With all the audio formats available for H300...

[id373]

Which one do you think will be the most ideal... (taking battery life, quality, size all into consideration). I wan't some advice before I encode everything. I would be prepared to wait until everything is under development as I have MP3's already.

[NPswimdude500]

I like MP3, just because it's a format that's more widely accepted than other formats.

Almost all DAPs support it (you wouldn't want to completely re-rip/re-encode all your music if you moved to a DAP not supporting that particular format), Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5/ Premiere 6.5 will import it (it won't import OGG). Pinnacle will support it, and in general almost all media players accept .mp3 (whereas WMA and OGG are not as widely accepted).

And I'm not a big quality freak (hence why I encode at 112k)

[DreamTactix291]

There isn't going to be one jack of all trades. Each codec is going to have its own benefits, but I'd say narrow it down between MP3 and Vorbis.

MP3

• Ubiquitous support
• Simple to decode
• Good battery life
• Slightly larger filesizes for same quality as Vorbis
• Doesn't scale down to low bitrates very well (<128kbps)
• Gapless only with LAME-encoded files
• Issues with the format make encoding content >16kHz cause bitrate bloat

Vorbis

• Good support from iRiver in general (and gaining support among Asian manufacturers)
• Not so simple to decode
• Worse battery life than MP3
• Slightly smaller filesizes for same quality as MP3
• Scales down to low bitrates very well (<128kbps)
• Natively gapless
• Encodes full bandwidth at high bitrates with ease

Musepack is too exotic to be taken too seriously now and Vorbis has pretty much caught up with it quality wise, and AAC would be similar to Vorbis with just worse support from most DAP manufacturers that aren't Apple.

FWIW I own an H140 (not an H3xx but they both run Rockbox), and I use Vorbis. However I have a lossless archive so if I changed my mind it would take nothing more than a batch encode overnight and I'd have an MP3 collection.

[musichound]

I didn't vote because as DT said each audio format has its streanghts and weaknesses. Kudos to DT for being so detailed about it!

[savagenator]

DT is right, and *** compare/contrast between MP3 and OGG is very informative so a thanks to that.

AAC format seems to be very high quality, my sound card (costs like $5) can handle songs with that format that it otherwise could not with OGG or MP3 (something with big bass, with the same song on MP3. downlaoded from CD as AAC once, then again as MP3)
my speakeres cracked on MP3, then didnt at all with AAC and i could raise the dB more than half without cracking, where as i had it almost completely down for MP3.

[musichound]

Originally Posted by savagenator

DT is right, and her compare/contrast between MP3 and OGG is very informative so a thanks to that.

AAC format seems to be very high quality, my sound card (costs like $5) can handle songs with that format that it otherwise could not with OGG or MP3 (something with big bass, with the same song on MP3. downlaoded from CD as AAC once, then again as MP3)
my speakeres cracked on MP3, then didnt at all with AAC and i could raise the dB more than half without cracking, where as i had it almost completely down for MP3.

DT is a guy.

[DreamTactix291]

Originally Posted by savagenator

DT is right, and her compare/contrast between MP3 and OGG is very informative so a thanks to that.

AAC format seems to be very high quality, my sound card (costs like $5) can handle songs with that format that it otherwise could not with OGG or MP3 (something with big bass, with the same song on MP3. downlaoded from CD as AAC once, then again as MP3)
my speakeres cracked on MP3, then didnt at all with AAC and i could raise the dB more than half without cracking, where as i had it almost completely down for MP3.

Format doesn't affect your soundcard at all. It doesn't do the decoding, just the output of the sound to your receiver or speakers.

OK, here's a queston I have. Did you use Winamp for playback? If so, it applies different equalisers for each format (and has a notoriously bad one for MP3, and probably a bad one for Vorbis). That could very well explain a difference that could lead to cracking (which I believe in your case is clipping) especially based on what I've heard your EQ habits have been in the past.

Try playing the two files back in a flat player like foobar2000 and see if you obtain the same distortion.

I'm going to attempt to translate your post into English now, so others can better understand it.

Originally Posted by savagenator translation DT-style

DT is right, and his comparison/contrast between MP3 and Ogg Vorbis is very informative; so thanks a lot to that.

