Slashdot Mirror
Listening Comparisons For Audio Codecs At 64kbps
waaka! writes "Hydrogenaudio has just wrapped up a listening test of various audio codecs at 64kbps. Check out the results, where Ogg Vorbis performed quite well, scoring significantly better than WMA, RealAudio and QuickTime AAC, and kept pace with MP3Pro and HE-AAC (AAC with the SBR extensions that MP3Pro uses). Clearly, though, no codec can honestly claim 128 kbps MP3 quality at 64 kbps. The charts at the end show entries for 128kbps LAME MP3 and 64kbps FhG MP3, but these are used as high and low anchors for reference, as MP3 is really out of its league at bitrates such as these."
... "Why not just encode it at 384 and be done with it?", consider that PDAs have 64 megs of RAM, cell phones get no better than 56k, and that not everybody has broadband.
...to compensate for everyone's crappy $1.99 computer speakers?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Sometimes, simple audio clips don't require the highest quality. Function triumphs over high performance hot-rodding.
You used to compare against CD quality.
Oh well, times change, I guess it's time to throw all my CDs away and instead store all music in this new exciting digital format.
And seriously, does anyone listen to music encoded at 64 kbps? 128 is the bare minumum.
where Ogg Vorbis performed quite well, scoring significantly better than WMA, RealAudio and QuickTime AAC, and kept pace with MP3Pro and HE-AAC (AAC with the SBR extensions that MP3Pro uses)
But from the article: QuickTime 6.3 AAC LC 64kbps, Best Quality
So, what gives?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I've also noticed sometimes that 28 kbps streaming audio in some sites is much better than 56 kbps audio on other sites
We shouldn't even be talking about this. MP3's are illegal and hurt our favorite artists. The record producers would never hurt the artists, so we shouldn't either.
"the purpose of PDAs is not to play music "
Yet they do, and people like to use them for that. Fascinating.
"the purpose of cell phones is not to play music"
Yet the holy grail of mobile computing is to merge the PDA (which can play music) and the cell phone.
You may like carrying around a cell phone, PDA, and iPod in your pockets, but I want one device that does it all.
MP3s are ubiquitous. My computer, DVD player, portable audio player, and car stereo all support it. The same can't be said for other formats.
More to the point, why are all of these competitions at such low bitrates? The differences in quality between various types of audio compression become indistinguishable (and therefore irrelevant) as you raise the bitrate.
I just use good old variable bitrate MP3 and forget about it. Simple and standard.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
Its nice to see ogg doing well, but ogg needs to start advertising. Nobody is going to give a shit about ogg if computer companies (apple) is distributing aac and their old napster mp3s don't play on an ogg player. Fact of the matter is that there is a LOT of power behind the MPEG (4, 7, 21) movement.
Have you seen the cuidado project? Have you read what companies publish? Why fight the good fight if you aren't getting the public hooked on it while its still the best option.
hmm
Rob
I saved this thread quite a while ago and I agree with several of the recommendations (notably with the 'Tori Amos' 'Boys for Pele' CD, not that it's the type of music I usually listen to, but I have to admit the production values are outstanding), after all using hyper-compressed (re: other slashdot articles) crappy source material is not that helpful in terms of figuring out how good the various encoders really are...
the thread on google
Personally I rip my own CDs with lame --alt-preset extreme (on said Tori Amos' CD it seems it hovers around 224kbps with -lots- of frames at 256 and 320), for fun I transcoded (I know, transcoding is bad, mmkay?) a few of them to vorbis 48kbps and it's amazing how good they sound at that low of a bitrate.
-- the cake is a lie
I always encoded my MP3s 224 kbps and when iTunes came out I simply continued the tradition.
In any case, I can certainly notice the improvement from MP3s encoded at the same rate.
Still #1 -- Lonely Gay Geek
Are we at the LIMITS of compression technology ? Is there anything new being worked on by anyone ?
1 of them shared.
I may be a bastard, but I'm not a stupid bastard.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
You were probably almost fired for listening to such a shitty band, not for sharing MP3s.
the purpose of PDAs is not to play music
And what do you think the purpose of Personal Digital Assistants are? I use mine to play music all the time, they're assisting me by entertaining me and keeping my mood up.
When was the last time you made a PDA? Never? Then you get no say in what their purpose is.
-- iCEBaLM
You don't want 64k except for PDAs and phones, and hell at that point only convert on the fly. WMP will convert down to the device when you copy them over to get you the best bit rate for the storage you have. Let me say it again, ON THE FLY. So why make seperate 64k encodes....just seems like a stupid test to point out that Vorbis does *slightly* better than the mainstream formats.
In Norway, any copies of any music downloaded for personal use are legal, so as long as I don't share or sell anything I download, I can download as much MP3 songs and DivX movies I want.
:-D
So, as I don't have any P2P software running at the moment, the number is zero.
This message has been ROT-13 encrypted twice for higher security.
Maybe nowadays everyone is doing these tests correctly so they don't feel they need to describe the procedure they use, but otherwise I would expect a clear answer to the following questions in the opening paragraph of these listening tests reports.
- Is it a blind test? Do the users know which codec they're listening to? Or can they find out with little effort for example if the information is leaked in partial results that are published before the end of the test?
