Next-Gen Low-Latency Open Codec Beats HE-AAC

Aldenissin writes "From the Xiph.org developers, Opus is a non-patent encumbered codec designed for interactive usages, such as VoIP, telepresence, and remote jamming, that require very low latency. When they started working on Opus (then known as CELT), they used the slogan 'Why can't your telephone sound as good as your stereo?', and they weren't kidding. Now, test results demonstrate that Opus's performance against HE-AAC, one of the strongest (but highest-latency) codecs at this bitrate, bests the quality of two of the most popular and respected encoders for the format, on the majority of individual audio samples receiving a higher average score overall. Hydrogenaudio conducted a 64kbit/sec multiformat listening test including Opus, aoTuV Vorbis, two HE-AAC encoders, and a 48kbit/sec AAC-LC low anchor. Comparing 30 diverse samples using the highly sensitive ABC/HR methodology, Opus is running with 22.5ms of total latency but the codec can go as low as 5ms."

Comments

HE-AAC is worse than LE-AAC in terms of quality

[carlhaagen]

HE-AAC uses SBR to reduce its data footprint. This results in worse reproduction of the source audio than LE-AAC at same (and often even lower) bitrate. The whole deal with HE is that it can maintain good quality at very low bitrate, by giving up accuracy. The article is misleading in the sense that it alludes people into believing that HE-AAC is the best choice for audio, regardless what kind and its purpose, incl. the thing the predominant masses think of when hearing the term audio - music - and do far no digitally lossy encoder can rival Apple's Core Audio LE-AAC codec when it comes to that case.