Public AAC Listening Test @ ~96 Kbps [July 2011].

The folks at the Hydrogen Audio Forums have for years been benefiting the world with their patience, technical skills, and hyper-focus on sound quality, by comparing the real-world sound of various codecs and bit-rates for audio encoding. Under the scope for the latest public listening test (slated to run until July 27) are the following AAC encoders: Nero 1.5.4; Apple QuickTime 7.6.9 true VBR; Apple QuickTime 7.6.9 constrained VBR; Fraunhofer (Winamp 5.62); Coding Technologies (Winamp 5.61); and ffmpeg's AAC (low anchor).

Comments

FFmpeg's AAC encoder is not finished

[Cigaes]

FFmpeg's AAC encoder is not finished (yet?), and flagged as experimental. Including it in such a test is rather a dubious idea: it is likely to give a bad impression of the whole project.

Having the new vo-aacenc as contender for the Free Software community would IMHO have been more relevant.

Many claim so and most a quite wrong.

[guidryp]

Almost no one can hear a difference between loss-less and any of the codecs at high bit rates (256K+).

Though many think they can, until actually blind tested.

If you can reliably tell the difference in proper blind testing, you are likely have better hearing/perception than 99.9999 % of the population.

I think I have great hearing, but when I did some ABX testing, my ability to distinguish drops off completely by 160 K VBR on MP3s and that is in quiet room with quality headphones straining to ID any difference.

I am skeptical of any golden eared claims these days pooh-poohing modern codecs.

Re:FLAC

[maeka]

FLAC sound clearer to me.

That is not a description of the type of artifact one is likely to find in AAC or MP3. Try again.

Yes, I have absolute pitch, if that plays any role.

Nope, that isn't where lossy codecs fail either.

I do not understand why people get up in arms when somebody says they her the difference: be glad that you do not.

Up in arms? No. It was an honest inquiry. If you are truly able to distinguish AAC/MP3 from FLAC on a general basis you would be most valuable.

Ya see, lossy codecs tend to fail in particular ways on specific types of samples. If someone was able to readily distinguish lossless from lossy across a wide (or even moderate) collection of samples they would be damn near unique and quite useful as a tester of dev changes.

Alas lots of people talk and few actually prove they're swinging the big dick they brag about once subjected to double-blind testing.

Re:And the point of this is?

[GrievousMistake]

The Hydrogen Audio Forums tests have traditionally used a sound methodology, it would probably be worth reading up on it before you comment, lest you make a fool out of yourself.

They will not be trying to measure how 'good' each codec sounds, they are trying to measure how close it is to the source material, with a 'perfect score' being statistically indistinguishable.