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Topic: WavPack 4.41 beta3 available (Read 25550 times) previous topic - next topic
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WavPack 4.41 beta3 available

Reply #25
Ok trumpet -ans sounds like DOLBY C and trumpet s0.4 no DOLBY
Ha ! Its really weird. I abxed 7/8 -ans vs Original and 7/8 s0.4 vs original. s0.4 more hissy but -ans more 'loud'. Failed to abx between -ans and s0.4 (3/8)..

WavPack 4.41 beta3 available

Reply #26
You're talking about wavPack, fast mode and a bitrate of 270 kbps (or similar)?
As you never write about something like an artefact or a distortion or something like that I really wonder whether we're talking about the same thing. Or maybe our ears and minds are really very different in categorizing this error. To me this error falls into a totally different class than hiss (hiss as comparable to tape noise). Maybe you want to try trumpet with Optimfrog fast mode ans quality 1 (in order to match ~270 kbps) to make sure we're talking about the same thing.
lame3995o -Q1.7 --lowpass 17

WavPack 4.41 beta3 available

Reply #27
That Dualstream setting  is bad I agree, but that is not what I hear with wavpack. You may have borked some wavpack settings maybe ?

My wavpack file is 293k with the following command:

-i -qfx5b270 - %d 
MD5:C2B49CA7788135916141374B2E1976C6


ABX wavpack -ans 270k vs DS --ans Q3: 8/8 [WV wins]
ABX wavpack 4.3 -ans vs. wavpack 4.3 s0: 5/8 [failed to pick them apart again].


Also Dualstream --ans problems are severe I easily abx 8/8 at quality 3 --ans 332k. So if --ans can cause problems at q3 at least on this sample. Anyway Florin himself favours flat noise with VBR over --ans. Again I don't want to draw conclusions from 1 or 2 samples.

WavPack 4.41 beta3 available

Reply #28
That Dualstream setting is bad I agree, but that is not what I hear with wavpack. You may have borked some wavpack settings maybe ?

My wavpack file is 293k with the following command:

-i -qfx5b270 - %d 
MD5:C2B49CA7788135916141374B2E1976C6

Hmmm, to me it's essentially the same kind of noise with wavPack, only not as bad as Dualstream's trumpet result. So I guess you really don't have a distortion like problem with wavPack.
Within my test I used wavPack 4.41b3 -fb270x4s0mi (resp. another value for s resp. no s-witch) and
wavPack 4.xx experimental -fb270x4mi for the auto noise shaping variant.
What is the -q switch?
lame3995o -Q1.7 --lowpass 17

 

WavPack 4.41 beta3 available

Reply #29
The difference may be with 4.4 encoder performing better than 4.3. I tried 4.3 -ans vs 4.41 using your settings and felt that 4.4 was cleaner. I failed again at 6/8 though. Difference is not great. I think -ans or negative shift might add a subtle 'whooo' noise as opposed to the normal 'tsssss' hiss. But with my current abx test it doesn't show. So far Bryant's -ans is stable enough for me - better that Ghido's and better than the current wavpack default. Maybe manual tunings are sometimes better but the point is to provide some compromise between cryptic commandlines (which I hate) and quality. Some advanced user can always override it anyway.

WavPack 4.41 beta3 available

Reply #30
... I think -ans or negative shift might add a subtle 'whooo' noise as opposed to the normal 'tsssss' hiss. ...
Guess we're talking about the same thing now, and it's just subtle to you and rather annoying to me which may be a matter of taste, as is this:
... So far Bryant's -ans is stable enough for me - better that Ghido's and better than the current wavpack default. Maybe manual tunings are sometimes better ...
which depends for instance on how to weigh the distortion like problems against the hiss problems, how to judge the difference ans against s0.4 for the better and worse, and how to weigh the fact that with ans noise character can rapidly change within a track. It's individual judgement, that's all.
Anyway I'd prefer an equal loudness curve based noise shaping over individual parameters, but when it's up to a wish list I feel a better quality control is more of concern. No matter which preference on noise shaping wavPack lossy usually is very good even with fast mode at ~ 300 kbps and it would be great to have a machinery which uses more bits in situations when the effective S/N ratio is bad when using ~ 300 kbps. And from my understanding this is easier to implement than a complicated noise shaping scheme (though a noise shaping which keeps noise flat in frequency for say 35% of the noise and put the other 65% into the area above say 12 kHz [to a strongly increasing degree the higher the frequency, pretty soft at ~ 12 kHz, still rather soft at  ~15 kHz, but strong at ~21 kHz] sounds rather rappealing to me).
lame3995o -Q1.7 --lowpass 17

WavPack 4.41 beta3 available

Reply #31
I too favour some quality control vbr over anything else and yeah i did stumble onto another example where -ans ads some unnatural noise. I still think its a good thing to have for the lower 'rockbox' bitrates and even for higher bitrates as long as its predictable enough. Maybe something there could still use some tuning.

