Icecast - Apr 2023 - Transcode lossy to further reduced lossy to stream over Icecast

Situation:?
 * remote virtual server with very little storage (estimate: I can
   spare about 40G for music)
 * local music collection of ~80G in all sorts of formats - lossy in
   varying quality, some lossless too

Vision:
 * stream my whole music collection randomized so I can listen to it
   anywhere

Plan/Idea:
 * Locally transcode everything to one format that results in files
   that are?
    - small enough to fit on my server, altogether
    - have a reduced bitrate for streaming
    - can be streamed as-is without further transcoding
 * Upload
 * Set icecast up to do just that (this I know how to do)

So I'm asking advice for the transcoding. What's likely to give the
best results with already lossy sources, and at small bitrates?

According to these documents:
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/HighQualityAudio
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Transcoding#Lossy-to-lossy_transcoding
it basically comes down to Fraunhofer Institute's FDK AAC, but the
articles are dated.
Opus is supposed to be good but I always have the impression it doesn't
deal well with loud/grungy/fuzzy/guitarry music, esp. at low bitrates.

What do you say?

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Opus or AAC will give you comparable results at reasonable bitrates (~128k).

Though, I would suggest finding a way to get more storage.  You could
upload to Backblaze B2 or AWS S3 for pennies, if your current host won't
let you upgrade.

On Sat, Apr 15, 2023 at 3:36?PM D.T. <ohnonot-github at posteo.de> wrote:
> Situation:
>
>    - remote virtual server with very little storage (estimate: I can
>    spare about 40G for music)
>    - local music collection of ~80G in all sorts of formats - lossy in
>    varying quality, some lossless too
>
>
> Vision:
>
>    - stream my whole music collection randomized so I can listen to it
>    anywhere
>
>
> Plan/Idea:
>
>    - Locally transcode everything to *one* format that results in files
>    that are
>       - small enough to fit on my server, altogether
>       - have a reduced bitrate for streaming
>       - can be streamed as-is without further transcoding
>    - Upload
>    - Set icecast up to do just that (this I know how to do)
>
>
> So I'm asking advice for the transcoding. What's likely to give the
best
> results with already lossy sources, and at small bitrates?
>
> According to these documents:
> https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/HighQualityAudio
>
>
https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Transcoding#Lossy-to-lossy_transcoding
> it basically comes down to Fraunhofer Institute's FDK AAC, but the
> articles are dated.
> Opus is supposed to be good but I always have the impression it doesn't
> deal well with loud/grungy/fuzzy/guitarry music, esp. at low bitrates.
>
> What do you say?
>
> _______________________________________________
> Icecast mailing list
> Icecast at xiph.org
> http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/icecast
>
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