Best format quality wise to listen to Audio Songs

[andy78]

Guys among the available audio formats which one is the best in terms of quality. I know MP3 is quite popular but I would want something better than that. Maybe a FLAC?

Sorry if I sound a noob. Also I know that the audio CD's available in music shops maybe of better quality.

Currently having Onkyo 3500 which I want to use to listen to music sometimes.

 

[hydra]

No doubt about it, FLAC is the way to go. WAV would be as good (even better, in some people's opinion) but WAV is not tag-friendly.

 

[koushik]

HD MA, SACD, CD, FLAC, WMA, WAV are also there.

 

[andy78]

Guys I was hoping to get more replies for this. Especially with so many audiophile folks here.

 

[sajjad4joy]

Flacs will be good. For that matter any loss less format will be as good as Audio CD. But you need a good stereo setup to enjoy it to the fullest. I don't know how good onkyo is for stereo. It is more renowned for movies.

 

[Sumanta]

Guys I was hoping to get more replies for this. Especially with so many audiophile folks here.

Do you mean there are other file formats available left to be mentioned?
And you need comparisons of them?

I think my ears are too dumb to find differences between properly engineered CD recordings and it's copy of very, very good Mp3 recording (I do not know how to quantify it in values, probably it is 320 kbps MP3).
Both are enjoyable.

I know almost nothing about music files and their types. Infact I didn't know so many type of files there are existing.

I think I am happy with CDs rather than Mp3s for one reason. CDs are easy to reach and play the song I want to hear. Mp3 needs a display to search and play them. I play MP3s only when I do not have CDs of them with me and can't find them or buy them for cost point of view.
Mp3s are good for people on the go who needs more files in small space and have access to a display in their media player.

 

[andy78]

Flacs will be good. For that matter any loss less format will be as good as Audio CD. But you need a good stereo setup to enjoy it to the fullest. I don't know how good onkyo is for stereo. It is more renowned for movies.

Well maybe Onkyo is not as good as the other one's out there. But pretty happy so far with the audio. Only looking for good quality Audio files.
I already have couple of FLAC albums. However only two things I have are MP3 and FLAC not much of WAV and AAC. Do I need an audio CD to rip/convert it to WAV format?

And also which is better WAV or FLAC?

 

[deba]

Listening to MP3 or any lossy format in a standard hi-fi system is like driving a Rolls Royce to your everyday local market.

Play only MP3 files of which you dont have the original CD. Or else its standard Audio CDs that is preferred when it comes to true hi fi.

But MP3 recorded at 320kbps sounds quiet good....

 

[andy78]

Listening to MP3 or any lossy format in a standard hi-fi system is like driving a Rolls Royce to your everyday local market.

Play only MP3 files of which you dont have the original CD. Or else its standard Audio CDs that is preferred when it comes to true hi fi.

But MP3 recorded at 320kbps sounds quiet good....

I don't know about others but I'm able to make out the difference between MP3 and the other better formats like FLAC etc.
Most of the MP3 collection I have are recorded at 320 Kbps.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Different people have entirely different bit-rate points at which they can detect that they are listening to lossy-compressed material. Many people seem to think that, if one must go for MP3 then 320Kbps is pretty good.

I think that MP3 compression has evolved, and is a great deal better than it was, but, as mentioned, for home/PC use, why use lossy compression at all? It is throwing part of the music away --- whether we can hear that or not!

I was a fan of Sony's system that they used for mini discs. I thought that they gave very good quality. But... it went the way of all restrictive propitiatory formats.

Question: lossy compression is justified for small-capacity portable devices, so, these days --- is OGG better than MP3?

Lossless formats... if they are truly lossless, then it is not possible for one to sound better than another! By definition, what you get when you uncompress is the same as what you compressed. Does a zip file alter the numbers in your spreadsheets? No, it does not.

However, apart from sound, what else do audio file formats offer? The first thing that comes to mind is meta-data, tagging. Actually, it was the last thing that came to my mind, or I wouldn't have been saving WAV files over the years! Now I've realised that tagging is useful, I use FLAC, more for the tagging than for the reduction in file size.

 

[Nikhil]

When digitization took over from analogue, the analogue signal was taken and sliced into 1s and 0s. In CD format the music is encoded at 16-bit (bit depth) and at 44.1kHz (sample rate). The sample rate is how many times the original signal has been 'sliced up' and the bit depth tells us how much information has been recorded in each slice. The bit depth is referred to as the resolution.

Higher the resolution and higher the sample rate the fewer "things" have to done to compensate for errors that occur when the signal is sliced up and converted from analogue into digital and back. Currently the higher end digital recordings are at 24-bit resolution or higher, and up to 192kHz. At this resolution it is virtually impossible for the human ear to perceive any difference between digital and analogue.

File Formats, Sampling rates and Bit Rates

? MP3 (.mp3 or .MP3)
MPEG-1/MPEG-2 Audio Layer 3 format with a sampling rate of 8 kHz, 11.025 kHz, 12 kHz, 16 kHz, 22.05 kHz, 24 kHz, 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz and bitrates of between 8 kbps and 320 kbps.

