by randi » Fri Oct 28, 2011 8:37 pm
ALAC: Unless it can be compressed significantly better than FLAC, it doesn't offer anything that FLAC doesn't.
AAC: As Graf said, it's patented, so somebody's going to need to pay that license fee. (Technically, you also need to be paying a MP3 fee, too, if you distribute wads with MP3s.) Vorbis is supposed to subjectively be about the same quality as AAC at the same bitrate.
AC3: This has license fees, just like AAC. Also, my understanding is that at low bitrates, it isn't very good.
ALAC: Unless it can be compressed significantly better than FLAC, it doesn't offer anything that FLAC doesn't.
AAC: As Graf said, it's patented, so somebody's going to need to pay that license fee. (Technically, you also need to be paying a MP3 fee, too, if you distribute wads with MP3s.) Vorbis is supposed to subjectively be about the same quality as AAC at the same bitrate.
AC3: This has license fees, just like AAC. Also, my understanding is that at low bitrates, it isn't very good.