Which audio compression to use?

[Guest ddieter]

Hey,

Could somebody please advise me on which audio compression format is the best?

So many to chose from, MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG.

Can anybody explain the difference to me in laymans terms?

[Guest maxh2003]

Ooh, a test-your-knowledge question!

These are all lossy compression techniques, btw - FLAC is the leading lossless format, though it is inappropriate for Smartphones - for more info see here -> http://flac.sourceforge.net/features.html

MP3 - de facto standard (owned by Fraunhofer?). Can be played on Windows, Windows Mobile, Macintosh, iPod, and just about everywhere else. Not technically free for personal use, but it might as well be - free encoders abound. No DRM (Digital Rights Management) possible in this format. Sounds rubbish at bitrates below 128kilobits/sec.

WMA - Microsoft-proprietary format. Can include DRM (e.g. mycokemusic.com downloads) - DRM'ed files will not play on Smartphone/PocketPC. File sizes are about half as big as MP3 files, for similar quality. Being a Microsoft standard, this will most likely never play under Linux, MacOS, iPod, etc. etc. CPU overheads of decompressing WMA are lower than for MP3, IIRC, so stuttering might be less likely.

OGG - open-source format. Increasingly supported in software for Windows, Linux, Windows Mobile, Macintosh and just about every other platform. File sizes again about half that of MP3 for similar quality, but CPU overhead is substantially higher than for MP3. Sounds great (to me) at around 70 kilobits/sec.

AAC - Apple's answer to WMA. Similar upsides and downsides - can include DRM, is controlled by Apple and therefore not as portable as you might like.

My advice - for a Smartphone 2002 phone, stick to WMA or MP3. It probably hasn't got the power to play OGGs *satisfactorily*. For a WM2003 phone, I'd choose OGG. OGG isn't controlled by a nasty monopoly so it'll still be easy to use in ten years' time (maybe...), sound quality is excellent, filesizes are small and portability is quite good and getting better.

Use the gob-smackingly good BetaPlayer as your playback software for MP3 or OGG. Use Windows Media Player for WMA files. For AAC files, use an iPod...!

Final tip: encoding files between lossy formats causes sound degradation very quickly. Take an MP3, convert it to OGG, then convert it back to MP3, and the soudn degradation should be bad enough to notice. So ideally you would rip straight from CD to OGG format, rather than CD -> MP3 -> OGG.

Can anyone add or correct anything?

HTH...!

[Guest ferret]

Good post!

Sounds rubbish at bitrates below 128kilobits/sec.

I tend to go for 96kbs when listening on a smartphone with the supplied headset but you probably won't save that much space.

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

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