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Topic: One Year at HA (Read 3642 times) previous topic - next topic
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One Year at HA

About a year ago I registered at HA.  I had been lurking for a few weeks, I must confess.  At the time I used EAC and Lame 3.9x (3.92 or 3.93, can't remember).  I knew there were other codecs and thought I might find something better.

Today I use lame 3.96.1 for music that will go into my CD based Sony portable player and either MPC or Monkey's for music that will be stored on my computer.  what is even more unusual for HA is that I rip with foobar2000 (my main discovery since being on HA).  Because it is possible to burst mode rip and compress to Monkey's at 25x i consider the music stored this way to be a temporary item.

This puts me in a minority position around here where ripping with EAC, no matter how long it takes is the norm and bit perfect rips are the "holy grail".  However, obsession is a very common trait in every internee forum that I visit, be it here or on topics completely unrelated to audio.

What happened?  I discovered the HA way of doing things, listen and compare before making any judgment.  I quickly discovered that at moderate bitrates ~175k I could not tell one thing from another.  I don't use killer samples, just the music I like, and I don't like castanets.  Along the way I tried Lame 3.90.3 and could not stand how slow it was.  When I upgraded to a Lite-On DVD burner tracks that EAC ripped with audible artifacts from scratches could now be ripped without audible artifacts and much faster to boot.  Out went EAC.  It is hard to set up.  I might recommend it people I don't like, but feel free to use it everyone.

So, when one can not tell the codecs apart, other factors such as compatibility, ease of use and speed came into play in my choices.  This may sound silly to some of you, but the main differences for me are file size, processing time, MP3 compatibility and the color of the icon that foobar2000 assigns to the extension.  For my purposes Vorbis in a P4 flavor is nearly the same as MPC.  I experimented with AAC based compression, but it was just too much trouble.  Yes, I could go out and buy something that plays Vorbis, but two devices I have now play MP3.

I also discovered Burrrn.  I use it to burn most audio CD's around here.  I used to use Nero, but now I use a variety of other apps to do what I want.  However, I think Nero is a good product and Ahead is doing a bunch of technology development in AV compression.

My last remark is that it appears that most research is going into video compression schemes and low bitrate audio for multi channel sound and telecommunications.  If any of this filterers down to high quality music listening, that will be a happy byproduct.

One Year at HA

Reply #1 –
After almost two years at HA, I've gone from Windows Media Player (  ) with the Intervideo plugin to rip my CDs to MP3, immediately discovered EAC 0.95pb3 and LAME 3.90.3 (--alt-preset standard), and adopted a better ripping/encoding process for MP3.  Then it was Vorbis 1.0 (for gapless playback and hardware compatibility), then FLAC 1.1.0 (for gapless playback, hardware compatibility and to have nice transcode sources), and now it's recently been back to LAME (gave in to the pressure of needing even wider hardware compatibility).  Still using 3.90.3 and --aps, though.  Can't be bothered to change to a different version unless I encounter a serious problem with this version of the encoder myself. 

My motto in recent months:  "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." 

One Year at HA

Reply #2 –
You have posed an interesting question, Eagleray, "One Year at Ha:  Has HA Changed The Way You Do Things."

Technically I am not qualified to respond to your query since officially I've been registered for but a couple of days.  Lurking?  Ah yes and for about six months, but I've felt so insecure about the concepts of digital audio that I didn't dare allow my ignorance to become known by posting.

You see, even though I have a fairly solid formal academic background in  acoustics / psychoacoustics and professionally work with sound on a daily basis it is within a clinical setting.  And that's considerably different from those of you who either work or tinker with sound in a digital setting.  Nonetheless, I'm interested and motivated.  Now the next step is to begin actually doing something with what I am learning at this web site.  Ask me the same question this time next year.  Better yet, I'll remember your question and volunteer an answer at that time.

As far as the past six months of lurking, I learned a tremendous amount.  It's truly exciting how what I learned in preparation for and during my professional career interlaces so perfectly with what is examined at this site.  The questions and answers are intriquing.  The links are fabulous.  And even the good natured banter are humorous.  My only regret is that I haven't found you sooner.  Once my knowledge/experience is up to par you'll see more of my postings.  I look forward to that day.

