Is MPC better than mp3? Options

[kwanbis]

*BUT* transparency is a hard anchor, since it's always 5.0 in any test. This may be enough to anchor the high bitrate tests together.

that is exactly what i reasoned.

Statistics proven wrong? Eh?

If you say something is true with 95% confidence, you know you will be wrong 5% of the time.

How can you prove that wrong? As I already asked, are you going to rewrite mathematics?

i have heard many reports that "statistically prove" that X event would happend, then to reallity show otherwise. I'm sure that statistcs is the less "exact" of all exact scienses. I'm not going to rewrite, but i won't be surprised that somebody in the future does. What i tried to say, is that statistics are a diferent kind of "exact sciences", where 1+1 is 2, with 100% confidence. As one already questioned, even the number of samples/results couldn't be statistically valid.

1st kwanbis takes the results of statistics, ie. the 2 graphs, mixes them up,
and now he questions the principles of maths & HA?

just a hint: statistics is not about predicting something with 100%,
but about measuring something with some safety of measuring correct and not guessing.
ie. probability of a percentage lower than 100%.
Statistics hasn't been proven wrong.

i'm not questioning anything, i'm just telling facts. Yeah, right, you can allways say with 99% of confidence, and you could allways have the 1% to cover your back. Thats why the world is so unpredictable. And statistics is a totally diferent type of maths, and i havent questioned HA principles.

Maybe certain test setups and used statistics and the interpretations were flawed.
(Like it looks here with high probability to put those 2 graphs side by side to demonstrate whatever. The 2 single graphs are not questioned (by me or HA or anybody with sense), but the putting side-by-side.)

already boring. As somebody already said, "*BUT* transparency is a hard anchor, since it's always 5.0 in any test. This may be enough to anchor the high bitrate tests together."

This post has been edited by kwanbis: Apr 12 2006, 14:16

[user]

I do question, that transparency = 5.0 is sufficient as anchor to make cross-test-comparisons like tried here.
The perceived differences are too subtle. 4.5 , 4.7, +- the usual statistical margins.

High bitrate = 128k tests ?

This post has been edited by user: Apr 12 2006, 15:35

[hybridfan]

hmm funny how this thread is continuing, sorry for all the people that had to bash me, but I only have discovered it sorry for being new to the mpc format )o:

[jazzymelody]

What is really bad about MPC is that before 2 years the answer was: yes, it is cleary best and possibly the best.
Now it's supremacy even in quality is arguable. That's the problem, it didnt evolve.

I loved this encoder, but now I dont see a reason using it.
I think that for this fast moving world its already dead

This post has been edited by jazzymelody: Apr 12 2006, 15:39

[nawhead]

What is really bad about MPC is that before 2 years the answer was: yes, it is cleary best and possibly the best.
Now it's supremacy even in quality is arguable. That's the problem, it didnt evolve.

I loved this encoder, but now I dont see a reason using it.
I think that for this fast moving world its already dead

I hate to beat a dead horse... but... I hate even more to see logical inconsistencies.

MPC achieved near-lossless quality at standard settings when all other encoders were still trying to improve their psychoacoustic models. MP3 has been hacked to death by the LAME developers because of fundamental structural deficiencies in the format, so it needed years to evolve to its current state. MPC didn't need to improve since it already was the lossy benchmark, in both speed and quality.

But still, even in 2007, encoding an album to MPC Standard takes less time than to LAME -V2 --vbr-new. It still is the best lossy archival encoder imo. Also, I positively ABX'ed tracks back 5 years ago between MPC Extreme and LAME MP3 320kbps CBR. So unless LAME has been tuning 320 CBR all these years as well, the MP3 format itself is still not good enough.

And from what I saw on the 128kbps listening tests, MPC still won over LAME. LAME has been trying for years to try to beat the other codecs at low bitrates while MPC development pretty much stood still and no tuning was going on, so where is the supremacy?

Also, we have the tests for the best portable encoder, but where are the tests for best lossy archival encoder? We'd have a fun time if we threw in a few lossless codecs in there too and really make some people angry.

People saying "nobody says anything about this thing anymore so this thing must not be good" have it backwards. When nobody complains, it means it just works. If you own a car and you're always having to talk about this or that it usually means your car sucks. I don't want to have to reevalute my encoder settings every few years. Constantly bickering to faceless nobodies on the Internet about, "do you hear that artifact?" "How can we improve it?" "What switches should I change?" That's why I switched to MPC years back and stopped caring about all this MP3 tuning business.

I'm glad MP3 has gained speed and more transparency at lower bitrates. I'll definitely use the "-V5 --vbr-new --athaa-sensitivity 1" for transcoding for portable use. But I'll be damned if I'm turning my entire library over into LAME V2 or even V0 just so I can do the whole dance again when the next version comes out after someone puts in more hacks.

[pdq]

Also, I positively ABX'ed tracks back 5 years ago between MPC Extreme and LAME MP3 320kbps CBR. So unless LAME has been tuning 320 CBR all these years as well, the MP3 format itself is still not good enough.