- Is the question people are asked to answer "how good does it sound", or is the question "how close does it sound to the original"? In other words are we measuring sound fidelity and enhancement properties of the codec, or only sound fidelity? More bass always sounds better, but I'd rather be the one in charge of that and not the codec.
Anything below 128k/s (in my opinion) is only good for streaming and embedding. Even 128 is the bare minimum for anything that sounds decent. Are there any comprehensive articles that deal with comparing high encoding rates (192+) of multiple formats?
It should also be noted that it is not recommended using CBR encoding with OGG. It is a native VBR codec that is only forced into CBR for steaming. The quality of CBR is much lower than VBR. It would be very nice to see a comparison that uses VBR for all codecs that stick to the same bitrate range.
Whoops, some kinda integer math error.
-]Phreak Out[-
I'm not an authority here, but the name "Personal Digital Assistant" kind of leads one into believing it might have something to do with ASSISTING a person?
Like a little helper, you know?
--
*Art
Fuzzy FM? Have you ever *listened* to Ogg at 64? It sounds *better* than FM. And for streaming, Ogg at 45kbps/44.1khz/stereo sounds excellent. Just LISTEN to it, darn it!
I don't think I am deaf or anything, but in all honesty I am totally incapable of distinguishing a quality 0.0 ogg from the 192kbit/s mp3 I converted it from, and even if I could, the resulting music still has the precise same quality of making me feel good and happy as it had before. If you encode it slightly higher, I believe the difference will be inaudible to anyone. So why waste space?
The poster offers an interesting interpretation of the results, but only his/her comments support Ogg Vorbis in this case. The numbers tell a completely different story.
The analysis presented leads us to one conclusion: use Lame 128. It's strictly better than all other options. Do not use FhG MP3. Easy.
If you're willing to slip to 4th best encoder, then consider Ogg Vorbis. 4TH BEST. That's hardly the rosey picture painted in the article.
Also, don't be deceived by the "confidence intervals" shown in the graph. They're all drawn to the same widths for each set! At best, this is an approximation. At worst, the author is simply using a program that draws in some uniform (and meaningless) bars. Fear graphs.
"actually, I carry a cell phone, PDA, gameboy advance, *AND* an iPod. You know why? I hate compromising. And like it or not, there aren't any decent "convergence" devices that can do 2 of those things well, let alone 4."
I agree with you from the gaming standpoint of it, but I don't on the rest of it. There's no reason why a single device can't be a PDA, phone, and Mp3 player. The storage is the problem now, and one day in the not too distant future, that'll be fixed.
The URLs of the sample files are hidden in a text file in a zip file. I've extracted the links, and hyperlinked them, so you can download them easier.
BigYellow
DaFunk
EnolaGay
experiencia
gone
Illinois
mybloodrusts
NewYorkCity
Polonaise
riteofspring
Scars
Waiting
And to help reduce the load, Ive also got a mirror
Why is it that no-one ever quotes their hearing test results when doing these subjective tests? It's just like when my co-worker tells me that watching DVD's on my 1600x1200 resolution screen is not as sharp as his German 100MHz standard television.
The fact that his visual acuity has been compared to Mr Magoo never comes into the equation...
I believe I know where it's coming from. And who's behind it, but we'll leave that for now.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
that Joe Schmo out there with the Windows machine will be pretty much sticking to WMA. Sure hardcore audiophiles can tell a difference between formats but the average computer idiot doesn't care.
The saddest part of all is that WMA is a beast that is growing and will be hard to get rid of. Since MS has submitted this format for inspection for widespread adoption, they will continue to force their way into this becoming the de facto standard even though it sucks ass. More importantly, because of the draconian DRM, WMA is the format that the RIAA and other head asswipes at recording labels are drooling over. They could really care less about the quality of their digital music as long as they control the rights management on it.
Until more portable players support formats like ogg, WMA will be an immovable force, the 800 hundred pound gorilla that will be difficult to move.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
First, I know and listen to some of those songs. It's nice to see band(s) I listen to, it makes the test seem much less... abstract. It seems like these tests usually use music I've never even heard. (For the curious, TMBG and John Linnell).
Second, I would have liked to see the results presented as "quality relative to 128kb MP3", since that's the "gold standard". Just a preference.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Which won't happen until someone designs a better method of inputting data. Keys only get so small before they're not usable and phones can only get so big before it's bulky.
@!#%$%#@ it. I suffered through three semesters of Stats in college, and the acid-reflux flare-up I get reading this kind of "test result" is the burden I bear for it.
-- Watch the REAL Jon Katz.
You see, that's why choice and diversity are a good thing.
You like having a dedicated device for everything, some people (me included) like having something small and convenient that'll do a fair job of a lot of things....
However, don't make the mistake of thinking that just because your preference means there is no need for something (in this case low bitrate digital audio) therefore means that no one has any need for it.
Advanced users are users too!
Comparing without a reference reflects how much you like the encoding of the codec, not how accurate it is to the original. For example, if a codec boosts the bass or encodes slightly louder, you may interpret this as better sound. For example, when auditioning speakers, you must always balance the output of the speakers as most people will psychologically prefer the louder (most sensitive) speaker. This does not mean the speakers are accurate however.
