vqf better than mp3 or vorbis and mpc ? What speakers are you using :eek: ???

I mostly stick to LAME --alt-preset standard -Y encoded MP3's for most of my digital audio files because of the size, quality, and hardware playback support (on my iRiver SlimX). Every once in a while, I do encode a few tracks into MPC, but until I see hardware support for that format, I can't be bothered to give up MP3 in favor of MPC.

And here we go to CD+ quality

i forgot the smiley

Dezibel

i agree that --xtreme sounds transparent from point of frequency spectrum on most songs. i did some ABX tests a few weeks ago where mpc decoded back to wave sounds almost identical to the source wave at bitrates higher than --standard. but for me on hq headphones [akg k141 or 240df] the sound of an mpc compared with the wave file sounds a little bit "thin". i need more compression or pressure to became the same "feeling". and i'm sure that it is not an psychical problem. --insane or --braindead [--quality 7 or 8] sounds good for me from point of "pressure".

...you can compare with image compression. while jpeg compression is designed to save subjective image quality. the jpeg filters on photoshop looks like the colors where displaced a little bit. and the sharpness is lost. the jpeg filters on my linux system [using gimp or the convert command on commandline] looks like the colors are fine, sharpness are fine, but there are little artifacts at fonts and little details. you can life with 90 percent jpeg quality or save the last 2 bits using an lossless compression like png. if ypu want an preview pic on your website for fast download than you have to go with small files. but if you want to archive anything you have to decide how many bits you can spend to save hard work for generations

Dezibel

Aim bit-rate: ~150 - ~170

Type of music: very complex : allot of black-metal (Dimmu Borgir), metal (Grave Digger, Judas Priest, Slayer, Metallica)

Sound quality: best for the bit-rate. i don't need precise average bit-rate. i used mp3 LAME --alt-preset standard -Y, but it ended ~175kbs (a bit too high, but it's not THAT important), and more important, a bit 'thin'. it didn't sound the same.

Sharing / portability: none. The only person that will hear what I've encoded is myself, on my PC, with my excellent headphones. so it's ok to use mpc, even dough it's not popular/can't use it on a portable player.

So, will mpc --standard will give me better quality for the specified music (it's ok if it ends with SLIGHTLY higher bit-rate...)? Will OGG -q4.99? Any other format?

Yes.

[b]

I'm not sure. I haven't done any testing with the later builds of rc4 or 1.0. There should be a q val that will give you similar quality, but I'm not sure sure what it'd be right now.

Umm... am I understanding this right? You did abx tests finding that the encoded output was perceptually identical to you, yet you are still implying there is some difference that you can hear, but that you can't abx (so you basically can't hear it)?

Heh.

It's always the same. "Thin", "feeling", "lack of bass", etc. Yet no positive abx results to back any of it up. I guess some people will just never give up their delusions even after proving to themselves in a blind test that they can't hear the difference.

10x dibrom. I thought I heard somewhere that mpc isn't optimized for metal... anyway, so this is the best codec for < 170kbs black-metal / metal out there? (What about AAC? or anything else?)

what about the new OGG 1.0 and metal, anyone?

Dunno where you heard that. If you did actually hear it, I'm pretty certain that it was just some unverified rumours (as usual).



Well, mpc -standard is generally transparent on most files to most people (yes, even the "golden ears"), at a bitrate around 160kbps. Take that as you want, but that means that it's certainly good at metal, yes.



AAC is also a good choice if you use a good encoder. PsyTEL AAC is usually the encoder of choice since it is the highest quality "publically" available AAC encoder.



Vorbis should do well also.

Again, MPC has kind of a proven track record with the -standard setting like I said, but you shouldn't do bad with AAC or Vorbis either.

The quality of all of these codecs are usually so high that the decision on which format to use falls to the other aspects/features of the encoder that one will use.

What you mean that if WMA is CD quality at 64Kbps and I raise the bitrate I get no increase in quality? Such blasphemy?! Lord Bill shall hear of this. We will smite you all. Smite smite smite. Love that word. Blame the new Microsoft math ™. Just like the old math only buggier and prone to incorrect output. LOL

OGG for me with a little MPC/AAC on the side.

