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Topic: Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa (Read 28626 times) previous topic - next topic
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Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #25
layer3maniac:

Interesting results.. and could be possible depending on the clip.  I think that a few people are going to want to have a reference of what you are encoding to try and reproduce test results though (standard procedure).  Can you maybe provide a link?

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #26
Well, there must be a problem with the in_lqt plugin I'm using because the decoded PsyTEL file even at 114 sounds excellent compared to the decoded lqt at 192. I'll try earlier versions but I really wish ff123 had used PsyTEL for aac in his test now... Ivan sure knows how to make a 114 file sound good. This isn't fatboy.wav but I don't listen to fatboy slim that much anyway. Right about now... da funk soul brover

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #27
Sure thing Dibrom, but first I want to encode some more challenging files. Not really encoder busting files though, just some "busier" music. When I get some reliable results you will be the first to know. I'm anxious to test out some files encoded with Garth's tuned ogg encoder too.

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #28
Hmm... I have to join this interesting discussion

First, my comments on MPC - MPC is very high quality audio encoder, probably best in its range. Andree has done quite remarkable work on psychoacoustic model optimization and applying psychoacoustic model suitable for transform coders (such as AAC) to one subband-only coder, like MPC. I have learned many things from his work and his comments/advices of my psychoacoustic model implementation.

When I started my work on AAC psychoacoustic optimization, MPC was near in production state, so I had hard time to "catch-up" with the MPC quality. Final result is the AACEnc -archive sounds very similar to MPC -extreme.

MPC has less "problem" cases than PsyTEL AAC on -extreme and -normal presets, but most people would agree than in MOST cases they both are high quality.  In some cases, AACEnc might generate small drop-outs (on -extreme and -normal values) that are not recognized by most listeners. This is due to some internal design trade-off in psytel AAC which I can't modify now, and AAC filterbank design, too (this is not fixable). However, -archive value is very good, as good as MPC.

Now, MPC certainly does not sound dull to me, at least I haven't found any clip that does sound "dull" or something like that to me.

Pros of MP+:
- Transparent quality at -extreme setting for 99.9% samples
- Low Decoder Complexity, lower than MP3 and AAC
- Excellent psychoacoustic tuning

Cons of MP+
- Not very flexible at lower bitrates
- No CBR support (can't be used for straming with small delay)
- Not a ISO standard

Pros of AAC:
- Transparent quality at -archive (psytel), very near at -extreme
- Good CBR support with high audio quality (better than MP3)
- ISO Standard
- Many sampling rates (8000-96000 Hz), up to 256 kbits/s per channel, up to 48 channels

Cons of AAC:
- Problem cases that trip out all transform codecs
- Dropouts sometimes possible (psytel aac)
- Very tight licensing schedule (ISO AAC is not for end-users)
- Increased complexity

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #29
Quote
Originally posted by VeryBlur
JohnV, I know you are 1 of the expert listeners and well trained to detect artifacts. But I think you side too much on MPC and feel that other formats are just craps (psychological problem).
No, I don't consider other formats craps. Well, Dibrom already have said pretty much everything, so I don't need to write long message...

Quote
In fact I am not a newbie. Very sorry to tell you so if you are trying to insult me as a newbie.
No, I'm not trying to insult you and I didn't say you are a newbie. I was warning newbies not to believe everything they see is said. The sad thing is that the psychological factor is very great here, meaning if some people would do now non-blind testing, they would probably try to hear the "lifeless" sound of MPC, and because of the psychological factor they really think they hear something like this. Only proper blind testing reveals this may not be true.

Quote
Listening is very subjective and I am just voicing my opinion that MPC in my ears not as good as PsyTEL AAC in terms of life of the music.
Well, ABX testing is totally objective. After you have reliably verified you can hear a difference, then you can start to speculate what is it you hear. It's not always practical to do full ABX testings when tweaking codecs, then for example blind AB-test is often used, but the key point also here is repetition. You gotta get the same result many times.
You can download ABX comparator from here:
http://www.pcabx.com/program/ABX173_setup.exe

Quote
I do agree that MPC gives no artifacts (-xtreme for my ears, have not able to find any music to kill it yet. 