The AAC format seems to be of very high quality. My sound card (which cost around $5) can handle songs in that format that it could not otherwise handle with Ogg Vorbis or MP3 (files with lots of bass suffered from the problem). My speakers had a crackle with MP3, and didn't at all with AAC. I could raise the volume over half with AAC and not suffer from the cracking, while with MP3 I had to have it almost completely at the bottom.

Originally Posted by musichound

DT is a guy.

Yes, I am. I just have female avatars since I prefer looking at women over men.

[savagenator]

thank you DT for translating my post, as a mod i give you permission to edit my post (if your not to lazy) and label yourself as a guy or girl in the same post.

I'M SORRY!!!! i always imagined you as that beutiful asain girl!!!!! (i voted for you at the beuty pageant) and i completely forgot!!!!!

the player i used was itunes, and yes there was a differnce. (is itunes not supposed to differ between formats?) The sound was not different in the speakers, but more in the subwoofer. (its 300watts) It cracks on MP3 and deosnt crack on AAC (this is at full volume)

[DreamTactix291]

How about you translate your own posts from now on and work a little harder on the grammar and general readability?

What were your EQ settings in iTunes? That is about the only thing I can think of that would cause such distortion, especially if you turned the bass up to maximum.

[savagenator]

The very left EQ setting are full, everything else is neutral (the 32 and 64 are max). I keep it at lowest dB usually. When i want higher volume, i increase the volume. I played a song (it was worlds deepest bass, by THX) at full volume and wanted it louder, so i increased the dB and had the idea to test between AAC and MP3, AAC won.

EDIT: The sound card i'm using is on a windows 95. The jack on my computer borke so i'm using an old windows 95 for my music. Its an old 8 bit card. Sound Blaster model: CT4180

look it up, you will be surprised that it can actaully make decent sound on my speakers, lol.

[DreamTactix291]

The very left EQ setting is the bass. What you are doing is introducing clipping. Turn down the EQ and the clipping will disappear.

[savagenator]

EDIT: The sound card i'm using is on a windows 95. The jack on my computer borke so i'm using an old windows 95 for my music. Its an old 8 bit card. Sound Blaster model: CT4180

look it up, you will be surprised that it can actaully make decent sound on my speakers, lol.

sorry you probably didnt see my edit. Now the reason for my actions have apeared: how much power can this old sound card produce? Very little, thats why i wanted to turned up the volume. Now even i was surprised when it didnt clip when i increased the bass full. (the dB was at its lowest, i wanted to increase it). The windows 95 was copied with windows XP, thats why i have itunes on it.

[MineMoltenArmor]

By and large I use MP3. Its supported by most everything, the sound quality is normally good enough. In terms of the iRiver, it takes less battery and space as well (on avg. I use 192 kbps).

But for all my most favorite bands, I convert them to OGG (Quality at 1.0), since the sound over all is much better (at least to my ears). I can't do this to every file however since it increases the file size so much, but for my favorite bands, I pull out all the stops!

[DreamTactix291]

I would just like to add that both LAME 3.97b2 -V2 --vbr-new and Vorbis aoTuV b4.51 -q6 should be transparent to about everyone here almost 100% of the time, so it isn't a case of one sounding better than the other. At those sizes they'll both sound like the source.

[dofdaisy]

i just stick with mp3, it's the easiest to work with, and it's more accepted around the world (i sound like a mastercard ad), i haven't really tried the others except for wma which is annoying if you don't have right codecs

[hooligan333]

Originally Posted by NPswimdude500

I encode at 112k

I think I'm gonna be sick...

[Nick114]

And I'm not a big quality freak (hence why I encode at 112k)

But cant you here the difference NPswimdude? Songs ripped at 320kbps are SO much clearer and sound an awful lot better...i cant stand listening to songs at 112

[savagenator]

i used to encode in 112k (lowest i could go back then), but then i stopped becuase i tried something over 400k and it sounded SO much better (the file size was like 15mb for the 2 minutes long song

[Kingnog]

i tried something over 400k and it sounded SO much better (the file size was like 15mb for the 2 minutes long song

What format was it in?