Hello. I am encoding for my Nano with a target bitrate of 96Kbps.

I noticed in the 80Kbps testing that Nero at CBR 80 ties itunes at 80 CBR with a tendency to be better.

But I am confused because my latest Nero, 7.8.5.0, does not encode CBR. I set it for 96Kbps,and the files sound great.But they are definitely VBR.There is only a slider bar to set bitrate.

Is there any formal or quality test comparing itunes to latest nero at 96Kbps? Is Nero in its latest tuning considered superior to Itunes?

If no test is available, opinions would be most welcome as I want to do the ripping right the first time with some confidence.

Thanks for any replies/advice.

The only opinion I believe are my ears: if you are satisfied with encoded audio Nero produced, then go with it.

Constant bitrate in a listening test is used only to have fair comparison of encoders.
I believe that Nero AAC Encoder produces better results when vbr is used instead of cbr (at the same average bitrate).

Well I have been doing some listening testing.The song is Feeling Satisfied off of Dont Look Back by Boston.

It's only one file so far but I have a few comments. I encoded with Itunes at 96 VBR and got a bitrate of exactly 96. I set Nero for 96 and got a bitrate of 100.

They were all named the same and I had someone else mix the order up in Winamp now and then.

First of all, both files sound superb considering the bitrate.

I was able to pick out the aac files from the wave consistently, mostly due to a bit of edge noise present on the opening guitar sequence, like a subtle distortion/crackling particularly in the L channel.

The distortion was clearly less audible with the Nero file as compared to the Itunes file.This made it possible to consistently differentiate the Nero from the Itunes. It was distinct on the wav.

Despite this, I would say the Nero file was ultimately better.Vocals at certain points were more distinct somehow. and cymbals seemed to have a bit more dynamics although this was harder to pick out consistently.

I wanted to look at the spectral analysis ( I know!) more so to see what the encoders are doing.

The Nero file was lowpassed at 16K and the Itunes 15K. The Nero file however exhibited behaviour similar to Lame VBR when SFB 21 switches on and off. Without cymbals or high freq content,such as the opening guitar sequence I mentioned, the lowpass was more consistently 14k, which I think is why this distortion was less distinct on Nero.14K to 16K seemed to switch on and off as required.

I tunes displays a more consistent frequency response up to 15K throughout the song, with little visible turning"off and on" between 14 and 16K, on this file anyway.

I realize this is only one file and the ABX methods not up to HA standards.
I will provide a clip off the intro if someone tells me how.

I need to express the greatest appreciation to those that conduct extensive listening tests for this board because it is very tiring to lsten to the same clip over and over.

I hope some listening test of the new Nero VBR tunings can be organized soon vs Itunes VBR. The new slider selection in Nero for bitrate would make bitrate matching easier I think.

Both sound so very good at 128 for casual listening that the lower bitrate might be of more interest to those trying to squeeze more tunes onto their Nano's.

Anyway, if I have violated any board evidence rules, my apologies and ignore the above.

I too believe VBR is superior, but only once properly tuned. For several years Lame at 128 CBR then ABR was always considered better than VBR by those (few) doing credible testing at R3Mix.

The last much older listening test involving AAC showed itune 128 CBR edging out Nero VBR at a significantly higher bitrate,almost 140 I think.

My point is that VBR seems to require a lot of careful tuning sometimes.The Nero staff have had a lot of time to work since then.

I also agree that one's own ears are the final yardstick,but like many here, I like the warm and fuzzy feeling that certain knowledge provided by careful listening tests gives me that my files are as good as possible.

I doubt it's the knock-down, drag out answer some people think it is. You enjoyed doing it, and
it helped you with your decision, so why not? OTOH, no one, unless he had a very small collection, could do any more than sample a fraction of it before it encoding, so any other information he can feed into his decision from other sources must be welcome.

Dudes:

With all due respect - and I'm [not] trying to come off as an ass here... I just cannot get my head around why folks mess around with a minimalist bitrate like 96kb/s. I mean, there is no way in hell that 96kb/s is transparent - with any coder / decoder on earth.

Sorry, again... but why not just stick to 192Kb/s and be done with it? That bitrate is pretty damn good, especially for ear-buds / car audio etc. In this day and age, with even the most pathetic MP3 players sporting a gigabyte+ of onboard RAM, surely storage space isn't an issue. (As I understand it, the Nano ships in 2, 4 and 8 gigabyte capacities. This equals a jaw-dropping number of tracks at 192Kb/s).

Seriously fellas': clue me in on this one... is it simply a case of curiosity?

Andrew D.

www.cdnav.com

.

So, you have curiosity to know if it is curiosity?

I mean, your sentence seems like coming from two or three years ago. Sure, 192kbps is enough... and 384kbps AC-3 has been enough for a long time in DVD's. This is not in dispute here, not even mentioned.

It just seems ilogical to discard any talking in a lower bitrate that the one you're used to with MP3, for the last 5 years. Plain LC-AAC shows its weak points at 96kbps like mp3 showed them at 128kbps. Yet, perceptual audio compression hasn't reached a lower limit.

You don't sound like an ass at all. I agree with this philosophy for my 250 Gig Maxtor drive.I still use Lame but switched to 320 CBR awhile back.

But with portable devices the "good enough for casual listening" that is not terribly artifacted still works if you have a finite amount of space.
On a 4 gig or 8 gig Nano or such, being able to carry more of your music collection is also attractive.

You can ABX the 96 files but believe me, you have to work at it a bit.

Your reasoning is backwards, in my view. Why would I want to use 192kbps if 128kbps is transparent to me? Why should I use 50% more disk space for no discernible audio benefit?

More listening.This time I encoded Fool on the hill by the Beatles. There is a lot of analog hiss on this recording.

Neither Itunes or Nero at 96 is really acceptable.

There is artifact in the vocals and on the bells.A good example is the word grin at around 10 seconds.

It is grainy and obvious with Nero.Perhaps slightly less so with itunes but still annoying and easy to pick out.

Nero at 128 or itunes is more acceptable but still these artifacts persist.The 128 files you really have to work at to hear at first but get easier to pick out with more trials.

I am starting to wish I had never started this.....

believe me, I know the feeling... until about two weeks ago I had spent probably the equivalent of a week's worth of hours ABX'ing back and forth between 96kbps and 160kbps VBR LC-AAC and trying to determine if a higher bitrate like 192/VBR was really necessary. my ears tell me it is. like others have said, though, there's no set bitrate setting that guarantees transparency (it really does depend on how well-trained the listener's ears are), though IMO higher bitrates are much more likely to return the best results.

(waits for 20GB Nano)

I have now encoded and listened to Revolver, Magical Mystery Tour, Rubber Soul,BoB Segar,Rush Chronicles and the Stones 40 Licks.

I encoded 96 and 128 with Nero 7.8.5.0.

On first listen all the files are quite good.If it was an internet stream or something, I would not complain.

But the conclusion I have come to for my ears only, is that the majority of files are off enough at 96 to be annoying.Once you know the artifact is there, its all you hear or concentrate on.

I can detect no significant difference between Itunes VBR 128 and Nero 128 except that very often, Nero gets the job done with fewer bits.

I have yet to hear a truly glaring artifact with Nero at 128, generally it is very difficult to abx without straining, often I just gave up trying.

Also, high bitrate mp3 Lame files transcode nicely with Nero at 128 although original wavs compress with much more presence.

If I re-encode my whole collection to Nero at 128, I will save approx 500MB space over itunes VBR 128 which will keep me going for a long time.

I look very much forward to the next definitive comparison between Nero's latest tunings vs Itunes at 128 especially if it is not just classical exclusively.