MPC vs OGG VORBIS vs MP3 at 175 kbps, listening test on non-killer samples Options

[echo]

- serious differences between lame --preset standard and -V2

Huh? I'm pretty sure you meant -V3 here.

I'd also like to point out for proper wording that it is not the ANOVA test that shows that Codec A is rated better than codec B or codec C. ANOVA just shows that differences between the samples exist or not by means of the p value. It is the Friedman post-hoc test (or the Tukey test) that shows exactly where these differences are.

Thanks for a nice test guru!

[eagleray]

From the discussion I notice the difficulty of ABX comparisons at high bitrates among highly developed codecs.

By the way Guruboolez, how is the pate (sp)?

[Adie]

MPC is still confined to computer, or in best case on PDA – and is maybe doomed to this limited usage.

It would be wonderful if this best case were true, but no: on my Palm I can only listen to MP3, Ogg Vorbis and WMA. And I know the same applies to PocketPC, besides some obscure AAC player. Musepack is unfortunately really confined to computers.

Hopefully, not for long. See here
.

You can always listen using BetaPlayer which handles mpc on ppc (it's great i can play movies from pc over wifi)

BTW. I'm using vorbis 1.1 from arewares and setting "-q5 --advanced-encode-option impulse_noisetune=-5" is really almost transparent to me in most cases. It causes bigger vbitrate fluctuation because it uses short blocks more frequently and thus adds more "texture" to encoding. I've ABXed it using SoundStorm connected with spdif to sony amplituner with pascal speakers and found that mpc at q6 sounds duller than vorbis (but around q8,9 mpc is also good) . Sometimes I have to switch to q6, but only when source cd is very good mastered. Tried mpc 1.14beta

[music_man_mpc]

I've ABXed it using SoundStorm connected with spdif to sony amplituner with pascal speakers and found that mpc at q6 sounds duller than vorbis (but around q8,9 mpc is also good) . Sometimes I have to switch to q6, but only when source cd is very good mastered. Tried mpc 1.14beta

I find this very hard to believe. Could you use ABC/HR and post your results please?

[Adie]

I've ABXed it using SoundStorm connected with spdif to sony amplituner with pascal speakers and found that mpc at q6 sounds duller than vorbis (but around q8,9 mpc is also good) . Sometimes I have to switch to q6, but only when source cd is very good mastered. Tried mpc 1.14beta

I find this very hard to believe. Could you use ABC/HR and post your results please?

As soon as I will return to my hometown. I'm currently studying in other city.

Update: I've abxed mpc q6 a little using ABC/HR and tested with vorbis q5 impulse, I must admit that dullnes in high freq wchich I heard b4 was virtually inaudible.
I think I should try with mpc q5 because vorbis had 165kbps and mpc 224kb. And of course try to abx vorbis. I'll try to find more time and test it more.
***
ABC/HR Version 1.0, 6 May 2004
Testname: roxette

1L = C:\CHIP\temp\019B4DD3,06.mpc.wav
2L = C:\CHIP\temp\019B4DD3,06.ogg.wav

---------------------------------------
General Comments:

---------------------------------------
1L File: C:\CHIP\temp\019B4DD3,06.mpc.wav
1L Rating: 4.5
1L Comment:
---------------------------------------
2L File: C:\CHIP\temp\019B4DD3,06.ogg.wav
2L Rating: 4.7
2L Comment:
---------------------------------------
ABX Results:
Original vs C:\CHIP\temp\019B4DD3,06.mpc.wav
7 out of 10, pval = 0.172

***

This post has been edited by Adie: Nov 20 2004, 00:23

[shadowking]

You haven't abxed it at all, 7/10 is useless.. try 8/8 , 14/16, 16/16

You need pval <3% over several trials to be creadible here.

[Adie]

You haven't abxed it at all, 7/10  is useless.. try 8/8 , 14/16,  16/16

You need pval <3% over several trials to be creadible here.

I've admitted in previous post that I haven't heard almost any difference this time. So these results are ok (just they are not prooving anything). I will try with other samples or admit that I can't get credible results. Anyway whatever comes I will stick with vorbis because of smaller filesize and portability. I wish there was a foobar2000 port to PPC.

This post has been edited by Adie: Nov 20 2004, 10:19

[guruboolez]

(...) Anyway whatever comes I will stick with vorbis because of smaller filesize and portability.

For transparent encodings?

[Adie]

(...) Anyway whatever comes I will stick with vorbis because of smaller filesize and portability.

For transparent encodings?

Transparency bitrate level for vorbis(with impulse_noisetune) seems to be lower than mpc. Realisticaly speaking I should use a losless encoder to do that but these are not portable nor produce small filesizes (with vorbis you can have one virtually transparent file and listen it on your computer, pda, xbox and few mp3 players).

[abbe learning]

MPC is still confined to computer, or in best case on PDA – and is maybe doomed to this limited usage.

It would be wonderful if this best case were true, but no: on my Palm I can only listen to MP3, Ogg Vorbis and WMA. And I know the same applies to PocketPC, besides some obscure AAC player. Musepack is unfortunately really confined to computers.

Hopefully, not for long. See here
.

This is ALMOSt true. For some of the better portable players an open source firmware update exists. It is called "Rockbox" and you can find it here: http://www.rockbox.org/.

Of course your point is still valid, as the majority of players do not support MPC, but as you see a few can be modded to do so.

I haven´t got any portable player at the moment because I listen to very good audio quality at home and don´t want to sacrifice that experience on the road. Then I learned about Rockbox and the quality of the D/A converter in some of the players, that can be modded by Rockbox, and when I have som money that will be my solution to portable audio (with some more than decent headphones, naturally )

Yours for now,

Abbe

[Canar]

Holy thread necromancy!

[indybrett]

Rockbox, eh? Never heard of it

This post has been edited by indybrett: Aug 25 2006, 20:17