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Topic: Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard (Read 10214 times) previous topic - next topic
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Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

I found a nasty problem with the --alt-preset fast standard while encoding some Tenacious D tracks from the cd. I only noticed the bad encoding artifacts on 2 tracks  during parts with loud talking and no music playing.

I'm using LAME version 3.90 (alpha 9, 12/19/01 10:05:36)

After noticing this I tested track 16. Karete Schnitzel which is a 31 second song that had Kyle sorta yelling at Jack half way thru which produces bad artifacts.

Both of these settings sounded much cleaner
--alt-preset standard
--r3mix

Now im trying to stay away from r3mix but i do enjoy the speed of --alt-preset fast standard. I wanted to believe that there is really no noticeable sound quality difference between fast standard and standard. Tho after finding this track im scared to use the fast setting for the rest of my library.

Is this just a temporary bug with this current alpha of LAME? Please tell me it is so for i don't wanna loose my faith brotha!

I'll be glad to post these encodings on a ftp or web site for u to d/l and hear. They are small encodings so it shouldn't be much of a hassle for u or me so just ask.

Thanx for letting me ramble...
kye

ps. Hey do i get a prize? This is my first post hehehe...  Thanx for all your work Dibrom and fellow bad motha fuckas.

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #1 –
Yeah, if you could provide a sound clip it might help.

I'm sure there are some cases where the "fast" standard is not as good as the normal one.. it just shouldn't happen too often.

I'll never be able to get both it and the non-fast standard to sound exactly alike though due to many internal differences in the code that each uses.

Quote
ps. Hey do i get a prize? This is my first post hehehe... Thanx for all your work Dibrom and fellow bad motha fuckas.


LOL  No problem...

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #2 –
Ok I put up two files on my filesharing page

http://homepage.mac.com/kye/FileSharing2.html

16-KarateSchnitzel(fast).mp3
16-KarateSchnitzel(standard).mp3

U will really notice the artifacts near the middle of the song when Kyle is talking really loud.

kye

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #3 –
I'll download the mp3s, but can you upload an original sound clip (.wav) for me?  That would help me much more than an mp3.  It'd be easier for me to compare against the original clip rather than another mp3.  Btw, could you give a time index for where you hear the problems the most also?. Thanks.

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #4 –
I'll have to go home during lunch and do that. I'm stuck at work right now and my CD is sitting on my server desk at home. I hope an aiff file will suffice instead of a wav.

On the fast encoding u will hear his voice get this insect like effect behind it and it kinda makes him sound like he's in the movie Fly.

I'll post the song as an aiff when I go home today either at lunch or after work.

Thanx again for the help Dibrom... U da man!!!

kye

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #5 –
I think a hear a problem around the :25 second mark, in the fast version compared to the standard version.  It sounds a little "rough" on his voice, is this what you are talking about?

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #6 –
Quote
Originally posted by kye
On the fast encoding u will hear his voice get this insect like effect behind it and it kinda makes him sound like he's in the movie Fly.


Yes, this is exactly what I'm hearing.  I'll see what I can do once you can get me a pcm of the sound clip so I can do some testing.

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #7 –
yo... d/l the aiff from my site mon...

http://homepage.mac.com/kye

please let me know what u find... gracias

kye

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #8 –
Thanks.  Downloading it now.  I'm pretty certain I know exactly what is causing this problem.  Odd thing is that it shouldn't be happening.. but if it's what I think it is, it shouldn't be too hard to fix.

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #9 –
Verified that this is a very audible artifact (16/16) at around the 25 sec mark, where the guy says, "it's, it's fair game..." using Rev
9a ICL --alt-preset fast standard, but not with --alt-preset standard or --r3mix.  Dibrom is fixing...

ff123

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #10 –
OK, I just made some changes which pretty much take care of this problem (also verified by ff123).  I'll be uploading a new binary shortly.

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #11 –
Excellent!!! Thanx mon u rock!!!

Will I see these changes soon in the bleeding edge linux source. I'm compiling LAME under OS X so I can't use the .dll releases.

Also I was wondering where I can find these sound samples that u commonly refer to on these forums. One of them is named Fatboy and there are others i can't remember right now.

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #12 –
I have a list of test sample locations at the bottom of:

http://ff123.net/links.html

fatboy.wav can be found on the Lame site.

ff123

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #13 –
Quote
Originally posted by kye
Excellent!!! Thanx mon u rock!!!


Np  Thanks for pointing out the sample for us.

Quote
Will I see these changes soon in the bleeding edge linux source. I'm compiling LAME under OS X so I can't use the .dll releases.


They are in CVS right now, so if you know how to do a checkout you can compile this very second  Go here:

http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=290

if you need more information.

Quote
Also I was wondering where I can find these sound samples that u commonly refer to on these forums. One of them is named Fatboy and there are others i can't remember right now.


