HydrogenAudio

Lossless Audio Compression => Lossless / Other Codecs => Topic started by: 2Bdecided on 2009-03-19 16:33:47

Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: 2Bdecided on 2009-03-19 16:33:47
Quote
  • mp3HD is a lossless audio codec (100% bit-exact replica of CD tracks)
  • Backward Compatible to mp3
  • File extension .mp3
  • Bitrates for music approximately 500 to 900 kbps rates (similar to other lossless codecs), depending on genre
  • Embedded mp3 track and the mp3HD file share the same id3 metadata
  • Encoding parameters (e.g. bit rate), ancillary data and meta data of embedded mp3 track are under control


Main page:
http://www.all4mp3.com/Learn_mp3_hd_1.aspx (http://www.all4mp3.com/Learn_mp3_hd_1.aspx)

...which links to downloadable test software:
http://www.all4mp3.com/Software3.aspx (http://www.all4mp3.com/Software3.aspx)

I learnt about this from this post...
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1263465#post1263465 (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1263465#post1263465)
...where a quick test suggests it's not as efficient as FLAC, or as fast.

Might be useful for a widely-compatible lossy/lossless hybrid.

I wonder if they've done something clever - when I tried this years ago, mp3 was a terrible base for lossless coding - the lossy>lossless "correction" file was often larger than a straight lossless encode. Maybe this new technology is more tightly integrated into mp3, so performs better?

Cheers,
David.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: ameyer17 on 2009-03-19 20:17:30
I wonder if they've done something clever - when I tried this years ago, mp3 was a terrible base for lossless coding - the lossy>lossless "correction" file was often larger than a straight lossless encode. Maybe this new technology is more tightly integrated into mp3, so performs better?

Cheers,
David.
If I had to guess, I'd say that the mp3 encoder in question is designed to minimize the mathematical differences with the original file, as opposed to various modern mp3 codecs that are designed to minimize the acoustic differences.

And I question the backward compatibility. I encoded a 3 minute 11 second song and mplayer is reporting that it's 46:28 long.
And the quality of the "VBR highest quality" mode isn't particularly good. (ABX test to follow, I hope)
The efficiency isn't that good, either. That 3:11 song is approximately 1.3 MB bigger, too.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: saivert on 2009-03-19 20:27:07
This format must for the love of everything good not succeed. Please let it die. Do not even talk about it.
There is not reason to have a hybrid lossless/lossy format. And if you want that you already have WavPack's Hybrid Lossy mode.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: LANjackal on 2009-03-19 22:23:44
If it were really backward compatible, why does it need a plugin for playback? And why is it restricted to Windows. I'm gonna have to call BS on this one ...
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: guruboolez on 2009-03-19 23:02:04
If it were really backward compatible, why does it need a plugin for playback? And why is it restricted to Windows. I'm gonna have to call BS on this one ...

A specific decoder is certainly needed to decode the lossless stream ; but any standard decoder would be able to decode the lossy part - hence the need for a specific decoder to get the best quality.
It sounds interesting - at least if performance (ratio) is on par with other formats. It should at least seduce people dealing with two different libraries (lossless for home - lossy for car or DAP).

Was someone able to make it work with foobar2000's converter? I could only get a regular mp3 file (128 kbps according to filesize) /-(
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: Silversight on 2009-03-19 23:31:50
Was someone able to make it work with foobar2000's converter? I could only get a regular mp3 file (128 kbps according to filesize) /-(

Strangely enough, it works with foobar2000's Converter if you force it to use another file extension. I told fb2k to give it an mp5 extension and the result was a fully functional MP3HD file which, after being renamed to *.mp3, could be played in fb2k (the normal MP3 part, that is) and decoded to the original Wave file by the MP3HD decoder.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: guruboolez on 2009-03-19 23:56:34
@Silversight
Good point! It works. I guess that tagging process is the cause of the problem. Once the "mp5" file is created and renamed to mp3 (at this moment, the file has no tags), and after you add some tags, the file is shrinked by foobar2000 and all the lossless part is gone (but the mp3 stream is still valid).
I'm not technician, but I guess that MP3HD file are built like: MP3 then CORRECTION or MP3 then LOSSLESS.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: ameyer17 on 2009-03-20 01:36:21
If I had to guess, I'd say that the mp3 encoder in question is designed to minimize the mathematical differences with the original file, as opposed to various modern mp3 codecs that are designed to minimize the acoustic differences.

For what it's worth, there appears to be a 17 kHz lowpass, so perhaps not.

It sounds interesting - at least if performance (ratio) is on par with other formats. It should at least seduce people dealing with two different libraries (lossless for home - lossy for car or DAP).


Yeah, the best of both worlds, bigger than flac and lossy (if not dealing with the mp3hd decoder)
The one song I encoded was approximately 800 kbps, whereas the flac -8 file is approximately 740 kbps.
Encoding speed seems to be about half that of flac.
Decoding speed is about 28x, whereas flac decodes at about 192x or so.

