Why is MPC perceived to be the best?, (an off-topic audio encoding discussion) Options

[ScorLibran]

This is a question that has floated through my mind for most of a year, but only yesterday became more clear to me.

Actually, it's a two-part question...

... 1. Is MPC commonly accepted among the HA community as the best psychoacoustic encoding format? (i.e., the most efficient at achieving perceptual transparency.)

... 2. If so, why?

The first item I've heard stated quite frequently, but have never seen any results of "transparency threshold tests" that would reveal the superior efficiency of MPC. I've heard that MPC uses superior encoding technology, but I'm referring more to the end result of such development efforts...the perceived sound quality, as measured against other codecs at the point of perceptual transparency for a significant number of people.

These concerns on my part were born from a post I made here, where the points of MPC statistically tying other formats at 128kbps, but no other known test results existing, were brought up. The thread portion ended up in the recycle bin, but I'm taking the chance that my concerns about calling MPC "the best" weren't the reason it was put there.

Hence, I want to bring up this idea in a different context in the off-topic forum (in the hope that this will be the correct area for it).

What I'd like to see, for instance, for the education of myself and others, would be a results summary like the following (though this is a very simplistic example)...

Format............Perceptual Transparency Threshold (nominal bitrate across samples tested)
MPC.................nnn kbps
AAC.................nnn kbps
Vorbis..............nnn kbps

...and so forth

Granted, VBR is more efficient at mid-bitrates and up, and quality-based VBR modes aren't bitrate centric, but we need some means of measurement and comparison between codecs in this context, so if not calling it "nominal bitrate", then perhaps "average filesize per minute of audio across all samples"

Perceptual Transparency Threshold could have a fixed target, like >90% samples with 5.0 subjective ratings, and non-differentiable from reference with ABX testing.

This kind of test has been discussed before, and has been mostly viewed as having little "real-world value". And I agree. Roberto's tests are much more relevant for most music listeners, and for determining the best formats for useful purposes like streaming audio, portable players, etc.

Many of us (including me) have trouble testing even these bitrate ranges, so higher ones would be even more tedious, and would answer not as many pressing questions.

My point, though, is how can MPC be called "the best for achieving transparency" without a test such as this? (Because so far it's been shown to be only "among the best" at lower rates.)

[Eli]

However if one codec handles problem samples alot better then it, IMHO is a better codec.

Once again, I don't think the point of this test is to find the "best" codec. The test is for the determination of the bitrate/transparency threshold for today's most popular codecs. ScorLibran's title of the thread doesn't really support the reason for the test anymore(IMO).

Well, Im not sure what the point of the test is then. The original question was what is the best codec (or why is MPC considered the best)? Somehow that got twisted into a listening test to see at what bitrate codecs become transparent. Most ppl code with a little extra head room anyway so is this even an important question? The big contenders here are MPC and AAC (and vobis I guess). We all know that they can achieve transparency at a realatively reasonable bitrate, so is it meaningful to say that one does it at ~180, one at 150 and one at 200 (random #s)? IMHO a test would do better to assume that the modern codecs do transparency realavily well at a reasonable bit rate, but which one performs the best on problem samples, so that you know your music library has the best fidelity you can get with lossy encoding.