Well I do remember this post, where Dezibel actually made test samples and ABX results available. Was anything ever done to follow up on this report?

I use MP3, LAME --alt-preset standard --lowpass 18 is good enough for me. I guess --lowpass 17 or -Y could be too, I would have to test it seriously.

However, when doing "quality" listening, sometimes I still prefer uncompressed, it gives me a "mental" feeling of greater "quality", or that I feel "safer" about the quality.

But I guess it's just a psychological thing, since I can't say it is better on a objective blind test, and I really believe that for me they are undistinguishable on regular music.

The problem is that the abx test results were not very significant. 8/10 trials in only 1 test isn't really enough to be "sure" I don't think. Secondly, one of the trials where he got 7/10 on the first try, he later was only able to get 8/15.

The results just aren't really strongly enough in favor of an actual difference being heard reliably. One way to increase the significance would be to increase the number of trials, or to repeat the tests multiple tries. None of that has been done though..

Ack... pick your poison, right?

Well, I'm quite happy with LAME --alt-preset standard for my Rio Volt. (Thanks a lot to Dibrom!)

I don't listen to music on my computer so all good albums that I come by are just copied the old fashion CDR-way. Hardware support dictates everything for me, so I'm looking forward to ogg (or even better MPC support) on a PocketPC with 512MB flash ram!

Regards, stoff

I wasn't after particularly small files. What I was after was to basically prove to myself that mp3 @ cbr 192 was really a decent format, and that ogg would be the next likely candidate...

Trust me, my results surprised me as well...

For my next test, I will try mpc and aac, and start with a CD and then a tape captured at 44.1kHz... I have a friend who is an avid ogg user who suggested that ogg may not work as well with 48kHz files... But that as a complete guess...


My long term goal is to get a halfway decent capture card (again my sound card ain't so great), and eventually move stuff to mp3.com... So capturing sound is pretty high on my list... ...and mp3 will probably be my end distribution format... ...and I will wonder "What if..."

Thanks for the suggestions...

ufff,

forget my abx tests. forget anything i've said about mpc quality.


mpc sounds for me lifeless. andrees encoder, franks encoder, version 1.06, standard, xtreme and braindead minSMR3. everything sounds lifeless for me. i can't significantly abx what i miss. so my experiences are no reason to retune the encoder.

Dezibel

--
plain old audio cd for me please!

Lifeless? This is a completely psychological phenomenon, IMO.

And if it _sounds_ lifeless, it should be possible to ABX. In principle any difference whether "lifeless" or what ever should be ABXable.

Another blind test you can try is the "odd man out" -test or ABA. Try playing 2 originals and one encoded (decoded wav) in Winamp. Shuffle between tries and try to pick the encoded 5-6 times in a row. You can let the music flow and tracks repeat and just concentrade on music, and check when in your opinion the track sounds "lifeless".

omg who voted fotr wma and vqf???

there should be a sticky about:

64kb/s in no way is CD quality!!! cuz this codecs suck even more at high bitrates...

Glad to say crapiest mp3PRO still has no votes...

...just for fun:

encode your favorite albums lossless [flac...] and also mpc [with your favorite switch --standard, --xtreme...]. hear 2 or 3 days nothing but these lossless albums from your harddisc using your favorite headphone and your stereo.

on 3th day after many many ours hearing these albums [lossless] start one of these albums in lossy quality. then you will know what a psychological phenomenon is and what not.

...you can acclimate everything.

Dezibel

Dezibel... I think you make a good point regarding the main weakness of a program like PC-ABX: It only takes a short time factor into account. I've always felt this was a weakness (of the usual ABX methods) too, but there's always somebody that produces various arguments knocking the theory. Which reveals yet another maxim: Anything can be successfully argued too! A simple debate class will teach that...

I'm still sticking to what i said.

Did you ever hear of something called the "placebo effect"? When you start to play the lossless files in that test of yours, maybe you're unconsciously expecting a different sound from them.

