Hi all. I encoded a few albums in mp3pro @ 96 kbits/s and i think the quality is quite good, but I don't have golden ears nor Hi-Fi audio.
I cant't find a good test on the net. Is vbr mp3 superior ?

Switch to OGG Voribis.
Sound better and is free.

I'll second that, mp3pro is not the way to go, Vorbis is the future even if Fraunhofer doesn't want to see this.

I totally disagree with that, even though Ogg IS the format of the future support for mp3 hasn't ended yet, and the quality provided by MP3pro, no matter with how false means, is simply uncompareable with ANY other format at that datarate. Why can't that be accepted??

Okay so its not free, so what? we are already ripping industries off, why stop here??

Its all about Loss, have to bear with it.

I think there will be some amount of acceptance for MP3Pro, but Vorbis has more potential, considering that it has already surpassed MP3Pro in terms of quality at the 64kbps, and will get even better when RC4 is released.

"we are already ripping industries off"


I'm sorry but I have to express my strong disagreement here.

I think what he meant is that lossy audio compression is used mostly for audio piracy, so why should people care if the codec is pirated too? Of course not everyone pirates audio, but I'd guess that most people do, and the people who only encode their own legally-purchased CDs are in the minority.

No its definitely not better than Ogg Vorbis at low bitrates!

edit: if it would be the way you described it, shouldn't the result of this poll be a bit different ?
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/poll.p...sults&pollid=11

Mp3pro isn't that unbeatable as you say, did you test vorbis yourself ?

I was using Vorbis before I found MP3pro actually, and I was quite happy with it, but considering the general music CD ripping, mp3pro does it best at low bitrates. Just test it your self right now, encode a song in ogg at 64kbps and in mp3pro with same rate. Ogg will be bigger because of VBR anyway and its artifacts will be clearly audible. MP3pro miserably fails in audio tests because of its fake ways of attempting to produce good results, not like ogg, which only tries to be different. None other formats that I have checked out [AAC, MPC, MP3, PlusV, VQf, WMA] can achieve this level of quality.

And the results of that poll definately shows the level of awareness that public have of MP3pro, [most certainly because either you have to pay for it or steal it] you do the test and see if I am wrong. MP3pro does suffer from pre-echo too much though, but ogg has its own extra crispy-artifact that I hate!

MP3-PRO might be able to "fake" good results. Vorbis on the other hand is trying to do it all on it's own merit. And the Vorbis codecs currently in use are not optimised for lower bitrates, but they still produce very respectable results. This will quite possibly all be put to rest forever once Vorbis RC4 is out.

If I am downloading songs I am not going to waste my time with 64Kbps encoded files. And if I am archiving my stuff I am not going to use 64Kbps either. The only place 64Kbps might be handy is for portables and streaming. And MP3-PRO has support for neither. And it will not likely ever get support. Vorbis on the other hand has and will on both points to be sure.

I understand your rabbid fervor to hold on to something you think you know. But this behavior will likely only hurt you in the future. Even if you pirate MP3-PRO encoder and decoder software what good will it do you? You will not see it supported on anything but PC decoders. No hardware or any other MP3-PRO solutions are likely.

Actually I would love to get rid of MP3pro and see Ogg taking its place in my collection. But right now mp3 pro is the only one to provide good quality. I don't know about others but I have to squeeze as much music in on a 700MB cd as possible, I find MP3pro very handy there.

I don't care if MP3pro gets support or gets further development or is supported in portable players, (its too much processor hungry, 300% more then norm mp3s) and I think the only way to use the encoder is to get a crack or something. Are you saying pirating is old school now? and How will I hurt my self? By making a pro archive???

well as I tested mp3pro vs. ogg and they both didn't sound too good at 64 kbps. But they are not supposed to sound good at such low bitrates.
I noticed the mp3pro file not having the full dynamic range as the Vorbis one, so I prefer Vorbis at low Bitrates.

sorry for my bad english...

wait a minute here. with a quick test, I found out that
ogg at 64 kbps actually cuts off at 12 Khz while mp3PRO
cuts at 16 Khz.Overall,I prefer mp3PRO at bitrates <=96 kbps.
Let's see what RC4 will have to offer...

well mp3pro cuts at 6 kHz, the rest is SBR...

a) He was talking about dynamic range, not frequency cutoff.

b) Juding by graphs or solely on the cutoff is senseless. Listen, don't look.

c) MP3Pro cuts off at 6kHz. See point (b).

--
GCP

MP3 Pro is like crack. It makes you feel good for a few minutes but then it goes away...

You seem very experienced in this crack matter...
I'll add your name here