I'm wondering which digital audio format you all use?

 

The standard is MP3, and alot of people seem to be starting to use AAC or AC3 lately.

 

I usually use MP3, but lately I've been using the FLAC format, which is lossless. Only problem with FLAC is that the file sizes are huge. 1 audio file can be 20+MB, which i think is okay, because you get the lossless CD quality audio, and drive space is so much and cheap now that its not a problem to go spend $50 on a 500gb or so drive for music, so its cool.

 

There is also .ape format, which is lossless, and compresses the audio more so you might save more space than you will with FLAC, but I've read some problems with ape such as it doesn't have error protection or anything, so if one byte of data got corrupted on the file then the entire audio file wont work, and with FLAC and most other formats you'll head a scratch sound instead.

 

Also i heard some problems with decompressing the ape file can cause system to become unstable, and problems with speed.

 

Many media players and devices are starting to support FLAC. But windows doesn't natively support it yet, but thats not a major problem because you can just simply download WinAmp, which supports FLAC out of the box.

 

So which format do you use?

MP3 here. sounds just like cd quality to me.

Okay I've been having some trouble with FLAC. such as native support in windows. Winamp, Foobar2000, and some other places could play them, but each of those players have their own cons, which makes me not want to use them. And also there are still core system problems with those formats.

 

Also with FLAC it seems to be hard to embed album at work and things withing the file. Maybe you can, but it was hard for me to notice since its not supported in windows explorer and such.

 

I then read about the apple lossless format. So i installed itunes and started to convert some of the flav files to the apple lossless m4a or whatever. Sounded great since i love the iphone, and plan to ge tone as soon as Verizon releases its, so i'd have my music already set up. Problem with that is that you need itunes to play it. Windows natively does not support it. I'm not a huge fan of iTunes.

 

Then i read about WMA 9 Lossless. Seemed great, im sure the iphone will support this, and also i can return to using WMP 12 Another great thing is that Windows Explorer and everything can read the files and tags just fine.

 

So now i'll be using WMA 9 Lossless, which seems to be working great