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File Format Preference

M

modrockfan

What format do you have your audio files in? I'm sure most of you are like me and have MP3s. I've been toying with the idea of going to WAV files when possible or even AAC files. Granted, if you have a good MP3, it's hard to tell a difference on your stream, at least mine.

Any thoughts?<P ID="signature">______________
Crescent City Radio Connection - Coming Back Soon</P>
 
> What format do you have your audio files in? I'm sure most
> of you are like me and have MP3s. I've been toying with the
> idea of going to WAV files when possible or even AAC files.
> Granted, if you have a good MP3, it's hard to tell a
> difference on your stream, at least mine.
>
> Any thoughts?
>


You know, i went all WAV after using 192+ mp3's and i noticed cleaner sound on my low bitrate stream... The problems that cropped up are that it was no longer possible to use my crossfader program (too much info in) so i had to manually edit all my songs very tightly. It also upped my cpu use to encode it from a huge WAV to a very teenie 48 bit aac+ stream. Sounds great but I had to make a lot of changes to fake it. I can't afford SAM audio but I hear it can handle WAV's pretty handily.

Let me know your thoughts

-Timmy<P ID="signature">______________
Perfection is overrated...
www.marinifamily.org</P>
 
> What format do you have your audio files in? I'm sure most
> of you are like me and have MP3s. I've been toying with the
> idea of going to WAV files when possible or even AAC files.
> Granted, if you have a good MP3, it's hard to tell a
> difference on your stream, at least mine.
>
> Any thoughts?
>
Start out with the best quality source files, and you will be rewarded. I currently use 192k mp3. I have experimented with some wav files. Even though I can't tell the difference by listening to each directly, I CAN hear a difference when I stream them.
 
Since my initial post, I started playing with my files. I tried WAV, but they are just absolutely huge. While my library isn't huge by internet radio standards (around 2000 tracks), multiply it out and you are looking at a lot of disk space. On the recommendation of a friend at a commercial radio station, I have started re-ripping my music at 320K MP3 and it is making a world of difference.

I run a 64k Windows Media stream and even with the 192k MP3s, you can hear a high squeal at times. The 320k doesn't do that.

I don't have the right AAC encoder to rip super high quality versions of that, but I feel like 128 AAC is just as good as 128 MP3, but with about half the file size.<P ID="signature">______________
Crescent City Radio Connection - Coming Back Soon</P>
 
> Since my initial post, I started playing with my files. I
> tried WAV, but they are just absolutely huge. While my
> library isn't huge by internet radio standards (around 2000
> tracks), multiply it out and you are looking at a lot of
> disk space. On the recommendation of a friend at a
> commercial radio station, I have started re-ripping my music
> at 320K MP3 and it is making a world of difference.
>
> I run a 64k Windows Media stream and even with the 192k
> MP3s, you can hear a high squeal at times. The 320k doesn't
> do that.
>
> I don't have the right AAC encoder to rip super high quality
> versions of that, but I feel like 128 AAC is just as good as
> 128 MP3, but with about half the file size.
>


AAC+ puts out the quality to the listener where you'll hear the difference. But it's a waste of space and resources to rip and load your files at 320k. Even at 190K. You'll know the difference, but your average listeners won't.
 
imo 320k mp3 is totaly worth it. hard-drives are DIRT cheap now, and the price is still dropping like flies. (u like that?)i think the average listener WILL know the difference in thier subconscious, even if they won't be able to figure out what it is. that can actually be worse than someone understanding what's going on and knowing why they are putting up with it, or why they are changing the channel.of more importance is the quality of the end-listener encoder you're using. i recommend using the latest Spacial Audio Encoders for Winamp (btw version 4 is coming out soon). it comes with the newest version i've seen of Fraunhofer's FAST codec, thier current reference coder... and it sounds great below 128k, even compared to the classic Fraunhofer DirectShow + Shoutcast 1.8.0 trick.at radioio i wish we could use AAC though. even a 320k AAC file will beat a LAME encoded mp3 hands down, and 500k AAC is nearly statistically impossable to ABX. but 320k LAME mp3, with good settings on the encoder, such as:-b 320 -q 0 --lowpass 22.05 --interch .001 --priorityusing LAME 3.97b2 you will get nearly cd-quality... i have trouble ABXing almost every test file i have with that setup, and i mostly listen/test/tweak/etc through Apogee DAs. 8)well i was going to type more, but freakn windows just crashed explorer.exe, and it won't come back... so it's reboot time.
 
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