benosteles
03-31-2011, 03:50 AM
Hello
I upload the Catherine OST in AAC TVBR, some dude post that that format was crap.
So I suppose not everybody here is informed about all the music formats.

I want to upload some Evangelion Albums so, what format do people prefer?
I can upload in AAC or FLAC or ALAC.I dont use mp3 because AAC is better.

nothingtosay
04-01-2011, 07:24 PM
AAC isn't just simply superior. If you're going for lower bitrates, sure, it tends to perform better than MP3. However, if you're using relatively high quality VBR with MP3 (about VBR 2 or some people say even less) and the bitrate is at around the high 100s to low 200s a lot of the time, chances are most often you're not gonna be able to distinguish it from lossless, let alone AAC.

I understand what it's like to want to get higher quality and it's easy to think of MP3 as inferior. It's old and we've all heard some shitty MP3s, but updates have been continually made to the encoders and it is without doubt that you can get transparency out of MP3 if you do it right, and it's even easier with VBR. I just listened to some 128 kbps MP3s earlier today that foobar2000 reports were encoded with the latest version of LAME and they didn't sound half bad, and without that noise that normally comes with that bitrate. Nowhere near as ugly as the 128s of the past, absolutely. (It was Basiscape's new Oto Gift EP that you can listen to for free on their Japanese website if you don't believe me.) At some point, it simply doesn't matter what format you're using, they're going to sound the same. AAC might reach that point at a lower bitrate than MP3, but MP3 assuredly can get to it and at not too much higher. And don't believe the people who say they can distinguish between 320 kbps MP3 and lossless. 999 out of 1,000 have overactive imaginations and couldn't tell the difference between them in a test if they couldn't see which format was playing.

That said, when I upload things I usually post both good quality VBR MP3s and FLAC. MP3 has the greatest range of compatibility across portable players and computer media players, and anyone who wants lossless can surely handle FLAC, whereas ALAC is often more complicated for non-iTunes users. It will probably be appreciated by a handful of downloaders to have the option between lossless or lossy if you can do that.

I'm up for any more discussion about this stuff if you want.

Silent Ed
04-06-2011, 11:53 AM
wtf is a fotma??

LordBlackudder
04-13-2011, 07:50 PM
i think previous polls have gone for mp3.

Bad Buffalo
05-01-2011, 02:11 PM
Mp3 for me. That's the only format I'll ever use.