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Topic: New Listening Test (Read 106108 times) previous topic - next topic
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New Listening Test

Reply #25 –
I would also like that we try the complete MUSHRA methodology with appropriate ranking scale

New Listening Test

Reply #26 –
Quote
- 32 kbps was already tested in Roberto's multiformat test
- 64 kbps was tested, too

48 kbps was never tested in multiformat conditions, and it would be very good to verify how codecs rank in this area.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=373354"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

I do not agree with your reasoning. It doesn't matter whether that bitrate was tested before, what we want to know is whether the bitrate is widely used (or if it should be widely used, e.g. the new encoders allow 48 kbps where 64 kbps was required before)

New Listening Test

Reply #27 –
Goal:

Radio Streams: More and more, stations are moving to reduce the bitrate in order to have more listeners/less bandwidth used. We know that HE-AAC sounds quite acceptable for "high" quality (remember 128kbps MP3 is the "high" quality streams). We would verify how much this is true and if there are any other contenders.

Ripping/Webcasting : 48kbps for stereo audio is interesting for videos, when wanting to squeze the bitrate, but not the quality. Not really needed for today's 1-CD rips, but probably interesting for web-downloads/live streams.


Probably there are others, I can't think of more just now.



Encoders:  Those that fit the quality, and how much, will depend on the bitrate, between 5 and 8.

New Listening Test

Reply #28 –
It is always exciting to look forward to a new listening test, however I can't quite figure out what all the enthusiasm would be for a test at 48kbps. 

Nero and CT have just been tested at this bitrate.  Are there other contenders that have made significant leaps here as well?

There has been no testing of 64kbps since long before the great advances made in the past few months with He-aac and Vorbis.  I would love to see how the claims of "close to mp3 at 128" will actually ring true. 

Once the latest aoTuv is released, it would be very interesting to test 64kbps - Nero, CT, Helix, Vorbis ect. 

New Listening Test

Reply #29 –
It would be nice to test Vorbis and the new WMA codec. Ivan wanted to clear some things up regarding the Vista EULA. Also, it is true that Nero and CT have just been tested, but this is something good because now the best HE-AAC encoder can be tested against Vorbis, WMA and other possible competitors.

(BTW, I know that there is no clear HE-AAC winner at 48 kbps, but some tendency can be recognized.)

New Listening Test

Reply #30 –
I vote for 48kbps.
For broadband video streaming, I notice that 48kbps is usually used for audio.

New Listening Test

Reply #31 –
IMHO
I really doesn't believe any non-SBR algoritm can beat or be close to SBR-based for such low bitrate.
And keep in mind AAC-LC (used as carrier) is really very good...
So this proposed multiformat test is mostly predictable - AAC+ wins (I will eat my hat otherwise)  with a big gap (at least 15%)...

New Listening Test

Reply #32 –
Quote
,Mar 22 2006, 06:09 AM]Ripping/Webcasting : 48kbps for stereo audio is interesting for videos, when wanting to squeze the bitrate, but not the quality. Not really needed for today's 1-CD rips, but probably interesting for web-downloads/live streams.


Well audio 48 kbit/s is normal for 1 cd-rip.  Imagine you have video 2-2,5 hours -> total bitrate is approx. 700 kbit/s.

700 kbit/s :
1. 652 video + 48 audio .  - good balance between audio/video q.
2.  644 vid  + 56 audio - most balanced for me
3.  636 + 64 audio -  good balance

Today 1-cd rip is used not for backups but something as for mobile needs (traveling, send family video via internet etc. )

New Listening Test

Reply #33 –
@dimzon,

Microsoft announced that according to some tests latest WMA is quite competetive, even better than HE-AAC. 

Since  3G AAC (HE-AAC / HE-AAC v2) and WMA  would be the most important codecs in the years to come for mobile/portable delivery, it would be very nice if this claim could be publically tested under a multiformat listening test.

Also it would be very good to evaluate latest Vorbis - there have been also claims on this forum by some users that Vorbis internet radio stations are better sounding than HE-AAC,  why not testing that, too?

New Listening Test

Reply #34 –
So. Most people are tending to be agree that 48 kbit/s is interesting for internet stream purpose.

What codec will be used as HE-AAC. I  would suppose that will be Nero's one.
But what version? 4.9.9.5  ( SBR only)  or Nero will provide other version for this test?
Yes, that would be interesting to see performance of SBR comparing it with the last prebeta Aotuv Vorbis 5.0 and wma 9.1 .
However HE-AAC is N1 pretender to win test at 48 kbit/s

New Listening Test

Reply #35 –
Quote
Microsoft announced that according to some tests latest WMA is quite competetive, even better than HE-AAC.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=373933"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

They have only one chance to be competetive with AAC+ - if they use SBR and/or PS

Actually I don't understand at all - why there are no OggVorbis+SBR implementation... It will be awesome IMHO

New Listening Test

Reply #36 –
WMA :

std 9.1: not really a contender.

pro 9.1: difficult to set a value that down, but not impossible.

pro 10: Coming with vista? (but Vista comes next year!). This is the one Ivan mentions, afaik...


Vorbis :  q -1 is precisely what is being tuned the most in aotuv codec and precisely aims to 48kbps.
(Note: Vorbis wouldn't get as much gain from SBR as the MPEG family get, because Vorbis tries to squeeze the bitrate requirements of the highs with other methods. SBR is not a magic keyword for everything.)

HE-AAC : From the pretest, i would get the new Nero codec, with HE-AACv1.

atrac3plus : it aims to 64 kbps... it would be unfair in a 48kbps test.