(All comparisons with flac use the 32 bit Linux version of mp3hd as downloaded from all4mp3.com and flac as packaged in the 64 bit version of Ubuntu 8.10 on a computer with an Intel E7400 processor and 4 GB of RAM)
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: Destroid on 2009-03-20 01:49:25
Awhile back I wondered who would be the first to implement MP3 with correction, and now it has happened.

It works as expected and all the media players have no problem playing the resulting MP3HD files. Original files are identical to MP3HD decodes. The MP3HD compresses around the level of FLAC -3, although much slower (as expected).

Interestingly, in my limited tests, the resulting filesize seems to go up with the lossy bitrate.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: guruboolez on 2009-03-20 12:01:54
I investigate a bit further with this encoder.
• First, tag edition is currently ruining the lossless (or correction) datas. That's why foobar2000 doesn't work without forcing another extension (like mp5): it adds tags at the end of the conversion and therefore deletes the all "HD" informations. I created several MP3HD files, and changed tags with fb2k, dbpoweramp and mp3tag: each time files were shrinked by ~80% 
With previous versions of foobar2000, user can disable tag writing after conversion: the encoder is therefore functional even with "mp3" extension.

• Then, I tried to see if MP3HD append an independant lossless file to the MP3 stream or if it really corresponds to a correction stream (like with WavPack and OptimFrog). For that purpose, I encoded the same file with different lossy targets (128 kbps, 320 kbps and also the highest VBR mode). Measuring the size of the "HD" data is easy once you can easily get the "lossy" part (with a simple tag edition as mentioned before). The size of the "HD" data changes according to bitrate. As a conclusion, it seems logical that the HD part is really a correction part, not an independant lossless stream append the a common MP3 file. The higher the lossy bitrate is, the lower the correction part is. In other words, MP3HD would bring some efficiency over a dual library (MP3 + FLAC for example).

My tests were based on two radically different files. The first one is a big hard rock track (several tracks merged) with an important lossless bitrate (>1100 kbps); the second is a long stereo John Cage composition including a lot of silence part and therefore encoded at an amazing 194 kbps bitrate with flac.

Click to enlarge the table:
(http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/9286/mp3hd.th.png) (http://img5.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mp3hd.png)
or direct link : http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/9286/mp3hd.png (http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/9286/mp3hd.png)

As a conclusion, I would say that MP3HD brings interesting but not amazing performance for people dealing with an independant MP3library. But to be really interesting it needs a simple software tool able to transfer to any portable player the lossy part of the lossless file. Unfortunately, I wouldn't recommand anyone using this encoder at the moment as your lossless collection could too easily be lost with a basic masstagging operation.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: menno on 2009-03-20 14:00:24
If you want to know how it works, look at MPEG-4 SLS, this is the same, but with MP3 as core codec. Indeed it will only give extra efficiency if you plan to have a library of both lossy and lossless versions.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: guruboolez on 2009-03-20 14:54:59
Thanks menno.
Before someone asks, MP3HD doesn't benefit from lossywav (resulting file was even bigger on my test).

I also noticed two different issues:
- conversion failed with long tracks (> 1 hour). I used fb2k as frontend.
- with long tracks and therefore huge amount of correction file, it could take some time before some program could access to tags (noticed it with foobar2000 and DbPowerAmp tag editor). I read in a french site that correction data are written as IDTag. Is it possible (ID3 size limitation maybe)?
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: menno on 2009-03-20 15:11:59
Thanks menno.
Before someone asks, MP3HD doesn't benefit from lossywav (resulting file was even bigger on my test).

I also noticed two different issues:
- conversion failed with long tracks (> 1 hour). I used fb2k as frontend.
- with long tracks and therefore huge amount of correction file, it could take some time before some program could access to tags (noticed it with foobar2000 and DbPowerAmp tag editor). I read in a french site that correction data are written as IDTag. Is it possible (ID3 size limitation maybe)?


Yep, the correction data is in the ID3 tag, because mp3 doesn't allow framesizes big enough for this. Maybe freeformat would work, but I guess hardly any players would play the mp3 file that way. And it would be very difficult to extract the original MP3 data. In MPEG-4 SLS, the lossless data is simply stored in a separate track in the MP4 file.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: guruboolez on 2009-03-20 15:50:10
Thank you again menno for this clarification
I wonder how difficult it will be to make MP3 tagging programs fully compatible with MP3HD. And how many people will lose the correction data by using a wrong tagging program (including audio players adding stats or stuff like that).

