AAC vs. OGG vs. MP3 843
asv108 writes "Yesterday, Apple unveiled their new music service claiming that the AAC format "combines sound quality that rivals CD." Here is a little comparison of lossy music codecs, comparing an Apple ripped AAC file with the commonly used MP3 codec and the increasingly popular OGG codec. Spectrum analysis was used to see which format did the best job of maintaining the shape of the original waveform." Wish they had WMAs in there too. And for the spoilage, it looks like OGG comes out on top.
Spectrum analysis is useless (Score:2, Insightful)
The only thing that counts is if they remove the right stuff and keep the stuff we like to hear. Only listening tests are valid to judge a lossy audio codec!
Lossless (Score:1, Insightful)
Maybe in the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
sadly, I don't think OGG is *currently* known to anybody except nerds or IT pros.
Ogg (Score:5, Insightful)
The important aspect of it is that it's free. There are no patents (at least as far as we know of) preventing anyone from using it, and it's made quite clear that the code can be included in open and closed source software without royalty payments.
pretty lame! (Score:2, Insightful)
So it's interesting to compare the Apple codec with all the others, but this review doesn't do it.
-mse
Anyone seen real specs for Apple's format? (Score:5, Insightful)
What kept me from buying the dozen or so tracks I found that I thought were worth a buck a pop was the fact that my Rio Receivers need MP3 or, via "upgraded" software, FLAC, etc... Although the AAC->CD->MP3 route is possible, and I intended to buy a track and see how the quality comes out, has anyone seen anything about how the DRM works on the Apple files?
I'm wondering if there are any libraries out there for decoding them, even within the confines of the DRM... just so I can get them into either a raw data stream or something so I can play them on my Rio Receivers... I'd probably switch to buying all my music (where possible) from them, if thats the case... but if I can't get them into a format I can play using my existing equipment, I'll have to pay the five buck "CD"-tax to get them in a format I can rip to high-bitrate MP3.
Re:MP3 Pro is better than OGG in some cases (Score:4, Insightful)
Ogg may not sound as good as MP3 Pro[1] but so what? Open Source is better overall simply because it is both Free and free. On top of that you even point out yourself that MP3 Pro is only sometimes better than Ogg. So why pay for something that will only sometimes be better if you can get as damn near with a Free format anyway?
[1]: Sometimes.
But what does it actually sound like??? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft likes to show how their wma looks better than the other compression methods... it does look beautiful in graphs, but it sounds all tinny and horrible.
I don't care if the compressed frequency response graph looks nothing like the original frequency graph, as long as my ears are unable to tell the difference between the two.
Re:Gotta pick something... (Score:4, Insightful)
Arggghh! (Score:4, Insightful)
Will people please stop talking about Ogg as though it were an audio compression scheme. It is not - it is a wrapper format.
I don't care what kind of tests were done, but anything comparing Ogg to a lossy compression scheme is bound to be unfair, as the Ogg family includes a lossless encoding scheme [sf.net]. Not only does Ogg include FLAC and Vorbis, but it also includes Speex, targetted at voice, and Theora, a video codec.
So please, stop trying to compare Ogg to MP3. It's like comparing AVI or Quicktime to MP3.
Re:Unfortunately I'm sticking with MP3 (Score:2, Insightful)
I do not buy a portable player which does not supports Ogg.
Re:To be fair... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Hard To Tell Difference (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have to do all that to tell the difference, doesn't that kinda tell you something?
Re:Hard To Tell Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Arggghh! (Score:3, Insightful)
bleat (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Gotta pick something... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think so. With all the other things being equal, free, open standard wins.
Re:The only problem with Ogg (Score:2, Insightful)
As for not needing larger hard drives... well, I have a 60 gig which is about half full; it feels rather constraining at times - capturing video in full PAL resolution sucks up close to 1GB/min, and my CPU is nowhere near fast enough to encode that in real time.
Re:Two Words (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at GIF, JPEG, and PNG. GIF is used for its quality, JPEG is used for its size, PNG is used by geeks. Unisys started suing webmasters, now the patent holder for JPEG is ruffling feathers, PNG is slowly becoming the accepted format. All it takes is some greedy SOB to make Ogg an attractive format.
