High Traffic vs. Low Traffic

[UnLeaded]

Question for one of the senior players:

If a song has the same graph and time, how can there exist a song that has different levels of traffic?  Is this because of the quality of the song, 128bit vs. 1000bit?  Or would they have to be altered / modified versions of the same song?

[blue_h3x]

Bit rate and format do alter the traffic, though they tend to be in the same region. Although there are some modified rides, such as those by LuTze (and some by myself).

Is there a song in question you are asking about?

[Passerby]

even with unmodified tracks the formate and bit rate can make a big difference if notices a huge difference between stuff in my collection which is almost all lossless flac and what most people have been surfing.

i even had to convert files to mp3 to compete on them since there was about a 40 traffic difference between my flac and a 192k mp3.

i also noticed things that have been mastered useing mid-side techniques like the re-mastered Beatles albums change quite a bit when converted to mp3 which is as a result of the person mastering it using phasing to to separate mid from side and mp3 encoders using phasing again to cover there artifacts in the file.

[UnLeaded]

Bit rate and format do alter the traffic, though they tend to be in the same region. Although there are some modified rides, such as those by LuTze (and some by myself).

Is there a song in question you are asking about?

M1dy - Midi Anarchism.mp3, (398 traffic)

I've been hearing there's a 500 traffic version of the same song, it just seems to me that this would have to be a modified version?

I think there was a small convo about file format in another thread, I think it would be cool if we could start a thread (started by the senior players) of which format they find best for Audiosurf, using the most common formats, .mp3, .m4a, .ogg, .wma, .cda, .flac.

My guess would be the best quality at an given same bit rate would be:

1. .cda (the cd itself of course)
2. .flac (lossless)
3. .ogg
4. .m4a
5. .wma
6. .mp3

Maybe someone could verify this for me, so I can burn my cds at the highest quality for Audiosurf.

[S.]

I never really cared.

.ash swapping

[blue_h3x]

.ash swapping

Solves all, you get the same track, minus the need to re-encode.

Maybe someone could verify this for me, so I can burn my cds at the highest quality for Audiosurf.

FLAC will give the best quality, although it depends on the source. MP3 is horrible and cuts out parts of the music.

[Hammer]

Midi Anarchism actually has two different versions - each comes from a different CD of his.

They might have been mixed slightly differently, but I can't remember the difference between the two - perhaps I'll man up and try and find the difference later.

[Mincus]

My guess would be the best quality at an given same bit rate would be:

1. .cda (the cd itself of course)
2. .flac (lossless)
3. .ogg
4. .m4a
5. .wma
6. .mp3

Maybe someone could verify this for me, so I can burn my cds at the highest quality for Audiosurf.

Quality wise, you're close.
Technically FLAC and CDA should be identical, and WAV will be in this category as well, what happens in reality depends on the FLAC encoder and settings, but yeah, any changes would be unnoticeable by even the most zealous audiophile. At this end it depends more on your sound card hardware and the decoder than the file format.

M4A is a fringe case since the m4a is a bastardised extension for the mp4 container format and as such can hold numerous codecs. The most common being ALAC and AAC. ALAC is in the same category as FLAC/CDA/WAV as it's Apple's lossless format, AAC is one of the newer lossy compression formats, so comes in with OGG and WMA.

OGG/AAC/WMA you'll get around the same quality provided you use a sensible bitrate. This also applies to higher MP3 bitrates, but you'll have large MP3 files then. These formats are all technically superior to MP3 but less widely supported. OGG also has the additional benefit of being free from licence and patent restrictions, which makes it an excellent choice from an open source perspective for those not into FLAC.
Which just leave MP3s which are the lowest common denominator. Supported by everything, one of the earliest formats around and restricted in many ways with multiple audio artifacts and issues at 128kbps, but good enough for cheap headphones on dodgy mp3 players.

As to how they perform in Audiosurf, generally the lower the bitrate, the higher the traffic. I'm guessing this is due to noise introduced that's undetectable by the human ear but I may be wrong. It doesn't apply for all tracks either, but generally you'll get a little more traffic for a 128kbps mp3 than you will for a FLAC. But the FLAC will be more pleasant to listen to. From that perspective there's nothing stopping you generating a .ash file with the mp3 and using it for the FLAC file.

[Passerby]

Midi Anarchism actually has two different versions - each comes from a different CD of his.

They might have been mixed slightly differently, but I can't remember the difference between the two - perhaps I'll man up and try and find the difference later.

prolly just remastered to match the rest of the songs on the 2nd album it was put on

[Passerby]

My guess would be the best quality at an given same bit rate would be:

1. .cda (the cd itself of course)
2. .flac (lossless)
3. .ogg
4. .m4a
5. .wma
6. .mp3

Maybe someone could verify this for me, so I can burn my cds at the highest quality for Audiosurf.

Quality wise, you're close.
Technically FLAC and CDA should be identical, and WAV will be in this category as well, what happens in reality depends on the FLAC encoder and settings, but yeah, any changes would be unnoticeable by even the most zealous audiophile. At this end it depends more on your sound card hardware and the decoder than the file format.

M4A is a fringe case since the m4a is a bastardised extension for the mp4 container format and as such can hold numerous codecs. The most common being ALAC and AAC. ALAC is in the same category as FLAC/CDA/WAV as it's Apple's lossless format, AAC is one of the newer lossy compression formats, so comes in with OGG and WMA.

OGG/AAC/WMA you'll get around the same quality provided you use a sensible bitrate. This also applies to higher MP3 bitrates, but you'll have large MP3 files then. These formats are all technically superior to MP3 but less widely supported. OGG also has the additional benefit of being free from licence and patent restrictions, which makes it an excellent choice from an open source perspective for those not into FLAC.
Which just leave MP3s which are the lowest common denominator. Supported by everything, one of the earliest formats around and restricted in many ways with multiple audio artifacts and issues at 128kbps, but good enough for cheap headphones on dodgy mp3 players.

As to how they perform in Audiosurf, generally the lower the bitrate, the higher the traffic. I'm guessing this is due to noise introduced that's undetectable by the human ear but I may be wrong. It doesn't apply for all tracks either, but generally you'll get a little more traffic for a 128kbps mp3 than you will for a FLAC. But the FLAC will be more pleasant to listen to. From that perspective there's nothing stopping you generating a .ash file with the mp3 and using it for the FLAC file.

you hit it on the point but wav flac cda are called lossless but not actually when you consider that most consumer audio is cd quality 16bit 44.1khz broadcast wave but most studios are working at 24bit 88.2khz and the highest possible sofar is 32bit(float) 192khz.

and than the conversion between analog mediums that really have no exact way of measuring there quality.

and there are some things that can be done and reel to reel tape and LP's that cant be done in a digital medium.

best example in popular music would be the ending of she's so heavy by the Beatles.
in the analog version on LP or from the original tape the white noise keep building well above 0 DBu and starts over saturating the the tape and causing analog distortion and the same thing happens on playback on LP to get even more.

versus on digital mediums nothing can go above 0 DBu so they compressed and limited the crap out of the cd version so as the ending get lounder the stuff in the background get it's dynamics crushed.

[UnLeaded]

All great answers, thanks!  Yeah I'm going back and re-ripping my cds as the Windows MP ripped everything at 128 (the default) and I thought I had ripped everything at near cd quality (but when I played it back it didn't sound near cd quality at all.

For lossless they offer either .wav (lossless) or .wma (lossless), of which I'm using .wma (lossless) for the songs I like, and using their "variable bit rate" .wma for the songs on the album I find just so-so.

The first I ever heard of the .ogg format was in the game UT 2003, and I've heard it's used in many other games. I guess the format compliments games well.

[metaLsurfeR]

For lossless they offer either .wav (lossless) or .wma (lossless), of which I'm using .wma (lossless)

Aaargh....if you really care to get the best possible quality out of your cds, try EAC instead of WMP...

This also brings up the advantage that you can use a proper lossless codec like .flac

[Passerby]

For lossless they offer either .wav (lossless) or .wma (lossless), of which I'm using .wma (lossless)

Aaargh....if you really care to get the best possible quality out of your cds, try EAC instead of WMP...

This also brings up the advantage that you can use a proper lossless codec like .flac

iv used both and i find cdparinoia to get better results on more drives

[Mincus]

The first I ever heard of the .ogg format was in the game UT 2003, and I've heard it's used in many other games. I guess the format compliments games well.

No more or less than MP3 really, the difference is that the company doesn't have to buy a licence to use it in their commercial product.

[Passerby]

All great answers, thanks!  Yeah I'm going back and re-ripping my cds as the Windows MP ripped everything at 128 (the default) and I thought I had ripped everything at near cd quality (but when I played it back it didn't sound near cd quality at all.

For lossless they offer either .wav (lossless) or .wma (lossless), of which I'm using .wma (lossless) for the songs I like, and using their "variable bit rate" .wma for the songs on the album I find just so-so.

The first I ever heard of the .ogg format was in the game UT 2003, and I've heard it's used in many other games. I guess the format compliments games well.

your best off to keep things consistent just go will all flac for rips using a good ripper like EAC or cdparinoia.

flac is lossless and still keep a decent filesize and is a open-format and for lossy files ogg is the way too go sounds good for lossy and is also a open-format