Just to point out that artifacts and life of music both are different, you could not say lifeless means there is artifact.
With blind testing the point is just to verify you can hear a difference. It doesn't matter what you call it; distortion,artifacts or what ever. The point is to verify you can hear a difference. The word "difference" here covers everything: single artifacts, constant distortion, excessive noisyness, even the effect you would call "lifeless", everything.

What I would suggest is that you would do ABX testings between both original vs MPC/Psytel and Psytel vs MPC. Also use fair comparable settings (bitrate) for both.

Quote
To be said clearly, lifeless means you always feel that there is lack of something in the music perhaps the psychoaccoustic model removes too many details e.g. masked too much
You should be able to ABX this difference then.
I hope you read also the experiences of Niktheblak:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/showth...s=&threadid=325

Lastly, I'm not saying it's impossible you are hearing this "lifeless" sound. But as long as there are no proofs (your ABX results, test clip), these opinions can't be taken very seriously and the developers have no chance to try to identify and correct the situation.
Juha Laaksonheimo

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #30
Quote
Originally posted by VeryBlur
clearly, lifeless means you always feel that there is lack of something in the music perhaps the psychoaccoustic model removes too many details e.g. masked too much, etc (e.g. NitTheBlak said it's on the mid frequencies, for my case I use my feelings to feel it). Artifacts means you have extra something


I see some similarities in our claims and I have to respond just out of the curiosity value of this issue. As a guitarist I pay very much attention to electric guitar sound and that (and that only) is where I thought that dropping might have happened. In a feeling-domain it could be described as a lack of PAIN with PAIN meaning that when listening to a distorted guitar at reasonably high volumes it sounds somewhat PAINful (the ear reacts to high-intensity mid-frequency sounds with a sensation of pain). My claim aroused from the experience that MPC version of the distorted guitar sounded less PAINful.

In frequency domain it might be seen as attenuation of some mid-range frequencies the ear is most sensitive to (or which trigger the painful sensation). Theoretically that could happen since the frequency spectrum of a distorted guitar is very wide and the encoder would have to dispense the limited amount of bits equally (according to the ATH, that is!) among different frequencies. Especially if plenty of other high-intensity mid-range sounds are present at the sample.

Theoretically high-intensity wide-frequency range sound consisting mostly of noise is rather difficult to encode and I also remember that most codecs indeed have problems with distorted material. That's why metal yields much higher bitrate than "easier" material with certain codecs.

But with MPC -standard everything is ~175 kb/s. Dibrom's standard preset encodes my metal with ~260 kb/s, GTuned2's 160 mode (-b 999) gives ~210kb/s while oggenc -b 256 gives ~300kb/s. But MPC -standard stubbornly encodes everything I feed it with at  ~175kb/s. So either some high-order compromises are made or MPC's psymodel is truly superior. My ABX tests indicated the latter.

You have to remember that all I have said here is strictly hypothetical and it should not be viewed so much as a claim as rattlings of a frustrated sceptic.

Althought I am pretty sure of MPC's superiority I will remain a bit cautious with this matter. The instant I spot a decent test clip I will do a series of ABX's and perhaps present some nice frequency response curves hopefully showing that some dropping actually happens. Until then I would recommend happy MPC'ing

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #31
Quote
Originally posted by Ivan Dimkovic
MPC has less "problem" cases than PsyTEL AAC on -extreme and -normal presets, but most people would agree than in MOST cases they both are high quality.  In some cases, AACEnc might generate small drop-outs (on -extreme and -normal values) that are not recognized by most listeners. This is due to some internal design trade-off in psytel AAC which I can't modify now, and AAC filterbank design, too (this is not fixable). However, -archive value is very good, as good as MPC.


I'd certainly agree with all of this.  For the vast majority of situations, PsyTEL is very high quality indeed, transparent even.

