Closing listening-tests.info Options

[Sebastian Mares]

This post is to inform you that listening-tests.info will close within the next weeks. The reasons for this decision are various and I don't want to go too deep into detail.

After the last test, a lot of people complained that the page is not very user-friendly which I have to admit is true. However, unfortunately I don't have the time and to be honest also the skills to improve the situation on my own. I asked several times in public if anyone might be willing to give me a helping hand with creating a new layout and how to write better how-tos, but never received any reply.
Also, several people complained that now that I work for Nero, future results might be faked to let Nero appear in better light (of course I would never do something like this).
Beside this, conducting successful tests became rather difficult because only few people are willing to invest time and test the samples - most people only want to see results without putting any effort, which is quite sad.
Broadband Internet and storage space also got cheap in the meanwhile and a lot of people either use lossless codecs to store their music or they encode at bitrates which are transparent for most users. If 128 kbps was such a big challenge, you can imagine that 192 kbps or higher is simply untestable. The demand for 96 or 80 kbps is no longer here.

Anyways, I would appreciate it if somebody from Hydrogenaudio could "port" the existing results to the Wiki so that the results are not lost. In case a HA admin is willing to host the site as-is, I could also provide the whole site as ZIP.

Cheers,
Sebastian Mares

This post has been edited by Sebastian Mares: Dec 3 2009, 13:53

[2Bdecided]

I think it would be useful to archive it as-is here - as long as it all gets mirrored properly (which it should do if you provide a zip).

There's precious little good listening test data out there - we don't need to lose some of the reliable stuff!

Cheers,
David.

[Sebastian Mares]

I prepared a 7z containing the whole site. If a HA admin / moderator is willing to create a mirror here, drop me a line via PM.

[Sebastian Mares]

I also got in touch with rjamorim and he is also looking for a mirror for his listening tests. Due to some personal problems, he missed the date for renewing his domain.

[Canar]

I think this needs to be done. I will talk to the admins about this. If they refuse to host it (I can't see why), I'll personally offer to host the whole thing and even offer to take over paying for the domain.

[Zarggg]

Due to some personal problems, he missed the date for renewing his domain.

Most registrars will hold the domain for a year if it expires. They might charge an extra fee if it's more than 90 days past due, but it should still be renewable.

[Garf]

Should be no problem to host the sites as is. Are you going to keep renewing the domain or ... ?

[Axon]

I'll host and/or store a backup of the files on audiamorous.net if need be. My conflicts of interest don't intersect with listening tests.

[MichaelW]

Could I thank Sebastian for all the work he has done on the listening tests?

The increasing difficulty in getting them done undoubtedly reflects the increasing quality of lossy encoders; to which, surely, public listening tests have contributed. So, in the best way, the tests have brought about their own obsolescence.

Congrats on the new job, Sebastian. I guess avoiding the appearance of conflict of interest is a good idea, but I hope you don't think those accusations represent more than the secretions of the standard Internet Trolling Drongo.

[Sebastian Mares]

Should be no problem to host the sites as is. Are you going to keep renewing the domain or ... ?

Thanks Garf. I could transfer it to you or Canar if you think it's useful. Otherwise I would quit it together with the webhosting account.

[Sebastian Mares]

BTW, another problem is that schnofler apparently stopped development of ABC/HR for Java, coding something in Silverlight would require an expensive IIS server, and I don't know how to program in Air or Flash or even if those would be suitable for a testing application. ABC/HR has certain limitations and bugs that I don't know how to fix. Last time it didn't work correctly with JRE 1.6 and even with JRE 1.5 it had the problem that on some machines, a click was hearable when playing certain files (it always happened for the same files).

[IgorC]

If 128 kbps was such a big challenge, you can imagine that 192 kbps or higher is simply untestable.

Nah, I don't think it was so big challenge.
From last MP3 128kbps test http://www.listening-tests.info/mp3-128-1/results.htm I see that all encoders are more or less tied but they aren't transparent. Personally for me to be transparent encoder should have at least 4.7-4.8 of average score and don't go to lower mark than ~4.0-4.2.
There were actually bad scores.

Picking up some more difficult samples for listening test will help.
It's possible to perform test even at least at 160 kbps with very hard samples.Aemese sample will be just very killer. I didn't participate in last public test as I hadn't time but I've participated in previous.

After the last test, a lot of people complained that the page is not very user-friendly which I have to admit is true

There are always a lot of problems but the most important thing is that the public test was performed and it was useful.

