What format is your main collection encoded in?

[ROBSCIX]

I figured this might make a good conversation. I find when newer people start getting into higher end audio components they start to realize their source files needs to be high quality also for the best overall experience.

Personally, I have a relatively large audio collection so organization becomes very important IMO. When I encode a new CD, I make sure the files are all named correctly, ID Tags are all done and I also include artwork from the original CD. I like the artwork because many of the players/skins I use will show or allow you to have access to this artwork during playback.

So what ya using and how do you keep it organized?

[TirolokoRD]

Mine is MP3 @ 320kbps mostly. Started with FLACS sometime ago, Most of my musics comes from online, differente sources (Itunes, amazon, google), depends on the wallet really.

FLAC is very hard to find online, and I dont usually buy the physical CD.

My collection is vaguely organized, I started (Slowly) to organize it, but its a long job considering that I have almost 20K files around.

What software do you use to encode?

[Mufflore]

FLAC, some MP3s from an age past.
Organised through folders for FLAC and MP3, completely separate folder for Classical with its own MP3 and FLAC sections.
Foobar2000 tabs used to organise further.

[ROBSCIX]

To the questions, it is easiest to organize the files as you are adding them. Doing it after you have a large collection is very time consuming. As for the encoding, there are different apps you can use EAC seems to most popular but such apps are for encoding from CD. You an use you can use different apps to re-encode from WAV or other formats to Flac. I have encoded tracks from line-input also, recording and encoding masters of live performances from friends.

[TruMutton_200Hz]

Most of it is audiophile quality vinyl (LP albums) ripped to 24/96 FLAC using a variety of decent turntable setups (Rega, Sota, Technics, VPI,...). Nearly all of these setups have been modded / upgraded in one way or another and combined with a variety of decent ADCs (Tascam US-144, E-MU 0404 or better).
The albums are stored in separate folders with the artist, album title, year and usually some additional info such as the country in which the pressing was made, the record label and catalog number, bit depth and samplerate, all nicely specified in the folder names, which also include artwork scans most of the time. I have scripted the column contents of my foobar2000 playlist view a little according to my personal preference and basically that's it.

[killer_939]

320k MP3 and flac where i can get my hands on it.

[bokah]

flac, mp3 192+, avi...

[ASLayerAODsk]

FLAC n WAV..anything less...is uncivilized.

[flimbo]

FLAC and 320k mp3's. And I have a Spotify Premium subscription. I believe the format for Spotify hq streaming is 320k OGG.

[Doomsoldier]

Got drunk one night and heard a crappy quality MP3, selected files by type and deleted the lot, only FLAC for me now. I have fairly good kit, a xonar stx (with ever changing opamps) and some KRK monitors. Perhaps my ears are better when drunk, nothing else is !!

[Mufflore]

Nothing like beer for making things happen lol.

[Doomsoldier]

Well as I recall I was listening to some 80's love song compilation, gladly rid of that, and the ex Mrs. to be fair. Every cloud.....

[Pill Monster]

MP3 @192k or better & tagged with IDv2.

My collection has nearly 30,000 files...there's no way I could store them all in lossless format it would take up too much room.

Actually I listen mostly to shoutcast these days via WinAmp.

[Nato.dbnz]

Mine would be about 98% FLAC delivered to my DAC by the Logitech Squeezebox Touch. MP3 when there are no other options but that is rare these days. I'm buying more vinyl these days than I have for years though so for the last month or 2 I've been doing about 50% of my listening from analogue.

[Vandrende Pind]

I have a mix of FLAC and mp3, a little bit of WAV too.

[Decane]

Mine is entirely in ALAC, mainly because I'm too lazy to convert it all into FLAC, which had a better performance:compression ratio the last time I checked.

[k1net1cs]

Archive rips from CDs are in TAK.
TAK compresses better and just as fast as FLAC.
Anything I want to store in my portable player is transcoded to MP3 using LAME (-V 0).

[elkosith]

CDs and DVDs, both physical and clones in hard drive
MP3 320
Just starting my FLAC collection

[WhiteLightning]

most are VBR MP3. wish it were flac, but its too damn time consuming to do it again.

[TirolokoRD]

I guess as long as it sounds nice and its organized correctly, it should not matter.

Almost 20k in files, can have the time to mess with them.

What I do, is to choose a day in the week and deal with couple of albums/artist randomly!

[thatguy91]

VBR MP3 when encoded correctly sounds quite decent. I don't mean using some ancient version of LAME (it really only started at 3.9x something anyway!!! so 3.97 is ancient), or using a -q value of more than 2, or a -V value more than 4 (lower is better for both of those). Note that -v is a completely different option to -V! Also using the new VBR algorithm (I believe this is the default now).

I personally use -q0 and -V3. Encoding in CBR can be either quite wasteful (320KBPS) or not enough (192 in complex scenes). VBR adjusts the bitrate accordingly, and can go up to 320KBPS. Its far superior to how it used to be, so there is no detriment to audio quality.

Latest builds of FLAC and LAME can be found here:
http://www.mediafire.com/lame

No idea who builds them, but they work great currently using LAME 3.100A0 from 18 March 2012, but the less adventurous use the 3.99.5 instead. The date on the archive is very important, such that FLAC 1.2.2 is quite different to FLAC 1.2.2_20111201 (01 Dec 2012).

I would have been using AAC (using a good encoder like the Nero AAC) if the .m4a container format (which is absolutely NOT an Apple format like some may think) were more widely accepted in devices. I'd use a -q value of 0.45. A lot of audio encoded in AAC either uses a crappy encoder (like the iTunes store), or too low of a setting, or force AAC HE because 'high efficiency' sounds better than 'low complexity', but HE is only meant for speech, and its a common mistake.

Apparently there is a new audio format being developed which is something like twice as efficent as AAC again. It would be getting very close to not being able to go any further!

[k1net1cs]

Originally Posted by thatguy91

Latest builds of FLAC and LAME can be found here:
http://www.mediafire.com/lame

Official LAME repository is here:
http://www.rarewares.org/mp3-lame-bundle.php

Originally Posted by thatguy91

... , but HE is only meant for speech, and its a common mistake.

No, HE isn't only meant for speech, it's just more efficient than LC at low bitrate encoding (80kbps and lower).
For the same bitrate, HE sounds better than LC at those low bitrates.

Originally Posted by thatguy91

Apparently there is a new audio format being developed which is something like twice as efficent as AAC again. It would be getting very close to not being able to go any further!

I take it you're talking about Opus?

[N0sferatU]

FLAC MP3 and WAV

I usually duplicate my FLAC collection into MP3 for the car (won't read FLAC).

Just checked...25,254 files and 268GB space.

[pokerapar88]

FLAC level 4 rips from my cds, then mp3 320kbs mostly. there's a couple of songs at 192 or variable bitrate.

[F1refly]

128kbs mp3 works just fine for me.