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Topic: Wavpack lossy (Read 27456 times) previous topic - next topic
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Wavpack lossy

Reply #25 –
Quote from: halb27 on
Quote from: shadowking on

...  I have 2 samples similar to bruhns this in my collection that I can post

Yes, I'd like to listen to your samples though I don't expect to get a new aspect. Anyway it's good to have more experience.

Taking it all together everything looks like for achieving a very good robust quality it is advisable to use 300+ kbps with wavPack lossy. And in that range it's as always with lossy encoders: given a certain setting in the robust quality range you can achieve an even more improved robustness by going higher with quality settings but in a practical sense the ratio robustness improvent vs. additional effort (file size, encoding time, ...) is quickly getting worse the higher the quality setting is already. It's just personal preference where to put the optimum point. It also depends on the application context. For me who doesn't listen to CDs any more and doesn't want an additional lossless archive (or additional correction files) I feel more comfortable using 350 kbps and additional to -h a high -x mode. (And when the first 16GB+ high quality flash players will come up I guess I will even go a bit higher - I just realized the iPod people have arrived at 8 GB for their nano). But this is just my personal paranoia. Your 320 kbps setting is certainly fine, and if it is only about playing music additionally to keeping a lossless archive or keeping CDs in an active state maybe I'd do that too - or be totally satisfied with very high bitrate mp3 as mp3 has additional desirable features.


You could follow bryant advice, which is published on his web page.  384kbps for practically transparent encoding isn't too far from MP3 insane 320kbps bitrate.

Right now, nearly all my CDs are archived with lossless WavPack.  I'm waiting for WavPack 4.4 and if the concensus is that the lossy part is an improvement over 4.3, I will probably convert everything to 384kbps (not that I find anything wrong with the lossy implementation of 4.3  ).

BTW, 350kbps is a weird bitrate.  I don't know why you just don't stick with the 32kbps increments.  But, to each is own.

Wavpack lossy

Reply #26 –
Quote from: Radetzky on
BTW, 350kbps is a weird bitrate.  I don't know why you just don't stick with the 32kbps increments.

You never get the exact bit rate you specify anyway 
With 350 you could end up for example with tracks between 348 to 363 kbs. So you might as well forget 32 increments.
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.

Wavpack lossy

Reply #27 –
Quote from: Radetzky on
[BTW, 350kbps is a weird bitrate.  I don't know why you just don't stick with the 32kbps increments.  But, to each is own.

There is no real sense in using 32 kbps increments with wavPack lossy. I'm just used to it cause the cbr modes of mp3 usually obey it, and when trying out settings an increment of ~ 32 kbps seems quite adequate to me. In case your remark covers my preference for ~350 kbps: as I said I feel pretty safe with it and moreover my iRiver H140 makes HD spin up more often when using a higher bitrate (which I hate as I can hear it), and drain on battery is higher too as a consequence.

EDITED: Oh... things are mixed up.
            I'm talking about ~350 kbps cause the exact bitrate doesn't matter - it's only nominal anyway.
            I personally use 352 kbps nominally but that's not important at all.
lame3995o -Q1.7 --lowpass 17

Wavpack lossy

Reply #28 –
Nice samples. Bruhns is abxable at 300+ k after listening to it 100 times. At 320k its subtle but there. Tested Dualstream Vbr modes: abx 8/8 up to quality 2 (297k) and then 7/8 for quality 3 (342k).. Tested Corelli and abxed 8/8 quality 0 , 7/8 quality 1 . Can't say that Dualstream is better than wavpack with confidence anymore - it depends on the sample. With dualstream --ans things sounded worse than without at least up to quality 2.

I must also mention that isn't as dramatic as it sounds. I can only get these differences on very low volume samples like Bruhns with track gain of +16 db ON when abxing. At these levels even the original sounds weird and this is not a normal listening situation. If I did it through my amp / speakers , i'd also get added noise from the amp itself (and not so pure white). One thing for sure , is 250k is sub-optimal on these tracks. I would say that such samples might be easier to 'isolate' on wavpack and dualstream vs other encoders, rather than easier to find.

Wavpack lossy

Reply #29 –
Quote from: guruboolez on
Quote from: halb27 on

Just tried guruboolez' samples, and also found them pretty bad at < ~300 kbps, especially bruhns.
But at ~ 350 kbps (tried 4.31 -hx6, 4.31 -hx, and 4.44a2 -hx3) results to me are what I call not-at-all-annoying, and I don't think I will hear a problem in normal listening situations.

Will the next improvements (VBR mode, different noise shaping) improve WavPack's transparency?



Guru, In wavpack 4.0 b3 Bryant changed the shaping and in my experience there is some real progress on these type of samples. I also discovered some regressions, but there is an -alpha- 4.31 encoder they are fixed. I'd like to get additional feedback starting with -hx1b256 or more. This will encode high quality mode, auto-joint stereo and auto-noise shaping.

The encoder is here:

http://www.wavpack.com/wavpack4x.zip

Wavpack lossy

Reply #30 –
I'll try one day, but I must get my hardware back first (I moved four weeks ago and I'm still not fully installed).

Wavpack lossy

Reply #31 –
Ok, thanks.
 

Wavpack lossy

Reply #32 –
Comparing wavpack with mp3 is not correct because mp3 uses lowpass filter. Try to downsample a file to 32kHz  samplerate, wavpack can compress it to ~146kbps. Mp3 uses 16kHz lowpass filter at 112bps. Not so big difference, but wavpack sounds better! You can use mp3, but it's lieing yourself.