In my opinion, MP3HD was really useful and maybe designed for popular stores (like amazon) to give them the opportunity to sell lossless music accessible to everyone (as many customers don't even know file extension, so program installation or file conversion is not an option for biggest stores). But the bad interaction with the current software environment (tagging program and into some extend media players) is IMO ruining a bit this idea.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: callisto on 2009-03-20 16:21:45
When many customers doesn't even know file extension why would they care if they have a lossless mp3hd? they just see .mp3 and wonder why it's so big. and that lossless part is just accesible with appropriate decoder, which has to be installed.
and I don't understand why it's mp3hd that gives stores like amazon that opportunity? they could also just use flac...

for me, reading this thread tells me that mp3hd is just useless. mp3 an already old and inferior compression format becoming lossless... oh well >_>
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: Peter on 2009-03-20 16:34:25
Useless format:
I wonder what those people will think of next. Maybe resurrect VQF or something.

Addendum:

Current tagging software isn't prepared to deal with this kind of situation, so you're going to see various disturbing behaviors such as:
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-03-20 16:47:43
Useless format


Totally agree. Not having separate correction files is pretty bad, anyway. With mp3hd you can fit just one album on a CDR for your car stereo in the worst case. That's not the point of mp3.

I would propose a generic correction file creator for all lossy formats ("DeltaFlac"?  ). A very simple piece of software or plugin could decode a lossy stream (including gap correction) and generate a delta stream against the original PCM, which would then be FLAC compressed and stored somewhere safe (for the reconversion of a whole collection in 2025 to Super-AAC2-Pro-3000).

A realtime playback filter, e. g., for Foobar could just reverse the chain. Delta and lossy file could be matched by a simple tag for the case that filenames get messed up.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: guruboolez on 2009-03-20 16:59:21
When many customers doesn't even know file extension why would they care if they have a lossless mp3hd?

Having few knowledge about computer things doesn't mean that people don't care about quality and would buy anything. If advertising on "CD-Quality" is now pointless and confusing (because stores were claiming it since the beginning) selling "HD MP3" and advertising on files "four time bigger" (hence better) makes things easy to understand even to the less-technician people on earth.

Quote
and that lossless part is just accesible with appropriate decoder, which has to be installed.

It doesn't matter people could really access to the correction stuff or not. Most people (even here) wouldn't notice the difference between a truncated "HD" stream at 256 kbps and the full lossless music. I'm pretty sure placebo effect will ensure people that their HD file are now much better than regular MP3, even if the stream is the same.

Quote
and I don't understand why it's mp3hd that gives stores like amazon that opportunity? they could also just use flac...

Yes, and having their hotline full of people unable to make their flac/alac/WMAlossless work on their computer, digital players or even both. Selling a format customers don't understand means losing customers (I saw it myself with some friends of mine trying to deal with WMA and AAC). MP3HD is at the moment the only lossless solution that give a sound (even a nice one at 256 kbps) working on all DAP players, DVD players and software players in the world. Without installing anything. That would make a big difference for several people on earth.
What's the most attractive in your opinion:
"Buy HD MUSIC. Cristal clear sound. Compatible with every player"
or
"Buy lossless music. CD Quality. Download the MP3 codec, the GUI and follow our two page tutorial to make it work"

Note that I'm not personaly fond of this format (crappy IDTag solution) but I'm just trying to show that the concept isn't useless.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: guruboolez on 2009-03-20 17:03:58
  • Size of ID3v2 tags is limited to 256MB by specifications; as a result, lossless part of an mp3hd file can't be larger than 256MB.


I suspected it when the encoder returned an error on long files (55 minutes of low bitrate classical music was working but not 40 minutes of high bitrate rock music).
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: menno on 2009-03-20 17:04:38
Useless format


Totally agree. Not having separate correction files is pretty bad, anyway. With mp3hd you can fit just one album on a CDR for your car stereo in the worst case. That's not the point of mp3.


While I agree on the uselessness of putting the data in ID3 tags, I disagree about the file size argument. You can remove the correction data by removing 1 frame from the ID3v2 tag, this is much faster than re-encoding your lossless files, and you will just end up with a normal "small" mp3 file. The idea is to have a lossless + lossy file at a smaller datarate than a separate lossless and lossy file, without the need to have to encode your lossless local files for portable usage.

Quote
I would propose a generic correction file creator for all lossy formats ("DeltaFlac"?  ). A very simple piece of software or plugin could decode a lossy stream (including gap correction) and generate a delta stream against the original PCM, which would then be FLAC compressed and stored somewhere safe (for the reconversion of a whole collection in 2025 to Super-AAC2-Pro-3000).

A realtime playback filter, e. g., for Foobar could just reverse the chain. Delta and lossy file could be matched by a simple tag for the case that filenames get messed up.


