AAC at 128kbps test - FINISHED Options

[guruboolez]

There was another case in which I'd considered all codecs unlistenable (2.0 highest score), but I saw other people giving high grades. All a matter of preference.

Lifeshatters I suppose. I have at contrairy some difficulties to ABX similar samples : they are deafening and boring me at the same time. I can understand, now, some reaction with harpsichord music

[Gecko]

Man, Gecko tossed all the codecs into the rubbish bin! I wish I had spread my scores out, to better differentiate the scores and make my results a bit more statistically significant.

I didn't know I was such a "rigorous" judge. I find it difficult to give consistent ratings. It's all very subjective and possibly different from sample to sample. If I'm grudgy, I might give lower scores etc. (Allthough I don't remember being in any extreme mood when I did these tests). I try hard to use the verbal scale for rating. Notice that 3.0 is still only slightly annoying. I quickly skimmed my results and found that I did rate LifeShatters_2.wav a solid 4.5. That's better than "perceptible but not annoying"! Maybe more emphasis should be put on the verbal scale rather than the pure numbers. On a scale from 1 to 5 a three is only mediocre, while the verbal description is better than that imo. Maybe that confuses people.

I didn't give the encoders a "128k bonus". What I want from a codec/format is transparency. I guess (at 128k) that is also part of the design goal and for some listeners it has been met on some samples, so I'm asking much, but not too much, imo. Also, I don't have any other reference than the original, so what else should I rate against? I would have given higher scores if the question would have been: considering the bitrate, how do you think these encoders perform? I do admit that "annoying" is also a very subjective rating and personally, I'm annoyed pretty easily by artifacts. Basically, if it doesn't sound like the original, then it's not acceptable for me (allthough some things like a slight lowpass can be OK).

Two more things to consider: My equipment is mediocre at best. (I recently upgraded to an Aureon Sky though. ). I'm pretty familiar with the test samples from previous testing.