Pre-Test thread
Reply #23 – 2003-08-23 12:54:30
Some comments : atrac3plus would be nice to test. Sony is putting some marketing investment in this format. I recently saw some portable CD/mp3 players reading atrac3plus ; there are flash memory players based on this new audio format too. Nevertheless I don't expect to see any other manufacturer supporting a Sony format, and therefore audience of this format may be very limited in the future. Unfortunately, including atrac3plus is a real pain. Encoding/decoding through SonicStage, capturing through TotalRecording, editing offset and file precise length with CEP for 12 samples is in my opinion a real torture. And I don't forget that all samples have to be flacced in order to intergrate the public archive, increasing the weight, downloading time and server bandwith. Sad... wma9 at 64 kbps is probably the most used encoder/setting at this bitrate, by a lot of people having a small USB mp3player. Not on HA of course... but I often read positive comments and propaganda for wma9@64 kbps = mp3@128, at least in nomad conditions. Including wma 'standard' and lame 128 as anchor, is a nice idea, and will be a good, official reference for fighting this optimistic equation. Of course, I would like to see wma9pro performance too, even at 50 kbps, and compare it to wma9 'standard'. I was positively surprised by the performance of the format with classical music (but horrified with loud music), but I didn't tried with many samples... Due to the lack of CLI decoder of both WMA/WMApro, I suppose difficult to include the two encoders :/ (note : there is a VBR setting for wma9 standard - is it possible to consider it ?) AAC - HE-AAC : an AAC encoding, opposed to a HE-AAC one, may show some surprise (I don't know) : SBR is a nice tool, but some reverse effects are not impossible (they exist, I'm sure). Can we add an encoding ? File size isn't an issue (faad2 is already present), but challengers number is one, maybe... Why not Nero ABR, with PNS ? Or maybe Sorenson encodings