Ogg Vorbis or Musepack?

alexz721 · Post by **alexz721** » Tue Jun 05, 2007 10:45 pm

Both are better than mp3 (and I'm having problems gaplessly ripping some .ape images with lame), but which is actually better? I'm curious to know. I've noticed Musepack rising in popularity in the past year, moreso than Ogg Vorbis, though the last I heard, Ogg Vorbis scored higher in blind listening tests.

DOLLS (J) [!] · Post by **DOLLS (J) [!]** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 2:14 am

Half of my music collection is in MPC format and it has served me well quality-wise, the obvious drawback is the almost complete lack of support from mobile players (with stock firmware). See Rockbox, iPodLinux for support on the iPod and other players. See COWON A2 for out-of-the-box-along-with-firmware-update support.

MP3 files encoded in 256+ kbps from any encoder as old as 5 years is transparent for almost every person with any equipment. LAME encoded files from -V 2 up to -V 0 settings are transparent for almost everyone as well at bitrates around 200 kbps.

OGG vorbis with the latest aoTuV patches can achieve this at slightly lower bitrates (~192), and has wider hardware support.

I'd use OGG with aoTuV patches with -q >= 6,4.

See soundexpert.info for details.

alexz721 · Post by **alexz721** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 1:16 am

Okay, can you tell me why when I'm using foobar2000 with oggenc2 with aoTuV, it encodes at a higher bitrate than I set it to as opposed to using oggenc2 with libVorbis? I set it to q5 for getting a file of around 160 kbps, and it churns out a file at around 192.

alexz721 · Post by **alexz721** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 1:41 am

Nevermind, according to most people, q4 should be good enough, and as I'm not a major audiophile, I'm fine with that.

DOLLS (J) [!] · Post by **DOLLS (J) [!]** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 2:20 am

You may also want to consider the AAC format, it fares well in mid to low bitrates, has gapless playback tagging support from many encoders, and it's bound to be widely supported for years to come.
The Nero AAC encoder is good and free, and you can effortlessly use it from within foobar.
I recommend EAC for your DAE needs.

alexz721 · Post by **alexz721** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 3:44 am

I was considering that, but ogg does get the upperhand in most cases except for low bitrates, but I'm not encoding low enough for it to matter. Also, I 've had problems with the gapless support for some reason and I'm frankly too lazy to figure it out.