Re: Does xHE-AAC guarantee acceptable quality at below 24kbps (for stereo music)?
Reply #3 – 2018-09-27 07:14:49
Unless something comes out to blow away the current lossy king (i.e. Opus) I don't see anything around 24kbps being acceptable as even 32kbps is already really pushing it for a variety of music as I see even for the more extreme types of people who don't mind sacrificing sound quality won't want to go below 32kbps, at THE lowest. even with Opus, unless someone is pretty desperate for maximum amount of songs into the least possible amount of storage space I would avoid going any lower than 64kbps for sound quality reasons on a wide range of music. with that said... 32kbps/48kbps are respectable sound quality considering their file size but I pretty much consider 64kbps as my minimum suggested bit rate for Opus as I have a feeling my suggested minimum on Opus quite a few people would agree with as sound quality is still solid enough overall and even in terms of file size is quite minimal as to me it's not worth going from say 64kbps back to 48kbps or 32kbps as the sound quality loss ain't worth the storage space savings at that point as I can understand one going from 96kbps to 64kbps if they need storage space savings as the overall sound quality won't take too much of a hit and you will get a decent storage space savings unlike going lower than 64kbps where the sound quality hit is more obvious and storage space savings are minimal at that point since 64kbps is already pretty small. also, just going from 24kbps to 32kbps gives a solid boost to sound quality for not much file size increase and at those ranges your still talking a very small file. hell, even for speech I suggest, with Opus v1.3, not to go anything lower than 13kbps (with Opus v1.2.1 I suggest no lower than 14kbps) as I consider that setting the minimum for speech and when your talking 24kbps (or less) for music your really asking a lot. but with that said... what's 'acceptable quality' will vary from person-to-person. but I guess if you want something in the ball park of transparent I would avoid going lower than 64kbps.