• Need an audio format comparable to aac
    18 replies, posted
If you understand bitrates, sound quality and the difference in codecs please help me. For those that don't know, .aac, most commonly experienced through Youtube, is able to achieve great sound quality at lower bitrates. For example a 320 bitrate .aac song converted to a 320 bitrate .mp3 would sound terrible in comparison when heard through a higher quality pair of headphones. for those in the know, I'm looking for an alternative to apples lossy .aac format as far as sound quality per bitrate is concerned. Does anyone know if an equally powerful codec exists? I have tried Vorbis' .ogg codec but the sound quality was not as good. Despite the larger size, would converting to a lossless codec work?
Have you tried flac? It is basically just a wave file which have been zipped. I think that is the best you can get.
Does FLAC just use a higher bitrate or does it hold higher quality per bit?
[QUOTE=Axiomatic;31363003]Does FLAC just use a higher bitrate or does it hold higher quality per bit?[/QUOTE] It's lossless, it'll sound as good as the original audio source. The sound quality is quite amazing, audio enthustiasts use only it.
Wave is raw audio without any compression (lossy or lossless). Flac is essentially a wave file places inside a special archive (Just like a Zip or RAR) which have been optimized for audio and adhoc replay.
When you convert a lossy format (aac, mp3, ogg, etc) to another lossy format, you will always lose quality. If you convert a lossy format to lossless (FLAC, ALAC, WAV, etc) you will not gain any quality, but you won't lose any quality. Why do you need to convert your AACs if you're happy with the filesize? The best alternative to AAC to my knowledge is OGG, AAC is one of the things Apple has done really well. If audio quality is what you care about, convert your original sound sources (CDs) to FLAC. It's lossless and has a smaller filesize than WAV. ALAC is Apple's lossless code, which is used with iTunes/iPods. If you want a good compromise and are happy with Apple's not-as-widely-supported codec, stick with AAC. Otherwise, VBR MP3 is the most widely supported but has a good compromise.
If you've already tried ogg, try ape. I've not used it in a while but it used to be awesome. [url]http://www.monkeysaudio.com/[/url]
The problem is AAC is not supported by my mp3 player. I do like AAC, but I want to listen to it elsewhere.
AAC has nothing to do with Apple. Apple only started using the Codec in 2003, 6 years after it has been developed. AAC stands for Advanced Audio Coding (or Codec). The codec was developed with the cooperation and contributions of companies including AT&T Bell Laboratories, Fraunhofer IIS, Dolby Laboratories, Sony Corporation and Nokia. It was officially declared an international standard by the Moving Picture Experts Group in April 1997. It is specified both as Part 7 of the MPEG-2 standard, and Subpart 4 in Part 3 of the MPEG-4 standard. [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding[/url] You also didn't mention why you can't use AAC. If you've got the storage space, use Windows Media Audio Lossless (WMA), Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) or Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC). Generally WMA is supported better on Windows, ALAC on OSX and FLAC on Linux. Store all of your audio in one of the lossless formats and then transcode those files to different formats depending on your device. In my own home environment, I store all of my music in WMA Lossless on my Windows Home Server and then use the built in DLNA server to transcode the files on-the-fly to each of my different devices (TVs, Receivers, XBox 360, PS3 etc). I also keep a copy of all of my music in Apple Lossless Audio Codec on my Macbook Pro. Whenever my iPhone syncs with the computer, the music is automatically converted to 128 kbps AAC and moved to the device. Competitors to AAC include MP3 and OGG, which both sound fine at VBR 192 kbps. A full list of competing audio formats can be found on wikipedia: [url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_audio_codecs[/url]
Thanks Devin, that's definitely helpful. I'll have to consider as many options as I can. Basically I want to retain as much quality as possible.
Wma is actually pretty good...Even 64Kbps is decent (As long as the source is lossless). It sure is hell of a lot better than MP3, that's for sure.
you're imagining the difference. the difference between 320k mp3 and lossless encoding is not noticable. at lower bitrates AAC blows mp3 out of the water, if i was limited to 128 or 192 i would go with AAC, but saying that at a 320k bitrate AAC is better than mp3 is a joke when it's not even better than flac if you have really expensive speakers you might be able to tell the difference, but $200 headphones are not expensive speakers. [editline]27th July 2011[/editline] hell i have all of my music in v0 because 320 is ridiculous enough as it is
The average user won't really tell the difference after 320kbps. Even 192kbps is plenty. I believe that's 1080p audio bitrate on YouTube.
using youtube as an example is terrible because people can't upload music properly and so it sounds terrible, not because of the bitrate
[QUOTE=Cheesemonkeh;31382229]using youtube as an example is terrible because people can't upload music properly and so it sounds terrible, not because of the bitrate[/QUOTE] That's true, but when it's done right it still sounds good.
128 is perfectly fine, pandora sounds great because it's profesionally encoded
AAC typically works fine, most people aren't able to discern the difference between it and FLAC. Also, not sure if it's been posted already but AAC wasn't made by Apple, it's just a format they use.
[QUOTE=nikomo;31363130]It's lossless, it'll sound as good as the original audio source. The sound quality is quite amazing, audio enthustiasts use only it.[/QUOTE] You can convert a FLAC into mp3 320, aac, mp3 v0 etc and it will retain the same quality. As long as you don't convert from a lossy to another lossy it will retain the same quality (lossless > lossy > lossless = same quality end result). [editline]30th July 2011[/editline] Any audio will retain good quality if you maintain this formula. Sometimes it's hard to find the source of an audio file and how it was converted, but if you know it came directly from its CD or from a lossless audio codec, it will contain that good quality you're looking for (flawless quality to be exact). The most common are FLAC (not many people choose to listen to this because of its file size), mp3 320 for a constant bitrate, or mp3 v0 for smaller file size. If you want mp3 just make sure the source was lossless or a CD, and there were no double lossy conversions involved. I don't know how much this will help you but it's good knowledge to have.
Flac. Its lossless compression (meaning you get the exact same sound as a wav file only in a smaller package. (its like winrar/zip) it compresses the data without changing it.
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