One of the issues that I'm faced with (and I realize this doesn't apply to probably even 1/8th of the people) is that at least half of the "standard" music that I encode and listen to happens to be of the type that cause these very problems with transform codecs.  However, I believe PsyTEL AAC handles them better than any other transform coder I've seen yet, which says a lot really.  I also realize that (as Ivan says) many of these differences approach a level that most listeners will not recognize.

However, given that MPC does edge out AAC on these pathological cases, and that it is free, and it is very fast, it just makes sense for me to use that format.  I'd really love to use AAC more (since it seems to be gaining hardware support), but the fact that it is difficult to use the format as an end user makes for a bad situation unfortunately..

Quote
Pros of MP+:
- Transparent quality at -extreme setting for 99.9% samples
- Low Decoder Complexity, lower than MP3 and AAC
- Excellent psychoacoustic tuning


I believe that encoder speed should be added to this list.  AFAIK MPC is also the fastest encoder out there for the level of quality that it provides.

I pretty much agree with everything else in your post also.

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #32
Quote
Originally posted by niktheblak
I see some similarities in our claims and I have to respond just out of the curiosity value of this issue.


If you want my opinion on this matter, I suspect "similarities" between all these types of cases are nothing more than people reading there may be a problem, then somehow convincing themselves there is a problem and that they are actually hearing it.  This effect is not really so uncommon..

I'm not saying this is what happened with you, or with VeryBlur or anyone in particular.. but the fact that claims keep popping up with no results and everyone is so unwilling to do tests or try to prove any of it, (except you, which was a nice change) I think supports this possibility.

Quote
Theoretically high-intensity wide-frequency range sound consisting mostly of noise is rather difficult to encode and I also remember that most codecs indeed have problems with distorted material.  That's why metal yields much higher bitrate than "easier" material with certain codecs.

But with MPC -standard everything is ~175 kb/s. Dibrom's standard preset encodes my metal with ~260 kb/s, GTuned2's 160 mode (-b 999) gives ~210kb/s while oggenc -b 256 gives ~300kb/s. But MPC -standard stubbornly encodes everything I feed it with at  ~175kb/s. So either some high-order compromises are made or MPC's psymodel is truly superior. My ABX tests indicated the latter.


Well as far as MP3 goes, the only reason you are seeing bitrates that high is because of a flaw in the format.  It cannot encode content above 16khz efficiently at all.  If you want proof of this effect, encode the file again with the -Y switch which disables noise shaping in this region, basically keeping vbr from trying to increase bitrate to compensate for the fact that it cannot encode this content accurately otherwise, because of a lack of a scalefactor for the last band.

If you encode with -Y you will see the bitrate drop significantly.

As for Garf's mode coming out at 210kbps, you can't compare that directly to MPC for a number of reasons.  First of all MPC exploits more psychoacoustic effects than vorbis does (temporal masking for example) and I also believe that the lossless stage in MPC might be superior to that of Vorbis (I'm sure Garf will correctly me here if I'm wrong), so that saves even more bits.  All of that and MPC has also had the benefit of being tuned "to the wire" much more than Vorbis has.. so you gain even more efficiency.

And as for -b256, you can't compare that to MPC standard because you are forcing a higher bitrate in Vorbis on purpose.  So to have any sort of valid comparison you need to force a higher mode in MPC as well.. try -insane for example, if you just want to see higher bitrates.

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #33
Quote
Originally posted by Dibrom

I also believe that the lossless stage in MPC might be superior to that of Vorbis (I'm sure Garf will correctly me here if I'm wrong), so that saves even more bits.

Lossless and saving bits are a bit contradictory arent they

If you're talking about the transform stage, Vorbis has the edge there because the MDCT is superior in terms of efficiency to subbanding (hence Vorbis will beat MPC at lot bitrates). The problem of the MDCT is that it's more susceptible to preecho, which then may cause a need for more accurate encoding in the lossy steps, causing MPC to win out in those situations.