I usually have a personal webpage up with all of these samples on them but it's down at the moment.  Once I begin to overhaul the site here some more I'm going to try and put all the samples online along with the FAQs and whatever else.  In the meantime, a lot of them can be found on ff123's page or the LAME page here:

http://lame.sourceforge.net/gpsycho/quality.html

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #14 –
One final question to wrap it all up. Do u think it's safe for me to encode my library using --alt-preset fast standard instead of --alt-preset standard? I really enjoy the speed of the fast setting but if sound quality is an issue i'll stick to standard.

This whole mess started cause I bought an iPod so I can now hear problems with my old encodings i once thought were fine. I'm a little annoyed that I used the Xing VBR settings for most of my older encodings. Thankfully I got wise.

The LAME project and hydrogenaudio are my saviors from bad encodings! Thanx ya'll....

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #15 –
Quote
One final question to wrap it all up. Do u think it's safe for me to encode my library using --alt-preset fast standard instead of --alt-preset standard? I really enjoy the speed of the fast setting but if sound quality is an issue i'll stick to standard.


I think it's pretty safe.  The fast standard mode does pretty well on pretty much all of the clips that I improved standard to do well on over other modes (--r3mix for example).  I think this last issue you found was probably one of the very few slight remaining differences between standard and fast standard really, and the modification I made to help out here should improve quality in other situations as well.

Quote
This whole mess started cause I bought an iPod so I can now hear problems with my old encodings i once thought were fine. I'm a little annoyed that I used the Xing VBR settings for most of my older encodings. Thankfully I got wise. 

The LAME project and hydrogenaudio are my saviors from bad encodings! Thanx ya'll....


Glad to hear you've become interested in High Quality MP3, and are finding what you need

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #16 –
Is this problem fixed with LAME version 3.90 (alpha 9, 12/20/01 18:09:03)?

I just did another encoding of the same track using fast standard and the artifacts are still there. Will the fix show up in tomorrows version?

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #17 –
Nevermind hehehehehe.... i just did more listening tests and I jumped the gun. This does sound alot better and pretty much just like standard does. Thanx again.

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #18 –
Ok... im posting the track on my web site so u can d/l and listen to. I think it doesn't have as much as a problem as the first fast encoding but it's still not quite up to standard.

What do u think of this Karate Schnitzel new fast encoding? Is there a way to get it as good as standard?

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #19 –
Yeah, it's not absolutely perfect, but it is quite significantly better than before.  The difference between the non-fast standard mode and the fast standard mode is much smaller now.

There may be some ways to further improve the quality but I'm not sure (I have some ideas, but I can't promise anything).. the problem is that if I tune too much to make things perfect here, it will throw off bitrates in other areas.

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #20 –
Hrmm.. I just downloaded the file from your site, and it sounds quite a bit worse than the version I have, encoded via my compile directly.  That's strange...

Let me put my version online and see what you think..

Did you grab the sources from CVS and compile them yourself, or did you get a binary from someone else's site?  If you got a binary from somewhere else, its likely that it didn't include the improvements yet.  The file you posted sure doesn't sound like it at least.

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #22 –
I d/l the source from ftp://cedric.vabo.cz/pub/linux/apps/lame/...0011220.tar.bz2 and compile on os X almost every morning. Your track does sound better then mine so i'll wait till tomorrows update on the ftp to test again.

Here's a LAME newbie question for ya. What exactly does this mean?

average: 177.9 kbps  LR: 102 (1.333%)  MS: 7551 (98.67%)

The average is obvious but what does the LR and MS stand for?

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #23 –
Quote
Originally posted by kye
I d/l the source from ftp://cedric.vabo.cz/pub/linux/apps/lame/...0011220.tar.bz2 and compile on os X almost every morning. Your track does sound better then mine so i'll wait till tomorrows update on the ftp to test again.


I see, hopefully things will come out OK tomorrow then, they should.  I take it you feel the version I posted is a big improvement (very close to standard now) then by your comment?

Quote
average: 177.9 kbps   LR: 102 (1.333%)   MS: 7551 (98.67%)

The average is obvious but what does the LR and MS stand for?


Well first off, LAME makes use of something called joint stereo which you probably know about.  When using joint stereo (or mid-side stereo in this case, there are many variants of joint stereo), you can decide on a frame by frame basis whether to use true L and R channel stereo, or to use a mid and a side channel instead to reduce redundancy between channels and exploit certain psychoacoustic effects which allow a bitrate reduction but without an audible loss in quality (if everything is tuned right).  The LR percentage is how many % of the frames the encoder felt needed to be encoded with an L and R discrete stereo channel, and the MS is the percentage it was able to use a Mid and Side channel on for stereo.

Sound problem with --alt-preset fast standard

Reply #24 –
Yes your file did sound almost identical to the standard setting. Thanx for fixing that problem so quickly.

Thanx again for giving me the low down on the LR and MS... now i feel im beyond being a newbie with LAME... just barley hehehehe...

Your rock Dibrom!!