please tell me the best quality audio format for video playback on my tv

[appollo147]

My TV is compatible with the audio formats listed below. I know how to convert the audio tracks on videos to different formats, but what I would like to know is which of the comatible formats will give me the best quality. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Compatible formats:
AAC
AC3
VORBIS
MP3

[davexnet]

Listening through the TV speakers?
I doubt if there is that much difference, just make sure you use a decent bitrate

[appollo147]

No I am using a 2.0 soundbar.

[davexnet]

If you're converting video's to something else, why not maintain the original audio, or are you trying to downmix
5.1 or similar to 2-channel stereo? Or uncompressed to compressed? Why recompress already compressed
audio if you don't have to?
If your aim is to produce the best sound for the smallest size, perhaps aac or vorbis

My point still stands though, if you use a higher bitrate, I doubt if you could tell the difference.
Perhaps some others will chime in and give you a different perspective ...

[manono]

I agree with you, davexnet. I doubt this person will be able to improve on what he already has. Just leave it alone.

And I don't think soundbars really reproduce top quality audio. Better than TV speakers but much worse than a real sound system. And I have a 5.1 soundbar myself.

[sneaker]

Results of the public multiformat listening test (July 2014)

Summary
♛1 Opus 1.1 with opus-tools-0.1.9-win32
opusenc --bitrate 96 in.wav out.opus
♛2 AAC iTunes 11.2.2 via qaac 2.41
qaac --cvbr 96 -o out.mp4 in.wav
♛3 Ogg Vorbis aoTuV Beta6.03
venc603 -q2.2 in.wav out.ogg
♛3 MP3 LAME 3.99.5
lame -V5 in.wav out.mp3 *used 29% more bitrate.

http://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm

[johns0]

Any of the codecs you showed will sound the same on a 2.0 sound bar as long as the original sound is good.

[appollo147]

Thanks for the help everybody I'll just stick to AAC for now. And as for davexnet's question, I don't convert the video just the audio because I like to watch videos on my big screen via a portable drive and my TV doesn't support the E-AC3 or DTS sound formats.

[davexnet]

Thanks for the help everybody I'll just stick to AAC for now. And as for davexnet's question, I don't convert the video just the audio because I like to watch videos on my big screen via a portable drive and my TV doesn't support the E-AC3 or DTS sound formats.

Yes I understand, I've done the same. When I used to make DVD's and had to convert audio to ac/3
I used to use 256kbps stereo, because to me it sounded more transparent and less "pinched"
than lower bitrates, even on my TV speakers. Especially important if the material was mostly music.

Here's a short article with some recommendations - may be useful, but even still, I'd take it with a pinch of salt
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/Encode/HighQualityAudio

[jagabo]

My TV is compatible with the audio formats listed below. I know how to convert the audio tracks on videos to different formats, but what I would like to know is which of the comatible formats will give me the best quality. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Compatible formats:
AAC
AC3
VORBIS
MP3

It depends on the bitrate as well as the codec. For example, AAC ad 32 kbps is going to sound worse than AC3 at 448 kbps. It also depends on the particular encoder. Even among the same codec some encoders do better than others. And on top of that there's personal preference. One encoder might attenuate frequencies over 18 KHz in order to get better accuracy at lower frequencies. Another may keep those high frequencies but be less accurate at lower frequencies. If you are 18 years old and can hear up to 22 KHz you may prefer the latter. But if your 50 and can't hear anything above 15 KHz you may prefer the former.