At any rate, here is the relevant quote on that page:
Note that the quote (and here's the nitpick) suggests that double-blind means that the participant doesn't know which encoder is used. Double-blind means that both the participant and the person running the test don't know. By the way, this is, indeed as accurate as double-blind (since, well, the computer might know but surely doesn't care to influence the results). And I realize he doesn't say "double-blind means" but seems to suggest the definition of double-blind. Anyways, that's just the nitpick. Please don't mod me down for it. It's just an observation and I'm trying to build some Karma!
Sunny
Be my Friend
Yet they do, and people like to use them for that.
Ah, the fallacy of the plural. Just because a couple dozen nerds think it's cool to listen to badly encoded music on their Palms doesn't mean that "people like to use them for that." Generalizing from the plural to the collective is not valid.
Yet the holy grail of mobile computing is to merge the PDA (which can play music) and the cell phone.
Says who? Take a really good cell phone and a really good... well, okay, an iPod and put them together. You end up with a really shitty cellphone, or a really shitty music device, depending on which one you're using at the time.
The holy grail of mobile computing is to have small, single-purpose devices that do their jobs perfectly. Remember? That's the UNIX philosophy.
Nobody will ever need less than 64kbps of audio.
As an artist that releases mainly online, I found these results very interesting, and thought I'd share my feelings with the slashdot community.
:D
While MP3Pro and Vorbis were good competitors overall, and have a fairly good footprint to boot, I'd have to say that if I'm forced to encode to 64MBit/s, I'd absolutely choose Ahead HE AAC, if I'm judging solely on this comparison (which I am at this point in time...)
Why? Because there was no sample that Ahead HE AAC did POORLY at. MP3Pro and Vorbis (and all the other codecs) each had one or two samples that they just totally choked on, quality-wise. So if I was forced to use a 64 MBit/s codec, it would absolutely be Ahead HE AAC, because while it didn't score highest on every test, and the three codec were virtually tied across the whole competition, I would feel far safer trusting my best digital work to a codec that, according to this test, would have the least chance of representing it particularly poorly.
I wonder how these results compare to higher encoding rates; I could easily imagine that most codecs have a sweet spot, where the encoding quality/bitrate maximizes... it would be interesting to do some research to find this sweet spot.
Anyone want a quick way to slashdot a server?
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
If you intend on streaming your audio. Audio can stream decently at 128kbps, in fact, for modems it is a must. Internet radio, and even most stuff on mp3.com et al sounds decent for previewing purposes when played at lower bitrates.
>It's worth mentioning that, while Ahead HE AAC,
>Vorbis, MP3pro and WMA were encoded in VBR mode,
>Real Audio and QuickTime were encoded in CBR mode
>since these codecs don't offer a VBR mode.
>Lame MP3 was encoded at ABR mode because that's
>how Lame performs better at this bitrate.
It explains. The "64kbit/s" is only an average.
In general adaptive sampling methods such as VBR should always outperform constant sampling methods like CBR.
If you had live versions of their music you'd be fine. I believe Phish is one of the most MP3 friendly bands and you can find bootlegs fairly easily.
All of which the band seems to have condoned, iirc.
-- taking over the world, we are.
- Almost ALL of these kids have cell phones. These are middle class kids mind you.
- Almost ALL OF THEM message each other using that miserable little numeric pad.
The issue is that you're too old!Pretty impressive really. I'm trying to change my ways and try using my itty-bitty phone for e-mail and whatnot. I mean gimme a break, I'm 29 and already getting outpaced...
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
While there is a need for 64kbps bit rates, this is, *at best* FM radio quality.
This is not high fidelity and certainly not for critical listening.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
For monophonic human voice encoding, Speex at 20 kbps is transparent over my stereo system. Have a listen.
Will I retire or break 10K?
On a portable device it's an entirely different story. Maybe it uses hardware for MP3 playback and you can't play other formats. Maybe the company developing its closed source firmware doesn't care about other formats. Maybe the CPU is too slow and even if it isn't a more CPU intensive format can seriously shorten battery life.
Isn't getting more storage often the best choice?
As I understand it, the "Best" mode, which they used to encode the QT AAC clips, was actually optimized for audio with sample rates well above CDs' 44.1khz. For audio that originated on CD, the "Better" setting would have been more appropriate. (this setting does seem really unintuitive, I would hope for better from apple)
I wonder if/how this would have affected the scores.
I was surprised to se QT AAC ranked so low after it recently won a similar test among AAC encoders, was that HE AAC encoder not included in the previous test?
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
...RCA Orthophonic records were judged superior to Edison Blue Amberols--even at 160 RPM.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
It's worth pointing out that at least MP3Pro and HE-AAC from tested codecs use SBR. SBR is a method (mostly post-process) that allows transmission of lower half of audio spectrum, and have the decoder "guess" what the the other part of the spectrum would have been. While this allows for "cool-sounding" audio at low bitrates, the generated part of the spectrum is not actually an encoded original audio, but rather its "guessed" reconstruction. SBR is also patented.
Search for more info on SBR if interested, like this one.
Ah, the fallacy of the plural.
Did you mean: "Is that several small single-purpose devices in your pocket, or..."?
"This is not a sig." -- R.
It's good to see these types of reports, but they need more press. False advertising by the marketing machines have been lying to the sheepish public for years. with terms of "CD Quality", "100% Digital", etc etc.
