AAC vs. LAME mp3
Reply #4 – 2008-03-01 15:28:19
I did a personal listen test on 128 cbr and 128 abr about 2 years ago (i did ABX those but lost the logs), and found that Ogg at q2 and iTunes at 128 ABR sounded better then Nero AAC at q0.35 and Nero only sounded a tad better then LAME -V 5 --vbr-new. A year later i tried out Nero AAC again at q 0.35 with a track and also with iTunes AAC at 96kbps ABR. I could not ABX the iTunes encode, but the Nero encode was easy since there was a nasty precho artifact on it. Then a few months later i tried a newer version of Nero AAC and performed worse then the Feb 12 07 version. I week ago i tried out Nero AAC Feb 12 07 again, and I was shocked that I could manage to ABX at q 0.60.Serj Tankian - The Unthinking Majority [Nero AAC Feb 12 07 q 0.60] foo_abx 1.3.1 report foobar2000 v0.9.5.1 beta 1 2008/02/23 19:39:04 File A: E:\Music\Albums\Serj Tankian - Elect The Dead\02. The Unthinking Majority.m4a File B: E:\Temp\Listen Tests\The Unthinking Majority.flac 19:39:04 : Test started. 19:40:09 : 01/01 50.0% 19:41:03 : 01/02 75.0% 19:41:16 : 02/03 50.0% 19:41:44 : 03/04 31.3% 19:41:50 : 04/05 18.8% 19:42:15 : 05/06 10.9% 19:42:30 : 06/07 6.3% 19:42:54 : 07/08 3.5% 19:43:23 : 07/09 9.0% 19:43:35 : 08/10 5.5% 19:43:45 : 09/11 3.3% 19:44:14 : 10/12 1.9% 19:45:22 : 11/13 1.1% 19:45:41 : 12/14 0.6% 19:45:47 : 13/15 0.4% 19:46:00 : 14/16 0.2% 19:46:42 : 15/17 0.1% 19:47:02 : 16/18 0.1% 19:47:18 : 17/19 0.0% 19:47:20 : Test finished. ---------- Total: 17/19 (0.0%) There is a precho on this someware but i forgot were it was, I will have to listen it again sometime. The artifact also appears on the August build aswell along with a 20kbps bitrate increase. I also got 10/10 on Metallica's For Whom The Bells Tolls, which had warbling at 0:48, which i think it is really unexpectable to have artifacts like that at 220 kbps VBR. From my personal listen test in the past and today, I find Nero AAC to only be a tad better then LAME, but i find Nero AAC has the most annoying artifacts i ever heard while the artifacts on LAME are lot more tolerateabale.