Efficiency of Music Ripping Tools/Formats

Post by **Shotokan101** » Mon May 15, 2006 6:52 pm

Hi,

I've been ripping a lot of my music collection recently and I've been running out of space on my 4GB Zen Micro

so I've deleted all the albums and started to look at loading it up again.

Now up until now I've been ripping as MP3 format at 128Kbps as that's the default setting for the Creative Ripping S/W Util.

So as my player supports both MP3 and WMA formats I've been wondering whether I can rip at the same quality as WMA format and squeeze more tracks on - because I just seem to believe everything that Micro$oft tell me

So I've started by riping one album at 320kbps - the highest supported by the ripping util and "Lo and Behold" both MP3 and WMA formats are almost exactly the same size and the tolal size in MB for the album in each format is the same........

Now I'm going to redo this test at a few alternative bitrates as well as I understand that some ripper algorithms are more/less efficient at certain compression levels.

But I just thought I'd ask here as well - has anyone else looked at this ?

Is 128kbps MP3 as "good" audibly as 128kbps WMA ?

Do I really need anything like 128kbps for "In Ear - In Transit - Commuting" Listening ?

Are some ripping software utils. better than others ?

Come on get "ripping" into me

Post by **thechief** » Mon May 15, 2006 7:06 pm

Try Ogg Vobis:
http://www.vorbis.com/

Post by **Shotokan101** » Mon May 15, 2006 7:10 pm

thechief wrote:Try Ogg Vobis:
http://www.vorbis.com/

Thanks Chief - but isn't that yet another compression format ? - and I'm pretty sure that my player doesn't support it - or maybe it's just that the ripping util. doesn't....

but I'll checkout the player specs. again and also the link you've posted and let you know

Post by **thechief** » Mon May 15, 2006 7:12 pm

Ogg typically has better compression and sound quality. However, there has to be a compatible codec for your player. It is OpenSource, and so there's likely to be a codec somewhere, if not already built-in.

Post by **Shotokan101** » Mon May 15, 2006 7:17 pm

Hi Chief - I've come across the Ogg format quite some time ago as for a while a lot of games seemed to use it for the sound sample - no doubt due to the fact that - as you say - it's a pretty effective compression codec.

Unfortunately my player only "natively" supports MP3, WMA and WAV formats - haven't had a look for any third party firmwares yet though..... but might be worth a shot

bazz007 · Post by **bazz007** » Mon May 15, 2006 7:35 pm

http://www.mp3-tech.org/tests/wma9/index.html

For low bitrates, WMA seems to be a better compression scheme than MP3. But the difference is not as huge as Microsoft would like us to believe. By listening to the sample, you will understand that recent MP3 encoders are quite better than two years ago. Even without additionnal parameters, the results are way better than the MP3 samples provided by Microsoft. By using additional parameters, the quality can even be pushed further. You can also notice that medium and high bitrates (128kbps) do not need any additional parameter than the preset value, when using a recent Lame release, in order to provide optimum quality. (note: for Lame 3.90-3.92 it was necessary to use --alt-preset instead of --preset)

Post by **thechief** » Mon May 15, 2006 7:41 pm

Shotokan101 wrote:Hi Chief - I've come across the Ogg format quite some time ago as for a while a lot of games seemed to use it for the sound sample - no doubt due to the fact that - as you say - it's a pretty effective compression codec.

Unfortunately my player only "natively" supports MP3, WMA and WAV formats - haven't had a look for any third party firmwares yet though..... but might be worth a shot

Many people have been asking Creative to support ogg. I am would be surprised if no-one has produced an ogg codec for the Zen.

Post by **Shotokan101** » Mon May 15, 2006 7:48 pm

Hi Bazz - thanks for that link - interesting reading.

Also some interesting other articles comparing the audio quality "as listened to" at different MP3 bitrates which seems to conclude that for other than serious listening through Hi-Fi quality home systems with MP3 front end - 128kbps is sufficient.

....interestingly though I've now ripped my test album at 320/256/128/64kbps now and in every case the fie sizes are as near as matters the same - so perhaps I'm missing something here

and it's possible that at the same bitrate a WMA is actually better quality than a MP3 (according to Micro$oft of course

) which would seem kind of logical as the are recorded at the same kbps and hence you would expect the same size output file.....