IBOC is coming to american radio waves, sometime in the nearish future... For FM signals programming will be encoded at 96kbps (64kbps if optional data/program channel is used). For AM 36kbps... There will be no listening tests for the public, they'll get what they get. They haven't divulged a whole lot on what encoder is to be used but it was internally developed by Ibiquity ( the joint venture developing IBOC ).
Anyway, it's good that the public understands the bad side of the great "digital" realm. It will help in my fight with DirecTV... They've been increasing the compression of their channels - looks like I'm watching an internet stream. But when the other sheep complain to DirecTV, they actually believe the cop-out tech support answer, 'Your dish needs re-alignment' or 'Try some of those gold plated connectors' - um yeah, okay. if they only knew how DirecTV and Dish squeeze channel after channel into their fixed bandwidth satellite feed. Same goes for digital cable, Satellite Radio (XM & Sirrius), and soon FM/AM radio.
And just think, if all the sheep start buying music by downloading the crappy 128kbps files that are offered at most of these legit online music sites, they'll stop selling CDs and only offer music online. say good-bye to your 256kbps VBR rips.
If we the public don't understand it and therefor can't fight it - we'll all die early of compression fatigue.
"Who makes good PDA's? Palm. Nobody else."
You forgot Compaq and Sharp.
"That's why "convergence" devices are shit."
Your reasoning is flawed. Phones are a well established technology. Every day, making a good PDA is less and less of a myster. A phone is a logical extension of a PDA. You may or may not have noticed that PDA phones are already on the market.
Funny thing is, if I imagined merging a game machine in with all this, I would 100% agree with you. I've never seen a game machine do something besides play games and excel at either.
I use my phone for messaging all the time. It took me a while to get it down, and each T9 system is a bit different. It's amazing how the people like to make excuses about how it's really difficult yet they manage to type faster than the majority of the population who has a problem typing on a regular keyboard.
;)
Yes, it has a learning curve. No, it isn't impossible. If you can't push a number on a keypad than how do you dial the phone? T9 messaging is really easy to get the hang of if you just try.
The key is don't use T9 when you shouldn't, and use it when you should and hope your phone has a good way of switching between them. My latest phone (Panasonic GU87) has the easiest switch and probably the best messaging features yet. My second favorite is a Nokia, before the stupid circular keypad. Their T9 system is really good.
Sony-Ericcson sucks horrible goat balls.
Keep trying to get the hang of it, inside of 6 months you will be amazed at how fast you can type an SMS. Keep in mind they are called Short messages for a reason though
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
only very few professional and gifted people can distinguish or even recognize a good encoded sound from lossless sound on 100 % top end HIFI systems.
Check out the C't listening test (blind test!) done in 2002 or 2003, which showed that people producing classical music, people finetuning codecs and many others were not consistently able to tell the difference. The best tester was someone with a hearing damage on one ear. The psychoaccustics obviously did not work 100% for him.
BTW: OGG won that test for ~100 kbit and higher bitrates. Even well encoded MP3 with 256 are almost perfect.
Moritz
The charts at the end show entries for 128kbps LAME MP3 and 64kbps FhG MP3, but these are used as high and low anchors for reference, as MP3 is really out of its league at bitrates such as these."
I guess that it's good that whenever I buy and rip a CD I always encode it as 256kbps MP3s.
But seriously, what is the point of these ultra low bitrate audio tests? Hard drive space is constantly getting cheaper, memory for portable devices is constantly getting cheaper, so what is the point? Sure, my MP3s take up 4 times the space of AM radio quality encodings, but unless you are listening to classic oration, where there is no music, why not use a higher bitrate?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
If your interested in the "legal" trading visit http://db.etree.org/ and have a look around
------
"You forgot that I said "good PDA's.""
No, I didn't.
"Like hell they are. Have you ever used a bad phone? Like, say, an Ericson phone?"
I've had Ericsson phones, and cannot eay I've ever had a 'bad' one. The only complaint I've ever had was that one wasn't very efficient with batteries. Fortunately, it was good at the other things it did.
"Just keep telling yourself that, sparky. You couldn't be more wrong."
That's hardly a rebuttal.
"Your logic is very different from our Earth logic."
That's hardly a rebuttal.
"You may or may not have noticed that they SUCK."
That's funny, my coworker is quite satisfied with his. It's palm based, and he loves it. Even if they do suck in general, it's laughable to think that they'll always be that way. In case you haven't noticed, the same argument could be made about PC's. They're about as generalized as anything can get, yet today they perform a plethora of auxilary tasks that they excel at.
" You also may or may not have noticed that that's my WHOLE POINT."
I know what your point is, it's just not a strong one. It's certainly not backed up by strong reasoning.
I have to admit... I did indeed own when I was a kid some form of digital personal assistant. Some sorta phone number digital rolodex thingie. I bought it off some other kid for some silly low price. It had a fold out membrain keyboard, but with an alphabetial layout. I have to admit, without even thinking about it... I was up to 15 to 20wpm, which is actually adquate for such a device.
This was before any sorta formal typing classes, my method up to that point was hunting and pecking, but actually I was hunting and pecking at a reasoanble speed, about 30wpm.
