My personal prefered settings for encoding media files, especially audio.

PreferredSettings.md

Disclaimer

If you decide to follow my settings, I'm not responsible for anything that happens if you decide to go careless and become a priceless dumb. All commands are done in Linux PC using corresponding CLI programs. In Windows, just add .exe after CLI program name.

Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)

I prefer maximum compression as possible with replay gain applied.

$ flac --delete-input-file --replay-gain -s -V8 <input-file>.wav

MP3 - LAME

LAME is so far the best MP3 encoder out there. This is my encoding settings to achieve the best quality to play on my MP3 player. No ReplayGain flag is passed since it doesn't append the calculated value anyway. Use foobar2000 (run it in Wine) if you want to apply ReplayGain in MP3 files.

$ lame --silent --noreplaygain --flush --vbr-new -V0 -q0 -m j -p <input-file>.wav

Opus

In Opus I'll look at overhead, but in common I'll use --framesize 10 or --framesize 20 for a whole album tracks and not whole music collections. I'll use 192kbps VBR (see here why), with maximum encoding complexity and no expected packet loss.

$ opusenc --quiet --vbr --bitrate 192 --comp 10 --expect-loss 0 --framesize (10 or 20) <input-file>.wav <output-file>.ogg

Note: Android 5.0 doesn't recognize Opus audio inside .opus container, use .ogg instead.

auCDtect (Windows)

Doesn't fall at encoding at all, but useful to verify WAVE files ripped from a CD. Use the slowest, most accurate settings of auCDtect. Also, print summary conclusions.

auCDtect.exe -m0 -d <input-file.wav>

what do you think about AAC?

I'm currently using these settings and it produces pretty decent audio:

$ fdkaac --silent --profile 2 --bitrate-mode 5 --afterburner 1 <input-file>.wav -o <output-file>.m4a