Public MP3 Listening Test @ 128 kbps - FINISHED
Reply #115 – 2008-11-26 17:20:46
I'm quoting halb27: “Well, as you can learn from recent posts there are some people feeling that there are posters here defending Lame in an inadequate way (though there is nothing to defend). Chance is high they wouldn't do something similar if Lame had come out clear on top. I am one of these who feel like that. ” Of course, and that's perfectly normal. When a general consensus is confirmed, there's no debate. But when the same consensus is broken by a new element (test, proof, theory) then the pertinence of the latter is subject to strong debate. Take an example. A scientific would find a new proof that earth turn around the sun: the scientific community won't put real attention to this new proof. Another scientific would bring a test proving that heliocentrism is wrong… and guess what will happen. You see a bias where there's simply a very common attitude.“What you say isn't wrong, it's just killer statements which if taken seriously makes this test worthless.” So what I say is not wrong but you refuse to accept it because it makes the test worthless?! I said this result is "a lead" and "a brick" to a bigger building. No more and certainly not less. I don't call this "worthless".“and on the other hand you try to give special merits to Lame because you think we can trust Lame more. This simply isn't fair. And it's even a bad argument, cause Lame 3.98 isn't Lame 3.97 and when going back in time we had significant changes in Lame technology when looking at the Lame history. ” This argument looks dishonest to my eyes. LAME 3.98 is an improvement, not a radically different piece of code. A new release won't break the confidence people have on an encoder just because parts of the code changed. People trust LAME in general, Vorbis in general, MPC, FLAC, x264, Xvid in general... and not a single and past version of it. LAME is trustable since years ; LAME 3.98 quality didn't start from scratch ; with no surprise several people are trusting and using the last version of the encoder. HELIX/Real wasn't trustable for years, and I don't see giving a special merit to LAME when I say that a single listening test won't make Helix as trustworthy as LAME considering the different history they have.“Moreover what is this trust in Lame good for if for instance with Lame 3.97 the 'sandpaper problem' came up” I case you forgot it, the sandpaper issue occured on very specific occasions and the overall progress of LAME 3.97 over 3.96 was massive enough (specially with VBR at mid -bitrate range) to prefer that most recent version. I've posted several listening tests on LAME 3.97 beta few years ago (in which the artefact you described was discovered).“b) the detailed outcome of the encoders on the individual samples gives some hints which encoder to use: b1) iTunes and Lame 3.97 aren't attractive candidates for encoding ” So long on HA.org and still unable to read a listening test?! ALL ENCODERS ARE TIED. HELIX is as good as iTunes according to this test. If you refuses it then you're implicitly admitting some limitation of collective listening tests.
Wavpack Hybrid: one encoder, one encoding for all scenarios WavPack -c4.5hx6 (44100Hz & 48000Hz) ≈ 390 kbps + correction file WavPack -c4hx6 (96000Hz) ≈ 768 kbps + correction file WavPack -h (SACD & DSD) ≈ 2400 kbps at 2.8224 MHz