? WMA (.wma or .WMA)
WMA stands for Windows Media Audio and is an audio compression technology developed by Microsoft Corporation. Audio can be encoded in WMA format by using Windows Media Player.
Sampling rates of 8 kHz, 11.025 kHz, 12 kHz, 16 kHz, 22.05 kHz, 24 kHz, 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, bitrates of between 5 kbps and 320 kbps and WMA DRM

? WMA Lossless (.wma or .WMA)
Sampling rates of 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz.
Quantization bit: 16 bit, 24 bit

? WAV (.wav or .WAV)
WAV files contain uncompressed PCM digital audio.
Sampling rates of 8 kHz, 11.025 kHz, 12 kHz, 16 kHz, 22.05 kHz, 24 kHz, 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 64 kHz, 88.2 kHz, and 96 kHz.
Quantization bit: 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit

? AAC (.aac/.m4a/.mp4/.3gp/.3g2/.AAC/.M4A/.MP4/ .3GP or .3G2)
AAC stands for MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Audio.
Sampling rates of 8 kHz, 11.025 kHz, 12 kHz, 16 kHz, 22.05 kHz, 24 kHz, 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 64 kHz, 88.2 kHz, 96 kHz and bitrates of between 8 kbps and 320 kbps

? FLAC (.flac or .FLAC)
FLAC is a file format for lossless audio data compression.
Sampling rates of 8 kHz, 11.025 kHz, 12 kHz, 16 kHz, 22.05 kHz, 24 kHz, 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 64 kHz, 88.2 kHz, and 96 kHz.
Quantization bit: 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit

? Ogg Vorbis (.ogg or .OGG)
Sampling rates of 8 kHz, 11.025 kHz, 12 kHz, 16 kHz, 22.05 kHz, 24 kHz, 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz and bitrates of between 48 kbps and 500 kbps

? LPCM (Linear PCM)
Sampling rates of 8 kHz, 11.025 kHz, 12 kHz, 16 kHz, 22.05 kHz, 24 kHz, 32 kHz, 44.1 kHz, 48 kHz, 64 kHz, 88.2 kHz, and 96 kHz.
Quantization bit: 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit

 

[Audiodoc]

Any lossless format will be good enough:

FLAC, WAV, Apple Lossless etc

DVD Audio, SACD are better however costly and material is rare.

On the whole FLAC is good and available online.

 

[andy78]

Any lossless format will be good enough:

FLAC, WAV, Apple Lossless etc

DVD Audio, SACD are better however costly and material is rare.

On the whole FLAC is good and available online.

How can I play DVD Audio disc? Will that play on my DVD player? Also on computer which software do I need to play this?

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

When digitization took over from analogue, the analogue signal was taken and sliced into 1s and 0s. In CD format the music is encoded at 16-bit (bit depth) and at 44.1kHz (sample rate). The sample rate is how many times the original signal has been 'sliced up' and the bit depth tells us how much information has been recorded in each slice. The bit depth is referred to as the resolution.

It is easy to take for granted that bigger numbers mean better (and the next step, of course, which is to pay more for those bigger numbers, both in hardware and in music. Happy marketing departments!)

Whether or not bigger is better is in some doubt. Increasing the bit depth gives you a dynamic range that we can't reproduce on our systems, and which would deafen us if we could.

Increased sampling rates, apart from giving us frequencies which we can't hear...

Many other threads where this is done to death, including one which starts with an article that proposes that, technically, 192Mhz may not be better, but might actually be worse!

Whether or not we loose any of the music any of the music at 44.1khz is controversial --- but it is not at all moot that we loose content in lossy comrpression. That's what lossy means.

(one might think that "sampling" also suggests something left out. It's intuitive. But what's intuitive is not necessarily right.)

 

[Audiodoc]

DVD audio can be played using power DVD very well. Though many software program's can also be used with proper settings. However spdif connections should be used to cater to its bandwidth.

An ordinary DVD player will not play DVD audio however there are high end players which can play SACD as well as DVD audio.

I agree with the previous post that we cant hear the entire spectrum and dynamic range however one can differentiate between the same tracks between CD and DVD audio possibly due to difference in mastering. However no one knows which one is more authentic to the source recording.

 

[esanthosh]

IMHO, Mastering > Format in terms of importance.

What use is 24/192 if the damn thing is bricked Or just upsampled?

I stick to FLAC with PC and 320kbps MP3 with portable players.

 

[andy78]

DVD audio can be played using power DVD very well. Though many software program's can also be used with proper settings. However spdif connections should be used to cater to its bandwidth.

An ordinary DVD player will not play DVD audio however there are high end players which can play SACD as well as DVD audio.

I agree with the previous post that we cant hear the entire spectrum and dynamic range however one can differentiate between the same tracks between CD and DVD audio possibly due to difference in mastering. However no one knows which one is more authentic to the source recording.

What do you mean by high end players? Blu Ray players?

 

[venkatcr]

An ordinary DVD player will not play DVD audio however there are high end players which can play SACD as well as DVD audio.

I think any DVD player will play DVD-Audio. It is different matter whether the player has the capability to decode the audio. But you can transmit the sound in digital format to an external decoder. This can be done from any DVD player.

SACD can be played only on players that support that format. But all SACDs can be played as simple 2 channel stereo on any player - CDP or DVDP. SACDs carry two copies of the sound - one as multi-channel HQ sound, and the other as regular stereo sound.

Cheers

 

[Audiodoc]

By playing I meant sound at the line outs which obviously is not possible without decoding within the player. Yes if you have a DAC which can decode the same no problems there.

These are some examples of hi end players and refrences to DVD Audio & SACD technology and material:

DVD99 HDMI DVD-Audio SACD Player

Top 10 must-have DVD-Audio/SACDs - CNET Reviews

http://www.oppodigital.com/

http://www.hifi-writer.com/he/applianceretailer/dvda-sacd.htm

http://hometheater.about.com/od/dvdplayerrecorderreviews/fr/piodv46avf.htm

I believe going through these will clear all doubts!