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Which audio format do you use with Rockbox?

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prankstare:
I own a Sandisk Sansa Clip Zip and, since Rockbox supports a wide range of audio formats, I decided to tackle onto Musepack again after a few tests among some lossy audio formats. So I am currently transcoding all my .flac collection to .mpc -q10 (~ 350kbps) and sounds great. I know some of you might say this is crazy and there's not much of an audible (perceptive) difference between MP3 -V 2 and whatever other lossy format at such "transparent" specification but, if this is the case, then I'd rather ask ourselves why we prefer original CD's or any other lossless format rather than CBR320kbps or -V 2 LAME MP3 for instance. Well, personally, Musepack DOES have a different feeling to the sound, especially at very high bitrates (maybe it's just quality headroom, or maybe it has something to do with decoding, I have no idea really).

How about you? Which audio format are you using with your portable player?

saratoga:

--- Quote from: prankstare on April 01, 2012, 05:45:59 PM ---Well, personally, Musepack DOES have a different feeling to the sound, especially at very high bitrates (maybe it's just quality headroom, or maybe it has something to do with decoding, I have no idea really).
--- End quote ---

If a format sounds different at high bitrates then something has gone quite wrong.  The idea is that at high bitrates they should sound identical to the source.  In the case of MPC, I would expect such high bitrates to sound identical to FLAC for virtually all files.

prankstare:

--- Quote from: saratoga on April 01, 2012, 05:55:03 PM ---If a format sounds different at high bitrates then something has gone quite wrong.  The idea is that at high bitrates they should sound identical to the source.  In the case of MPC, I would expect such high bitrates to sound identical to FLAC for virtually all files.
--- End quote ---

I said it gives a better 'feeling', which would have to imply that the sound itself has to be different somehow, yes and no. We're talking very subjective things here, but I still believe there must be subtle changes in sound (could be the decoder or the EQ or something, I don't know since we have to take in consideration many variables here - in this case in special because I do have to use EQ and other effects on). With EQ and some other tweaks on, I could blind-test MPC (q10) Vs. MP3 (-V 0) with some difficulty yes, but could do it. Yet, I am more than aware that my methods for blind-testing isn't really ideal, but it's just how I listen to music with my Clip Zip everyday so I am happy with it.


PS: If we let us take this matter onto a more philosophical perspective, I'd take the liberty to ask myself what is reality anyways... is it only the things we can see, touch or hear through our senses? There's a disparity on this cheesy conclusion IMHO. Have you guys heard about binaural sounds? Given a difference in pitch for left and right channels separately, it's something our brain can't quite decode and turns out that it creates its own beating sound inside our heads... it's just one of those funny things you know... hehe...

saratoga:

--- Quote from: prankstare on April 01, 2012, 07:39:20 PM ---I said it gives a better 'feeling', which would have to imply that the sound itself has to be different somehow, yes and no. We're talking very subjective things here, but I still believe there must be subtle changes in sound

--- End quote ---

Well theres two possibilities:  something wrong with MPC, or that you're wrong.  I suggest using an ABX test to determine which:

http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=ABX

If you can pass the test, then you know its a real problem.  If you can't, its probably imaginary.


--- Quote from: prankstare on April 01, 2012, 07:39:20 PM ---Have you guys heard about binaural sounds? Given a difference in pitch for left and right channels separately, it's something our brain can't quite decode and turns out that it creates its own beating sound inside our heads... it's just one of those funny things you know... hehe...

--- End quote ---

I think you misunderstand what a binaural beat is.  Your brain can certain decode the difference signal between the two frequencies.  Check out the wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binaural_beats#Acoustical_background

wilsonsamm:
What I do is I copy my files to my rockbox player, and then run a bash script that transcodes all the files it finds. Flac and WAV files become Ogg Vorbis files, but MP3 files are just downsampled using LAME, because I have read advice against transcoding from one lossy format to another.

This transcoding makes a big difference to the filesize. Even with reasonable quality on the resulting files, after running this program I often end up going from, say, 1.5 gigabytes in use to less than 700 megabytes. That's important when your player has only a very small capacity of 1.9 gigabytes.

If you want to see my script, just let me know and I'll post it here.

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