage discussions. Which is my point. ALAC provides support, is well written, and sounds the same as the others. As far as sound difference between WAV and lossless, I said it could be in my head. Operative word COULD.

Next question- if WAV and ALAC are mathematically identical to uncompressed (WAV) like you say then how come you say in the same breath, lossless is not 1:1?? Your logic seems flawed.

Anyway, I use ALAC because I use iTunes exclusively, on a MAC and it is just easier, and sonically I can't hear the difference between the lossless formats-although its been a few months since I listened to the ones you swear are better. But I have had issues using other codecs with iTunes from a support perspective. Sounds like you may using awindows-based PC? Which are sonically inferior in the first place, without a shadow of a doubt. I heard significant differences when I used a XP-based machine with a properly configured ASIO, regardless of the codec I chose. So I switched to MAC since Apple drivers have much better control over the hardware than Windows will EVER be capable of. For my application this was critical. Ultimately this what I based my decision on when choosing a codec as well, all Apple software is written very well; ALAC is no different.

In the end, this debate is a waste of time. All the Lossless codecs sound the same to my ear. If it is a storage debate you want to create, like I said I have oooodles of it, so I am not worried about sacrificing a few MBs per file-unless sonics were to improve along with. Just make sure and point out why something "sucks", like I have here.

In the end, the benefits of savings physical storage space by move my music to HDD vastly outweighs any additional investment I might need to make in it.

Jc51373, I am also a Mac user, so I understand why you would use ALAC. If I went lossless, I would probably go for it too because it's a bitch to deal with the other formats on OSX.

The only reason why ALAC is inferior to some other lossless codecs is that it doesn't compress as much and takes longer to encode. So yes, if you don't care about hard drive space, it doesn't matter.

As far as your 1:1 comment goes, while they are sonically identical, space-wise the ratio is more like 1:2. Lossless cuts storage in half (roughly).

I think though, that storage is a factor. For a PC you can always get more space, but what about a portable player? As far as I know, the biggest hard drive on a portable player is 80GB, not that much for some people. I'm interested to know how you get around this problem.

Ledhed2222-Now I understand where you are coming from.

To answer your question-I have two completely different libraries. One is all AAC on one PC, and the other ALAC on my MAC, which is dedicated to audio for the most part. For our iPod (80gb) we just sync off home PC and the library is AAC, and we use about 60GB of space for the portable library.

You can also have iTunes boot to two diffent libraries, where it will prompt you to choose when you click on it to open. This might prove useful for you.