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SOLVED Absolute best sound format?

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What is the absolute highest quality sound format? I don't care how much space it takes up, I want quality :)
 
WAV is better than 320 kbps MP3. I was just wondering whether or not there's something better than that.
 
The best sound is acheived through LP's, as they are uncompressed, whereas CD's are compressed to 320Kbps, The best way to check is to see the amount per side you can achieve on an LP, and translate that onto a CDs size. If there are 4 songs a side, then 4 songs a CD-R with highest Kbps and KHz encoder size available. A sorta uncompressed digital disc, the best of both worlds.
 
the bit rate on a music cd is well over 1000kbps, mp3's highest compression is 320kbps.

EDIT: i just checked a cd, it's 1411kbps
 
Last edited:
I don't believe that whole LP's are best hype. For turntablism and mixing, yeah, but as far as sound quality, no. They work like this, a groove is dug out of a slab of vinyl representing the sound. Think like this, you know how a speaker moves in and out real fast to make sound? The printing needle of a record does the same thing, and that's the groove in the vinyl. As the playing needle rides those grooves the slight variations are amplified into a speaker to make them audible. That's not necesarily uncompressed, it's nineteenth century. Sure it's analog, so purists are like, "It's more organic." I don't know about that.

Enough ranting. While doing two semesters of sound work with a sound engineer who's worked with Janet Jackson among others, here's what he uses. AIFF. It's basically a Mac version of WAV files. As long as you have a raw format like WAV or AIFF at 16 bit 48K sample rate that's about as good as digital sound gets (there's a new 24bit format availiable, but it's essentially unused). Any more would be unnecessary. Once you get over 41K samples it's pretty much crystal clear, 48K is kinda just making sure.

--Illah

--Illah
 
CDs are 1411Kbps? :eek: My bad. @Illah, what I meant was it is more of a raw sound than CD format, as it is not compressed whatsoever. I have no idea of wtf 16 bit 48K sample rate means. I only know Kbps means a certain number of kilobits per second per track.
 
I sorta meant something on a hard drive, so CDs/LPs wouldnt matter ;). Im not using a Mac anytime soon, so I guess its 48k WAV for me :D
 
I knew about that a while ago, thats goin in my new rig :)
 
ok here we go. as far as digital audio goes .wav and .aiff are the best quality because they are uncompressed. all mp3's are compressed meaning some data is omitted. some compression schemes are better than others, but none contain as much data as a .wav or .aiff file. there is no such thing as lossless compression, compression by definition is omitting data and therefore data is "lost". now a lot of people can't hear the difference between decent file compression and standard .wav files but some of us can. i can. but then i work with audio for a living and listen acutely all the time. 16 bit 44.1 khz is the standard red book cd specification. 16 bit means the quantization and 44.1 indicates the sampling rate. this means when the analog audio was converted to digital, sixteen voltage measurements (approximations)were taken 44,100 times per second. the bit depth is exponential, so 24 bits has 256x the resolution as 16 bit. and 96khz means roughtly twice the resolution as 44.1. (doubling the number of samples per second) in the real world though differences between 24/96 and 16/44.1 are subtle. it sounds much better to me though, and probably will be the audio spec once dvds replace cds. (cd's don't hold enough data) going to 24 bit increases your file size exponetially and doubling the sample rate doubles your file size. it's expensive to store all that stuff on hard drives. i've have probably 50-60 hard drives sitting in my closet right now. kind of a simple explanation but i hope it helps:)
 
Storage is no problem for me *evil grin* hehehehehe:D

But seriously, thanks everyone sound is something i used to not know but now I do :)
 
flaming gerbil said:
ok here we go. as far as digital audio goes .wav and .aiff are the best quality because they are uncompressed. all mp3's are compressed meaning some data is omitted. some compression schemes are better than others, but none contain as much data as a .wav or .aiff file. there is no such thing as lossless compression, compression by definition is omitting data and therefore data is "lost". now a lot of people can't hear the difference between decent file compression and standard .wav files but some of us can. i can. but then i work with audio for a living and listen acutely all the time. 16 bit 44.1 khz is the standard red book cd specification. 16 bit means the quantization and 44.1 indicates the sampling rate. this means when the analog audio was converted to digital, sixteen voltage measurements (approximations)were taken 44,100 times per second. the bit depth is exponential, so 24 bits has 256x the resolution as 16 bit. and 96khz means roughtly twice the resolution as 44.1. (doubling the number of samples per second) in the real world though differences between 24/96 and 16/44.1 are subtle. it sounds much better to me though, and probably will be the audio spec once dvds replace cds. (cd's don't hold enough data) going to 24 bit increases your file size exponetially and doubling the sample rate doubles your file size. it's expensive to store all that stuff on hard drives. i've have probably 50-60 hard drives sitting in my closet right now. kind of a simple explanation but i hope it helps:)
Click to expand...

Actually, that's not true. You CAN compress without losing data. Your modem does it all the time if you're on dialup. Ditto if you use winzip, winrar, etc. Also, there IS a type of audio compression that DOES allow for lossless compression at roughly 2:1. it's ulaw compression I believe, but it's been a little while since I read up on it. I suppose I could look for references if someone really wants to know. But that compression will let you compress audio and when you uncompress it, you get back every single bit that went into it.
 
that's different than audio compression. you can't replace the bits of let us say a guitar solo unless you have those original bits on your end of the download. i would like to see a link, cause something amazing might be going on i don't know about.
 
best i've heard is AC3... much superior to mp3 or wav files. but good luck finding songs in ac3 format. they aren't plentiful.
 
Maxvla said:
best i've heard is AC3... much superior to mp3 or wav files. but good luck finding songs in ac3 format. they aren't plentiful.
Click to expand...

What about encoders?
 
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