Wma 9 At Soundexpert.
Reply #13 – 2002-09-27 08:03:14
So maybe you could offer an option to choose some specific samples from all available files without giving up the idea of a blind test by saying "These are all 64 kbps files I have with CBR" or "These only contain 64 kbps with VBR" or something similar... In that case you couldn't make inter-bitrate comparison of codecs, as each bit rate would have it's own rating scale and audience. Really, blind testing is not comfortable undertaking, but it's the price of valuable results it generates. But it would be a more realistic approach to people's preferences, I think. Those who would like to compare all available codecs for streaming purposes normally aren't interested in 96 kbps or higher and vice versa those wishing to archive at a near-transparent quality usually do not care how anything at 32 kbps would sound."Today I wanna know how Bach sounds with WMA8 compared to WMA9 at 64 kbps", not caring how other people have ranked them before. It's easy! Just encode and listen! SoundExpert blind testing is something different. But I can't, because I don't have Windows 2000 or XP, so that the WMA9 encoder wouldn't work on my PC. Nevertheless I'm interested in its sound quality for low bitrates and especially how it would compare to WMA8 with the same sample. I do understand what your site is up to, like I wrote already. But it might also be a great help for people that would like to have a quick and easy access to different test samples without bothering how they would produce such samples. Furthermore your nine sound excerpts seem to be well chosen and so could be a perfect "common ground" for a discussion. Of course this would have to be separated from the "normal" usage of your site which is doing blind comparisons for a lot of codecs. Don't get me wrong, I think your idea is great, I only wanted to suggest some "supplements" that might motivate more people to participate in your tests, so that some day you will have about 60 results for each codec and each bitrate.