humblebee
Active Member
So, I have been looking at finding a new audio file type because of two reasons:
1) To see what new developments can give us better audio for the same bitrate (Read : is there a successor to AAC, as it was for MP3?)
2) Can we go beyond the frustrating 320kbps limitation in bitrate? This will bring us closer to lossless audio.
3) If we can have smaller filesize, then thats a bonus.
Sometime back, I came across HE-AAC and HE+PS AAC, but sadly they were limited to low bitrates even though they had better encoding tech.
Well, today I came across OPUS (Opus Codec).
This codec has :
1) The efficiency of HE-AAC (not sure of HE+PS AAC), and in listening, I can say that I find it to be better than AAC at 256kbps. I compared iTunes downloads with files converted from original CD wav files to Opus at 256 kbps.
2) It supports bitrates upto 512 kbps. The audio quality is coming to be really close to wav here. Opus@512kbps is better than Opus@256kbps for sure.
3) File sizes are smaller than AAC. e.g. file sizes are:
Its My Life - Bon Jovi
AAC - 7.57 MB
Opus - 6.52 MB
Opus 512 - 13 MB
Flac - 31 MB
WAV - 37.7 MB
The One That Got Away - Katy Perry
AAC - 7.9 MB
Opus - 7.16 MB
Opus 512 - 13.4 MB
Flac - 26.9 MB
Wav - 38.2 MB
And the good part is that its Wikipedia page says that OPUS is supported by iPods (Hopefully iPhone) and Android devices.
As of now, the only limitation I see is that internally it upsamples the file to 48Khz. Though I didnt notice a reduction in quality but still. I will look up or try to contact the developers on this.
If we give the encoder a raw audio file instead of a wave, it can keep sample rate of 44100. This will also give smaller filesize than the current 48000 files.
So, I urge audio lovers to give this a try and post their thoughts.
Conversion tools are available from their download page.
opusenc.exe is the file.
I used the command: opusenc.exe --bitrate 512 --vbr --comp 10 input.wav output.opus
Have a good day !
1) To see what new developments can give us better audio for the same bitrate (Read : is there a successor to AAC, as it was for MP3?)
2) Can we go beyond the frustrating 320kbps limitation in bitrate? This will bring us closer to lossless audio.
3) If we can have smaller filesize, then thats a bonus.
Sometime back, I came across HE-AAC and HE+PS AAC, but sadly they were limited to low bitrates even though they had better encoding tech.
Well, today I came across OPUS (Opus Codec).
This codec has :
1) The efficiency of HE-AAC (not sure of HE+PS AAC), and in listening, I can say that I find it to be better than AAC at 256kbps. I compared iTunes downloads with files converted from original CD wav files to Opus at 256 kbps.
2) It supports bitrates upto 512 kbps. The audio quality is coming to be really close to wav here. Opus@512kbps is better than Opus@256kbps for sure.
3) File sizes are smaller than AAC. e.g. file sizes are:
Its My Life - Bon Jovi
AAC - 7.57 MB
Opus - 6.52 MB
Opus 512 - 13 MB
Flac - 31 MB
WAV - 37.7 MB
The One That Got Away - Katy Perry
AAC - 7.9 MB
Opus - 7.16 MB
Opus 512 - 13.4 MB
Flac - 26.9 MB
Wav - 38.2 MB
And the good part is that its Wikipedia page says that OPUS is supported by iPods (Hopefully iPhone) and Android devices.
As of now, the only limitation I see is that internally it upsamples the file to 48Khz. Though I didnt notice a reduction in quality but still. I will look up or try to contact the developers on this.
If we give the encoder a raw audio file instead of a wave, it can keep sample rate of 44100. This will also give smaller filesize than the current 48000 files.
So, I urge audio lovers to give this a try and post their thoughts.
Conversion tools are available from their download page.
opusenc.exe is the file.
I used the command: opusenc.exe --bitrate 512 --vbr --comp 10 input.wav output.opus
Have a good day !
Last edited: