Dear PowerArchiver users,
You might have noticed in last few versions of PowerArchiver 2017 that we have added a new mp3 compression codec to Advanced Codec Pack (.PA format).
It has been tested with our own alpha tester team for half a year before we introduced it in the final release. The MP3 codec has been proven to be fast, reliable, and it simply has the best MP3 compression on the market.
Design goals for the mp3 codec were to achieve the fastest speed and best compression rates among the competition – namely WinZip (other software such as WinRAR or 7zip don’t have an mp3 codec so they cannot compress mp3 files any further). We specifically targeted high bitrate MP3s that go up to 320kbs (including VBR). That is what most MP3 users are using nowadays and that’s where we can achieve best compression ratio. PowerArchiver’s MP3 codec is multi-core optimized and is up to 4x faster than competition when used on 8 and 16 thread CPU’s.
Examples
For test examples, we have acquired some of the most popular audio albums released in 2017, in MP3 format, and have compared it to WinZip. WinZip has added the popular open source mp3 codec to the ZIPX format to their latest release. On 256kbs and 320kbs mp3 files, PowerArchiver creates up to 5% smaller files at 2x-4x faster speed. PowerArchiver’s mp3 codec can also detect mp3 files better and worked fine with every file we tried, while with WinZip we had one album that did not want to compress via mp3 codec at all (so ended up full size).
We have tested them on 7700HQ (4c/8t) and Ryzen 1700 (8c/16t) CPU’s and were able to archive almost 2x performance boost on Ryzen. Good news for all of the Ryzen owners is that we will further fine tune our support for 16 thread CPU’s and achieve even more speed out of them. Compared to WinZip, PowerArchiver’s mp3 codec is almost 2x faster on 4 core cpu’s and almost 4x faster on 8 core cpus. These excellent speeds at leading compression ratios also leave us space for adding stronger/slower version of the mp3 codec in the future.
PowerArchiver 2017 with Advanced Codec Pack (.PA) is now available from our download page. For more detailed info on specific features, please check other posts in our blog. We hope you will love PA 2017 as much as we do. Thank you for your support since 1998!