Overall, I find it a bit hard and irrelevant to say what codec is better based on the internal steps it does. MP3 does both subbanding _and_ MDCT so it should easily beat Vorbis and MPC, right

Bitrate fluctuations on passages are a bad way to judge a codec on. Sometimes an encoder will use a very low bitrate on a hard passage and get away with it without problems. I often see that passages that I think are hard to encode really are not. It's hard to predict bitrates. You certainly should not assume that because a codec uses a low bitrate on a passage and others do not that there is a higher chances that it will artifact there. Quite the contrary: it indicates it can encode the passage well when the others cannot.

As for the rest of the thread, we've had a zillion of these already and they unvariably end up the same. I don't have the patience like Dibrom to explain everything for the umpteenth time, so I will be very short and blunt:

Either you provide a sample or point out the CD and track, or you shut the fuck up.

--
GCP

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #34
Quote
Originally posted by Garf
Lossless and saving bits are a bit contradictory arent they
I believe Dibrom means MPC's lossless phase: huffman and differential coding and maybe some other lossless methods.
Juha Laaksonheimo

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #35
My choice of Liquid Audio for my 128 kbit/s comparisons was based on listening tests I had performed for myself using Psytel 1.0:

See:

http://ff123.net/peaceful.html
http://ff123.net/duel.html

I believe psytel sounded better on duel.wav, but was quite bad on peaceful.wav.

Also, back then, bAdDuDeX complained of ringing in psytel at 128 (which he cured for himself by lowering the ATH, I believe).  Liquid Audio 128VBR was actually his choice of best low-bitrate encoder, even though that setting is not really low bitrate (can go up to 160 kbit/s on some music).

Psytel 1.0 is an older version, though, and Ivan has improved CBR 128 since then.  Ivan's tests of castanets.wav (see results of 128 test here:  http://ff123.net/export/aac128log.txt) appears to show that Psytel is very close to Liquifier quality.  I participated in that test, and my personal results was that FhG (Liquid Audio) was clear and away the best on castanets.wav at 128.

ff123

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #36
Quote
Originally posted by Garf

Overall, I find it a bit hard and irrelevant to say what codec is better based on the internal steps it does. MP3 does both subbanding _and_ MDCT so it should easily beat Vorbis and MPC, right


Not quite - MP3 is using subbanding and MDCT because MPEG commitee needed to keep some degree of filterbank compatibility with MP2, don't ask me why - I don't know  And, at the time MP3 was standardized pure MDCT codecs were not yet superior to subband ones at low bitrates, and important companies were "pushing' subband design.

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #37
Quote
Originally posted by JohnV
I believe Dibrom means MPC's lossless phase: huffman and differential coding and maybe some other lossless methods.


In that case, I would expect Oggs VQ to do better than MPC's quantization+huffman.

But I have no idea, really. (looks like apples and oranges to me)

--
GCP

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #38
Quote
Originally posted by Ivan Dimkovic

Not quite


Of course not. I was being ironic. Maybe you missed the  ?

My point was that the actual transform method does not provide any guarantee whatsoever for audio quality.

--
GCP

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #39
Quote
Originally posted by JohnV
I believe Dibrom means MPC's lossless phase: huffman and differential coding and maybe some other lossless methods.


Yes, this is what I was talking about.

Quote
Originally posted by Garf
In that case, I would expect Oggs VQ to do better than MPC's quantization+huffman. 

But I have no idea, really. (looks like apples and oranges to me) 


Could be.  I was just trying to find ways to explain why MPC would still outperform Vorbis at a lower bitrate, even with the GT modes being used.  I know that the lossless stage in MPC is really very efficient (and I assume Vorbis' is as well)and it might be a way that MPC could saving a few more bits.  Of course most of the other stuff mentioned is probably more likely, temporal masking, more fine grained tuning, etc.

