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Topic: Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz? (Read 9960 times) previous topic - next topic
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Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Human ears can't notice frenquencies below 20Hz, so why not add a highpass? Won't that save some spaces?
But if i type --highpass 20 it says "highpass frequency too low, highpass disabled".
Please tell me if it is a bug or something else?
Using LAME3.98 -V 6 as i have bad ears. Transparent to me. Don't suprise!

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #1
--highpass    highpass filtering frequency in kHz

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #2
I understand the dilemma of the OP. If one would want to disable frequencies below 20Hz, and the highpass filter should be in kHz, then it would be a problem.

Expect to hear that -Vx switches are there for a reason, and hence, no need for additional switches.
"Listen to me...
Never take unsolicited advice..."

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #3
Frequencies below 20Hz require very, very few bits to encode. I'd be surprised if such a highpass filter cut 1kbps off the overall size of the MP3.

Edit: Removed typoed "k" in front of "Hz"

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #4
Thanks for replies guys.
I just tried --highpass 0.02 it didn't work either.
Anyway I'm happy with -V 6.

And I have another question:
I've recently bought some MP3 from Amazon and they're 256kbps. For portable use, I want to cut the file size down, I'm thinking transcode them to -V 6, will that harm the quality a lot? Or I should transcode to -V 5 to get the same quality from WAV to -V 6?

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #5
Only you're qualified to make that assessment, yingmahe. Give it a listen, see how it sounds. High-bitrate to low-bitrate conversions don't hurt that much.

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #6
Exactly. There's only 20Hz of bandwidth between 0Hz and 20Hz, or about 0.09% of the bandwidth of CD Audio. That portion of the spectrum only takes up 1.28kbps in CD Audio, before any compression takes place. Probably not worth worrying about in an MP3.

EDIT: Whoops, too slow .

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #7
Surely a 20Hz sine wave at 44.1kHz sample rate will still require 1411.2kbit/s?
lossyWAV -q X -a 4 -s h -A --feedback 2 --limit 15848 --scale 0.5 | FLAC -5 -e -p -b 512 -P=4096 -S- (having set foobar to output 24-bit PCM; scaling by 0.5 gives the ANS headroom to work)

 

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #8
Surely a 20Hz sine wave at 44.1kHz sample rate will still require 1411.2kbit/s?

Not if it is compressed using WinRAR, WinZIP or something similar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_theory

A 20Hz sinewave could moreover be resampled to a samplingrate of >40Hz, meaning that the bitrate would be divided by 1000.

-k

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #9
OK thanks everybody, planning to do some tests soon.

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #10
There was a recent thread that discussed the lowest settable value for the highpass filter. I think the conclusion was something on the order of 400Hz.

Edit: found the thread here.

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #11
Who will want a highpass at 400Hz? That'll filter most bass!

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #12
A highpass at 20 Hz would be a bad idea. Most modern records are sent through a limiter, and as such removing the low end would actually increase the peak level! So, you will need to reduce the level to avoid clipping, and you might even have to spend more bits to encode the low end due to higher required PSNR...

Not to mention that you wouldn't gain anything because commercial releases don't have insane levels of sub-20 Hz content, and because the MP3 frequency resolution is much too coarse to be able to "notice" that there is nothing below 20 Hz.

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #13
A highpass at 20 Hz would be a bad idea. Most modern records are sent through a limiter, and as such removing the low end would actually increase the peak level! So, you will need to reduce the level to avoid clipping, and you might even have to spend more bits to encode the low end due to higher required PSNR...

Huh!? 

The limiter was applied before recording the CD, so any reduction of the higher frequencies has already occurred. Later removal of low frequencies has no effect on the amplitude of the higher frequencies.

As for encoding of frequencies near or below 20 Hz, only a very small fraction of the total bits are used for encoding such low frequencies

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #14
It's even less beneficial to high pass filter than this discussion suggests.

All frequencies below 20Hz (and quite a few above that - double that even) are going to land in the DC bin - i.e. you don't even fit a full cycle within one mp3 frame.

I'm guessing that most mp3 encoders will be reasonably careful with the DC bin - not because we can hear DC, but because systematic or random changes in DC level from frame-to-frame would cause horrible discontinuities if the blocks weren't overlapped. Since they are overlapped, what you would get is a sinusoidal-like waveform at frame rate. That's 44.1k/576=77Hz for long blocks or 44.1k/192=230Hz for short blocks. Not nice.


You'd need to high pass filter at a much higher frequency (e.g. above the two calculated above!) to ensure the DC bin was always approximately zero. So they'll usually be content in that bin, and it'll need to be encoded quite accurately - removing a little of the content below 20Hz will make no useful difference.

(Having said that, a large DC offset is not a good thing on an audio signal, but if present, it should be removed with care).

Cheers,
David.

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #15
For what it's worth, I have made a number of vinyl recordings using VBR, quality 0 (= maximum), and rumble of around 30Hz is clearly visible on the lead-in of most of them.  Ergo, MP3 files can carry information at these very low frequencies, at high bit rates certainly.

Unless, and I'm really not sure about this, these are artefacts.  Would anybody know if this might be the case?  I have not re-recorded any of these albums to a lossless format, unfortunately.
I am an independent software developer (VinylStudio) based in UK

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #16
I was trying to get highpass into a command line earlier this year.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....c=64185&hl=

I for one would love Highpass filters to work below 400Hz.
Very useful for encoding audiobooks were there is just the human voice envolved.
Even if the saving was small, every little byte helps over hours of audio.....

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #17
It's even less beneficial to high pass filter than this discussion suggests.

All frequencies below 20Hz (and quite a few above that - double that even) are going to land in the DC bin - i.e. you don't even fit a full cycle within one mp3 frame.

Due to the nature of the filterbank (polyphase filterbank + MDCT with sine window) a DC offset will affect only the first MDCT coefficient. Other low frequencies affect a group of transform coefficients each due to the spectral leakage effect.

To avoid excessively large low frequency coefficients the A/52 (Dolby Digital) specification even suggests the use of a DC-removing 2nd order Butterworth high pass filter -- if I recall correctly. I don't think it's a bad idea to apply this kind of filter prior MP3 encoding. On "normal" audio (with no DC offset / rumble) this should not make a big difference w.r.t. quality/bitrate.

Cheers!
SG

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #18
Looking back again at my old thread I see it was 350 not 400 Hz.
Still a useless frequency setting no one would want to use.....

Looking at the voice recording I have, nothing is really going on under 100 Hz.
But maybe this is ignored by Lame anyway and doesn't use many bits.

Why not and can't add a highpass at 20Hz?

Reply #19
Due to the way Lame's filtering is implemented, it can not offer such granularity, which is why very low values get ignored.