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Topic: New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011) (Read 80564 times) previous topic - next topic
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New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #100 –
Interesting an AAC test would win over a multiformat test. Intriguingly, I guess that's where the public eye has come to rest in terms of encoding interest (if not decoding -- the ubiquity of MP3 is still with us). In any case, I was hoping GXLame-t5.2 would finally get in the running.
Copy Restriction, Annulment, & Protection = C.R.A.P. -Supacon

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #101 –
Quote from: Steve Forte Rio on
Quote
Yes, unfortunately there is a bug that makes the new encoder sometimes not write the gapless data. I just fixed it. I'll post an updated DLL here shortly for everyone, and we should get the release out in about a week.


Thanks


Here you go - http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=89487
Thanks for spotting the bug.

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #103 –
Until now the candidate list is as following
Bitrate is 100 kbps.

1. Nero -q 0.345
2.  QT-TVBR --tvbr 46 --highest --samplerate keep
3. QT-CVBR --cvbr 96 --highest --samplerate keep
4. FhG VBR 3 (Winamp 5.62)
5. Coding Technologies (Winamp 5.61). Bitrate is shifted to 100 kbps (Mediacoder).
+ low anchor ffmpeg's AAC 128 kbps.

Suggestions, please.

The selection of samples will start from 7 July.

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #104 –
I'm no particular interested on AAC codecs, but i see no problem with your selection.

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #105 –
I tested the bitrates of my usual test file sets (25 various and 25 classical tracks) using the above mentioned settings:

Code: [Select]
      Various    Classical    All
QT CVBR    99.9    99.0    99.5
QT TVBR    94.4    94.4    94.4
NERO      102.3    92.8    97.6
WA/FhG    104.2    90.8    97.5

Regarding the Winamp/CT encoder I'd prefer to have the normal 96 kbps Winamp setting instead of the Mediacoder tweak which is not available in Winamp. It would be a quite fair comparison of the old and new Winamp encoder.

I'll upload an Excel table of the file specific bitrates and add the link here.

EDIT

The bitrate table: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=762129

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #106 –
Current table of bitrates per member



Quote from: Alex B on
Regarding the Winamp/CT encoder I'd prefer to have the normal 96 kbps Winamp setting instead of the Mediacoder tweak which is not available in Winamp. It would be a quite fair comparison of the old and new Winamp encoder.

All right.
The average bitrate of all codecs is 98.5 kbps. So it can be 98 kbps for Winamp CT. Or leave it as is (native winamp's 96 kbps).
Though let's see what other members will say. (it's a last day to suggest settings).

Quote from: kwanbis on
I'm no particular interested on AAC codecs, but i see no problem with your selection.

Thank  You. Even such simple answer is useful. (instead of silence)

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #107 –
While there are still a few hours to make suggestion for choice of codecs/settings all members can submit their samples for this test.
Here http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=89518
Time slot: ~1 week

/mnt and Steve Forte Rio will conduct the process of sample selection (as we have talked via PM).

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #108 –
I have done a bitrate test with 40 tracks from my collection.



After adding some non electronic and hard rock tracks on the test, the bitrates from both Fhg and Nero are still high.

Edit: redone bitrate test.
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #109 –
Quote from: /mnt on
I have done a bitrate test with 20 tracks from mixed genres.

Nero at 0.345 and V3 Fhg seems to produce higher bitrates with my selection.


I don't know how much I'd consider that song list to be "mixed genres".  I've noticed the same for electronic and hard-rock music, also.  In some sense, we can assume this is the encoder being smart (after all, VBR is meant to be constant-quality, regardless of input type).  But I know what you are saying: this sort of bitrate variation can make it difficult to fairly compare VBR codecs.

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #110 –
Quote from: /mnt on
Nero at 0.345 and V3 Fhg seems to produce higher bitrates with my selection.

Assuming that FgH is 'high' correlated with FLAC (0.8) and also Nero somewhat less (0.6) while QT totally unrelated (0.03, 0.01) from my tests, both encoders can be 'controlled' by source FLAC bitrate performance.
Or, I guess all you tracks have relatively high FLAC bitrates
Just a thought

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #111 –
Quote from: romor on
Quote from: /mnt on
Nero at 0.345 and V3 Fhg seems to produce higher bitrates with my selection.

