Now that Apple has finally enabled what appears to be Quicktime's highest quality encoding for the iTunes "Plus" preset, would it be worth conducting a listening test to determine the relative standings of the current contenders?

• iTunes Plus @256kbps
• iTunes (standard) @256kbps ABR (optional)
• neroAacEnc @~256kbps VBR
• neroAacEnc @256kbps CBR (optional)
• Lame 3.98 @~256kbps VBR
• Lame 3.98 @256kbps CBR (optional)

- M.

I think, if previous listening tests are any sort of indication, it's very likely that they're all going to be transparent on non-problem samples.

So then what are you wanting to compare exactly? Average filesize?

Go for it if you have the ears. Otherwise you probably aren't going to hear any difference between all three encoders. I would be curious to see how the iTunes Plus setting stacks up to Nero and Lame. I would still never use such a high bitrate setting as Nero produces transparent results at -q0.45--q0.50 for me but that doesn't stop me form being curious.

I think that you might have difficulties matching up the bitrates though. From my experience, the iTunes Plus setting tends to produce files at around 280kbps while -V 0 averages files at about 260kbps. I never tested Nero at -q0.60 but -q0.50 produces file at around 190kbps for me. I don't know if a 20-30kbps difference would drastically affect things but it might be something to think about.

Unless one of those encoders are horribly glitched, all my submissions would be 5.0

Are we certain that the iTunes Plus setting is using VBR and not VBR_Constrained?

iTunes Plus is VBR_Constrained @ 256kbps using the highest quality setting of the encoder.

Sorry for the ignorance... constrained meaning 256 minimum or 256 max?

Well I wouldn't be able to participate in such a test because all these settings will be transparent for me.

I wouldn't mind a new 128 Kbps test featuring LAME 3.98.2, the latest Nero AAC encoder and the new CoreAudio AAC encoder in OSX 10.6.