Re:Ogg (Score:3, Insightful)
Using a Winamp vorbis encoder plugin, I was able to achieve significant crunches on classroom lectures, that were close enough to the original to be useful. Bear in mind too, that this was before Speex became part of the project.
MP3 on the otherhand was totally useless at anything less than 64k. The loss drove me nuts.
Let's not consider only that Vorbis is free...but it's also further extensible. Last I knew, none of the "new" audio formats being touted could support up to 255 discreet audio channels...which could be a very big hit with multispeaker surround systems well into the future. Bitrate peeling promises to be very exciting...once the details of that are all worked out. The Ogg multimedia foundation will be a true thing of beauty.
And it's free not just from the licensing and patents...but also from that DRM BS that all of us hate so much. Probably another reason Apple decided to go with ACC was to get the DRM support from the record labels.
Re:It's Vorbis, not Ogg. (Score:1, Insightful)
Luckily the stupid name issue is irrelevant, since Ogg/Vorbis is unlikely to ever work 'out of the box' on Windows and so is doomed to be unavailable to 99% of the population who have never even heard the word 'codec' let alone know what it means. Sad but true.
Re:Vorbis! Not Ogg, Vorbis! (Score:4, Insightful)
IT DOESN'T F'ING MATTER!
Just like Linux isn't an OS, (it's a kernel) no one aside from you and some other geeks (not meant as an insult, I am a geek too, obviously) will ever convince others of the truth.
More importantly it doesn't even matter. The details are subtle and by continuing the geeky "I'm better than the stupid lusers" all you are doing is keeping Vorbis from becoming more popular -- people will become pissed off that they get hassled every time they mention it, and then ignore it in the future.
Just need to flame! (Score:1, Insightful)
Bose guy: I have original 901 Series I speakers. They are great. Bose lost a lot of their touch by trying to please everyone. Oh well... But you got nice headphones.
Sennheiser Guy: I have HD 590 by Sennheisers. They were the CHEAPEST I could find that didn't had any kind of problems by Sennheiser. 80$ Senns will buy you good cans but that's it. Not the end of the world.
Ogg people: I used to be on the vorbis mailing list. Ppl saying Ogg a wrapper are right. But ppl know the files by their extension. Only pros know this, as was previously stated. And only inside ppl know that Vorbis is what drives Ogg inside. This is so much off-topic I don't care. For all ANYONE should know, Ogg is a really great format. Mp3 is a great format. WMV is a great format. AAC is a great format. And I don`t care on any inside technicalities, subtleties or anything. I just want to encode. I only want to download. I only want to listen.
K... my bag is empty.
I don't care wether WMV is a better format than AAC. WMV takes up a lot of processor power to reach its goal. It also contains that ever bad licensing limitation. I find this totally impratical and
MP3 is a great format. It still has potential. It is mainstream and Lame v0 q0 will give good enough quality for everyone except for mastering. Easy. Works. Good quality. +-220Kbps . Twice as high as AAC. Oh well.
I don't need to know of patents and free software. Quicktime can decode my file. I can burn them. I can rip them. I can do whatever I want with them. If I want to lose some quality, I can transcode them to MP3 and play them everywhere after. 99c a pop and you have the song to do whatever you want for your private use. That's a first by a big company for me.
As far as audio quality goes, I do see a slight difference in AAC between an original and this file. This makes me believe it's not for audiophiles. But audiophiles usually buy their CDs with XRCD or HDCD or SACD or other high quality encoding so any download would be unacceptable anyways. So why bother with that. 128 is great for anyone and it's streamable so you can play them instantly with broadband. I find this very nice indeed.
Anonymous Coward
Re:Bose??? Buahahaha (Score:2, Insightful)
First, the subwoofer + satellite model is fundamentally flawed. 20Hz is directional. Bass doesn't "fill the room like fog" -- when a train's coming, you can hear the direction, right?