Assuming that FgH is 'high' correlated with FLAC (0.8) and also Nero somewhat less (0.6) while QT totally unrelated (0.03, 0.01) from my tests, both encoders can be 'controlled' by source FLAC bitrate performance.
Or, I guess all you tracks have relatively high FLAC bitrates
Just a thought


Sounds like you might be right:



My foobar2000 setup displays lossless bitrates in compression ratio. The highest bitrate FLAC i had on the playlist was 'It's All About the Pentiums' and that also scores high bitrates with Nero and FhG.
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #112 –
Final bitrate table:


Final version of the list with codecs and settings:
1. Nero -q 0.345
2. QT-TVBR --tvbr 46 --highest --samplerate keep
3. QT-CVBR --cvbr 96 --highest --samplerate keep
4. FhG VBR 3 (Winamp 5.62)
5. Coding Technologies (Winamp 5.61). Bitrate is shifted to 100 kbps (Mediacoder) because all other encoders (except TVBR) produce 100 kbps.
+ low anchor ffmpeg's AAC 128 kbps.


Thank You to all who have contribute to verification of bitrates.



New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #113 –
Quote from: /mnt on
My foobar2000 setup displays lossless bitrates in compression ratio. The highest bitrate FLAC i had on the playlist was 'It's All About the Pentiums' and that also scores high bitrates with Nero and FhG.

By "compression ratio," is this in relation to 1411kbps established by the Redbook format, or some other metric? Feel free to respond via PM if you'd rather keep this side discussion off the thread.

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #114 –
Regarding CT AAC encoder and 100 kbps setting: it's interesting that aacPlusCLI (enc_aacPlus.exe, commandline wrapper for enc_aacplus.dll) can produce CBR files with arbitrary bitrate... Unfortunately, it has several bugs in its code and it doesn't make 100% correct files.

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #115 –
I have asked Benski some time ago if it's ok to use MediaCoder to produce odd bitrates. He said it was ok. 
We will check the streams later.

Quote from: lvqcl on
Unfortunately, it has several bugs in its code and it doesn't make 100% correct files.

more specifically?

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #116 –
Quote from: IgorC on
I have asked Benski some time ago if it's ok to use MediaCoder to produce odd bitrates. He said it was ok.


You could also do it in winamp if you manually edit the encoder settings INI file (i think it's %appdata%\winamp\plugins\ml_transcode.ini), although the configuration UI *might* revert to a different bitrate when it gets displayed.  You could uncheck "show me this every time" in the pre-transcode configuration UI to avoid that, though.

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #117 –
Quote from: IgorC on
more specifically?

foobar2000 verifier complaints:
"Warning: Reported length is inaccurate : 4:30.520000 vs 4:30.460340 decoded"

This is relatively easy to fix, but benski's advice looks better IMHO.

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #118 –
Quote from: lvqcl on
Quote from: IgorC on
more specifically?

foobar2000 verifier complaints:
"Warning: Reported length is inaccurate : 4:30.520000 vs 4:30.460340 decoded"

This is relatively easy to fix, but benski's advice looks better IMHO.


If I remember right, Winamp 5.61 (with CT AAC) can't encode gaplessly too.
🇺🇦 Glory to Ukraine!

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #119 –
Quote from: Steve Forte Rio on
If I remember right, Winamp 5.61 (with CT AAC) can't encode gaplessly too.

No problems here. (Winamp 5.62 + enc_aacplus.dll from 5.61, but I don't think that it matters)

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #120 –
Quote from: Steve Forte Rio on
If I remember right, Winamp 5.61 (with CT AAC) can't encode gaplessly too.


I could get gapless with CT AAC files under Winamp, but not on foobar2000 and iTunes. Sadly i cannot get gapless playback working with QuickTime and Nero AAC encoded files under Winamp. Gapless support for AAC is pretty messy outside foobar2000 and iTunes and completely non-existent on Linux.
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #121 –
I would like to participate in this listening test with completely new AAC encoder that will be included in Easy CD-DA Extractor 15.3.

As you may be aware of; Current Easy CD-DA Extractor version uses the same Coding Technologies (v8.2.0) encoder as Winamp 5.61. This is now going to be replaced with further improved encoder in v15.3.

I am going to release the new version with the new AAC encoder before 31st July. I will be able to announce the encoder details after the weekend.

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #122 –
No

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #123 –
Ok, so there is no interest to test the Dolby Pulse encoder against Nero and Fraunhofer, or is there ?

New Public Listening Test (July-August 2011)

Reply #124 –
Quote from: jukkap on
Ok, so there is no interest to test the Dolby Pulse encoder against Nero and Fraunhofer, or is there ?


There might be interest, but the test was announced long ago, and the deadline for encoders already closed 2 weeks ago. I don't think the person pouring his time in organizing this test will want to delay or redo everything because one encoder might get a new release. Then you can keep postponing the tests forever, because by the time that's out, something else might have an update pending, too.