My LAME tests Options

[tr1n1tr0n]

Hi forum people,

After following the various posts arguing for and against the transparency of LAME and it's various bitrates and encoding methods, I decided to put my ears to the test and try a blind test with a variety of modes.

The piece of music used was track 5 from "Faith - A Message From The Spirits" on the Soul Jazz label, which is an album of religious music from around the world. More specifically, the piece in question is a solo percussion piece on Djouba, which sound more or less like bongos (to me anyway!) so as you can imagine, the music is fast with great transient attack.

Music ripped with EAC Secure/C2, encoded with LAME 3.94 a11 17Feb build, decoded using the MAD 0.14.2b plugin, listened to through an Echo Gina 20 digitally connected to a Marantz PM-75 amp, monitored on Sennheiser HD580 headphones. ABC/HR was used to audition the samples.

Results:

All cbr files are stereo, q2. All preset files use their respective settings in LAME.
"CBR 192 EAC Filt" is 192Kbit Stereo Q2, with a lowpass filter (19383-19916Hz) that EAC includes, even if no command line option is set.

ABC/HR Version 0.9b, 30 August 2002
Testname:

1R = D:\cdrips\test\preset 128.wav
2L = D:\cdrips\test\cbr 256 no filt.wav
3L = D:\cdrips\test\preset standard.wav
4L = D:\cdrips\test\preset cbr 192.wav
5L = D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
6L = D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 no filt.wav

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General Comments:

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1R File: D:\cdrips\test\preset 128.wav
1R Rating: 2.0
1R Comment:
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2L File: D:\cdrips\test\cbr 256 no filt.wav
2L Rating: 4.7
2L Comment:
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3L File: D:\cdrips\test\preset standard.wav
3L Rating: 4.4
3L Comment:
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4L File: D:\cdrips\test\preset cbr 192.wav
4L Rating: 3.9
4L Comment:
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5L File: D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
5L Rating: 4.3
5L Comment:
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6L File: D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 no filt.wav
6L Rating: 4.6
6L Comment:
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So, summing up, this test indicates to me that MP3, even if encoded by the latest LAME engine, is definitely not transparent up to and including 256Kbit. Not once was an MP3 mistakenly rated above the reference CD-Audio sample. The source material is very simple (solo bongo) which one would assume would be an easy task for an encoder. The standard preset fares quite well, but at the cost of file size (an 8% premium over 192Kbit CBR). Filtering does not benefit the sound, as shown by the difference in rating between the 5th and 6th samples, which are otherwise the same. To further investigate the comparison between filtered and non-filtered mp3, I made up a second ABC/HR test, this time comparing samples 5 and 6, the non-filtered sample as the reference, and the filtered sample as the comparator, 8 times over.

ABC/HR Version 0.9b, 30 August 2002
Testname:

1L = D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
2L = D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
3L = D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
4R = D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
5R = D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
6L = D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
7R = D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
8L = D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav

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General Comments:

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1L File: D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
1L Rating: 4.0
1L Comment:
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2L File: D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
2L Rating: 4.0
2L Comment:
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3L File: D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
3L Rating: 4.0
3L Comment:
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4R File: D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
4R Rating: 4.0
4R Comment:
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5L File: D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 no filt.wav
5L Rating: 4.0
5L Comment:
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6L File: D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
6L Rating: 4.0
6L Comment:
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7R File: D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
7R Rating: 4.0
7R Comment:
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8L File: D:\cdrips\test\cbr 192 eac filt.wav
8L Rating: 4.0
8L Comment:
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Only once did the filtered sample fare better than the untouched, unfiltered sound. So there you have it.

[KikeG]

For the sake of rigorousness (statistical validity), I advise to try to ABX at least the highest quality encodes.