Compression for music tracks

[Robert Cummings]

Hiya,

If I go with ogg for music, and I'm converting from wav/aiff/mp3 what's the best settings to use which also sound the nicest?

Thanks lads

[Nikster]

I'm no expert, but not sure there is a one settings fits all for best sound vs size as depending on the instrument harmonics and so on, one setting may have nasty effects on other sounds. Like speech vs strings and bass vs hihats :) but the savings you will save with ogg on a highish setting should still make your music very small, I guess it depends on how tight you want it all to be, on a side note, it's usually not wise to go from one lossy format to another (mp3->ogg), but I guess it depends on what you're actually converting as always speech suffers less.

So I guess, trial and error to what you feel is acceptable sound wise over size.

[soniCron]

If I go with ogg for music, and I'm converting from wav/aiff/mp3 what's the best settings to use which also sound the nicest? Why don't you try playing with some of the tools? They're free and easy to learn. OGGdropXPd (http://www.rarewares.org/ogg.html) is the best that I know of. You can get ~48Kbps VBR that's near-CD quality. Though there will be some artifacting, it's insanely compressed and definately worth it for downloadable games. The quality at that rate is better than MP3 @ 112Kbps and sometimes better than MP3 @ 128Kbps.

[Robert Cummings]

Thanks for the advice lads. Ears still open for more advice if it's coming though :)

[Robert Cummings]

Decided on OXM.

[soniCron]

Decided on OXM. EDIT: Scratch that! :D

[ZephyrXero]

With my Ogg Vorbis experience so far I've found that q0 (~64k) is about equivalent to a 112k mp3, q4 (~128k) is like 192k or better mp3. That's mainly been with music though... a sound file of dialouge can probably compressed much much lower bitrate and still sound good. But really, it's like the others have said... you'll have to just try out different settings and see what sounds best to your ears ;)

[Robert Cummings]

Well I've been thinking of going with OXM because it's just so much smaller. Hugely more expensive though, as I can't just use off the shelf music.

[ZephyrXero]

Well, you'll still need to compress your samples as Oggs, and the quality ratings will matter there ;)

[HairyTroll]

With my Ogg Vorbis experience so far I've found that q0 (~64k) is about equivalent to a 112k mp3, q4 (~128k) is like 192k or better mp3.

The mp3 codec (MPEG-2 layer-3) is about 12 years old now. You should really compare Ogg to the newer MPEG audio codec, AAC, which is only 8 years old. AAC provides the same quality as mp3, but at half the bit rate.

[soniCron]

The mp3 codec (MPEG-2 layer-3) is about 12 years old now. You should really compare Ogg to the newer MPEG audio codec, AAC, which is only 8 years old. AAC provides the same quality as mp3, but at half the bit rate. That's unreasonable. Since MP3 is clearly the most widely used, it would make the most sense to compare OGG to that, now wouldn't it? ;)

[ZephyrXero]

Yes, the purpose wasn't to specifically bash on Mp3s, it was just to give a general idea of the quality. Pretty much everyone is familar with the different bitrate qualities of standard Mp3s, but not so much on the newer ones. Also, are any of those other formats you mentioned completely free to use like Vorbis?

[Diragor]

The one time I used ogg audio for game music I was impressed with how highly compressed it could be and still sound good. As some others have pointed out, the best thing to do is just play with the settings. In my case, I just kept reducing the quality setting until I got something that sounded bad and then backed up a notch or two, arriving at the smallest possible file size that didn't sound bad.

[Melin]

If you ever decide to go with mp3, don't encode at less than 192kbps. Any fairly trained ear can clearly hear reduction in sound quality when encoding at 128 or 96.
Going above 192 wouldn't really make sense, as 99.9 percent of your audience won't hear any difference anyway.

/Staffan Melin
Melin Music (http://www.melinmusic.com)

[HairyTroll]

If you ever decide to go with mp3, don't encode at less than 192kbps. Any fairly trained ear can clearly hear reduction in sound quality when encoding at 128 or 96.

Depends on the quality of mp3 encoder that you are using. Some encoders will generate excellent quality audio at 128kbps while other encoders generate crap at anything less than 192kbps.

[soniCron]

Going above 192 wouldn't really make sense, as 99.9 percent of your audience won't hear any difference anyway. While I agree that I can clearly hear the difference between 96K and 192K, frankly, 99.9 percent of the audience won't be able to tell the difference. And with that difference in bitrate we're looking at doubling the file sizes for the music.

Either way, it doesn't matter. He said he's going for OXM, and going to use OGG compression (he'd have to be stupid to pick MP3 over OGG). In that case, he's going to have the best results at ~64-96K sample compression; perhaps 128K+ for certain samples (hihats, crash cymbals, trumpets, etc.).

So there. Problem solved. ;)

[Robert Cummings]

I might be out of budget and have to drop back down to ogg vorbis tracks - just so you know :)