Lossy formats are hardly ever decoded deterministically, so your idea will never work (at least not losslessly). In SLS (so also mp3HD I assume) the original AAC/MP3 stream is not decoded by a normal lossy decoder.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: callisto on 2009-03-20 17:10:37
@guruboolez
Ok, I get your point...
But still think it's crap. And to have a huge file on your DAP where you just can play the lossy part is just silly^^


I stick with buying CDs that I can touch, browse the booklet and look at in my cd-shelf
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: menno on 2009-03-20 17:14:33
@guruboolez
Ok, I get your point...
But still think it's crap. And to have a huge file on your DAP where you just can play the lossy part is just silly^^

You're supposed to remove the lossless correction part before copying the file to your DAP. Of course this requires knowledge from the user about the format and I think that's where it will go wrong in general.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: guruboolez on 2009-03-20 17:20:10
And to have a huge file on your DAP where you just can play the lossy part is just silly^^

I understand your point but I don't think it's silly. Nowadays cheapest flash-memory based MP3 players are rather big (2 GB at least). People could store 4 albums (sometimes more), or 60 tracks. It's a honest performance. I also know people unable to fill their players with lossy stuff and even other who consider as silly to put so many music on a portable player.
I tend myself to maximize the capacity of my own players (including a 160GB iPod filled with 130 kbps music) but I learnt that many people acting differently.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: Brent on 2009-03-20 18:18:04
I would propose a generic correction file creator for all lossy formats ("DeltaFlac"?  ). A very simple piece of software or plugin could decode a lossy stream (including gap correction) and generate a delta stream against the original PCM, which would then be FLAC compressed and stored somewhere safe (for the reconversion of a whole collection in 2025 to Super-AAC2-Pro-3000).

Hmm, interesting. Have a regular <filename>.mp3, and an accompanying <filename>.dflac file. Old players, just use the .mp3, new players the .dflac, and takes it's metadata from the /mp3 and uses it as a base to perform the corrections on, provided in the .dflac.

Could be quite cool. And would be _very_ convenient for me.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: lvqcl on 2009-03-20 18:34:31
some test files encoded with flac -8: 477 MB, or 976kbps. Musepack --extreme: 102 MB (210 kbps); difference between lossless and lossy encoded with flac -8: 400 MB, or 819 kbps.
So, we can make MusepackHD! 
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: monoton on 2009-03-20 18:43:52
How do I get an mp3 file that is of exact length as the wave? I quickly tried converting a wav file to mp3 (with Lame) and back to wav but there was about 0.05 seconds of something totally irrelevant added in the beginning... well, I could simply truncate that later... but for what... why can't the stream just match exact size in number of samples?
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: Alex B on 2009-03-20 18:45:28
Useless format:
  • The lossless part is stored in ID3v2 tags.
  • Size of ID3v2 tags is limited to 256MB by specifications; as a result, lossless part of an mp3hd file can't be larger than 256MB.
I wonder what those people will think of next. Maybe resurrect VQF or something.
I agree.

As a test, I tried to encode a 500 MB wav file:

Code: [Select]
C:\Test\mp3hd>mp3hdencoder -br 192000 -if t.wav -of t.mp3

******************************************************************************
*                                                                            *
*                      mp3HD Commandline Encoder V1.4.0                      *
*                            (Evaluation Version)                            *
*                                                                            *
*                              Revision 1007                                *
*                              Build Jan 30 2009                            *
*                                                                            *
*                        © 2007 - 2009 Thomson S.A.                        *
*                      © 1996 - 2009 Fraunhofer IIS                      *
*                            All rights reserved.                            *
*                                                                            *
*      This software and/or program is protected by copyright law and      *
*        international treaties. Any reproduction or distribution of        *
*        this software and/or program, or any portion of it, may result      *
*      in severe civil and criminal penalties, and will be prosecuted      *
*                to the maximum extent possible under law.                  *
*                                                                            *
******************************************************************************
frame 114579Error: cd-chunk is greater than ID3 Tag Size
Error: Closing ID3 Tag Handle
In addition, I don't see -ofl mentioned in the options. I suppose they really don't care about gapless (lossy) MP3 playback. Though, in any case FhG's implementation is not widely supported.

I wonder if the lossless plugin can play gaplessly. (I have not tested it yet.)
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: lvqcl on 2009-03-20 19:16:20
How do I get an mp3 file that is of exact length as the wave? I quickly tried converting a wav file to mp3 (with Lame) and back to wav but there was about 0.05 seconds of something totally irrelevant added in the beginning... well, I could simply truncate that later... but for what... why can't the stream just match exact size in number of samples?


1) don't use old versions of lame. Latest version is 3.98.2.
2) don't use -t switch.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: Alex B on 2009-03-20 19:39:17
I did some gapless playback tests.

The -ofl switch does not work with the CLI encoder, but apparently the "-ofl" info is added automatically because the native Winamp plugin can play the lossy part of mp3HD files gaplessly and the encoder delay and zero padding values are displayed in the "view file info" window. This works only when the mp3HD plugin is not installed.

However, surprisingly the mp3HD plugin does not play the same files gaplessly when it is set to play only the lossy part. My test files were played exactly like standard MP3 files without any gapless playback headers. When the plugin is set to play the lossless part playback is correctly gapless.

I tested also LAME encoded "gapless" MP3 files. Fortunately the installed mp3HD plugin was not activated and the native Winamp plugin played the files correctly.

EDIT

I removed the word "surprisingly". As far as I understand, decoding accurate file lengths correctly from lossy MP3 data is not simple and there is really no need for the additional gapless decoding code when the file contains also the lossless part that can be played with the decoder.