This can have a bigger influence than you may think. In 1998, there was a test performed on more than 2000 people, with the antidepressant "Prozac" and a placebo. You can read about it here: http://journals.apa.org/prevention/volume1/pre0010002a.html

The outcome was that half of the drug's effectiveness is on account of the placebo, and only one quarter of the drug response is due to the active medication.

Maybe now you understand why we rely on ABX results, not on feelings.

Is placebo effect just an effect i can get rid off or is it permanent more like a disease???

I started to try vorbis 1.0 against psytel AAC and switching from one to another in ABX tests along with my mediocre ears i got to a point i dont know wich one gets closer to the original wav. man i cant even trust my brain or ears, imagine how anoying it is...

No, it's not a disease... it's an effect, as the name implies. I'll try to explain it differently: A little kid crashes with his bike and now his knee hurts. When he comes home, his mom gives him a teaspoon with medicine and promises that it will ease the pain. The little boy immediately feels better. But all his mother gave him was water with a little sugar in it. No active ingredient. It was only in his mind.

This does really happen, to adults as well. Due to the huge effect this "wishful thinking" can have on humans, it is widely used in medical treatment.

yes... i've heard about such things.

why does some people listen vinyl? why does some people listen tapes? ...they "feel" better with it!!!!

for some people an classical album becomes the right feeling while listen to an vinyl only. with all the pops and clicks. they spends a lot of money for an deck that costs more than your car. and in summary this deck sounds not as god as my €500 denon cd player [for my ears].

an lossy codec that sounds like an "true" cd where an nice thing. but the true is [for my ears] that mp3 sounds realistic but has many artifacts in high frequencys. vorbis sounds weird, can't describe it. and it's horrible slow. mpc sounds very clean and don't heard any artifact. but it sounds synthetic, lifeless. listen to vanessa maes violin and you understand what i mean. aac i've not tested. mp3pro is a good joke. and wma is no solution for me since i boot windoose only for burning VCD's.

if you "feel" good with your codec use it! if i find anyday "my" codec i will encode my music collection with it.

@fewtch: i agree 100% with your terms. abx is an useful thing for testing at first stage. but the last stage should be "daily_use"!!! and no one decode the files back to wav and hear them on hq headphones on one volume level the whole time. an file have to sound good on headphones, speakers, laptop speakers, in car, on portable, in the hell and on moon at 10% volume or 300% volume or...

Dezibel

thats not a drawback, thats a plus imho, simply meaning u can overcome human short sound memory,

... on the other hand, few years ago i got some burned cds from someone and some were done via mp3->wav, and i didnt know that (l8r said they were 192kbps mp3's, but that doesnt mean much vs the encoder used), well after some time listening them on various audio devices i could point out which cd isnt original..., so i guess after all there is some for me unknown 'time-factor" thats is ignored by abx.

anyway, its a mistery, and it would be great if someone has the real answer.

(sorry for my english)

This is why you perform multiple tests over time and under different circumstances. Of course just 1 test may be a fluke or may not be representative, but as you perform more testing and the significance of the results increase, at some point the positive results are so likely to hold true over an even greater expanse of time that it's irresponsible to not recognize this.

Is anything ever an absolute 100%? Of course not. As humans, at some point we have to go with whatever is most likely though (in this case your continued test results showing that it is extremely likely that you can hear a difference), otherwise we'd never get anywhere or ever make any progress. You can either be irresponsible and go that route blindly, trusting everything as it seems on the surface, or you can attempt to increase your chances of making a good choice by being more critical, by performing tests and making comparisons, and in the end, by just increasing your information store and making an intelligent, informed, and objective decision.

It's up to you, but I surely know which one method I'll go with.

