Multiformat Listening Test @ 64 kbps - FINISHED Options

[Sebastian Mares]

The much awaited results of the Public, Multiformat Listening Test @ 64 kbps are ready - partially. So far, I only uploaded an overall plot along with a zoomed version. The details will be available tomorrow. You can also download the encryption key on the results page that is located here:

http://www.listening-tests.info/mf-64-1/results.htm
http://www.listening-tests.info/mf-64-1/resultsz.png

Nero and WMA Professional 10 are tied and WMA Professional 10 is tied to Vorbis. Vorbis however performed worse than Nero. Of course, High Anchor is best and Low Anchor loses.

This one goes to the experts: How would you rank codecs in such a situation, where A=B and B=C, but C<A?

[hellokeith]

Do we? Do you have a link - I'd like to have that corrected. Speaking for Microsoft, I recommend that content that needs CBR be encoded as 2-pass CBR, and otherwise 2-pass VBR be used. We've done a lot of work around 2-pass audio encoding.

Hi Ben,

Nice to see you here at HA. I think you'll find this place somewhat subdued compared to AVSF..

Interesting you speak of 2-pass VBR WMA. I have been using -a_codec WMA9STD -a_mode 3 -a_setting 128_44_2 for more than a year with excellent results on my portable. I think perhaps it is underrated/underused in the lossless community, though it wasn't trivial to get the VBS command line options all sorted out. The reason I ended up with ~128kb 2-pass VBR WMA was that during my testing, I found it maintained the best stereo imaging during intricate percussion/cymbal passages.

[benwaggoner]

Nice to see you here at HA. I think you'll find this place somewhat subdued compared to AVSF..

Thank goodness !

Interesting you speak of 2-pass VBR WMA. I have been using -a_codec WMA9STD -a_mode 3 -a_setting 128_44_2 for more than a year with excellent results on my portable. I think perhaps it is underrated/underused in the lossless community, though it wasn't trivial to get the VBS command line options all sorted out. The reason I ended up with ~128kb 2-pass VBR WMA was that during my testing, I found it maintained the best stereo imaging during intricate percussion/cymbal passages.

Cool, glad it's working out for you.

I'd probably recommend using -a_mode 4 and set a peak bitrate instad of leaving it entirely unconstrained, since devices may have a maximum supported rate. For Zune, it's 320 for audio-only files, and 192 for soundtracks in WMV files, IIRC.

Stuff like stereo seperation is a great thing to use VBR for, since it gets you the bits were you need them. I think people spend so much time sweating the hard clips they can miss that most of most full tracks aren't that hard.