A converter that could quickly extract the lossy part for portable use would make the format more usable. It could be a simple file copying & tagging tool, but preferably it should not first duplicate the complete source file because the target location may be size restricted and the available bandwidth may be limited. Perhaps it could first copy the file to a temporary location, remove the losless tag and after that move the file to the destination location.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-03-20 20:48:21
Lossy formats are hardly ever decoded deterministically, so your idea will never work (at least not losslessly). In SLS (so also mp3HD I assume) the original AAC/MP3 stream is not decoded by a normal lossy decoder.


Deterministic decoding is irrelevant in this case. You only have to guarantee that the same decoder is used at delta generation time and at reconstruction time. A non-deterministic decoder will still generate the same WAV file every time it is run and that is all what is needed, a CPU is still a deterministic machine executing the same code multiple times.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: menno on 2009-03-20 21:15:29
Lossy formats are hardly ever decoded deterministically, so your idea will never work (at least not losslessly). In SLS (so also mp3HD I assume) the original AAC/MP3 stream is not decoded by a normal lossy decoder.


Deterministic decoding is irrelevant in this case. You only have to guarantee that the same decoder is used at delta generation time and at reconstruction time. A non-deterministic decoder will still generate the same WAV file every time it is run and that is all what is needed, a CPU is still a deterministic machine executing the same code multiple times.


Not just the same decoder, but the exact same build even. That means it will only work on 1 platform, with just 1 specific decoder build, making it much more useless than mp3HD IMO.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-03-20 21:24:35
Not just the same decoder, but the exact same build even. That means it will only work on 1 platform, with just 1 specific decoder build, making it much more useless than mp3HD IMO.


Hmm, the platform dependency would be quite a disqualifier. In the case of MP3 and AAC, is this caused by how decoders are usually implemented or already inherent within the reference encoder's ISO spec?
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: menno on 2009-03-20 21:46:29
Not just the same decoder, but the exact same build even. That means it will only work on 1 platform, with just 1 specific decoder build, making it much more useless than mp3HD IMO.


Hmm, the platform dependency would be quite a disqualifier. In the case of MP3 and AAC, is this caused by how decoders are usually implemented or already inherent within the reference encoder's ISO spec?


Performing floating point operations in different order might produce different results (10*(a+b) or 10*a+10*b can give different results), so the exact output is dependent on the compiler since it can optimize things away or reorder things. The ISO spec allows these minimal differences between decoders. I guess you could get deterministic results between compilers if you would use an integer based decoder, but it would still have to be the exact same codebase everytime you use it.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: saratoga on 2009-03-20 21:48:37
Not just the same decoder, but the exact same build even. That means it will only work on 1 platform, with just 1 specific decoder build, making it much more useless than mp3HD IMO.


Hmm, the platform dependency would be quite a disqualifier. In the case of MP3 and AAC, is this caused by how decoders are usually implemented or already inherent within the reference encoder's ISO spec?


Its because of how floating point math works.  You don't have to use floating point math to decode MP3, but its most common on PCs since integer is slower.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: rpp3po on 2009-03-20 23:14:12
Well, then a packaged integer only decoder would be needed for delta-generation and reconstruction. That makes it less "generic" than I had initially thought. It would only work for a certified set of (to be included) decoders.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: m0rbidini on 2009-03-21 02:43:03
Oh my... The only good thing that comes to mind when reflecting about this is that Thomson/FhG must have ordered a market research which concluded that the demand for lossless will grow substantially and then decided to milk the MP3 buzzword a little more... again. Everything else gives me a headache, especially the thought of this turning out to be a success.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: DOS386 on 2009-03-21 11:04:02
Useless format:
  • The lossless part is stored in ID3v2 tags.
  • Size of ID3v2 tags is limited to 256MB by specifications; as a result, lossless part of an mp3hd file can't be larger than 256MB.
I wonder what those people will think of next. Maybe resurrect VQF or something.


Agree, useless horrible hack.

What's the most attractive in your opinion:
"Buy HD MUSIC. Cristal clear sound. Compatible with every player"
or
"Buy lossless music. CD Quality. Download the MP3 codec, the GUI and follow our two page tutorial to make it work"


None of those. I prefer:
"Buy lossless music. CD Quality. Download audio file, codec is free, open source and well designed"

Also, since FLAC is the weakest of the "useful" lossless codecs and this hack is even weaker and at same time much slower
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: guruboolez on 2009-03-21 11:25:52
None of those. I prefer:
"Buy lossless music. CD Quality. Download audio file, codec is free, open source and well designed"

I also share your choice, but I repeat, installing a piece of software is an annoyance for many people (customers) and they could flee any store requires such operation. Moreover, the codec is sometimes useless. For example, there's no plug-in for people using iTunes and I don't see a vast public learning to transcode their flac to a third-party tool in order to play-it on iTunes and transfert it on iPod. The success of amazon.com and iTunes Music store comes from simplicity (download and play & transfer) – not from freedom or open-source. Unfortunately I would say…
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: N!Ce on 2009-03-21 13:29:18
Interesting read. I basically agree with guruboolez, the only purpose of this format is marketing and getting more users (customers) into the lossless world. It appears quite inferior compared to other lossless formats however, it's usually not the superior things that prevail, but the easier to handle ones. Keep in mind, the vast majority of music listeners are 'newbies' on that part. That's why I agree that it's a rather useless format, but still likely to have a certain success.