This makes no sense. You could hear a difference between two lossy encodings, and this proves that one is good and the other bad? Don't you need to ABX each of them against the original?

Also, if I remember correctly, five years ago -b 320 was not equivalent to --preset insane. Which did you use, and which version of LAME? Maybe your 320kbps cbr files were not as good as is currently possible. I'm not saying that MPC isn't superior to MP3 (it probably is), but I just think that you are selling MP3 a little short.

[shadowking]

What is really bad about MPC is that before 2 years the answer was: yes, it is cleary best and possibly the best.
Now it's supremacy even in quality is arguable. That's the problem, it didnt evolve.

I loved this encoder, but now I dont see a reason using it.
I think that for this fast moving world its already dead

But still, even in 2007, encoding an album to MPC Standard takes less time than to LAME -V2 --vbr-new. It still is the best lossy archival encoder imo. Also, I positively ABX'ed tracks back 5 years ago between MPC Extreme and LAME MP3 320kbps CBR. So unless LAME has been tuning 320 CBR all these years as well, the MP3 format itself is still not good enough.

And from what I saw on the 128kbps listening tests, MPC still won over LAME. LAME has been trying for years to try to beat the other codecs at low bitrates while MPC development pretty much stood still and no tuning was going on, so where is the supremacy?

Also, we have the tests for the best portable encoder, but where are the tests for best lossy archival encoder? We'd have a fun time if we threw in a few lossless codecs in there too and really make some people angry.


I'm glad MP3 has gained speed and more transparency at lower bitrates. I'll definitely use the "-V5 --vbr-new --athaa-sensitivity 1" for transcoding for portable use. But I'll be damned if I'm turning my entire library over into LAME V2 or even V0 just so I can do the whole dance again when the next version comes out after someone puts in more hacks.

People don't care / take 'lossy archival' seriously. Those who do went to lossless compression and others realised that total transparency in all conditions is not practicaly achievable [with normal bitrate] so they stuck with mp3 and enjoy life. They can get good quality even at V5. There are also abxable mpc samples where mp3 does better FYI. MP3 hacks? the latest versions use a highly tuned vbr quality system from 9~0. You know MPC is also hacks: seeking, Xlevel etc. Don't pick on MP3 because its easy and popular on some ripping scenes. Anyway Vorbis and AAC don't have mp3 limits and achieve better all round performance than mpc.

Regarding MPC transcoding to V5: Its a mistake and a waste of time IMO. You can use -V3 and even -V4 and get very good quality on a majority of music for both Hi-Fi and portables and never transcode again. Ask yourself - what is this all for ?

This post has been edited by shadowking: Sep 11 2007, 04:24

[shadowking]

people saying "nobody says anything about this thing anymore so this thing must not be good" have it backwards. When nobody complains, it means it just works. If you own a car and you're always having to talk about this or that it usually means your car sucks. I don't want to have to reevalute my encoder settings every few years. Constantly bickering to faceless nobodies on the Internet about, "do you hear that artifact?" "How can we improve it?" "What switches should I change?" That's why I switched to MPC years back and stopped caring about all this MP3 tuning business.

'nobody says anything' = Wrong . There have been complaints about various issues that have been largely dismissed by the 'other' forum, even calling us trolls, calling extensive abx tests as 'objectionable methods', saying our tests are nothing because of easy to encode samples, estimating a 'true transparency threshold for modern codecs' as 220~245 k - something that i've never heard of from any developer. When you think about it , it makes sense: You don't have to do nothing on quality front, let others catch up and avoid the heat by encouraging 250 k encodings from your userbase. All other developers take issues at 180k seriously even Klemm and Bushel when they were still active. All others codecs have seen quality development since 2003: mp3, aac, vorbis and wavpack lossy.

As for bickering, Its a part of any project in active developement - you just get that like it or not.

[xmixahlx]

HA is development driven and musepack's psymodel improvements have been dormant for YEARS.

the format WILL stay around forever thanks to geeks (open licenses and decoding support).

SV8 will address many of the shortcomings of SV7 - it's all about how the format is further developed that will address it's place on the codec totem pole.

it's still (and always will be) a great codec and it's perfect for what i need/want/use/etc. so i keep using it. (hello rockbox!)


later

[tomelephant]

I just noticed in the polls that more people use mpc than mp3!

Bearing in mind that I know nothing about mpc, could anyone explain the benefits over mp3?

I use alt-preset extreme... does anyone recommend I upgrade to mpc?

1) I don't recommend it too much work, very tiny benefit
2) yes, at the given bitrate mpc reach better quality than mp3
3) if you need better quality than mp3, stick with ogg instead, I can't tell if it's better than mpc, but at least much more supported and there is develompent still going into it

Yes , I agree with your point .

The support of MPC is a big problem..

[xmixahlx]

lol... you signed up to say that?