If you bought Bose, you overpaid for consumer grade stuff and the Circuit City man swindled you out of your money. Big 3-way cabinets produce a flat signal, but, granted, they take up space. Those tiny cubes sound like fluorescent lights -- almost white noise, not quite, but in a cheaper package. Sticking a subwoofer under the table doesn't make up for it.
If you want to listen to music, you should be prepared to make space for the equipment it takes to do it.
Re:Two Words (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you point out one player? Because I've never seen them.
Yep. The 5GB iPod I bought over a year ago plays AAC encoded files (after installing the v1.3 Firmware Update), as do the other 700,000 iPods out there. Combine that with the new Apple music store, and overnight you've got a whole lot of AAC encoded music out there with hardware support.
Useless Comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
The only value I can see in a spectrum comparison would be to find obvious errors in the encoder or decoder. Like the 16kHz spike in the Xing encoder. But how likely is that going to be these days?
The only proper comparison involves a good hi-fi, a sensibly furnished room, and a comfortable chair. It is called "golden ear" testing and it's the ONLY way to compare psychoacoustic models.
Or at least it's the only way until the research scientists work out how the human brain works.
Re:Two Words (Score:2, Insightful)
Sure, the MP3 format may be disliked by the RIAA, but the very fact almost EVERY hardware manufacturer supports the format bodes well for its future. I mean, when you have portable CD players, automotive CD players and even DVD console players supporting MP3 format audio burned onto a recordable CD, that says a lot about the MP3 format acceptance.
The AAC format will survive because of Apple's sheer marketing influence, even though Apple has such a small share of the overall computer market. The very high popularity of iPod will at least guarantee that the AAC format can survive, since AAC is one of the native storage formats for iPod players. I wouldn't be surprised that AAC gets a good amount of third-party hardware support, since AAC does have Digital Rights Management (DRM) support, something the RIAA really likes.
As for the Ogg format, you can forget about its success except among the very serious geek crowd. The fact that you can't play Ogg-formatted files on portable and automotive CD players out of the box bodes poorly for widespread acceptance of the format.
Re:The presentation... (Score:5, Insightful)
Get a clue already. Apple went with AAC because it's great quality, supports the (fairly mild and necessary to get the RIAA onboard) DRM restrictions for the service, and is a subset of the excellent MPEG4 video codec.
Even if Ogg is better quality at lower bitrate (a point that I am not convinced of, "waveform comparisons" notwithstanding), Apple has legitimate reasons for going AAC that have nothing to do with The Man trying to keep you and the open source community down. Jesus, it's not always about you, mkay?
Spectum analysis in invalid (Score:5, Insightful)
The most respected technique is double-blind testing using an ABX tool such as PC ABX [pcabx.com], WinABX [arrakis.es] or ABC/HR [ff123.net].
More info on conducting blind tests can be found at the PC ABX site [pcabx.com].
OGG who? (Score:2, Insightful)
Amongst who? Slashdot readers? It's certainly not consumers. Everyone uses mp3 (mpeg 2 layer 3). Apple's AAC (mpeg 4) does sound amazing. I've bought several songs already in that format.
OGG may sound good, but I wouldn't know. It's going to be relegated to the nerd community (which I am a proud member), but I just don't see it breaking through.
Spectral analysis != psychoacoustic model... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only way to test this is to use double-blind listening tests. The spectral analysis stuff is absolutely useless for finding out how good the music actually sounds.
Re:Hard To Tell Difference (Score:4, Insightful)
Even then you would probably have to be selective. Rich orchestral works (say, Janacek, Mahler, Sibelius) won't show an obvious difference, but something more spare (e.g. Debussy string quartet or a good recording of baroque strings) will show a big difference that should be evident even on poorer quality equipment.
