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Topic: LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion (Read 20159 times) previous topic - next topic
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LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #25 –
just wanted to thank the LAME devs because they added --noreplaygain in the CVS

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #26 –
evereux, I MESSED IT UP. I didn't remember correctly the numbers Gabriel gave me via PM ~ 1 week ago. Correct 'official' numbers are:

-V 6 : 128kbps
-V 5 : 144kbps
-V 4 : 160kbps
-V 3 : 192kbps

testing -V 2 isn't necessary since the result will be the same as --preset standard.


Testing this independantly should make sense anyway - thanks alot.
Let's suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who is feeling negative? The rain? Or YOU? What's causing the negative feeling? The rain or your reaction? - Anthony De Mello

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #27 –
LoFiYo: Good point. I thought about this too (but I missed coming to a conclusion - so thanks for bringing this up again). IMO a good way would be to use some statistical analysis similar to the one used in rjamorim's recent tests. Every quality setting should be analysed this way independantly. When a certain level of confidence is reached (e.g. 95%) that one encoder is better then the other, the officialy recommended version can be announced for this quality setting. Testing wouldn't have to stop, if new test results / problem samples ... appear, the statistics can be calculated again and the recommended version could change.

The remaining question is: How to calculate the statistics... I don't know if using ABC/HR rankings without a big number of results for each sample (at a given quality setting) and without anchor makes any sense. Simple 2 choices "a is better than b" or "b is better than a" might be enough. I could be wrong, but I think in this case the "chance that codec a isn't better then codec b, but by picking test samples reandomly it still performed better on x out of y samples" can be calculated the same way as ABX p-values.
E.g. if 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard wins on 37 out of samples, 3.96b1 --preset standard wins on 23 samples, the chance to get this result in spite of both codecs are equal on a big number of samples woud be 4.62%
Right now (3.90.3 --alt-preset standard won on 8 samples out of 12)  the chance that 3.90.3 is not better (simplified wording) would be 19%

Anyone with enough statistics knowledge arround? ff123?
Let's suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who is feeling negative? The rain? Or YOU? What's causing the negative feeling? The rain or your reaction? - Anthony De Mello

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #28 –
I still wonder about the criteria’s an encoder has to meet in order to be recommended by HA, though. If the goal was to get it most close to transparent --preset 320 should be chosen. However, it hasn't. So it must be somewhat connected to the file size. But at what extend? --preset 128 gives probably the best ratio of quality / file size but it's still not recommended. So who makes the criteria’s for that? Lame 3.96 gives in general a significant lower bitrate at --aps than 3.90.3. Let's assume LAME 3.96 would overall perform a bit worse than 3.90.3 does (I know that you can only tell from the tested samples). Why wouldn't the people here accept this slightly quality drawback for the benefit of the much lower bitrates? I mean they did the exact some thing when choosing LAME 3.90.3 --aps...otherwise --preset 320 was chosen, right?!
I think it's essential to clarify first what's expected from a HA recommended version.

In addition, I think the samples should be rated in terms of their improvements made. For instance, if 5 files sound slightly better with LAME 3.90.3 but only one file was turned from totally horrible to perfectly transparent using LAME 3.96, 3.96 should still be considered as recommended. If all improvements were just counted equally it wouldn't give a true picture of the encoders’ quality. Overall an encoder could sound much better, but still be beaten by another one that just produces tiny enhancements on samples but fails even harder on others...
--alt-presets are there for a reason! These other switches DO NOT work better than it, trust me on this.
LAME + Joint Stereo doesn't destroy 'Stereo'

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #29 –
Jojo,

I think it's simpler than you think!

--alt-preset standard was (is?) simply the best VBR algorithm available at the time in terms of making as many samples as possible transparent for as many possible people.

--alt-preset insane was (is?) simply the best CBR algorithm available at the time in terms of making as many samples as possible transparent for as many possible people.


Of the few problem samples which remain, there was nothing else efficient and straight-forward Dibrom could do to --alt-preset standard to make them better. Forcing the bitrate up across the board (inefficient, but obvious!) will often reduce any remaining problems, but may not make them go away entirely, and will waste bits on the 99.999% of already transparent signals. That's why more people choose --alt-preset standard than --alt-preset insane.

To replace --alt-preset standard, I think something should be either
a) as good, at a lower bitrate, or
b) better at the same bitrate, or
c) better, at a lower bitrate

In short, any improvement must fix more samples than it breaks, and/or reduce the bitrate. Any "improvement" which pushes the bitrate through the roof for samples which were already transparent is inefficient. I think the aim of psychoacoustic coding which is transparent and efficient.

If you want more efficiency you can go lower than aps, but you can forget about transparency (for the most critical listeners) for many signals. If you want more transparency, you can go higher than aps, but you can forget about efficiency for many signals!

The aim is a setting which uses just as many bits as necessary, intelligently, to make a signal transparent (or as close to transparent as is possible for that format), but no more.

Cheers,
David.

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #30 –
The results from encoding 22.2GB of wav files using LAME 3.96b1 are as follows.

-V3
Compressed to 2.73GB
With an average of 172.4kbps
Details (195KB)

-V4
Compressed to 2.60GB
With an average of 163.7kbps
Details (195KB)

-V5
Compressed to 2.04GB
With an average of 128.7kbps
Details (195KB)

-V6
Compressed to 1.92GB
With an average of 120.7kbps
Details (195KB)




Here is a zip file containing the deliminated text should you wish to present the information in a better way.