CiTay's example of a placebo effect is an excellent one, but... the whole picture is much more complex than suggested. The conscious knowledge that a boy's mother gives him positive attention and love, nurses him, and gives him something sweet and the subconscious processes that may occur as a result of this knowledge and these actions may have much more to do with "easing the pain" than the boy's belief that this "medicine will be effective." So many variables, so little time....:eek:

Phobos, the good news is the placebo effect isn't something you have: It's an effect that we can attribute some of your responses to based on information you know. So to some extent you are not stuck with it. It damn sure drys up in good blind listening tests. When you know what format you're using, those other variables start creeping into your subconscious even if you deny them consciously(by you, I mean you, me and billions of others) and may prejudice your results that you've tried to limit to listening quality alone:

Let's see....
1. I have x000 xyz format files that I don't really want to rip/encode again in another format
2. I've been damn happy with xyz thus far.
3. People whose opinions I respect use xyz and tout its benefits over other formats
4. xyz has hardware support now
5. xyz either is developing at speed of light(if thats what you like) or isn't changing every 3 days making me feel like I need to redo everything.
and a big one...
6. I've publicly stated my preference for xyz and my disdain for other formats based on non-blind listening comparisons.

While these variables(and others) may properly have their place in decision making, unchecked they WILL interfere with your opinions on audio quality.

What can we do?

1. Test and Train your ears - Learn to recognize the common problems in sound quality and learn and accept the limitations of your own ears and equipment

2. Listen blindly!

3. Recognise that sound quality may or may not be the sole reason for choosing one format

When I said to some extent we're not stuck with the placebo effect, to another extent...it returns. The idea that you have committed to a format for any number of reasons can subjectively add to your listening pleasure

EAC for ripping, oggdrop for encoding and winamp for playing :=)

Seems I am one of very few to use aac!

And I'm finally getting PC-ABX. Three times I tried to get it, but was stumped by the website. A pretty terrible design if you ask me, I don't enjoy reading 20 paragraphs just to find a windows download :-S

EAC & oggenc.exe combination is in high use. Winamp2 for playing .oggs.

Ogg Vorbis.

I honestly don't see the problem.
If your brain/ears likes it - it's transparant.
If not - it's not.

ABX results may get influenced from tireness/stress. Better take it easy. Also, training improves ABX abilities. It's good to start with easy tests, get used and comfortable with the method, and try harder things after.

As to ABX comparators, I suggest to try mine, at http://www.kikeg.arrakis.es/winabx, it has more features than PCABX, and more will be added in the future.

Well, how can I select "Lossless" when the original question was "Which lossy format are you using"?

But anyway, I use Monkey's Audio and sometimes also mp3 (Lame -aps).

I recently tried MPC and instantly became a convert. I used to rip everything Lame -APS, but mpc is twice as fast, gives me smaller file sizes, is gapless, and sounds great (better than Lame according to what I've read). I'm currently re-ripping all my albums to mpc, now I just gotta convince other people to use it.

deleted
It's weird just several seconds ago there were less choices could be a forum problem or it has just been changed, and mad i am not .. MPC for me.

I'm new to this boaard, but very glad someone pointed me in this direction.

Do you find that the universal mp3 format is good enough for you?

Yes, I do. Why? Because if I enjoy the album, I go out and buy it anyways. Why MP3 over other formats? Because it has very high compatibility. Not to mention I'm begging an mp3 player for Christmas. :-)

Is MPC meeting your demands precisely?

The person who gave me the URL for this board mentioned mpc to me, but didn't go into a lot of detail. What I did gather is it's not for me at this time.

Or perhaps you've decided to stick with a previous tool and use the DRM plagued formats, RM or WMA.

rm? What supports that? I've never even heard of it. wma? If only I could remove wmp from my machine! Ugh!

Welcome


I believe this sort of makes the assumption that other people only use lossy formats to trade files illegally (or without having owned the album they originated from). This is certainly not the case. Many people (like me) use lossy formats to archive hundreds of legally owned CDs onto their harddrive for matters of convenience and security.

Yes! Very much so!

Files with lower bitrates and better quality than lame mp3's that playback gapless without any hacks... how can you go wrong? People gain nothing by supporting inferior formats.

Thank you.



Ok, so I worded that wrong.... but good call. I know a lot of people do exactly as you have said. I have a ton of comments and questions, but until I learn a bit more about this format, I really can't say much.
One of my reasons for that answer is this- The vast majority of my mp3 collection has been accumalated thru trading data cds full of mp3 albums thru the postal mail. Mp3 is the only format used for this in the group I am in (over 400 people around the world). So that's my big reason.. a different format isn't practical for me right now.



