Vorbis And Musepack Win 128kbps Multiformat Test

technology is sexy writes "After 11 days of collecting results Roberto Amorim today announced the results of his 2nd Multi-Format listening test: Vorbis fork AoTuV scored the highest and ranks as the winner together with open source contender Musepack closely followed by Apple's AAC implementation and LAME MP3, which improved markably since last year thanks to further tunings of its VBR model done by Gabriel Bouvigne. Sony's ATRAC3 format ranks last after WMA on the third place. The suprising success of AoTuV (compared to last year's performance of Xiph.org's reference implementation) shows the potential of Vorbis and possible room for further tuning and improvments. Take a look at the detailed results and their discussion at Hydrogenaudio.org."

Comments

But does it matter?

[Gothmolly]

When everyone gets an iPod, dood, or the WinFooTunes player that you get with your Dell only works with WMA, or your in-dash CD player only groks 128kbps MP3s, whats the practical application of the other codecs? It's nice that we propeller-heads on Slashdot can smirk while we rip everything to FLAC and write custom Perl apps to transcode-on-the-fly to our wireless enabled MythTV box, but for John Q. Drone^H^H^H^H^HConsumer, none of this matters.

So how do we get the word out? How do we start the revolution? Open-Source hardware?

Re:But does it matter?

[millahtime]

There is a difference to this. At the time there was no alternative to the CD-RW. There are many compressed sound types that are being marketed.

mp3 still defacto standard

[Random Web Developer]

No matter what researchers find the best format, the best format for users is what they can doubleclick to play, use on their el-cheapo portable mp3 player or whatever music device they own.

This might be of interest to musicians but the proverbial "jane doe" will keep using mp3 for quite a while

Re:mp3 still defacto standard

[Zilch]

2 - It's an open-source format, i.e. it reeks of piracy and hackers in the minds of music player manufacturers and of the public

Yeah - because piracy and hackers didn't have a hand in making MP3 popular.

Zilch

The Big Marketing Push

[millahtime]

The open source ones don't have the big push amungst the general population. So, number 3 on the list Apple (ACC) can say in independent tests ACC scored higher than WMA or MP3. The top 2 don't have the marketing push to get out and be popular in the general population.

This does give more fuel to Apple. Although I'm not complaining about them having fuel over Microsoft.

How much of this is just OGG fans voting?

[DrewBeavis]

I read some of the results, and I'm not a Vorbis hater or anything, but how much of this is open source fans voting for their favorite codec? I looked at the test just now, but can't tell if it was blind or not.

Compared with radio

[danormsby]

Compare this with radio. There are a lot of popular AM and LW radio stations here in the UK even though FM is a superior format. MP3 will be around for almost ever due to the popularity and level of takeup.

More vorbis content is needed

[mojo17]

One way I see Vorbis making it into the mainstream is if there were high availability of Vorbis content on the net. This includes P2P channels as well. If music releasers in the underworld start adopting vorbis, then Joe 'I own the original CD' Downloader will get a far wider familiarity with the codec, same as to what happened IMHO with xvid. More content will eventually lead consumers to start demanding vorbis compatibility in their hardware.

No

[RAMMS EIN]

No, they won't. Their definition of innovation is making the same thing in an incompatible way.

Blind testing? And "Best sound" or "Accuracy"?

[turnstyle]

Of course it matters! I took a quick look, but I didn't seem to find anything describing how the tests were performed.

IMHO, the best way to test is to provide an uncompressed source and a variety of compressed files, and ask "which most closely matches the uncompressed source" -- and NOT "which sounds best."

Years ago, I did an a/b switch test with a high-end audio engineer between a CD and a 128kbit/s MP3. Though we could both clearly hear a difference, he actually guessed wrong.

My point is: the test needs to be blind, and the test should be looking for compressed files that most closely sound like the uncompressed original -- and not the ones that "sound best."

It's called a "control"...

[gumpish]

What if a lossless codec were included in the test - and it came in dead last?

That would provide useful information: either the listeners weren't up to the job or the lossy codecs at ~128 kbps were truly indistinguishable from the source material.

Re:Inaccurate test, big bitrate differences

[13Echo]

128 / 149 = 86%

Vorbis is not a CBR codec like WMA. It's almost impossible to get it directly on the nose. The encoder doesn't easily allow that kind of control without seriously damaging the quality of the finished file. I'm not sure that the 14% difference really matters as much as you insist.

To be fair though, WMA does perform reasonably well for a CBR format. However, that's not what the test is about. It's about getting the best sound out of a similar amount of space.

I don't doubt that Vorbis would still beat WMA if the bitrates were 100% even, to be honest with you. It's just not that simple to get it directly on the nose. It would have been interesting to see the results of Vorbis on a quality level that is a notch lower, so that we could see how much variance there is between each level.

Reason 2 is bogus.

[anti-NAT]

2 - It's an open-source format, i.e. it reeks of piracy and hackers in the minds of music player manufacturers and of the public

I think you are way off here.

Firstly, a number of portable players support Ogg Vorbis. There is a list of four here, I'm sure the number will increase.

Secondly, I'd doubt that many of the public know about Ogg Vorbis, let alone consider it to "reek[s] of piracy and hackers".

Furthermore, the "success" of P2P music sharing indicates that the public are the last group of people to have morals about the source or the format of the music they listen to.

Ogg isn't as widely used by the public, because it is not known by the public, it is as simple as that. That will change, as more and more players support it, and the public find out that it is a DRM free alternative to the flexibility restricted formats such as AAC.