MP3 vs. the Free World (opensource)

[the1artisan]

Hey guys,

Myself, I am sick of the whole mp3 thing.
The only reason I even bother with it is because it has been made easy to get coder/decoders and mp3's are (no thanks to the RIAA [The Recording Industry Association of America - a.k.a. the guys that helped shut down Napster and are in the process of attaching Audio Galaxy and Kazaa] and other big record label copywrite protection associations) still very easy to get.

I have been looking into other various encoding formats and have found quite a few that kick the snot out of the (fraunhofer) mp3. Here are a few of them: (these are all freeware - so I hope the links I'm posting don't get me in trouble...)

OGG:
Of Course!
**tp://www.vorbis.com/download_win.psp

Aupec2g:
This great format that was developed by Mark Vinton while attending the University of Washington... He has since graduated, and his work is very hard to find.
His encoder produces an mv3 - again, much better sounding than mp3's, which can play through WinAmp with a simple plug-in (both the encoder and the plugins are included in the D/L link.
**tp://angelfire.com/clone/art/aupec.zip

There are also some great lossless formats out there!
Lossless compressions (unlike mp3 and ogg which are known as lossy formats) sound exactly the same after you encode them as the original! They will not produce as small of a file as an mp3 or ogg, but you can compress/decompress a file 1000 times and it will sound the same. My two favorites are Ape (Monkey's Audio) and Flac.

Monkey's Audio (awesome!)
**tp://www.monkeysaudio.com/
Flac (also, awesome, but a little slower than Monkey's Audio):
**tp://flac.sourceforge.net/

DBpowerAmp makes a free encoder/decoder application that can deal with almost any format (RA, WAV, OGG, mp3 (lame, blade, gogo, xing, etc), Flac, Ape (monkeys audio), AIFF, VOC, MP2, VQF, WMA, etc.)
They also make a player that plays almost any format you can think of.
**tp://www.dbpoweramp.net
There are patches @ cracks.am for the "powerpack" to this freeware.

Anyone else know of any kickin' sound formats that beat mp3 (or anything mentioned above)? PLEASE let me know. It has become a hobby of mine!

Thanks!

Youre sick of MP3 Im sick of members posting Direct Links >>>> I have edited your post re the direct links these are not allowed - please read the Rulez - Tnx - joripe

[El_Matador]

Hi Artisan,

That's true, but, and here resides the problem; you cann't Burn those formats as Audio. Ok you will tell me, there is dBPowerAMP to convert. Nothing special this program, it only converts almost averything as you said and it is free. The problem is that every time you convert the file from format to format you loose quality. I agree, there are better encoders than the traditional MP3 encoder (but still not that good that you can put the Lame encoder aside) like OGG and VQF. This is a subject that we cann't come to the point were everyone agrees. I have tried it in 3 forums and always no agree. Just subject to discus, because it's a matter of taste and at this point the taste is MP3.

Cheers,

El_Matador

[Strahlen]

.ogg files can be decoded, the tools are at the xiph site, hopefully .ogg will remain open source and not go commercial at some point in the future..

.vqf, anyone still use that? I always thought it would be good for spoken word, music sounds very tinny with that, also quite cpu intensive..

Isn't there an issue with formats other than .mp3 needing a floating point processor to play 'em on..? thus limiting the ' portability ' of some of them..?

>>X<<

[the1artisan]

joripe - sorry 'bout the links.

El_Matador -
Of course I agree it is a matter of taste. For mp3s I use Lame every time. And I would never convert the mp3s I have to OGG (or any other lossy format) because it WILL make them sound worse every time! - - - APE or FLAC are exceptions because they are lossless compression. - - -
and yes, you would still have to convert these formats (to wav, etc) to burn an audio CD.
Taste is usually a familiarity thing though - Just trying to introduce some other options

[the1artisan]

Sorry I didn't think to actually attach this earlier.

[El_Matador]

Hi Artisan,

My excusses if it sounded as I was Criticizing you. That's not my idea, just as you did, I pointed out that people's taste play a great deal. I will try the Aupec and see what comes out .

And let those posting go on the forum, without direct links of course .

Cheers,

El_Matador

[the1artisan]

El_Matador, I did not take any offense to anything
Myself, I'm just looking for more alternatives to mp3 - and wanted to share some of what I've found

If anyone else finds anything I haven't - I'm hoping they'll share it with me.

Ciao!

[LTR12101B]

h**p://mediaxw.sourceforge.net/***********
Directshow filter support for:
MJPEG, Vorbis, AVI with alternate sound encoding, Monkey's audio (APE).

AVI/Vorbis audio set for ver 0.7, but project is nominally suspended at ver 0.6 - with some risk develpment stuff beyond that.

Nothing NEW there, but brings playing of those encodings to ANY DirectShow-compliant application!

[the1artisan]

LTR12101B
Thanks!