Re: A Session In The Abyss: xHE-AAC vs OPUS at 12, 24 and 32 kbps (voice & music)
Reply #63 – 2021-06-08 17:54:21
Opus at 12k is a mess, but we already know this. At 16k it's not as bad, though. Yeah. that's why I tend to use 13kbps as a absolute bare minimum with Opus v1.3(or higher) for speech as I feel at 13kbps the sound quality is 'just' good enough as it's a solid option for those who want to keep file size as low as possible while maintaining a sound quality that's not TOO low. but if someone wants to play it a bit safer on speech sound quality then they will obviously have to increase bit rates a fair amount. but at the same time... I don't know about everyone else but with speech I am not nearly as concerned with keeping it near transparent like I would be with music. hence, I can say it's 'good enough' at a lower point than I would with music as with music I tend to go a little higher instead of trying to run it on THE edge like I did with speech at 13kbps. but speaking of this, I might say the following with Opus in regards to speech and music... -Opus (speech) = 13kbps -Opus (music) = 40kbps or 48kbps those are in regards to what I would probably consider a bare minimum with each (although I am playing it just a touch safer (i.e. higher kbps) with music though). I know opinions will vary on this stuff, but I am trying to roughly take a bare minimum approach to use with both but I played it a bit safer on the music side of things, since like I was saying, I tend to be a bit pickier on the sound quality of music than I would be on speech. so I don't quite think my 40kbps/48kbps for music is on THE edge like I was with the 13kbps speech suggestion, but it's probably close enough given I don't want to run sound quality where things start to become more obviously worse. p.s. but like my signature currently shows, with Opus I tend to avoid any less than 64kbps for music as I feel 64kbps is a pretty strong balance of those trying to keep file size at near a bare minimum while still maintaining a sound quality in the ball park of MP3 @ V5 (130kbps average) which does well enough in a public listening test.In a general sense, anything from V4 or more. I tend to see V4 (LAME MP3) to be more of a odd-ball/kind-of-useless setting because I think one can see MP3 in general more along the lines of use 'V5' or 'V3 or better'. because V4 is only 10kbps lower than V3 and according to the hydrogenaudio wiki page, V3 is the start point of the highest quality settings. so I figure if someone is going to use a lower bit rate than V3 on MP3, they are probably best off sticking with V5 (130kbps average) and forget about it as V5 does pretty well in public listening test and is efficient with bitrate. so at least with V5, besides doing well in public listening test, it also has a decent decrease in bit rates to unlike V4 which is only 10kbps shy of the higher quality settings. so V4 seems like a pointless setting to use if you ask me given bit rate to quality given how quality and bitrate scales from 130kbps(V5) to 165kbps(V4) to 175kbps(V3) to 190kbps(V2) to V1(225kbps) to V (245kbps). so I think, at least in my mind, when it comes to MP3 it's pretty much V5 (130kbps) or V2 (190kbps) and forget about it as these two options basically should cover a high percentage of people in my opinion. like those who prefer more efficient bit rate (i.e. V5) and those who want higher quality sound but want some level of efficiency (i.e. V2) as beyond V2 efficiency pretty much goes out the window and sound quality gains got to be minimal/negligible in real world use. but I can't directly fault you for saying "V4 or more" since basically anything from "V5 or more" is good enough in a very basic sense (hell, some might be able to get away with settings lower than V5). although I would probably say for those who prefer the higher bit rates or so, given only the 10kbps difference between V4 to V3 and given what the Hydrogenaudio wiki page says, seems like those types would think more along the lines of "V3 or more". hell, I suppose one could argue that since the difference between V3 to V2 is only 15kbps more and could give a bit of a safety buffer one could use that etc. but with all of that said... I know storage space is cheap and all nowadays, so what I said above probably ain't going to matter to most people anymore since one could argue it won't really matter much whether someone uses V5 or all the way to the MAX of 320kbps CBR. but it's more of the thought of it for efficiency sake (for us OCD types around here) ; one last little thing... I guess even with the storage space to burn argument taken into account, a more efficient file size would still be a bit wiser like in a situation one were to upload/backup a bunch of their stuff online to where storage space to burn would be less likely, or someone were to store a good amount of music on their smart phone since many are probably in the 8GB or 16GB of internal memory range etc.