Poor people using RealJukebox (plus) at 96 kbit/s... ;-) I use it in combination with my Rio 500.

Encoding the Incubus album "Morning View" proved once again that the Xing engine sucks. Try the beginning of the song "Blood on the Ground", encoded with 96 kbit... I use RealJukebox V2, by the way. It has a newer Xing build than V1.

The song sounds like encoded with a modem bitrate codec ) Something is totally f***ed up there. Warbling, dropouts, in other words: YUCK.

It must be related to the stereo effects used in the sample. As soon as the vocals start on the right speaker, the guitar on the left speaker gets completely messed up. And completely I mean.

Would be interesting to explore at what bitrates the same engine starts to perform better on this particular song... and whether other engines (Lame, Fraunhofer) have similar problems.

why don't u use EAC + Lame ?
Does the Rio Software only allow a connection between this software and the player ?? Can't u transfer the mp3's via USB ?

One word: Convenience.

Realjukebox does "SLUUURP" and the CD is encoded. The album gets added to the media library and can even be replayed while it is being encoded. And the result _usually_ sounds acceptable.

But then, of course, there's exceptions like the track mentioned above. ;-(

And just to remind you: Lame isn't exactly the best choice for those extremely low bit rates <128 kbit/s either...

It does ""SLUUURP"" and the CD gets encoded with Xing, that's a big difference



It was just an example, i could have written Fraunhofer etc. because everything is better then Xing .

Not wanting to get too far off topic, but in general I find blade the most consistently objectionable codec at 128 and it is definitely useless at 96.

Many samples of both codecs sucking on various clips unfortunately abound:(

I would be interested to hear ff123's take on this as he seems to test alot of stuff at 128.

I've never tried Blade at 96, but I agree that it deserves the title of worst mp3 at 128. Maybe QDesign's MVP would rival it, but I don't think anybody uses that one.

ff123

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I hereby present the worst artifacts I ever experienced with
RealJukebox encoded files. (I am using this program for > 2 years
now...)

Here's the first 30 seconds of the Xing encoded file with massive artifacts.

http://home.san.rr.com/sandiegodiaries/audio/xing96kbit.mp3

It doesn't actually require a reference to see what's wrong.
But here it is, anyway... (192 kbit/s CBR Lame). I didn't have
space to put a LPAC file up on that webserver, sorry!

http://home.san.rr.com/sandiegodiaries/audio/lame192kbit.mp3

Enjoy

BTW does anyone have an explanation for these particular artifacts? Anything related to the method of stereo coding they use, maybe? I am not an expert concerning the MP3 stereo modes...

It's so horrible it's funny.



I think so. I remember Peal Jam ' Daughter ' being listed as a killer-clip in one codec comparison, and it had a similar configuration.

--
GCP

hmm, the song "Warning" on the same Incubus CD produces almost identical artifacts. Again to song uses sound panning from left to right and the guitar and vocals on separate channels generate "evil" artifacts.

Seems like Incubus don't like Xing and vice versa

And yet again we see how some people still favour speed over quality

Repeat after me cubuchner1:

"Encode once, play many times"

The worst thing about Xing is...

EMUSIC.COM uses it!!!

I got a membership at that site, downloaded a few samples, they sounded OK. Then I started listening to them on headphones and it sucks incredibly (especially all the metal stuff...artifacts so massive it boggles the mind any QA department could let them go through).

I've been fighting with them for 6 months to move to LAME or Fhg, or anything else...no result, they still use Xing.

And their page states "our professionally encoded MP3s"...well, in this case their "professionals" don't know rat's ass about audio quality...

And the worst part is that they have an amazing catalogue, I'd be glad to keep my membership there, but with audio quality this bad I will not be renewing it

Let's start a petition to encourage eMusic to use Lame

At 128kbps, LAME 3.70 wouldn't be a huge improvement which is what they would probably use. If you are going to petition for them to change encoders, shoot for --alt-preset standard rev7 at the least.

Sorry, they're 128 CBR only, more likely they would use ff123's tuned 128kbps settins for LAME 3.89 +.

But, as an indication of how clueless these people are...a few weeks ago when they finally told me they're moving to LAME I found it was LAME 3.70, not anything newer....which probably sounds as bad as Xing for this bitrate.

I am just exasperated that the biggest legal MP3 download site does not know its ass from its elbow when it comes to rudimentary things about MP3 quality...it's just mindboggling, their incompetence...

Hi! This is my first post over here - I took the plunge since the r3mix forum seems to be going down... and I *just* graduated from being a 'junior member' after a year over there!

Well, I just listened to a few MP3s from emusic, and they were indeed encoded with Xing (very old) according to EncSpot. Do you know if they still use LAME 3.70? I suppose they have agreed with the record business not to have such good quality at all. Bad quality will keep the rumours that MP3s are all crap alive. Their own description is a bad joke:

"GUARANTEED QUALITY

EMusic takes all the guesswork and frustration out of downloading music. When you download from us, you know what you're getting -- a quality encoded MP3 and a fast connection to our servers.

/.../

'Your MP3s are really clean and clear sounding and really sound good on my home MP3 stereo player.' - EMusic subscriber"


Zzzz...

There are a lot of killer samples for the xing encoder...
expecially at 96,128 and even at higher bitrates....

Unfortunately 90% of samples are killer samples when it comes to Xing. It's tuned only for speed.

There's only one piece of music which is not a killer sample for Xing.

4:30 by John Cage.

RoFL Frank Klemm

Wonder if it will kill that sample?

Cheers
AgentMil

lol.

Cage's piece isn't total, absolute silence. He wanted (or so he claimed) people to listen to the "music" present in the background noises we hear all the time but never notice.

Personally I think he was having a laugh at the expense of his listeners and critics.

ff123

Sorry, but it's 4'33