Btw, the in my opinion more useful solution for the lossy-lossless dual archiving would be, finally establishing a useful lossless format. The argument of being able to store more files when they are lossy while it won't make a difference on a DAP anyway, will constantly decrease and finally vanish. Because by this rate it won't take too long until you will be able to store more lossless files on your DAP than you will be able to listen to. That's when the argument of using only one filetype for everything will weight much more. All we need is to get a useful lossless format as established and known as mp3 is at the moment, but that is unfortunately not likely to happen soon. 


So far my 2 HD cents. 


Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: shakey_snake on 2009-03-21 17:59:35
Interesting read. I basically agree with guruboolez, the only purpose of this format is marketing and getting more users (customers) into the lossless world.
Yeah by tricking them. 

You can't really force peoples hands like this.

Lusers get massive mp3s and those-in-the-know get a hackish crappy format. It's not good for anyone.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: seanyseansean on 2009-03-21 20:16:50
None of those. I prefer:
"Buy lossless music. CD Quality. Download audio file, codec is free, open source and well designed"

I also share your choice, but I repeat, installing a piece of software is an annoyance for many people (customers) and they could flee any store requires such operation. Moreover, the codec is sometimes useless. For example, there's no plug-in for people using iTunes and I don't see a vast public learning to transcode their flac to a third-party tool in order to play-it on iTunes and transfert it on iPod. The success of amazon.com and iTunes Music store comes from simplicity (download and play & transfer) – not from freedom or open-source. Unfortunately I would say…


We will never get mainstream pop on lossless formats for download.

The next big thing will be surround or higher bitrate formats.

Once everyone has their entire libraries on itunes, like we did with CDs, the industry will simply resell us our music in 'HD!!!!'. It's not worth the bandwidth and marketing cost to sell a mathematically exact format, when they can sell us a lossy 'HD!!!!' format instead.

You have to hope and pray that red book and blu-ray formats remain hacked.

Props to whoever brought up VQF - I remember from my earlier ripping days with some crappy Yamaha encoder. Happy memories
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: lvqcl on 2009-03-21 21:27:42
About quality of MP3 part: I encoded the same file with mp3HD Encoder (V1.4.0) and mp3 surround Encoder (V1.5, Encoder-Library V04.01.01):
Code: [Select]
mp3hdEncoder -if test.wav -of mp3hd.mp3 -br 256000
mp3sEncoder -if test.wav -of mp3surr.mp3 -br 256000 -q 1 -ofl

mp3 part of mp3hd.mp3 is exactly the same as mp3surr.mp3.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: kode54 on 2009-03-22 00:56:20
I tried replacing the lossy portion with LAME encoded MP3 data, and after successfully transplanting the mp3HD tag and Xing header onto the LAME data, it fails 6 frames in with a hash error:

Code: [Select]
Decode frame 6 in CD-Quality
(Mp3HdSsc) error: Decoder - wrong hash


I guess either the first 6 frames were perfect matches, or it hashes the decoded audio data and those were silent frames. So much for slipping in some other lossy data to see what the decoder produces.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: aconverse on 2009-03-22 17:36:28
Not just the same decoder, but the exact same build even. That means it will only work on 1 platform, with just 1 specific decoder build, making it much more useless than mp3HD IMO.


Hmm, the platform dependency would be quite a disqualifier. In the case of MP3 and AAC, is this caused by how decoders are usually implemented or already inherent within the reference encoder's ISO spec?


Performing floating point operations in different order might produce different results (10*(a+b) or 10*a+10*b can give different results), so the exact output is dependent on the compiler since it can optimize things away or reorder things. The ISO spec allows these minimal differences between decoders. I guess you could get deterministic results between compilers if you would use an integer based decoder, but it would still have to be the exact same codebase everytime you use it.


