Bandcamp offers you the choice to download albums in a variety of audio formats, but which one should you pick?
Here's my recommendations, which may well differ from your own (please, put down the pitchforks! 😱).
(way too much consideration went into this and can be found under the fold)
Let's look at the options available for Hollow Knight (Original Soundtrack) by Christopher Larkin:
| Lossy | Lossless |
|---|---|
| MP3 V0 (133.1 MB) | FLAC (377.3 MB) |
| MP3 320 (161.7 MB) | ALAC (388.7 MB) |
| AAC (88.9 MB) | WAV (687.3 MB) |
| Ogg Vorbis (94.6 MB) | AIFF (689.1 MB) |
That's a lot of choices and Bandcamp's support page isn't much help.
Lossless (FLAC / ALAC)
Right off the bat, I can tell you what not to pick: WAV or AIFF. These are uncompressed audio formats, the BMP and PICT of the audio world. FLAC and ALAC offer lossless compression (like PNG if we continue the image format analogy), giving you exactly the same audio at roughly half the size. If you use an Apple device, you likely want ALAC otherwise FLAC is good for pretty much everything else.
But do you really need lossless? If you want to be able to convert tracks to a lossless format in the future or for archiving, then yes. Otherwise, picking a lossy format at a high bit rate is going to be virtually indistinguishable and take one fifth of the size.
Lossy (MP3 / AAC / Ogg Vorbis)
Of the lossy formats, most people have heard of MP3 audio files. Bandcamp provides two choices here Variable Bit Rate (MP3 V0) and Constant Bit Rate (MP3 320) (the values representing the configuration options in the LAME MP3 encoder). These are the highest respective quality settings for each mode, (MP3 V0) being able to save some space by adjusting the bit rate as needed while (MP3 320) uses 320 kbps regardless.
I'd argue MP3 320 is practically indistinguishable from lossless1, while MP3 V0 is on-par with AAC (VBR 128 kbps)2.
While MP3 is the most portable choice, there are several newer audio codecs that promise better audio quality at lower bit rates. The two most well known are AAC and Ogg Vorbis.
Which is better? At this point it's often more about the encoder used, rather than the format itself. Bandcamp uses the following encoder settings:
AAC: fdkaac, set to -w 19000 -m 4 (~128 kbps)OGG: vorbis-tools 1.4.0, set to -q 6 (~192 kbps)
AAC is generally considered to have better audio quality at the same bit rate, but is patent encumbered (if you care about that). Bandcamp encodes Ogg Vorbis at a higher bit-rate which compensates for that, at the cost of bigger file sizes.
Audio quality
It's actually surprisingly difficult to find a good side-by-side comparison of all these codecs (and encoders) at their respective bit rates. SoundExpert's Encoder Ratings is probably the best I've found. Based on their ratings and my own experience, I'd split the codecs roughly like so3:
Indistinguishable4
- MP3 320 (320 kbps CBR)
- AAC (256 kbps CBR)
- Celt (160 kbps VBR)
Excellent5
- Ogg Vorbis (192 kbps VBR)
- AAC (128 kbps VBR)
- MP3 V0 (224 kbps VBR)
I feel it would be nice if Bandcamp offered an AAC (256 kbps CBR) option as that seems to be the sweet spot of indistinguishable audio at one quarter of lossless' file size.
But hey, if you don't like any of these options, you can grab one of the lossless formats and encode them into format you desire! Don't let me stop you! 😁
- SoundExpert's Encoder Ratings consider MP3 320 kbps CBR having no perceivable artefacts (by some margin), even in the worst case.
- MP3 V0 and AAC 128 kbps VBR have almost identical distributions.
- The best I can do without actually doing my own ABX testing.
- It's been shown that virtually no one can distinguish uncompressed CD audio from AAC 256 kbps VBR and than MP3 320 kbps CBR is still a fraction better than AAC 256 kbps VBR.
- Fine for day-to-day use (you likely won't notice unless in good listening conditions).