It was a great question, Eagleray.  Thanks for asking it.

audiologist / aka Scott

One Year at HA

Reply #3 –
I wouldn´t say "HA has changed the way I do things". It hasn´t changed my life in a radical way or anything.
But after more than 2 years of being a member (not a very active one, I must confess) I can say I´ve learnt a lot about audio ripping/compression/etc. , this allowed me to better enjoy my audio collection and to share in a smarter way.

Of course I´ve learnt a lot of other funny/interesting things, mostly in the Off-Topic forum where I´ve posted quite a few times. As you know those Off-Topic posts don´t count for the post counter so I´m just writing my #100 post right now .

Audiologist, I don´t think you should be God, Ivan Dimkovic or a huge authority in the matter to become a member. Many of us can´t even write decent english, but we always find people who can help us, answering our questions. Sometimes even I have answered questions so...get an idea. I think the more you learn and ask,  search and read, the more you can contribute later. In my opinion HA is not only for technically proficient people.

One Year at HA

Reply #4 –
Before HA:

Player:  Winamp
Audio codec:  MP3
Audio encoder:  LAME 3.93.1
LAME settings:  -V0 -q0 -b 192
Ripper:  EAC Secure mode (at least I got something right  )

Today:

Player:  Foobar2000 Special
Audio codecs:

  Portable:  LAME 3.96.1
  LAME settings:  -V5 --athaa-sensitivity 1
  Computer lossy:  Musepack 1.15s
  Musepack settings:  --quality 5
  Lossless:  FLAC or WavPack (can't decide yet  )
  FLAC settings: -5
  WavPack settings:  -f -x2
  For DVD encoding:  Ogg Vorbis (currently testing 1.1 against aoTuV beta3) and Nero AAC
  One disc:  Nero HE-AAC @ Internet profile
  Two disc:  Ogg Vorbis -q4
  Music DVD:  Origonal AC3/DTS
  Ripper:  EAC Secure mode + C2 and accurate rip

Enough said?
gentoo ~amd64 + layman | ncmpcpp/mpd | wavpack + vorbis + lame

One Year at HA

Reply #5 –
Dani (Megaman) -  I really enjoy the Home Page listed within your profile.  The software summaries / links are great.  You've placed a great deal of work into it!

Regards,

audiologist aka Scott

One Year at HA

Reply #6 –
Quote
Dani (Megaman) -  I really enjoy the Home Page listed within your profile.  The software summaries / links are great.   You've placed a great deal of work into it!

Regards,

audiologist aka Scott
[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Well thanks Scott . I´m really glad you liked it. Seems you´ve learnt some spanish.

The page started as a small hobby back in ´99. As time passed I got kind of addicted to it for a while. I became really addicted to downloading/trying out software. Later, I was contacted by a guy who ran a popular site here in Argentina (Lucas Morea, responsable of www.monografias.com), he wanted me to write a weekly software review column for a site, but I decided not to join him because college was taking massive time. In 2003 I couldn´t keep updating it anymore since I lost the privilege of having an internet connection at home. Most part of the soft reviewed is from 1999-2002 and there are a lot of broken links (things like [a href="http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org]http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org[/url]    etc.).
I thought about translating it to english once, but desisted because there are thousands english sites a lot better, updated daily.

Cheers

Edit: just took the work of udpating broken links and some new progs!
 

One Year at HA

Reply #7 –
HA's totally changed the way I deal with my music.

When I first stumbled upon this site, I was frustrated with MP3 because I couldn't find anything that would work well for me. I was constantly encoding my music collection, listening, then several months later I'd hear artifacting somewhere and get annoyed. I had given up on music compression altogether at one point, and was only listening to lossless formats like modules.

Then I ran across this site (I think through one of the Vorbis beta posts on Slashdot), switched to Vorbis for a month or so, then found Musepack. I've also learned a load about psychoacoustic audio and audio theory.