Post by **Shotokan101** » Mon May 15, 2006 7:50 pm

thechief wrote:
Shotokan101 wrote:Hi Chief - I've come across the Ogg format quite some time ago as for a while a lot of games seemed to use it for the sound sample - no doubt due to the fact that - as you say - it's a pretty effective compression codec.

Unfortunately my player only "natively" supports MP3, WMA and WAV formats - haven't had a look for any third party firmwares yet though..... but might be worth a shot
Many people have been asking Creative to support ogg. I am would be surprised if no-one has produced an ogg codec for the Zen.

I'm looking Chief - but no luck so far - although the lack of Ogg Vorbis support does get mentioned/complained about quite a lot in reviews and forum chat.....

Post by **Kieran** » Mon May 15, 2006 9:16 pm

If your file sizes are the same, are you by any chance ripping in VBR?

Post by **Shotokan101** » Mon May 15, 2006 9:47 pm

Kieran wrote:If your file sizes are the same, are you by any chance ripping in VBR?

Well CBR was what I selected....... why do you ask

I would have assumed the "Constant" would be what gave the same number of bits used per sample..........

neilius · Post by **neilius** » Tue May 16, 2006 7:49 pm

Oh cool, sound, my speciality!

Hey Jim, I'd suggest checking out http://hqscene.fatty.dk/ for some info on mp3 encoding and suggested options for the 'best' quality settings using the LAME encoder (I hate the word 'best' because it can mean so many different things!). As far as I know, there is no ogg support for the Creative line of MP3 players, which is very unfortunate as you could compress your audio to ogg at a lower bitrate than 128kbps CBR and still get comparable 'quality' in terms of how it sounds to you. I personally favour ogg over mp3 any day of the week although mp3 is a good choice where compatability with as many other platforms as possible is a concern. In order to introduce ogg to the Zen, it would need to be added to its firmware, which is closed source (damnit!).

As a general point, most people can't distinguish between 192kbps mp3 and the original audio, although I'm sure it would depend on the encoder settings (and indeed the encoder) used.

For archiving your albums on the PC, you might want to consider a lossless codec such as FLAC (if you like open source) or WMA Lossless (if you're not fussed). There is no quality difference in any lossless format as you don't drop any audio data, just different encoding speeds and resultant file sizes across those formats. Think of it like rar or zip but specially optimised for the data patterns found in PCM audio data.

Also, the forums at http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/ are an EXTREMELY good resource for all things codec.

Regards,

Neil.

Post by **Shotokan101** » Tue May 16, 2006 9:59 pm

Hi Neil,

Thanks for the information - I'll be sure to check out the sites you mentioned

FYI - I'm not really thinking about "archiving" my CD collection at the momement and I'm not really thinking of streaming Audiophile didital musoc around the house or anything - she who must be obeyed wouldn't sanction (or pay) for it

I'm really only looking to get "acceptable" audio quality on the move as I've got much better available at home to listen to my master CD's on although I will hold a copy of a few CD's on my PC for casual listening while surfing etc.

Just using the "supplied" (don't know what encoder it uses) ripping app. from Creative seems to give "acceptable" quality at 128kbps MP3 at the moment.

As it stands I can get just over 1000 tracks at this quality on the 4GB Zen so I'll have enough room for a fair bit of variety

So I guess that I still need to do some investigation into the CBR/VBR issue andcheck out some other encoding apps. - so still looking for some feedback/recommendations there - I've also got the Easy CD-DA app. available at the moment so I might do some more quality/size tests with it and see if it's got and configurable parameters for encoding.

Good work so far folks - keep it coming

Post by **Shotokan101** » Tue May 16, 2006 10:32 pm

Well just checked and Easy CD-DA uses Lame 3.97 and allows VBR selection lebels so I'll read up on cbr/vbr using Neil's referenvce and see how I get on.

neilius · Post by **neilius** » Tue May 16, 2006 10:53 pm

Hi Jim,

I forgot to mention - a great CD ripper is CDex, available at http://kent.dl.sourceforge.net/sourcefo ... ex_151.exe. You can drop in a more up to date lame encoder (lame_enc.dll) from http://www.free-codecs.com/Lame_Encoder_download.htm if you like. I'm using 3.96.

Cheers,

Neil.