If it's anything like SLS (which you initially claimed) then corrections are applied in the transform domain then an integer version of the transform is applied. You can't just mash the corrections onto the output of a regular decoder.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: lvqcl on 2009-03-22 18:48:15
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=544529 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=60868&view=findpost&p=544529)

Quote
That's why SLS also operates in the frequency domain which is incompatible to the MP3 filterbank.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: cybertoon on 2009-03-22 19:18:44
heres a sample for you all
HD VBR 1:
http://rapidshare.com/files/212268246/Asaf...r_Lies_-_HD.mp3 (http://rapidshare.com/files/212268246/Asaf_Avidan___The_Mojos_-_Her_Lies_-_HD.mp3)

and MP3 VBR:
http://rapidshare.com/files/212274166/Asaf...es_-_256VBR.mp3 (http://rapidshare.com/files/212274166/Asaf_Avidan___The_Mojos_-_Her_Lies_-_256VBR.mp3)
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: saratoga on 2009-03-22 19:19:49
I think you could do this with mp3 like follows:

1) Create your correction file prior to the IMDCT step.
2) Define a specific integer implementation of the IMDCT and inverse subband filterbanks
3) Have the encoder compute any roundoff error during the decode phase and store this in a second correction file

Hopefully you can design the filter banks so that 3 is very, very small (or even zero) and thus can be compressed to be quite efficiently.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: odyssey on 2009-03-22 23:20:15
I don't really know what I should think of this. In general I think it's a nice proof-of-concept, but in reality I don't think I would use it.

1. Why would I carry gigantic files if I only get mp3-sound (on devices that don't support it, which would be close to most).
2. If the correction-parts are not separate, I can't even use this to avoid a secondary library for my mobile-encodes.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: ameyer17 on 2009-03-23 01:20:02
You would theoretically be able to strip the lossless data from the tags.
For example, I edited the tags in foobar2000 (running in WINE, in the unlikely case that it matters) and the file size went from over 18 MB to under 5 MB.

Though I still think this format is useless.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: SebastianG on 2009-03-23 08:38:15
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=544529 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=60868&view=findpost&p=544529)

Quote
That's why SLS also operates in the frequency domain which is incompatible to the MP3 filterbank.



I actually didn't test it.  So, this was me guessing.  The argument is that MP3 uses two filterbanks that are concatenated (PQMF + MDCT + alias reduction) and SLS is based on the MDCT only.  But maybe this concatenation is "similar enough" to what a plain MDCT would produce given a good window function.  But maybe they really use an integer MP3 decoder and update the time domain data using the "HD" data.  I don't know.

Cheers!
SG
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: menno on 2009-03-23 13:54:08
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=544529 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=60868&view=findpost&p=544529)

Quote
That's why SLS also operates in the frequency domain which is incompatible to the MP3 filterbank.



I actually didn't test it.  So, this was me guessing.  The argument is that MP3 uses two filterbanks that are concatenated (PQMF + MDCT + alias reduction) and SLS is based on the MDCT only.  But maybe this concatenation is "similar enough" to what a plain MDCT would produce given a good window function.  But maybe they really use an integer MP3 decoder and update the time domain data using the "HD" data.  I don't know.


It's not impossible to make a lossless PQMF, DTS MA has this for example. Add lossless IntMDCT and lossless alias reduction (possible because it is only some butterflies) and you have a lossless mp3 filterbank.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: SebastianG on 2009-03-23 15:02:32
It's not impossible to make a lossless PQMF, DTS MA has this for example. Add lossless IntMDCT and lossless alias reduction (possible because it is only some butterflies) and you have a lossless mp3 filterbank.

Hmm... sounds like there would be a lot of intermediate steps/roundings involved. The beauty of the MDCT is that you can factor it into a couple of butterflies and a type-IV DCT. This kind of DCT is an involution which makes "multidimensional lifting" applicable. The "multidimensional lifting" approach for a reversible integer-DCT is one of those that approximates the real-valued DCT pretty well. I don't yet see how the mp3 version could be as good w.r.t. approximating the real-valued filterbank.

The alternative would be using a deterministic integer mp3 decoder + correction in time where the spectral shape of the "correction" noise could be infered by the mp3 frame's side information (scale factors, code books).

Cheers!
SG
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: wnmnkh on 2009-03-26 01:08:00
As concept this codec has great potential (maybe can bring lossless mainstream)

But it fails in practice. That hack is just facepalm.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: WUXGA on 2009-03-26 01:50:34
As concept this codec has great potential (maybe can bring lossless mainstream)

But it fails in practice. That hack is just facepalm.

Quite honestly, I don't think that lossless will ever be mainstream.  Looking at listening tests lossy codecs seem nearly transparent to people at 128kbps and iTunes and Amazon mp3 are using 256kbps and I don't here complaints about audio quality.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: funkyblue on 2009-03-27 02:28:49
I WAS all excited when I read about it on some website. I presumed they somehow made MP3 lossless, (as in I could encode stuff that would play in full quality on any MP3 player). Sigh. I just wish Apple and and Sony would support FLAC!
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: monoton on 2009-03-29 22:26:58
Well... I don't get it... I extracted a correction file from a 190kbps and a 130kbps VBR encoded file (done with foobar factory settings and LAME 3.98.2) containing all the differences between the mp3 and the original wav and compressed that corrrection file with FLAC and the filesizes overall are almost on par:

Test track: AC/DC Smash N Grab
wav filesize: 41.4MB
complete flac file (lossless): 34.1MB
mp3 (190kbps VBR) + flac'ed correction file: 6.2MB + 29.6MB = 35.8MB
mp3 (130kbps VBR) + flac'ed correction file: 3.9MB + 31.7MB = 35.6MB