I'll edit this post to add more results (this will most likely be a similar time tommorrow).
daefeatures.co.uk

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #31 –
@ 2Bdecided

thanks for your answer!
Quote
Of the few problem samples which remain, there was nothing else efficient and straight-forward Dibrom could do to --alt-preset standard to make them better

well, if that is true what are the developers of LAME still doing? Are they trying to make LAME more efficiant? Do they lower the overall bitrate and get it to sound almost as good as LAME 3.90.3? I think I start to understand. If you were comparing 3.90.3 vs. 3.96 at --aps but with the same bitrate, 3.96 would be most likely the winner...so I think I see the improvements and goals of the developers. I actually use LAME 3.95 because of that  - I can accept some quality drawbacks, which I probably won't notice anyway, but what I do notice is the lower bitrate + there are samples that have been improved (which I probably won't hear either )

Anyway, I'll still follow the listening test thread with great interest
--alt-presets are there for a reason! These other switches DO NOT work better than it, trust me on this.
LAME + Joint Stereo doesn't destroy 'Stereo'

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #32 –
Quote
@ 2Bdecided

thanks for your answer!
Quote
Of the few problem samples which remain, there was nothing else efficient and straight-forward Dibrom could do to --alt-preset standard to make them better

well, if that is true what are the developers of LAME still doing?

Just because one person can't solve a problem, doesn't mean that no one can!

If you search way back on this board, I think you'll find Dibrom suggesting that to go much further, the entire lame psychoacoustic model would need to be overhauled. I believe this is planned by at least one developer for Lame 4.

However, that's not to belittle the work which has been done since, on Lame 3.9x, which does give improved quality on some samples, and achieves this at lower bitrates.

Remember too that lame is developed for free, by people in their spare time.


As for your other questions - you can read posts from Gabriel and others, and see the Lame History file to see exactly what they're doing. See the Lame site, and the lame mp3encoder mailing list.

Cheers,
David.

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #33 –
Quote
evereux, I MESSED IT UP. I didn't remember correctly the numbers Gabriel gave me via PM ~ 1 week ago. Correct 'official' numbers are:

-V 6 : 128kbps
-V 5 : 144kbps
-V 4 : 160kbps
-V 3 : 192kbps

testing -V 2 isn't necessary since the result will be the same as --preset standard.


Testing this independantly should make sense anyway - thanks alot.


My figures are a little different:

-V 6 : 121kbps
-V 5 : 129kbps
-V 4 : 164kbps
-V 3 : 172kbps
daefeatures.co.uk
 

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #34 –
Lame 3.96 is now in beta2 stage.

In the context of this thread, the interesting point is that V1 and V2 are now using 128kbps as minimal bitrate.

It means that some samples could be improved with this new beta. As this can not decrease quality, I think that you only need to check again samples where 3.90.3 was superior to 3.96b1.

3.96b2 is expected to go final in the next two weeks.

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #35 –
3.96.b2 available at RareWares (Debian Repository) as lame-cvs

...i'm sure john will be right behind me 


later

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #36 –
thanks to Gabriel and all the other LAME developers for their great work! Keep up the good work!!!
--alt-presets are there for a reason! These other switches DO NOT work better than it, trust me on this.
LAME + Joint Stereo doesn't destroy 'Stereo'

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #37 –
Quote
In the context of this thread, the interesting point is that V1 and V2 are now using 128kbps as minimal bitrate.

It means that some samples could be improved with this new beta. As this can not decrease quality, I think that you only need to check again samples where 3.90.3 was superior to 3.96b1.

Does this mean, that -b 128 (for V1 and V2) is the only change between beta1 and beta2? No differences for V0, V3, V4...?

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #38 –
Quote
Does this mean, that -b 128 (for V1 and V2) is the only change between beta1 and beta2? No differences for V0, V3, V4...?

Regarding vbr-old, this is the only change.

LAME 3.96b1 vs. 3.90.3 Discussion

Reply #39 –
I've performed some mass-encoding bitrate test similar to evereux. The result is here (might be updated):



3.96b1 was used, so the numbers for --preset standard (= -V 2) are too low compared to the latest version, but according to what Gabriel has said, for all other settings in the table there shouldn't be a difference.
For direct comparison:
results by | evereux | tigre . | average
-----------+---------+---------+---------
-V 3 ..... | 172kbps | 170kbps | 171kbps
-V 4 ..... | 164kbps | 157kbps | 160kbps
-V 5 ..... | 129kbps | 122kbps | 126kbps
-V 6 ..... | 121kbps | 112kbps | 117kbps

So IMO it should be safe to modify Test instructions:
Quote
(alt)presets + VBR/ABR
(320kbps) 3.96 --preset insane vs. 3.90.3 --alt-preset insane
(~256kbps) 3.96 --preset extreme vs. 3.90.3 --alt-preset extreme
(~210kbps) [span style='font-size:11pt;line-height:100%']3.96 --preset standard vs. 3.90.3 --alt-preset standard[/span]
(~160kbps) 3.96 -V 4 vs. 3.96 --preset 160 vs. 3.90.3 --alt-preset 160
(~128kbps) 3.96 -V 5 vs. 3.96 --preset 128 vs. 3.90.3 --alt-preset 128

It seems like there's not much interest in testing bitrates between 128kbps and (alt)preset standard anyway so this should be enough.
Comments?
Let's suppose that rain washes out a picnic. Who is feeling negative? The rain? Or YOU? What's causing the negative feeling? The rain or your reaction? - Anthony De Mello