While I still prefered a traditional keyboard, my speed on this rolodex like device was fast enough to make data entry practical. It's entirely possible that I would have become so familar with it that I could continue to use such a layout to this day. In fact, the only reason I went for the traditional layout is because of some assurance that I can actually use someone else's keyboard with ease.
Kids today could in theory use the numeric keypad, if it wasn't for the fact that 123 and 789 are reversed in respect to a telephone.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Last time I was reading about a music comparison, the statement was along the lines of "OGG excels at very low bitrates, AAC is really good from about 128kbps up".
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Compression limits are like the limit to Moore's law. Everyone always says we'll hit them soon, but we never have.
While individual compression techniques aren't developed THAT often, finding novel ways to tune and enhance them are ongoing. For example, HE AAC is a combination of the "pro" part of MP3 Pro and AAC, but performs a lot better than a linear extrapolation of either would suggest.
One limiting factor is CPU speed. There are lots of techniques that are computationally expensive, and so aren't implemented until Moore's law has made them computationally cheap. This is definitely an issue with video codecs.
My video compression blog
Actually, storage isn't the only problem. I wouldn't even say it was a big consideration.
:)
The real problem is in the form. PDAs need a certain amount of screen real estate, and a usable manner in which to input data.
Phones, on the other hand, need only to input a small amount of data, but must have a comfortable way of talking and listening to them.
These aims are not really convergent, since the trend in phones is to smaller and PDAs can't get much smaller without sacrificing even more utility. PDAs will always be too large to comfortably hold against ones head like a handset. If anything, PDAs might get bigger again, with some sort of remote (bluetooth?) headset arrangement to take care of the cell phone interface. At least, that's what I'd like
Playing music on them doesn't really make much of a difference either way, since it doesn't change the form of either device significantly.
Speaking of strange bedfellows, I was just given the most useless device - a stop watch with a radio in it. I guess it might be useful to listen to the race broadcast while you're sitting in the pit timing it...
Which won't happen until someone designs a better method of inputting data.
:)
I'm afraid that will have to wait until someone figures out how to input data into a small portable device using voice input. Then we could have wireless communication with voice transmission, now that would really be something.
Hell, I record stuff at 16kbps MP3, though lately I've been using 40kbps. Why? It's NPR shows such as "Cartalk", "This American Life", "Science Friday" etc. I can fit up to 10 hours of such radio shows on the 64M base memory in my player.
For music, sure, I use Lame ABR MP3 averaging about 192Kbps. I'd use OGG but my little player I bought for $80 won't support it. I'd go higher but I don't listen in ideal situations, wouldn't benefit from the higher quality, and do like having more songs in memory.
The sole deciding factor in whether or not compressed audio really gets used in a game is available minspec bandwidth. If marketing is forcing us to target a 500MHz machine, and decompressing OGG audio kills our framerate, then audio compression goes. It the sad truth that the tech heads do not call the shots in this department.
...but sometimes it is the right decision. Many people don't see the big need to upgrade their machine, and only dedicated fans are willing to upgrade for your game specifically. Apart from maybe an extra install CD of music, your customers won't notice much difference, but those in the low-end of your CPU target might, not to mention it increases your potential market.
While I'm sure you as geeks have machines that are head and shoulders above the min spec, many people don't. Btw, it should also work as a "decompress-on-install" option to save space on the install discs, while still avoiding the CPU penalty of decompressing in real-time. I seem to remember some *cough*unofficial*cough* releases using this to reduce size at least...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Agreed.
I'm 19 years old, going through college and I txt with my nokia 8290.
The learning curve was pretty steep I admit. Its responsiveness isn't the greatest, you have to learn how to pick words. But when its all done and learned with, Its convenient to drive down the freeway at 80 and message someone with "Dang, can't find gas under x.yz...this war is bogus. Lets recall bush like they are doing to davis in calif"
But text messaging is a rip off I believe. Costs network carriers nothing (compared ot a voice call) yet they ding 5-15 cents a message.
blows my mind away.
thankfully my plan offers 300 free a mo. (and that is down from "unlimited"...makes me think of the comcast post this morn)
-Grump.
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
"Wow. You're a real tool. I especially hate the way you just said the same incredibly nerdy whine twice."
I apologize for pointing out that you didn't actually make an argument. I'll be more sensitive towards your feelings from here on.
Let's see, illegal copies of music on my computer: 0
MP3's: Over 1,000
So umm when did having MP3's become illegal? I have music files on my computer which are completely legal? Sure if I download metallica MP3's and share them on the net, that's illegal. But if a band gives me their MP3's to download and share with their permission that's absolutely not illegal. Not like it matters though your posts are all flaimbait anyway.
Quality != bitrate. What they're trying to do here is find an algorithm that only uses 65,536 bits of compressed data for every second of uncompressed data and sounds as good as 128k.
I mod down pyramid schemes in sigs.
Sounds like a misprint to me-- if the english language had approximately one bit of information per word, we'd have approximately two words.
"1" and "0"
...the difference in mindfucking sound between 32-bit and 64-bit penis-shaped soundwaves coming from the computer speakers, as i think about skins?
do() || do_not();
Seriously, why all the fuss about codecs? I know competition is good and all, but the way things are going, your average Joe isn't going to sit around re-encoding his 40GB music collection...
If they run out of space, they'll just go out and buy a new 120GB drive, and in terms of time=money, they'll be saving.