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #40
I'll just wade into this little debate. I've been a recording engineer for 25 years and an audiophile for a bit longer than that with an extremely high end system. Currently testing Musepack, AAC and FAAC. At this point in time they are truly the only ones that would be in the running for discerning listeners. LAME unfortunately destroys the music to the point where it could not be used for any critical listening. Currently comparing using an Al Stewart track that I was present for the recording of so I know what it should sound like. If anyone's interested I'll let you know my findings once I'm done. I certainly wouldn't, at this early point, consider any of the formats suitable for archiving.

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #41
Quote
Originally posted by Beatles
Currently testing Musepack, AAC and FAAC. At this point in time they are truly the only ones that would be in the running for discerning listeners.
Ehm, FAAC for discerning listener??? Well, anyway, what kind of settings and bitrates you use for testing?
Many of us are interested in your findings, so please share when you are done.
Juha Laaksonheimo

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #42
Originally posted by Beatles:
Quote
LAME unfortunately destroys the music to the point where it could not be used for any critical listening.


I am very interested in what you think of lame's quality if you use
the following commandline:

--alt-preset normal

and this version of the lame encoder, namely lame_dm_rev6.zip:

http://static.hydrogenaudio.org/extra/lame_dm_rev6.zip

What part of the music do you feel is destroyed? Content above 16 Kilohertz? Transients?

Quote
At this early point, consider any of the formats suitable for archiving.


Not even MPC musepak/mpegplus at the -insane setting?

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #43
Quote
Originally posted by JohnV
Ehm, FAAC for discerning listener??? Well, anyway, what kind of settings and bitrates you use for testing?
Many of us are interested in your findings, so please share when you are done.

No no FAAC is clearly not an alternative, that was QUICKLY obvious. I am only interested John in absolutely the highest quality settings. Smaller bitrates are not any concern to me although it may be fun to tweak some to see just how low acceptable results can found. I've been playing with many different settings and really don't want to report what I think until I've fully tested everything. I see too many people shooting from the hip without being able to back up their findings. Two little tidbits I find interesting:
Listen to the rhythmic propulsion of a track known  in Linn talk as the "foot tapping" ability of each encoder. I do find differences between AAC and Musepack with one clearly better but this is just preliminary.
Also in decay and overtones which allows one to hear soundstage cues and to hear into the music and discern the back and side walls I can hear a difference.
MP3 is clearly not in the same category as Musepack and AAC.
As I'm new here is the IRC channel a good place to discuss things?
Thanks.

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #44
I am using REV6 but don't consider MP3 as a suitable medium for anything other than sharing or casual background listening but that's just MY opinion.


What part of the music do you feel is destroyed? Content above 16 Kilohertz? Transients?

Mainly overtones, decay, sense of space and propulsion. I suppose obviously palpability could be added to that list.



Not even MPC musepak/mpegplus at the -insane setting?


No not for archiving. But archiving to me means would I save my masters in a certain format and no I personally wouldn't even consider it.  But both Musepack and AAC are eminently listenable formats. I found Muse to be very good but I was was using an absolutely ludicrous commandline that gave an extremely large filesize and bitrate but sounded quite good in most areas. Overtones and soundstage flattening excepted.

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #45
Dear Beatles,

Thanks for your comments.
However, for us non-engineers can you explain (briefly) in layman's terms what you mean by some of the jargon?

For example,
overtones, decay, sense of space and propulsion, palpability

Here are some guesses (probably incorrect):

1. overtones: as guitarists know when you hit an e note there is also an overtone (b note) that is present though in much much less volume...

2. decay: rate at which notes fade out?

3. space: stereo image and its characteristics, perhps an mp3 can take a cathedral sound stereo image and dampen it so it sounds more like a medium room?

4. propulsion?? no idea...

5. palpability?? no idea

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #46
Quote
Originally posted by Beatles
No not for archiving. But archiving to me means would I save my masters in a certain format and no I personally wouldn't even consider it.  But both Musepack and AAC are eminently listenable formats. I found Muse to be very good but I was was using an absolutely ludicrous commandline that gave an extremely large filesize and bitrate but sounded quite good in most areas. Overtones and soundstage flattening excepted.