What do you mean by "gapless"? All that's coming to mind is no space between songs, but you can always set you burner or ripper to not leave a gap.
Also, the person who directed me to this board said that the file size of these mpc files is larger then that of an mp3 of the same bitrate. If that is correct, then why not just rip your mp3's at a higher bitrate and break even?

Bitrate implies filesize, and filesize implies bitrate. They are equivalent!
For instance: a 100 second song at 192 kbps (kbit per second) means :
100*192 kb
(= 19200 kb = 2400 kByte)
= 2.4 MB

(Whether you encode a track with MPC at 170kbps,
or you encode that same track with MP3 at 170kbps,
doesn't affect filesize.)

That person will probably have meant that MPC gives you better quality than MP3 at the same bitrate. Yes this is true, and this is true for most other encoders too (mp3pro, wma, ogg vorbis, AAC, ...), MP3 is an old format after all (even though development is still going on).

Well I don't know whether this is the right place to clarify these things. hmmm yes it is, but using the search function might be very useful too (questions might already have been answered).

Gapless means that there is no shift ('offset') during encoding.
For instance a continuous mixed CD split into separate tracks, and encoded in MP3 will get a small shift, resulting in 'gaps' at the beginning and the end of each track, and thus breaking the continuity of the CD (indeed annoying on continuous mixes). A solution could be encoding the CD as one big MP3 (so that there are only gaps at the beginning and the end of the CD)
Encoders which don't have the 'shift' drawback are called 'gapless'.

MPC please!

(the superior quality...)

I use MP3 only. I'd consider something better such as MPC or OOG but I like being able to use one format across many platforms including my RioVolt SP250.

I use EAC 0.9b4 w/ Plextor PX-40TW for ripping and Plextor PX-W1210S for burning. I use all recommended settings/procedures for perfect rips (secure, offsets, test & copy ensuring CRCs match, etc). Settings obtained from EAC site, http://www.ping.be/satcp/, etc.

The one exception is that I *do* use the not recommended C2 error detection (only, not correction) since C2 is supposed to be best implemented by Plextor and I always use test & copy ensuring CRCs match to get a double pass on the CD. I welcome comments on this practice and may post the question later.

Lame 3.92 (Mitiok) --alt-preset standard nohist (I don't need to see the histogram and it takes CPU to display).

I used to follow the r3mix.net recommendations for each new release of lame until I found this forum recently. I made a more serious error by including -Q0 parm after reading the lame doc which still says "-q 0: use slowest & best possible version of all algorithms. -q 0 and -q 1 are slow and may not produce significantly higher quality". I've seen on this forum many others have made the same mistake for the same reason.

Speed doesn't matter. I'll just let my ancient dual PP200 W2K server encode for days if necessary. I want the highest possible quality MP3s without being "extreme" or "insane". Size does matter but not that much. I can live with the rare cases that -aps doesn't result in "transparency". Besides, from this site I learned that -ape and -api prolly won't do any better for those cases. I am considering re-ripping/encoding my entire CD collection (500+) again using -aps and DiBrom's compile of 3.90.2.

I am thankful for the hard working people that have taken the good idea of MP3s and made it great. I’ll try to help when/where I can. When I get a decent sound card and headphones I’ll try some of the listen tests. I’ve learned a lot in the past 18 months of reading, ripping, encoding, listening. The more you learn the more you realize that you don’t know

Well, i am a slut a little
First i started with Xing 192 then Lame 192,224,256,320,some VBR variations, then Ogg, then Lame again, than ogg again, a little Ape, little more Lame again, and currently i am using Mpc.

Isn't it time to settle down?

I want to settle down, but i dont know what to use, is it safe to use mpc or go back to mp3.

I use MPC for my encoding needs for archiving, using the standard profile. I also use lame --alt-preset standard for my mp3 needs (portable and incar mp3 players, as well as sharing with friends).