Besides that, sure, the more standards we can flood users with, the better -- everyone will just LOVE having to figure out what is a music file.
"Waa! He didn't argue with me! Waa! Mommy!"
Too bad he has a point. You called him wrong, you said he doesn't use the same logic as everybody else, but you didn't provide any reasoning as to why. As he said, that's not a rebuttal. I think the proper term is shithead.
Note to everybody else: If you have to resort to that type of rebuttal in order to get your point across, it means you're not winning.
"Derp de derp."
While Hydrogen Audio did provide the resources to host this test, the real work was done by Roberto Amorim, who organised this monster.
Credit where credit is due.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/demo center/9series/avquality/wmamp3/default.htm
This is an interesting test of music quality at different lower bitrates between mp3 and wma.
I think that these results are interesting, but I see MP3, WMA, and perhaps Real as the only power players in this field.
Most music downloads are still mp3, and real is losing their share in streaming all the time.
WMA is also starting to gain in the desktop market. Formerly anti-mp3 guys like myself have come around.
It ain't all bad. And it's from Microsoft, imagine that. ;)
Clif
clifgriffin > blog
If the letters were assigned by frequency it'd be a lot quicker to use once you get used to the layout. Something like:
Althought this is how this logic usually plays out today, I'm not sure it will remain this way for much longer. Especially considering the iPod uses an OS intended for a mobile phone. (Might give you a hint where Apple might be thinking of taking the iPod, and, no, they don't intend to make a mobile phone.)
I see you don't read very well. You might want to re-read my comment where I state that my PDA assists me by playing music.
-- iCEBaLM
If you use predictive text input, you shouldn't need to double-tap a number. This means that you press the number twice and it records it as two sets of [ABC]. The phone stores this simple regex and matches it against a word list, in frequency order.
So you type 8378 ([TUV][[DEF][PQRS][TUV]) and the phone suggests 'Test', hit the alternate word key (if your phone has one) and it'll switch to 'Vest', and back to 'Test'.
Of course, if you're entering URLs or names, or if your phone doesn't have an user dictionary, predictive text input may not help and you're back to pressing 'next' or waiting a second to finish one letter and go to the next if they're on the same key.
It's only bad when you merge an iPod with a hard-drive with a cell-phone and get a phone three times larger than normal and a music player with a number pad, not the best of either world.
Get rid of the hard drive though and use a phone with a graphical display (easy to remap for non-phone UI) and it's suddely very reasonable. Cell phones already have all the circuitry for playing sounds. Plug in headphones and you're set.
Little flash cards can already hold between 256MB and 3GB depending on the type. Easily enough for hours of music.
Don't discount the convergence concept. My cell-phone works as a flashlight (not the screen, it's got two white LEDs at the end) and while it's not as good as a dedicated flashlight I've always got it with me and it's a lot better than nothing. Certainly more useful that I thought when I bought the phone.
Ok, first of all, while the test was DISCUSSED on HydrogenAudio, and most of the participants are HA regulars, Roberto Amorim did all the hard work of organizing the test and compiling the results, dealing with complaints, etc. To not give him credit is not very nice.
/.ers seem to be only half-literate (can write but not read). There is a hilarious number of denegrating comments here by people who know nothing about either statistics or psychoacoustic audio compression. ABC/HR type methodology is the standard for comparing the relative quality of audio sources. Also, a great deal of effort went in to assuring that the best settings for the best encoders for each codec were used for the test. A little reading of the pre-test discussions would reveal this. Further, HydrogenAudio is not a club of audiofools who spend zillions of dollars on fancy speaker cable without any science to back it up. It is an objectivist forum. Anyone who makes statements without backing them up (with something like ABC/HR or ABX results) gets flamed HARSHLY. Some of the regluars have PhDs on various audio topics. They know what the fuck they're doing.
Second, there was a 128kbps test a month or two ago (which for some reason got repeatedly rejected when submitted to slashdot). You can see it here. Unfortunately, the results there aren't quite as interesting (it was mostly a big tie). Unfortunately, tests at higher bitrates are difficult because detecting problems at, say, 160kbps often requires well trained ears and good audio equipment.
Third, it's a good idea when commenting on an article to actually read it and click around on a few links to actually have an idea what you are talking about. Many
Fourth, just because you don't have a use for 64k audio, doesn't mean the results are meaningless. Lots of people have small-capacity players, and some codecs can tolerate that bitrate for very casual listening (such as in the car). Lots of streaming audio sources are at this bitrate or lower. Satellite radio is at 64k or lower. Also, it's not a good idea to try to extend these results to other bitrates. MPC for example, isn't even worth considering at 64kbps, but at bitrates over about 140kbps, it will beat the pants off of anything else.
Finally, for those who want to know more, or want their audio collections to sound best, read the FAQs at HA. Many codecs have a preset where they are transparent for the vast majority of samples; usually a VBR setting that averages somewhere between 160 and 200kbps (such as lame --preset standard, mppenc --standard, oggenc around -q5 or -q6).
... "Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the w
I want to give full respect to the people who put all the research into creating these new audio formats. The results are truly phenomenal for 64kbps codecs. It's a fabulous academic demonstration.
However, each is what it is. A 64kbps codec.