Interesting. Btw what kind of commandlines you used for MPC, I guess you also disabled mid/side-stereo? I could give you some hints for very high bitrate/quality commandline.
I don't think there's much use to go over 600-700kbps because then lossless coding becomes a viable choise.

Yeah, I wouldn't save masters in lossy format either...
Juha Laaksonheimo

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #47
Quote
Originally posted by RD
Dear Beatles,

Thanks for your comments.
However, for us non-engineers can you explain (briefly) in layman's terms what you mean by some of the jargon?

For example,
overtones, decay, sense of space and propulsion, palpability

Here are some guesses (probably incorrect):

1. overtones: as guitarists know when you hit an e note there is also an overtone (b note) that is present though in much much less volume...

Hi Rd,

Yes this is correct but a much more valuable tool is acoustic rather than electric instruments....although I play guitar too.



2. decay: rate at which notes fade out?


Yes exactly. This is one are where lossy compression falls quite short. However so far I would rate one method as a fair bit better than the other one.

3. space: stereo image and its characteristics, perhps an mp3 can take a cathedral sound stereo image and dampen it so it sounds more like a medium room?

Yes your characterization of the imaging and soundstage is correct. I'm testing one particular track I recorded with a 24/96 Nagra in a cathedral as a matter of fact. It doesn't "change" the room sound into a medium room, it fundamentally changes all soundstage cues, that is I can no longer hear the back or side walls. I'm continuing to play with different settings however.

4. propulsion?? no idea...


What rhythmically moves the track forward. For instance if the bassist is playing fast 8ths can all notes be distinguished or does it blur into low frequency noise. This is an often overlooked sound fundamental. In testing people can't put there finger on what's wrong BUT they're aware something isn't quite right.

5. palpability?? no idea

Palpability is the sense of the vocalist for example "being in your room". In a good recording you'll get a credible sense of the musicians being in your room...a palpable presence if you will.

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #48
Thanks for your excellent replies, Beatles!

Its nice to talk to an audio engineer...

Could you recommend some songs that really show off propulsion and palpability so i can do some tests?

Also have you ever tried --alt-preset insane with lame_dm_rev6?

I know there are problems with the mp3 format in general, but I'm curious to seek if you notice that --alt-preset insane is considerably better than -alt-preset normal... if you find that insane is not much better then it seems to me that normal is the way to go if someone is going to use mp3 at all....

Thanks,
AND HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE...

Is there any listening results for Psytel AAC v1.2 vs MusePa

Reply #49
Quote
Originally posted by RD
Thanks for your excellent replies, Beatles!

Its nice to talk to an audio engineer...

Could you recommend some songs that really show off propulsion and palpability so i can do some tests?

Hi Rd,

For propulsion I HIGHLY recommend Ginger Baker Trio's- Going Back Home , Atlantic 82652-2- Superb interplay between the bass and drums.
For palpability and soundstaging try Janis Ian- Breaking Silence which also has superb bass reproduction.
Also Steve Earle- Train A Coming a superb mostly live in the studio recording in which the musicians AND Steve should be right in the room with you. ESPECIALLY try the tracks Goodbye and Tecumseh Valley. A truly superb mostly acoustic recording that I wish I was responsible for.
One more I can't recommend highly enough to give your system an all around great workout is Sally Oldfield- Water Bearer preferrably vinyl or the domestic CD. The Japanese mastering is nothing short of music killing. 


Also have you ever tried --alt-preset insane with lame_dm_rev6?

I have but my comments are VERY preliminary and should not be relied on at this point.  So far in limited testing the presets do odd things to acoustic recordings. I intend to investigate further so I may be off on this but it is my first impression.



I know there are problems with the mp3 format in general, but I'm curious to seek if you notice that --alt-preset insane is considerably better than -alt-preset normal... if you find that insane is not much better then it seems to me that normal is the way to go if someone is going to use mp3 at all.... 

I have not tried normal yet.

Thanks,
AND HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE...