Community poll forum: What format is your digital music in?

My music is *mostly* in MP3 format, however I also archive it on Minidisc, so I have almost as much music which is technically in ATRAC3 format as I do MP3 music.

AS far as flexibility goes, MP3 is the best format out there.

you tell me ! i have just found two copied cds by queen that i done about 4 years ago i was then on win 95, i am now on win xp and my computer or my cd player will not recognize,my dvd & cd says no disc in drive.
help
paulval

Go to cdroller.com and download their software. You can try it first before buy. It reads OLD cds formatted before dinosaurs walked the earth and lets you recover the data from them, then reformat a NEW cd/dvd and rewrite it to the new disk. This is great stuff. One of the few things I've actually bought out there!

Plain old cd 1 for 1.

Mostly Mp3, some AAC and recently Apple Lossless which I like best.

I use AIFF. Perhaps it is called something else in your survey

FLAC rocks and iTunes needs a plugin!

Don't get me wrong, I use MP3s in a portable player too. But I would not pay for any lossy digital format, certainly not $1 a track. Moreover, you generally cannot purchase music in MP3 format. You rip them from your CD collection (or download them on P2P networks) like the rest of us.

A FLAC music file, however, is as good as the original. And believe me it does sound better on a good audio system than a 128-bit MP3 or iTunes file. Also, you can easily make an MP3 copy for your portable player. While it is true that most people do not care about quality, if they ever change their mind, they will regret having purchased a music library of inferior sound quality.

Fortunately, there are some web sites that do sell music in lossless formats such as FLAC, e.g., http://www.mindawn.com/. The major labels would be wise to take a look at their example.

I converted a 9.5 MB. MP3 into an ATRACplus48kps and that equaled 1.5 MB. Eat that and chew on it.

Is the best choice for archiving music. Need something smaller and more portable, OGG.

PO

I have a lot of MP3's since it was the first format that became very popular back at the end of the 90's (think Napster).

However, when I rip my CD's now, I compress them to OGG for 2 reasons:

1/ MP3 is a licensed format and you never know what can happen in the future if they start asking for more money to be able to use MP3 in software. Software programmers have to pay to offer MP3 compression/decompression in their software so most likely the cost will fall back on the user sooner or later.

2/ after doing different "side-by-side" comparisons between MP3 and OGG files, I have been convinced that the OGG format sounds better than MP3 even at lower bit rates. I found that it sounds more "natural" and closer to the original uncompressed WAV file. Also, OGG is a format that is not licensed at all, it is completely free.

Of course, to this day, MP3 is still much more popular than OGG so most likely very few people would be able to play them. Since I use them only for me, it doesn't matter if it is not popular. It is popular... with me.

I use MP3PRO

MP3 is the most used format, and sadly, especially in comparison to WMA, best quality. WMA says 64kbps is exactly like 128kbps for MP3, and that's only if you're tone deaf. WMA has these cheap digital ringing kind of sounds, almost like people throwing magic dust, when the music goes too high or low. If you want a reliable, compatible, high-quality music format, get MP3, it'll be with you when you change your player, your computer, or your media player, the rest are just for what you have with you now.

I started out converting by CDs to MP3, when my girlfriend told me that the music sounded absolutely horrible. I had to agree, I was not impressed. More depressed - after spending secveral hours on the process.

So I trashed the files, and started over with AAC. Much better. Girlfriend is happy - 'nuf said.

These are lossless audio compression formats that most file sharers use (FTP)or (Bit Torrent)unlike mp3 all data is used, hence the term lossless. Winamp has plug-ins to play both these versions, and conversion tools are readily available freeware (Flac Frontend & MKWACT) to name a couple