Test track: Orchestral track
wav filesize: 17.9MB
complete flac file (lossless): 11.3MB
mp3 (190kbps VBR) + flac'ed correction file: 2.6MB + 9.5MB = 12.1MB
mp3 (130kbps VBR) + flac'ed correction file: 1.8MB + 10.1MB = 11.9MB

Tho I had to correct those aligning issues described above manually (cropping a selection of the mp3 which was longer than the orignal wav both in the beginning and at the end... maybe using VBR caused this?). At least that way (if properly implemented) you'd be able to get back a lossless file and still have everything on mp3 as well without major sacrifices and spare the overhead of full flac plus mp3 files. Just a player that can stream both at once would have to be implemented as well and you'd be all set I guess.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: funkyblue on 2009-03-30 02:47:42
Unless they invented a fully lossless MP3 format, that could be decoded by any MP3 player, then this new format is useless. FLAC all the way!
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: doccolinni on 2009-06-14 06:55:56
While I agree with everyone who says that this is a completely useless format, I wonder if a proper lossless encoder which used FFT analysis and frequency domain representation for predictor might achieve more easily compressible residuals...
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: lvqcl on 2009-06-14 08:57:02
Quote
I wonder if a proper lossless encoder which used FFT analysis and frequency domain representation for predictor might achieve more easily compressible residuals...


white noise cannot be compressed at all losslessly.  you can make an audio file that cannot be compressed to even half size by any compressor simply by mixing a loud track with half-scale noise.  what you describe is not a usable metric for evaluating compression because it is too dependent on the input.

state of the art lossless compression is close enough to the noise level of the input already.

Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: doccolinni on 2009-06-14 09:10:45
Quote
white noise cannot be compressed at all losslessly. you can make an audio file that cannot be compressed to even half size by any compressor simply by mixing a loud track with half-scale noise.

Of course white noise won't compress well losslessly when it's basically completely random data! However, listening to music we can all very easily hear that what we hear is not random - or at least not even remotely as random as pure white noise. That's the reason why lossless audio compression works at all, actually.

As for whether or not better lossless audio compression than what's possible today can be achieved... I think it's possible. Look at for how long zip was the best general compressor available, and then rar came and blew it away. And then, 7zip came and blew both of them away. I think there's still room for improvement. As for how much more will be possible... that I really can't guess. If you forced me to estimate, I'd say (with great uncertainty) that at least 5% - 10% more is possible. But that's really a shot in the dark.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: jcoalson on 2009-06-14 20:00:37
frequency domain prediction has been tried.  before lpac there was ltac.  there are several older threads here about this.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: /mnt on 2009-06-14 20:19:16
This format is just as useless as Pulseaudio.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: doccolinni on 2009-06-14 22:06:56
frequency domain prediction has been tried.  before lpac there was ltac.  there are several older threads here about this.

Oh. Well I'm sort of new here so I apologise for not knowing that there already was a discussion about this.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: servimo on 2010-03-07 21:46:06
I want to know if exists a plugin for foobar2000 for decoding mp3hd?
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: servimo on 2010-03-08 01:53:37
Found information about: Will there be suport for mp3HD? (lossless mp3) (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70565)
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: saratoga on 2010-03-08 02:44:50
Found information about: Will there be suport for mp3HD? (lossless mp3) (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70565)


AFAIK theres no decoder source available at all, let alone a plugin for foobar.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: NetRanger on 2013-04-22 17:58:23
Is this encoder still available somewhere out there or?

Have been trying 2 get my hands on it but the all4mp3 website is down.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: C.R.Helmrich on 2013-04-22 23:22:58
The web site of the German IT magazine CHIP has apparently mirrored the encoder package to their servers. Haven't tried it though.

http://www.chip.de/downloads/mp3HD-Toolkit_13001528.html (http://www.chip.de/downloads/mp3HD-Toolkit_13001528.html) (click on "Zum Download")

Chris
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: NetRanger on 2013-04-22 23:59:23
The web site of the German IT magazine CHIP has apparently mirrored the encoder package to their servers. Haven't tried it though.

http://www.chip.de/downloads/mp3HD-Toolkit_13001528.html (http://www.chip.de/downloads/mp3HD-Toolkit_13001528.html) (click on "Zum Download")

Chris



Thnx a lot Chris

That 1 worked just fine
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: mrmarbach on 2013-07-19 19:46:26
A label I am friendly with just started selling MP3HD downloads. 

I told them to stop that right now.

In the meantime, when I use XLD to convert to FLAC, is it using the full lossless component from the MP3HD files? I can't find a way to tell.
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: eahm on 2013-07-20 02:18:07
And... why are people still using or ever used mp3HD??
Title: lossless mp3 - mp3HD
Post by: Rotareneg on 2013-07-20 06:17:15
Because it's "HD".