CD is the problem, not wma, mp3 or ogg (Score:3, Insightful)
While most master-to-CD transfers sound fine, classical music tends to lose its "warmth." I am no audiophile but I noticed a big difference when I listened to Crux Shadows live and on CD. Speaking of audiophiles, by the time they can afford to buy their must-have equipment, they've already lost their hearing. Give them 128kps mp3 file stamped on vinyl and will swear it sounds better than your original CD
Re:That's all very well but (Score:5, Insightful)
[rant] I wish the author would present his graphs in a more readable way. A screen dump of Photoshop in WinXP is not a professional way to show data. It's ironic that while reviewing lossy audio formats he opts to use a lossy image format (JPEG) for the graphs. I had to double their size on my screen just to make some sense out of them. [/rant]
It's not difficult to gain better-than-CD quality. CDs have been around since the early 1980s, and their main drawback is that they have a low sample rate, 44.1KHz. This is why many sound engineers prefer vinyl. because it's an analogue format, vinyl has a potentially infinite sample frequency range (although it's obviously limited by the recording and playback equipment, and by the physics of the media itself). Apple has used original masters (not CDs) to create much of its song library, so all they have to do is encode at a higher frequency than 44.1KHz. At a guess, they're probably using 48KHz, which is on par with DAT and MiniDisc.
I'm not surprised that Apple is using AAC. For one thing, it is clearly better than the decade-old MP3 format in all respects, and the licensing costs are probably the same or better. Technically, it may not be as good as Ogg, but most people don't even know what Ogg is so it doesn't matter. As long as Apple can say "our format is better than MP3 and CD audio" (the two prevailing formats), they will have the attention of consumers. AAC is a more mature format than Ogg (Ogg isn't bad, but AAC is more tried-and-proven), and is probably more compatible with existing DRM technologies. DRM is important to keep the recording companies happy and to ensure that the files will only play on devices that Apple specifies (like on Macs and iPods).
A major stumbling block for Ogg is that until fairly recently it was necessary to use a floating point processor to play the format. In the arena of portable devices, only PDAs have floating point capability, which is why you can play Ogg files on your Zaurus and not on your iPod. AAC is already supported by many devices, so Apple has a larger potential market (although at present only iPods can play the files).
Ogg vs. AAC (Score:2, Insightful)
A better comparison would be WMA vs. AAC and OGG vs. MP3.
PNG (Score:3, Insightful)
So, instead of people doing the intelligent thing and switching to something that is unencumbered by patent liability, people stand around with their pants down and get bent over.
It sure is painful to watch...
Re:That's all very well but (Score:4, Insightful)
If people deliberately want to alter the sound, that should be done by effect processing that can be turned off, but not built in by inherent limitations in the reproduction equipment.
Now, if you are interested in sound production, that is another matter entirely. The sound of a (say) guitar amplifier is as much a part of the musician's instrument as the guitar, though it would still be nice if a lot of that load could be taken off of unreliable power amplifiers and placed on reproducable, removable low level effects processing.
Re:Arggghh! (Score:3, Insightful)
No problem here, nothing to see, please move along.
Re:AAC is pretty weak, no marketing can change tha (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bose??? Buahahaha (Score:2, Insightful)
Umm while I would agree that Bose's implementation of satellites+bass module (to Bose's credit, they don't call it a "subwoofer") has flaws, the subwoofer + satellite principle is not necessarily flawed. If your satellites go low enough (80 Hz is the common figure), a sub/sat system is perfectly workable. See NHT.
Also, it's been pretty well established that frequencies below 80 Hz are non-directional. When you look at the wavelengths of those frequencies when compared with the typical human interaural spacing you can begin to see why. The reason you can hear the direction of a train is due to the high-frequency cues you get from the wheel/rail noise (disclaimer: I spent 7 years working as a noise consultant specializing in rail noise).
Re:Windows Media player support (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is everyone so determined to miss the point? Yes, there are a dozen ways of adding Ogg/Vorbis support to Windows. They vary in complexity.
Support is not available by default, therefore your average non-technical Windows user will get a window popup asking them which application they want to use to open the
Spectrum analysis :- (Score:5, Insightful)
Will people ever stop doing that. It's complete bullshit and certainly not the way to evaluate a codec. These codecs use perceptual weighting of the noise. That means that the idea is to distort the signal as much as possible in any region of the spectrum where it won't be heard at a certain time. That means that you see a big distortion in the spectrum and think the codec is worse than the others when in fact it's better because it realized that it doesn't matter.
