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After 4 Years, HydrogenAudio Opens New 128kbps Listening Test
kwanbis writes "After more than four years, a new MP3@128kbps listening test is finally open at HydrogenAudio.org! The featured encoders are: LAME 3.97, LAME 3.98.2, iTunes 8.0.1.11, Fraunhofer IIS mp3surround CL v1.5, and Helix v5.1 2005.08.09. The low anchor is l3enc 0.99a. The purpose of this test is to find out which popular MP3 VBR encoder outputs the best quality on bitrates around 128 kbps. All encoders experienced major or minor updates that should improve audio quality or encoding speed, and we have a totally new encoder on board. Note that you do not have to test all samples — it is a great help even if you test one or two. The test is scheduled to end on November 22nd, 2008."
good headphones are a must for such close listening tests. you'll only be able to hear really major differences with most speakers.
Wow, what a mess. Download this package. Now download fourteen more packages (DownThemAll is the only reason I didn't give up right then). Y'know, I'm kinda interested in this subject, as I have no trouble hearing artifacts in most 128kbps CBR MP3s, but this is just a huge pain in the ass. Wouldn't a simple Flash app have made things so much easier?
I'm not too worried about the quality of my music. Since I mostly listen to noize, industrial and EBM, the occasional scratching, pop, siren, explosion, grinding metal and screaming only accentuate the already apparent awesomeness of what I'm burning holes in my ear drums with.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
Umm... 128 Kbps? Seriously? And no Ogg Vorbis, AAC etc... If you're bothering to set up a listening test, why limit yourself to 128 Kbps MP3?
Also, this should really be set up as a blind test, you get to listen to two clips, and have to choose which is better. The clips are randomized, of course... I could go on, but I'd just make myself sound even more arrogant. ;)
.: Max Romantschuk
That's great if you're trying to use a codec for a purpose it was never designed for and nobody actually uses. Would you choose a JPEG codec based on its ability to encode/decode raw audio? Would you choose a car based on its ability to traverse the English Channel?
is there anything else I should be aware of as someone who transcodes everything to mono before I copy it to my mp3 player ?
Some songs are recorded with parts out of phase between the stereo channels. This means that the left and right channels, instead of being up/up and down/down, are up/down and down/up, which creates directional effects in stereo (especially on a surround receiver) but cancels itself out in the conversion to mono. For instance, "Happiness in Slavery" on Broken by Nine Inch Nails loses the snare in mono, and the quality of the snare drum in the remix of Coburn's "We Interrupt This Program" used with the NEDM meme drifts back and forth between clap-like and snare-like.
"Overtones" are not an issue
Incorrect. One of the ways MP3 achieves lower bitrates is by removing overtones of a fundamental frequency when the overtones are reasonably quieter. If, for example, you pluck an "A" string tuned to 440hz, the string would also resonate at 880Hz, 1320Hz, 1760, and so on. An MP3 encoder would remove these overtones if they were significantly quieter than the original 440Hz tone, since research has shown that the human ear doesn't really notice them if the fundamental is much louder. The problem arises, as the parent noted, in some niche music; however anyone should be able to notice this in things like cymbals, where the most basic sound and timbre of the instrument is defined entirely by the overtones it produces. You can hear this as an almost flanger-esque quality to the cymbals in sub-128Kb/s encoded MP3s. Any drummer will tell you that this drives them up a wall, and the way the psychoacoustic model of MP3 compression handles overtones is the culprit.