After 4 Years, HydrogenAudio Opens New 128kbps Listening Test 267
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."
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:use the cans, luke (Score:4, Interesting)
Good headphones are nice in so far as they block ambient noise and allow you to hear any artifacts easier, but since MP3 is a perceptual encoder it is actually more likely that artifacts are audible on "defective" hardware.
If a cheap speaker or cheap headphone's frequency response is bad enough to mess with the model's idea of masking, for example, poor quality reproduction can actually make the 'tricks' of MP3 apparent.
Re:ugh (Score:5, Interesting)
Agreed.
I went into the trouble of trying to run this under Linux.
the supplied batch files didn't work - it was missing files due to bad paths. the java application required a HUGE meddling around, choosing the settings, creating tests... I gave up. I'm not *that* motivated to help.
If you're trying to design a public test, the goal is to make it as simple as possible. An online application is an absolute must here.
I would be surprised if there will be anymore than a few hundred responses to this, all from a very specific demographic, Hardly a representative sample of the general population.
Re:use the cans, luke (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends if you can isolate outside noise as well. If you live like a hermit, certainly(no neighbours making noise while testing, etc...
Good headphones do that for you, and isolate ambient noise better. You can't noise-cancel on speakers either, not practically.
Re:Popups on Slashdot? (Score:1, Interesting)
What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What kind of music is involved (Score:3, Interesting)
No it's not the point. The point is, in such kinds of music as "spectralist music" there's a much higher density of "sound information" due to the shear number of overtones and it requires higher encoding bitrates.
As for the point of the experiment I linked to, the point isn't to actually store images in MP3s but to show how images can be transmitted over sound with a good quality, furthermore in an intuitive format (i.e. the image's 2 space dimensions are 'mapped' to the sound's time and frequency dimensions). The practicality (or lack thereof) is irrelevant.
Re:Outdated? (Score:4, Interesting)
MP3 is plenty good enough, it just requires more bits. Why have 192kbps MP3 when you can save room with an equally good 160kbps Vorbis?
Why have 160 kbps Vorbis when hard drives are growing in capacity and dropping in price?
I used to encode things in 192 kbps, then VBR, and now I want to smack myself over the head for doing so; blank CDs weren't so cheap back then, and I wanted to save a little bit of money. Looking back, it sure as hell wasn't worth it - I have crappy, lossy mp3 encodings of rare albums that I cannot obtain anymore, and a hard drive that could easily hold 2000 albums encoded with FLAC.
Sure, there was a time when storage was a premium, but now it isn't. Save room for WHAT? Five years from now, when you will be able to cheaply have 10 TB of storage space in your computer, are you going to regret having 160 kbps Vorbis instead of FLAC encodings? I know I would be, so now I'm encoding every CD I still have in lossless. If I were interested in HD video (which I'm not), I'd have no intention of re-encoding it to smaller sizes, because I *know* there will be a time when I'd regret it. Of course, YMMV.
Re:What kind of music is involved (Score:5, Interesting)
"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.
Re:What kind of music is involved (Score:3, Interesting)
My favourite piece of music for showing off the flaws of MP3 is Mike Oldfield's good old Magnum Opus, Tubular Bells. At first listen, an MP3 can sound just fine, but then you listen again, and focus on the "walking treble" in the background. When the sound frequency hits a multiple of the foreground music, notes all but disappear, and if you're actively listening to the background theme, it's quite jarring.
For some odd reason, Fraunhofer's encoder (latest version) seems to handle this far better than LAME (latest version), but that doesn't mean it's better. For other music, Fraunhofer can make a horrible mess of things (like Alan Parson's "Poe" LP, where the deep bass of the intro gets raped by Fraunhofer regardless of bitrate).
Re:What kind of music is involved (Score:3, Interesting)
I've noticed that besides classical music, the music that is hardest to encode is 70s/80s underground punk music (the hard kind), because it's often recorded on VERY bad equipment with lots of background amplifier humming, distortion, recorded on a cheap cassette 4-track porta studio in someones garage, and no mastering what so ever. The encoder have a very hard time to keep up with all the "extras" that are usually mastered away. At 128 kbps, hihats and cymbals sound like "pssh" instead of "tss" and the guitars get a "digital bee"-like sound. They also often get what sounds like a subtle flanger effect on top of it. At 192 kbps most sound like the original vinyl or cassette but many need even higher bitrates.
Re:use the cans, luke (Score:3, Interesting)
The same piano key hit multiple times can end up sounding different with VBR. First you get an awesome 224 or 320 kbps note, then another, but then omgwehaveusedupallthebandwidth you get a 80 kbps note that just doesn't sound similar.
ahh, audiophiles. they'll make up anything to try and sound like they hear better than the rest of us, even when what they've described it entirely NOT how VBR works. it's nothing to do with available bandwidth, it's about what is required to represent that frame of sound. if encoding silence at 224kbps makes you happy, by all means go on believing that shit sounds better than 320kbps vbr files that will come out smaller in size.
personally i just use apple lossless for everything so i dont have to concern myself with whether or not i can hear a difference. there is NO difference from the source and the extra the space needed is minuscule in respect to drives these days, but I'm not trying to delude myself that I can tell the difference.
Re:use the cans, luke (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I like my music to kick me in the guts a bit, you know?
Pro sound tech chiming in (Score:3, Interesting)
MP3 is optimized for best performance at 256kbps. MPEG-4 AAC is optimized for 128kbps. Trying to determine which MP3 codec works best at 128kbps is like figuring out whether Jimi Hendrix or Jimmy Page would be better if they lost two fingers off their left hands. Similarily, MP2 is optimized for 384kbps, and beats MP3 at bitrates beyond 256, which is why it is widely used on DVD's at 384kbps.
Here's how it plays out:
Lossless codecs obviously are best when bandwidth isn't an issue
MP2 (MPEG-1 layer 2) is best from 320kbps upwards
MP3 (MPEG-1 layer 3) is best from 160 - 256 kbps
AAC (specified initialy in MPEG-2, finalized in MPEG-4 [they skipped MPEG-3 not to be confused with MP3]) best from 128kbps downwards
MP2's at 384kbps sound better than MP3's at 256kbps, which sound better than AAC at 128kbps. None of the codecs sound any better at higher-than-optimal bitrates, i.e. an MP3 at 320kbps cannot sound better than a 256kbps MP3 encoded from the same source.
Simply put, it's the codec that determines the optimal bitrate. Given a 128kbps bitrate, who cares how an inappropriate codec performs?
Re:use the cans, luke (Score:2, Interesting)
...at the same time, most recording studios probably work with headphones far more than they work with speakers.
This is incorrect. For recording music, the performers will have headphones on so they can listen to other parts of the song without having it bleed into the microphones (although with the sensitivity of some microphones, even this can be a problem!). The engineer and producer will do all the recording using studio monitors. When they come to the mixdown, they will mix on a variety of listening sources, including headphones, but primarily on different types of speakers. I would estimate they spend maybe 85% of the time listening on monitors.
I've never worked in a post-production facility, but I have visited a few, and they all seemed to be using monitors rather than heaphones.