July 21, 2006
Musepack is Dead
A few years ago, I set out to transfer my CD library to my desktop so I could listen to any song any time I wanted. Having audiophile tendencies, I wanted the highest quality possible, without sacrificing what was then moderately expensive storage. The folks at Hydrogenaudio.org provided some much-needed assistance. There, blind listening tests were conducted against all available audio compression algorithms of the time. I was intrigued by a relatively unknown codec, Musepack (MPC). It was receiving high scores on all the listening tests and had numerous other advantages, such as faster encoding and decoding, APEV2 tagging, ReplayGain support, etc. Everyone on the forum was extremely excited about Musepack. It was supposed to be the next big audio compression algorithm. After all, it blew the pants off MP3 and Ogg in almost every comparison.
After conducting my own listening tests to verify MPC was the real deal, I started to encode my library into MPC. I have never regretted that decision. I love being able to listen to encoded music at 180kbps that still sounds transparent. The ReplayGain support is great for shuffling around tracks without having to fudge with the volume (I still prefer to listen to whole albums at a time, however). I can even play MPC files on my Rockbox-powered iPod! MPC is simply put, amazing.
Anyway, I stumbled back to Hydrogenaudio this evening to check in on current matters. It is with a heavy heart that I report that the general consensus is MPC is dead. Despite the fact it still sounds better than Lame and Ogg in many circumstances, especially in the 160-180kbps range, general community usage has dropped off significantly. Oh well. I still have days upon days of MPC audio to keep me satisfied. Perhaps one day, when I have a state-of-the-art sound system, I will finally be let down by MPC and will find myself encoding my favorite albums to lossless. Until then, viva Musepack!
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