WavPack 4.41 beta3 available

Reply #32
I'm about to figure out how to do some quality control on my own, and I found something I didn't know which may be the reason why I prefer s0.4 over s0:
  • The drop in hearing ability for people of my age (57) starts already at 2 kHz, and the drop in this range isn't gentle at all. I had always thought that it affects mainly the very high frequency range way  beyond 10 kHz.
  • We're most sensitive to noise in the 6 kHz range.
So s0.4 may be the best compromise for me (and other people of a certain advanced age) weighing the distortion problem against the hiss problem, but for younger people this may be different.

ADDED later:
Taking into account, that according to the equal loudness curve we're pretty sensitive in the roughly 700 Hz ... 6 kHz area (below and above sensitivity starts dropping in a rather steep way), and that we're sensitive toward noise especially in the 6 kHz area, a noise shaping scheme that keeps noise out of the ~ 700 Hz ... 10 kHz area to a large extent would be very welcome IMO.
lame3995o -Q1.7 --lowpass 17

WavPack 4.41 beta3 available

Reply #33
There is some truth there. Also depends on the music you listen to. For  electronic HF aggressive sounds , positive shaping may be helpfull in some situation to reduce 'noise' . For classical music and some instrumental , negative shaping will reduce the hiss that might be percieved on long notes - flute, violin, solo vocal etc etc.

WavPack 4.41 beta3 available

Reply #34
Nice lively discussion here. I'm only a new user of WavPack but so far I pretty much agree with most of what was said here.

halb27, oh so that is how old you are. I was wondering, but I would never ask such a thing directly because it's impolite.  I also discovered something strange about high-freq hearing just yesterday that I didn't know previously (I was trying to artificially create more problem samples for WavPack). High-freq sensitivity greatly depends on whether my ear is directly facing the speaker (as would be the case with headphones, but not normally the case with loudspeakers which is what I use) or off-angle a bit. If the ear faces directly then the high-freq sounds can be shockingly louder, possibly perceptually a +30 dB gain at least for me. I discovered this in personal testing with sine waves and white noise in the 15 - 19 kHz region. I don't know if that effect would apply down to 2 - 14 kHz though, I think probably not, but it might be something fun to try for yourself. BTW I'm talking about making sure the ear faces the speaker, not making sure the speaker faces the ear (which is also critical to high-frequency response, but that is speaker acoustics, not ear physiology).

I also discovered just how badly damaged my left ear is compared to my right ear. I had mentioned this earlier in my initial controversial thread in the mp3 section (where everyone got mad at me), but I had no idea it was as bad as I just discovered. Well, my right ear is damaged also (I damaged my hearing badly a couple years ago) but the fact that it is so different from my left ear now proves to me the extent of what I did (if both ears were damaged the same I might 'forget' what music used to sound like to me...even now I'm sure I forgot somewhat because my damaged right ear is now my only currently available reference). My left ear is almost completely deaf in the 15 kHz to 17 kHz region (it's probably utterly deaf above). Assuming I understand my hardware setup correctly, at 60 dB my left ear was deaf (my amp says -50 dB on the digital readout, which I *think* corresponds to 60 dB sound level given my speaker/amp/computer settings). But my right ear was blasted with sound, as loud as typical listening volume of most things. Then I discovered my left ear still works okay (+30 dB) if I turn my ear facing the speaker...yay.  Otherwise, I can kind of still hear those sounds in my left ear "normally" if I crank my amp up +30 dB.

I don't think my right ear, even as it is now, is that much less sensitive at 15 kHz as it is at 3 - 6 kHz.

Anyway, for me at least the bottom line is that I think different people (age groups, genetics, etc) respond to high freqs too differently, so while I agree that "equal loudness" noise-shaping might be good, I'm not overly interested in it. I've seen some amazingly different looking equal-loudness curves when conducted by different studies, so I have no idea which to believe. I feel satisfied with the basic noise-shaping options as they are.

I'd be a lot happier to see a semi-psychoacoustic VBR quality control for WavPack, as I mentioned before in PM. Even though I am willing to spend the bits, I'd still feel foolish encoding everything at 400-450 kbps just because of the occasional highly-tonal, completely unmasked problem sample...when most of the time I think WavPack lossy is transparent (for the typical kind of music I listen to) at 256 - 320 kbps.