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Audiophiles Test MP3, EPAC and MWMA

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the sub-cd-quality dept.

An anonymous reader wrote in to tell us that "Sound&Vision has tested three different "codecs" and compared the sound quality to a normal CD. The three are MP3 system, Lucent's EPAC, and Microsoft's Windows Media Audio V2. None could give full cd quality but MP3 was the over all winner."

1 of 153 comments (clear)

  1. Why testing MP3 sucks... by kju · · Score: 5

    All these comparements of "MP3" against other audio compression technologies are rather meaningless.

    There is simple no "MP3" at all. MP3 is using a psychoacustic model for data reduction, and this model is not specified in the MP3 patents and therefore there are different models out there with varying results. I know of at least 6 models at this time:

    - DIST10 The acustic model used by the ISO reference source. Said to be rather bad.

    - BLADEENC Is basically the DIST10 model, but with few improvements and fixes.

    - FRAUNHOFER Used by Producer, l3enc etc. Said to be one of the best.

    - GPSYCHO GPL-model used by LAME. Apperently also quite good quality.

    - XING/OLD The old Xing Encoder used this. Cuts the frequencies at 16 kHz. Increndibly fast compared to others, but bad quality.

    - XING/NEW Apparently the new Xing Encoder (at least the linux version) use a new model, as there is a new switch for changing between cut at 16 kHz and not cut. To my tests the quality is ok.


    So you see, testing just one MP3 encoder is not meaningfull. All these encoders have different qualities, different speeds. Some encoders have better sound at 128 kbps than other at 160 kbps or more. Use a bad encoder, and the result will be bad. Use a good encoder, and the difference to a CD will be heard only by trained people (these people who helped developing the psychoacustic models).

    Additional every psychoacustic model will not match on all people. The human ear is just too complicated and different for a catch-all model. So even different persons may rate the encoders different in quality.

    If i may offer a advise for MP3-Encoding: Use the new Xing-Encoder for Linux or LAME. Make use of variable Bitrate-Encoding. Fixed Bitrate-Encoding is bad, as the bitrate will always be to low at some very special pieces of the audio and very often just to high. Variable bitrate encoding tries to use the Bitrate just needed. I've made very good experiences using VBR and got smaller files which sounds better.