I have about $6000 invested in my 2-channel +subwoofer setup here at home, and I consider that moderate compared to what you can truly achieve. I love listening to music, and it is completely remarkable when it is reproduced as realisticly as possible. So I go to painstaking methods to make sure the AC power is clean, the wiring is right, the distortion is low as possible. The signal to noise ratio is far between, with a good amp, and great speakers... I am especially pleased when the recording I am playing on my wonderful system is in the best production quality that it can possibly be.
As amazing as they are, these 64kbit formats are useless on a person like me. I crave LOSSLESS not LOSSY. I might as well be listening to music on a $60 AIWA boombox, since it would sound relatively similar either way. All the subtle beauty and realism of the music is completely wasted with destructive compression.
And for those of you that say it's for portable devices, It's not too unreasonable to get a portable player that plays high streaming VBR mp3s with some nice ~$100-$150 headphones. The small little investment to hear your music from 20hz-20khz flat response with low distortion is worth every single penny.
I simply do not understand the need to take our ever improving technology and lower the quality of the music. If anything, it should be increasing... higher resolutions. 24bit/192khz technologies, and wonderful DSP equalizers, large portable storage devices... they are all realities now, but nobody seems to care but the fanatics like me. I would think that techno geeks would care more about the music they love, but that does not seem to be the case. The only logic that I can fathom to explain why is that perhaps they don't even know what they're missing. I know I didn't, until I actually experienced how good sound quality can be on the right system.
to fit on my olde skool mp3 player (which has 32 MB on board and ONLY takes 32MB smart Media cards, no larger) I sure as hell re-rip to 64 kbps MONO.
Why? I use it on the plane (Crazy background noise), on public transpo like buses and DC Metro (crazy background noise) and in our raised floor lab (Crazy background noise).
And I can't hear any difference!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
"Note to everybody else: this is not a debating society. There are no rebuttals. There's no winning."
Then why did you have such a problem with his reply?
"Don't be such a fuckin tool. Grow the fuck up."
Am I calling anybody a tool? Am I telling people to grow the 'fuck' up? Am I the one who turned into a 12 year old kid when my response was rightfully questioned? Am I the one who needs to grow up here?
"Also, quit referring to yourself by dumbass names like "nanogator." That's just fucking childish."
Is that the best you got? You can't support your side of a debate, so you attack my name of all things? You're calling me childish?
Heh thanks for the laugh.
"Derp de derp."
"Note to everybody else: this is not a debating society. There are no rebuttals. There's no winning."
Wait a sec... you started the debate, and now you're claiming it isn't one?
... is the real problem. Give me a device that can actually do all those things for a decent amount of time. Something ergonomic wouldn't hurt either.
Given the increasing popularity of hand free headsets - the old "how does hold against the cheek" test for a cellphone design may be on the way out. How long until we get wireless cellphone headphones? This really is the last roadblock to the convergence device.
I was thinking about this a while back. Mp3 files are in the frequency / time domain while raw audio is in the amplitude / time domain.
If you have an x voice synth (maybe 64 / 128 or so) where each voice is a sinewave and where each voice can start at any phase with respect to the others, would you not have a synth that could reproduce most sound convincingly?
Seems that synth today is an mp3 player with the usual CPU ram and DAC, but it could be a bunch of nicely designed oscillators and a CPU and ram as well. The CPU probably would not have to do as much to get the music played because it would be in charge of only the ends of things, not all the bits inbetween.
Another choice would be to include a powerful CPU and the same synth design. The extra compute might make lower bit rates possible on less hardware than we would need today.
Maybe the parent of your post has it right, but not at quite the right level. Exchange frequency for instrument and it seems interesting at least.
Just a couple thoughts...
Blogging because I can...
.. and the results are here. That news was submitted before to /. but didn't make it through.
RTFA. VBR was used for Ogg Vorbis in both test.
What about teenagers like me who try their friend's pair of Sennheisers and that very day go and buy their own? Sadly, most teens do seem to prefer the crappy wraparound atrocities disguised as headphones.
Still, I have a lot of 128kbps mp3s because it'd be too much work for me to go out and replace them. If I were going to do that, I'd probably end up going for ogg anyway. The main thing that keeps me from starting on that right now is that there's little to no support for them on portable devices, and the metadata editor in XMMS blows.
With storage capacities increasing for mini hard drives and prices falling, any compression less than 128kbps to fit more songs on your portable devices is a stopgap measure if mp3s continues to be the compression standard. Better compression obviously means getting more value out of your portable device. Since some of these codecs does a better job at compression, at what bitrate would Nero HE-AAC or Ogg compare to Lame mp3 in regard to a similar rating? Finding out those ratios should be useful to this community. I think I saw a post which said that Ogg is about 96kish in sound quality compared to mp3. Which if correct gives us 25% increased storage. Would nero be better or some other codec? Bring it down to 80kbps or so. Going after a arbitrary "64kbps" is silly. Now if they were made so we could change the firmware... oh babbbbbbby!!! more excitement for us nerds =P =)
I've had too many Johnnie Walkers already :-D
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
You've all got it wrong. Nobody whants to listen to 64kbps audio in whatever format, 80kbps in ogg is the lower resonable limit for music I think.
