Whats the best format to encode music in today?

[Erik1984]

I use OGG. Sounds great, is an open codec, and is virtually indistinguishable from lossless formats such as FLAC.

That's what I have done since discovering Ubuntu, ripped all my CDs to that format. Also nearly everything I downloaded from Jamendo is in the OGG format. Only problem can be portable music players (often called MP3 players for a reason ) that only play MP3.

[Sam Mills]

I say good ol MP3. It works everywhere. But the one thing I really like is google music. I uploaded 3,200 songs and can access them from anywhere.

[Bandit]

Thanks for posting everyone. Yea FLAC is preferred, but since I use apple a lot (photo and graphics work) of Apple products I will prob merge over to AAC after a while. Right now all my older music through out the years has been in MP3, mostly 192-256, but I do have some old stuff that I could only encode at 160 due to program limits. iTunes seems to becoming affordable these days and is DRM free now. May try some of there music in AAC, that is if something great comes out anytime soon.

[mr john]

Itunes makes me cringe. I go for high quality MP3's if I want to go portable.

[Thee]

Unless you can hear a difference between a highly encoded MP3 and any other format out there on your standard home and car speakers (and I'll bet you can't), then you're fine with MP3's. Plus maximum compatibility.

[whatthefunk]

flac flac flac. mp3 is horrible shounding if you have good speakers or headphones.

[Jakin]

This thread seems to think AAC is Apples format, it isn't. It is a direct descendant of MP3 and is developed by the very same people.

[CharlesA]

This thread seems to think AAC is Apples format, it isn't. It is a direct descendant of MP3 and is developed by the very same people.

This. Although iTunes defaults to ACC (MP4) IIRC.

I try not to buy stuff from iTunes unless I cannot get it elsewhere.

[Bandit]

This thread seems to think AAC is Apples format, it isn't. It is a direct descendant of MP3 and is developed by the very same people.

Oh very true, its just Apple basically adopted it as their goto codec standard for music. But yea it was designed by Bell Labs, Nokia, Sony and Dolby.

[screaminj3sus]

MP3 (VBR with LAME encoder) perfectly acceptable quality and pretty much universal compatibility.