The only way to correctly evaluate a codec is to listen to it. I write codecs (see sig), so I know a bit what I'm talking about. I use spectral analysis sometimes, but only to identify problems which I've already heard before, not to say that my codec is good.
As a aside, I'd say it probably wouldn't be hard to write a codec that does better than any other on those spectrum analysis. They would sound like crap because their psycho-acoustic model would be all wrong.
Musicians hear music differently (Score:1, Insightful)
I use relatively inaccurate speakers for the same reason that I listen to old, mono recordings of Count Basie or Louis Armstrong's Hot Seven. The most accurate speakers remove the coloring and I find it harder to add that back in my head than to hear the notes through what to an engineer must be a fog.
Non-players don't realize that the music up close is actually less clear - more on acoustic instruments. And that it's full of imperfections - from the player and instrument. My daughter is a violinist and I have to put my head right next to her instrument to hear her complaints about buzzing and that annoying (to her) string ring.
At the bench, I'm surrounded by bass and the sounds definitely separate as they move just a few feet away. I was listening to a friend run through a few "big" tunes for his next CD. At one foot distance, they blew right through me, with an incredible life. But I also know that the song will be produced and so much distance added that the song won't be as competitive a release as the song deserves. In many ways, I believe major record companies (producers, artists) need constantly to find a new hook or edge for their sound because they can't put music onto a disk so it sounds lifelike.
Re:Hard To Tell Difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Your $5 crack clearly isn't on par with $100 crack.
I can't believe how wrong people on slashdot can be sometimes.
- A.P.
Re:That's all very well but (Score:3, Insightful)
Palm OS 5 PDAs (Zire 71, Tungsten T) only have integer ARM CPU's, and they play Ogg files just fine (running AeroPlayer [aerodromesoftware.com] or PocketTunes). And the Apple iPod uses a very similar ARM CPU core.
Re:maintaining the shape of the original waveform (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter!
Spectrum analysis of a perceptual coding system is useless. The whole idea behind perceptual coding is that certain types of sounds mask others, so therefore you can avoid encoding the masked sounds.
The waveforms will always be different... the better the psycoacoustic model the more the waveform will differ for the same PERCEIVED quality.
But that's not the point... does it SOUND the same to the average listener? Does the perceived quality diminish? Does the audio suffer NOTICABLE artifacts that irritate the listener?
No matter what scheme you use, the answer to all of these questions will be "yes" to some people. But how many people say "yes?"
Each person's interpretation of audio is different... some people are tone deaf, others have a very high sensitivity to artifacts, and yet others are somewhere in the middle.
Spectrum analysis tells you nothing about how well a codec encodes for the human ear because the analyzer is FAR more sensitive.
Re:Maybe in the future... (Score:3, Insightful)
What does "the average user" matter? Innovation seeks to push the boundaries, not cater to the masses.
Re:AAC is pretty weak, no marketing can change tha (Score:3, Insightful)
- the listeners don't know what the hell they're doing
- all the formats are pretty damn good
If the compressed formats are able to fool or confuse over 50% of the testers, then we're probably just splitting hairs here.
Re:Hard To Tell Difference (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, this claim is refuted by every test ever done:
If you honestly believe it, it's either because you simply like the sound of MP3 distortion, or you really wanted to like MP3, so you've conviced yourself that you do. Personally, I just assumed you were trolling because of your following comments:
That is just plain bullshit. No audio codec is going to relieve fatigue. Even if you do believe it.
Working with people, I have discovered that people convince themselves of many things. When something happens to their computer that they don't understand, they grasp onto the last thing that they did understand. This is very clear when you see cases of people claiming a change they made to the BIOS make their computer stop booting, when it was actually just a computer virus infection. People who are convinced that moving their computer to another room made it run much slower, but they moved it around the same time that they upgraded from Windows 95 to 98. Etc. If really feel less fatigue, I can only assure you it has nothing to do with the lossy codec you are using.
Re:Ogg, not OGG (Score:2, Insightful)
Tremor isn't a codec at all, its a Vorbis playback engine.
You made more nits than you picked.