However, I use my PDA to watch movies/shows on the train and here's where you want to go down to 64kbps or even 48kbps. I've used both mp3 and ogg (ogg + divx in the ogm container) and I can tell you that ogg wins over mp3 at these low bitrates by long ways, doesn't matter if you have $200 or $2 headphones.
Sure a test at a higher bitrate would be interesting since that should be the quality to go if you want to archive your music. But this kind of test would be nearly impossible
In this 64kbps test there were not that many participants. Spotting the artifacts was pretty simple and you didn't need "golden ears". In the previous 128kpbs test most samples had to be so called "hard to encode" samples so that the listeners could detect the artifacts.
If we go even higher in bitrate (where the codecs are supposed to be transparent) most people can't spot artifacts any longer - even with problem samples. It would be hard to find enough people to get a statistically relevant result.
Actually I do on my Smartphone SPV, I have a 256 MB mem card in it and Im quite happy to leave my minidisc at home for now.
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
Judging from your silence, it's clear I kicked your ass. Guess you'll think twice before flaming people.
"Derp de derp."
"I'm 19 years old" and "Lets recall bush"... why am I not surprised?
Goddamn commie youth. Don't know a good thing if it bites them in the ass.
HE AAC, being a new codec, likely has a lot of room for improvement. I'd also be surprised if Ahead were using the best psychoacoustic model available.
>And seriously, does anyone listen to music encoded at 64 kbps? 128 is the bare minumum.
I have a tiny gadget that I plug into my car stereo so I don't have to lug a CD case around. It holds 192MB of data, so to make the most of it I compress everything to 64kbps. Since the music is normally competing with road noise anyway, it's "good enough".
Through headphones, though, one really can tell the difference.
It's called mono :-)
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
I own a Motorola A830. Its a phone I bought from 3 (3g phone services here in .au)
It plays mp3s, has an sd card slot, does bluetooth/IR, fully functional email client, wide band GPRS, everything.
This is the true merging of PDA/Phone. Even more so with the Motorola A920. Check them out.
--
The last digit of pi is four.
i should also mention the phone (like all good video phones) supports mpeg 4, and 3gpp movie files. i have a 512mb sd card, i wake up in the morning, put a couple of hours worth of mp3s, 2 or 3 futurama eps, and off i head to work or uni depending on the day.
--
The last digit of pi is four.
I agree - with some reservations.
:)
Firstly, if you have a wireless headset for your PDAPhone, you are still carrying two devices (the headset and the PDA). The challenge will be to put them in a common holder arrangement, so that you feel like you're only carrying one device, but can pull out the headset easily when required. Then you have to worry about losing the headset in the same way people lose the stylus. People are already looking for a usable single device.. having a remote headset doesn't ease this desire.
Secondly, never underestimate the fashion factor. People may balk at a convergent device if they don't look good while using it
Producers of convergent devices should bear this in mind as much as anyone else - especially since many of the people who want one of these are business people for whom image can be an important part of their job.
Yeah - anybody over nineteen understands the issues at hand well enough to realize he should be executed for treason instead of recalled.
"Yes, little friend. You really inflicted an serious act of violence on me! Woo!"
I must have, you sure got sore about it.
"You're a real badass, "nanopenis."
Is that all you got? Heh. No wonder you gave up.
"Derp de derp."
What I want to know is why do we even try to make one devise that can do all these things.
What is overlapping in these devices?
So, we make one device that has the main CPU, Memory, Storage, and Battery. Give it a very basic display. Another device has the speakers (headphones) and microphone. Another is the Display/Input mechanism.
Now, the main unit doesn't have to be that ergonomic, it just has to fit on the body somewhere. The display is thin and light and easy to use. They communicate wirelessly. Maybe the display has a small amount of memory in order to function as an input devise when away from the main unit. Phones have voice dialing for common numbers now, so you'd only pull out the display for numbers you don't use often.
The base unit and each of the other units (more can be thought of, I'm sure) could be mix-n-match. Poor students could get the basic of each, someone who wanted could get the basic main unit, but a color screen. Or just the basic screen, but the most memory/storage and fastest CPU. Heck, if we get standards going, you might not even need to stick with one manufacturer (not likely - but the whole thing actually makes sense, so it's not likely at all).
We need something faster than bluetooth to get the display separate from the main unit, but as long as we're keeping it all a 'BAN' (Body Area Network) we don't need to worry about distance.
Oh, well, I can dream, can't I?
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
It's a shame you posted anonymously when you flamed me, because I absolutely agree with you. There are many "true audiophiles" that would consider my setup mid-fi, or horribly low end. So if even I'm complaining about media quality with my "low quality" $6000 stereo, what does that say about the media types these days? Why should you as an extreme audiophile even bother to buy music these days, when you know the production quality of the recording is never going to come close to the abilities of your sound system?
Anyway, I'd be happy to get rid of my "crap" if you'd be willing to send me some better stuff... Wanna help a poor guy out? I would buy it myself, but the cost of the equipment you listed is more money than I could make in 3 years, if I saved every penny, and frankly I'd rather have a 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX STI for the price. =) If you have a heart, please send me some B&W Signature 800s with a pair of high end McIntosh monoblocks, and a Meridian digital processor/DVDA player so I can hear the difference between these "crappy VBR mp3s" and true CD quality. I can sell my current system and spend all the money I get on the wires I would need to hook that system up. Thank you! =)