[Garf]

Should be no problem to host the sites as is. Are you going to keep renewing the domain or ... ?

Thanks Garf. I could transfer it to you or Canar if you think it's useful. Otherwise I would quit it together with the webhosting account.

I'd drop the domain then. I'll just put it on a subdomain of hydrogenaudio.org.

Can you make a tarball of all content somewhere where I can fetch it, or so? Nevermind, got it.

[Sebastian Mares]

Cool, thanks for hosting Garf.

Anyone intersted in taking the domain and using it as "alias" for the subdomain on HA.

[Sebastian Mares]

Could a moderator please split this thread into "Closing listening-tests.info" and "Development of ABC/HR for Java" or something.

[Alex B]

Could a moderator please split this thread into "Closing listening-tests.info" and "Development of ABC/HR for Java" or something.

Good idea.

Regarding to the actual topic, it would be nice if

1. the domain could be preserved as a hosted domain at HA (otherwise there will be lots of dead links in the HA forums, HA Wiki and also elsewhere in the web), but if that is not possible, at least the links inside "listening-tests.info" that point to other pages in the same domain should be be corrected.

2. Roberto's old tests could be added.

This post has been edited by Alex B: Jan 6 2010, 11:48

[Sebastian Mares]

Domain will be closed on 25. February 2010.

[Sebastian Mares]

The site is online for five more days. In case anyone / HA wants to mirror it, now would be the right time.

Edit: Sorry for the confusion. Five more days doesn't mean that it will close in March (25. February + 5 days) but in five days starting today.

This post has been edited by Sebastian Mares: Feb 19 2010, 11:23

[C.R.Helmrich]

The site is online for five more days. In case anyone / HA wants to mirror it, now would be the right time.

Edit: Sorry for the confusion. Five more days doesn't mean that it will close in March (25. February + 5 days) but in five days starting today.

In case nobody volunteers, I am willing to host the tests without any downloadable material (ZIP or audio files) on ecodis.de. Some more tests might follow there anyway.

Chris

[Alex B]

Sebastian,

In order to keep your valuable test reports online until Garf adds the site as a hosted domain (I hope it'll happen) I reserved a site from a free hosting service. They advertise unlimited bandwidth and the free version can hold up to 60 megabytes of data. Later on, after the site has been added to HA, the address can serve as mirror.

If you agree, the site is already running and just needs the content. (I can fix the broken links if any will show up and you don't have time to do that.)

The address is http://listeningtests.t35.com and a demo page is here: http://listeningtests.t35.com/testpage. I tried to reserve "listening-tests.t35.com", but it did not accept a hyphen in the name.

As you can see it displays only a quite modest amount of advertisements - just a line of links at the end of the page.

PM me for details.


P.S. Naturally Roberto's tests would be welcomed too.


P.S.2 C.R.Helmrich,

If this site works as I expect, you would not need to sacrifice your personal site's bandwidth. Future tests can naturally be added, but I hope they'll be hosted at HA.

EDIT

Maybe they have changed the rules or I just remembered this wrong, but the disc space seems to be now unlimited. Only the size of individual files is limited to 1 MB, so it can hold any usual content, except files like audio samples that would exceed the limit. If there is a need to release audio samples in the future, linking them from other hosts would not be a problem.

This post has been edited by Alex B: Feb 22 2010, 22:50

[Sebastian Mares]

http://listening-tests.info/4mirrors.7z

Links should be all relative, so no need to change anything.

This post has been edited by Sebastian Mares: Feb 22 2010, 22:47

[Alex B]

Thanks, I'll upload it ASAP.

[Alex B]

It's done.

http://listeningtests.t35.com/
(also www.listeningtests.t35.com works)


Sebastian, probably the email address should be fixed on the pages where the following exists:

"If you have any questions, feel free to contact me via e-mail: mail [at] listening-tests [dot] info."

Should I change it to something like: "If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the Listening Tests forum at the hydrogenaudio.org site." or would you like to provide another mail address?

This post has been edited by Alex B: Feb 22 2010, 23:53

[Soap]

Anyone intersted in taking the domain and using it as "alias" for the subdomain on HA.

If you're still looking for a taker for this role, I'll cough up the ~$10 a year to hold on to the domain and redirect towards the mirror, or even host the mothballed site.

[Sebastian Mares]

No idea if it's still possible to keep the domain. I already sent the signed confirmation fax to close the domain and not to transfer it.