Hi,
I'm just curious, what's the best stereo codec for bitrates of 32kbps and down? I know Nero does okay at 16kbps, below that it fails. I'd really love to know the progress in that area. I've heard AMR is better than Nero, but I haven't been able to get ahold of that thing.
What's the best codec and how can I find info or audio samples of it?
Thanks.

What are you talking about? Is it codec for music (as Nero AAC) or speech (as AMR)?

I don't know exactly why it should be better, supposedly AMR WB Stereo is better. I think if you search for AMR it's the sixth or so result down, "The future of audio codecs" one.
"MPEG is working on a new coding technology. It focused at low bitrates (24 kbit/s per channel and lower) for mixed content (music and/or speech). It will
have better quality than HE-AAC v2 and AMR-WB+"
That's from February so I'm guessing it's not too outdated. What they're going to do, I don't know. My guess is improve the bass codec, since I think HeAAC would benefit. This new MPEG's development sounds promising.

Ain't it a bit pointless to have stereo at 32 kBit/s? The signal can't be preserved accurately enough to make the listener feel he is inside the soundstage (what's the word?). Then why try panning the terrible artifacts around?

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A warning? "Soundstage" was probably not the word then. Yet, I stand by my statement and won't change my mind. Am I supposed to ABX a HDTV thats running at 3 MBit/s too?

Lack of stereo is such an easy artifact to hear, it wouldn't surprise me if a mostly-artifact-free mono signal ends up with a with a lower score than a stereo-with-artifacts signal in MUSHRA listening tests.

Actually to be honest, codecs are moving away from warbling artifacts. Mostly now it's more metallic, robotic sounds which are much less annoying, since codecs are now using noise to isolate some of there artifacts. Take Vorbis's noise normalization, for example. It almost never warbles as mp3 would. Instead it flutters around, which I can get used to at bitrates of 75kbps and up. I just can't get used to sbr artifacts, I'm working on it...