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Topic: WHAT'S THE BEST FORMAT FOR RIPPING AND PLAYING MUSIC? - Page: 2

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Do you have to pay to incorporate any file formats into your software Adion?
 
Here is a typical problem created by proprietary file formats..

"Why does multimedia specifically need open source?"
Example: An 'open' standard closes

In September of 1998, the world of Internet media took an unexpected (but long dreaded) turn when Fraunhofer IIS sent a "letter of infringement" to several small commercial and open source MPEG audio layer 3 development projects.

In the letter, [Fraunhofer claims] that due to patents they hold related to MP3, they are entitled to royalties for any commercial players, all encoders (whether sold or given away), and also works of art sold in MP3 format.

The letter of infringement had an immediate effect on the free encoder programs with many being removed from their official web site. Affected encoders include Plugger, CDEX, soloH, 8Hz, Blade, Canna, and others. [...] Fraunhofer is demanding a royalty payment beginning at $25 per encoder. Additionally, a 1% or .01 per file royalty is also put forth as being required.

—mp3.com article by Michael Robertson

The projects affected had based their work on code long freely available in the ISO MPEG audio standard. The debate about whether or not Fraunhofer was within their rights or not is beside the point; this is an illustration of the amount of control commercial entities will attempt to exert over commodity standards; this meddling is detrimental to open efforts and deadly to business (except for members of the MPEG consortium that is). Keep in mind that MPEG is considered among the most open multimedia standards (at least until the 800-lb. gorilla members of MPEG manage to sue the smaller encoder efforts out of existence); there are few or no cutting-edge open standards for streamed audio or video on the Internet today. Closed competition has just made matters worse; now there are several dominant and entirely incompatible closed 'standards'.

Our purpose is to open the field up a bit. Unfortunately we're not fighting on this front alone. Music and media on the net today also face corporate domination of the content itself ...


It's clear that we do need to select our file formats with care.
I'll stand by my claim that the flac is the only sensible lossless choice for archiving music.

It also appears that the humble ogg may be superior to the mp3.
 
There is a big difference from people open sourcing software that uses technology they do not have the copyright rights or patents to and a company that releases the rights or open sourcing stuff they developed.
The remaining MP3 patents should be expiring In 2017 anyway.

I still don't see where you addressing the original question. To me it just looks like your soapboxing your views on corporate procedures.
 
However, I think we've wasted enough of this persons time, and I'm bowing out of this conversation.
 
I use .m4a, for the smaller filesize, i cant tell the difference between m4a at 192 and mp3 at 320, but the m4a is 25% or more smaller than the mp3 file, with same sound quality. .m4a is a container like mp4 with an .aac file in it. Works well for me.
 
thank you everybody for answering.. but i'm a bit confused.. FLAC? AIFF? wich is the best and the most similar to wave?? why do you say AIFF is ready to disappeared?
as some of you understand i need a format that is less compressed as possible.. but i need it compatible with software: vdj, hardware: pioneer rekordbox device, and possibly with the more standard device as mobile phone, car audio, home entertainment.
 
ok guys i've found this one.. do you think it's correct?
 
RekordBox supports MP3' AIFF, WAV, and AAC
I didn't see where AIFF is going away. I think what was said is that it's been around a long time, it is uncompressed, and can be tagged. Uncompressed files do no loose any data. They can be burnt back to an audio cd and not loose any quality. They can also be compressed in the future if that is what you decide. Once you compress something, it looses data. That data is lost no matter what.
All four of these are on the chart you posted. The other formats are not supported on some other software and devices.
Sorry this conversation wondered around a bit.
Also, to answer your question, AIFF is uncompressed PCM. Just like WAV, but you can tag AIFF.
 
FLAC, and ALAC are lossless compressed. The data that is taken away has no audio signal in it. WAV and AIFF have both audio information and blank information. This is why ALAC and FLAC files are a bit smaller.
The rest of the formats are all lossy, meaning they use math to remove sound from the file in a less notable way. Some do better then others. But, all can be noticed by some people.

I hope this helps clear up some confusion.
 
Blckjck, I doubt you can clear up the confusion. It has been created on purpose with an eye on financial gain.
Where did you get your information regarding patents?
I have Googled for around an hour, and found little.
It appears it's even impossible to prove that flac is not threatened by hidden patents.
It would be nice to believe the mp3 patents run out soon, since it is undesirable to have organisations creating invoices out of thin air should they desire.

Mp3 CBR 320kb/s is in my opinion the best choice for Pioneer compatibility.
Rekordbox can only manage 10,000 files according to the manual.
My objective is a large flac archive managed by VDJ8, supported by a smaller high quality mp3 library to gain Pioneer compatibility.

I don't like anything about Apple, even though I now have an Ipad. Pioneer, more or less, forced that choice upon me through their implementation of Remotebox solely on Apple hardware.
 
bigron1 wrote :
Blckjck, I doubt you can clear up the confusion. It has been created on purpose with an eye on financial gain.
Where did you get your information regarding patents?
I have Googled for around an hour, and found little


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing.2C_ownership_and_legislation

bigron1 wrote :
I don't like anything about Apple, even though I now have an Ipad. Pioneer, more or less, forced that choice upon me through their implementation of Remotebox solely on Apple hardware.


For a while, VDJ's remote app was only available for iOS devices.
 
Thanks Blckjck, have you a handy link for AIFF?

I've now found a link using your first link.
Google didn't pick up on the wiki's very well?
 
Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) looks like an interesting format, however flac may have rendered it surplus to needs.

The thing about Rekordbox is that it's a squashed up system.
A theoretical 10,000 track limit with the content held in USB drives.
You can use an external hdd but that detracts from the beauty of a small usb flash drive.
I've just replaced my 320gb external hdd ( which works fine ) with a 64gb usb flash drive.
It's so small !
This squashed up system almost begs for a compressed file format like mp3.
 
I've effectively converted to FLAC for nearly everything. When I was doing full on production in Digital Performer in the early 2000's, everything on the Mac was done in AIFF. (AIFF can be considered the Mac version of .WAV.)
 
My subscription service delivers files in Apple Lossless or MP3. A song with the length of 3:33 is 27.8MB in Apple Lossless (ALAC) which is stored in an m4a container. The same song converted to AIFF is 36MB. This is about a 30% increase in size from the ALAC. Converting the ALAC to a WAV is a hair bit smaller. This is because it does no have room for tagging and such.
The same file converted to a 320CBR MP3 is 8.2MB. This is about a 78% reduction in size.
I am using AIFF instead of ALAC because of increased software and hardware. The difference over 6,522 songs has only been about 50GB. On a 1TB drive, that isn't much to worry about.
CDJ-2000's and XDJ-1000's for example, support MP3, AAC, WAV, and AIFF natively.

I can also verify that RekordBox supports a library of more than 30,000 songs on an internal drive. Then you can load your playlist or whatever to a device without converting formats.
 
Best choice is Flac.
Advance audio codec (aac) is good if you wish to go around 192kbps.

Believe it or not, old good mp2 (not mp3, mp2!) was concidered better mp3 at higher bitrates like 224 and 320kbps. MP2 also gives you a choice to encode to 384kbps which is excellent. I use mp2 myself at 320kbps but I am the only person that I know that still use this audio format
 


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