New Listening Test

Reply #37 –
Quote
pro 10: Coming with vista? (but Vista comes next year!). This is the one Ivan mentions, afaik...
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=373974"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


What do you mean? Both Ivan and I have access to the February release of Vista (build 5308).

New Listening Test

Reply #38 –
Quote
,Mar 22 2006, 10:34 PM](Note: Vorbis wouldn't get as much gain from SBR as the MPEG family get, because Vorbis tries to squeeze the bitrate requirements of the highs with other methods. SBR is not a magic keyword for everything.)
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=373974"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

talking about this i really want to ask Ivan Dimkovic to provide us standalone SBR encoder/decoder CLI utility

SBR_encoder must obtain original wav as input and produce 2 files - file with SBR info and downsampled wav file

SBR_decoder must  obtain 2 files - file with SBR info and downsampled wav file as input and decode it back to single wav

So we can emulate AnyEncoder+SBR

Code: [Select]
SBR_Encode.exe -input original.wav -out_sbr my.sbr -out_wav my.wav
oggenc.exe my.wav my.ogg -q -1
oggdec.exe my.ogg temp.wav
SBR_Decode.exe -input_wav temp.wav -input_sbr my.sbr -output oggPlus.wav  

@Ivan Dimkovic
Can You provide us such tool? It's REALLY VERY interesting!

New Listening Test

Reply #39 –
I kinda wanna hear a test at 64kbps.

there was just a 48kbps HE-AAC test that to me wasnt really conclusive. So maybe there needs to have more headroom to be conclusive.

that's just my opinion.

New Listening Test

Reply #40 –
Quote
I kinda wanna hear a test at 64kbps.

there was just a 48kbps HE-AAC test that to me wasnt really conclusive. So maybe there needs to have more headroom to be conclusive.

that's just my opinion.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=374010"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


What do you mean with conclusive?

New Listening Test

Reply #41 –
I would like to see a 64 kbps listening test with the following formats:

- WMA Pro (Vista)
- attrac3plus
- Nero HEv1
- Vorbis

The old WMA std is being toothed as equal in quality to mp3 @ 128 kbps. We all know that an overstatement. It would be interesting to see if the newest and best WMA makes the myth come true...

Sony is toothing Attrac3plus @ 64 kbps and base their battery estimates on this bit rate. Again I would like this test to reveal the quality of the newest attrac3plus.

AAC should be represented and well as Vorbis.

For high anchor I would consider either iTunes/lame VBR @ 128.

For low anchor iTunes/lame VBR @ 64 kbps.

New Listening Test

Reply #42 –
Quote
What do you mean? Both Ivan and I have access to the February release of Vista (build 5308).
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=374006"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]



I mean that Microsoft has officially said that Vista won't be released until next year to consumers ( although it expects a november release to businesses/partners).

I'm not sure how much can the codec change (if at all) in these 9 months, so maybe using the beta release you have could be enough.

New Listening Test

Reply #43 –
Quote
What do you mean with conclusive?
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=374013"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Well i mean the scale is out of 5 right? It seemed the best codec NeroHEv1 only go 3.3 out of 5. That's like what 66%? So from what im getting out of it is that roughly these 48kbps samples sound 2/3 as a good as the original right?

Thus i was suggesting that maybe a 64kbps would allow these lower bitrate codecs to sound better and possibly make the public more informed about them?

Maybe im just reading/interpreting these results wrong?

New Listening Test

Reply #44 –
Quote
I would like to see a 64 kbps listening test with the following formats:

- WMA Pro (Vista)
- attrac3plus
- Nero HEv1
- Vorbis

The old WMA std is being toothed as equal in quality to mp3 @ 128 kbps. We all know that an overstatement. It would be interesting to see if the newest and best WMA makes the myth come true...

Sony is toothing Attrac3plus @ 64 kbps and base their battery estimates on this bit rate. Again I would like this test to reveal the quality of the newest attrac3plus.

AAC should be represented and well as Vorbis.

For high anchor I would consider either iTunes/lame VBR @ 128.

For low anchor iTunes/lame VBR @ 64 kbps.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=374014"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I agree. Would be interresting to know how good atrac at 64 is.
davidnaylor.org

New Listening Test

Reply #45 –
I really want to see a (multi-pass) 5.1 test with both audio from music and movie sources @ 128 kbps.

We can test it with our headphones for audio artefacts and with our speakers for the surround problems. Not much 5.1 testing has been done so far and I'm sure the folks at Doom9 would be very interested to participate. With the previous 2.0 tests participation was a bit on the low site. This might rekindle interest. I also want to limit the test to codecs that are already shipping.

Possible formats :

Aud-X (matrix)
Dolby Digital 5.1 (discrete)
Dolby Prologic II (matrix)
Nero AAC 5.1 (discrete)
Windows Media Audio 9 Professional 5.1 (discrete)
Do not taunt audiophiles; they may bite.

New Listening Test

Reply #46 –
I am against doing a 5.1 listening test now, because of:

- Lack of free ABX software able of doing it  (just tried 6ch file with ABC-HR, can't work)

- Problems with the setup, too many possibilities that something going badly wrong

- Probably lack of enough number of listeners (even stereo tests are on the edge of statistical relevance)

So therefore I'd wait for 5.1 test for couple of months, until proper 5.1 listening test software is deployed.

Also, new MPEG surround codecs are coming, that will get requirements for a good 5.1 performance down to 48 kbps, so they should be tested too

New Listening Test

Reply #47 –
Why Nero HE-AAC at 48 kbps? As far as I know, only CT aacPlus is can be considered as popular (Winamp/shoutCAST DSP) an it is tied with Nero AAC in the latest test.
 

New Listening Test

Reply #48 –
No more arguing about 5.1 testing! Only stereo encoders will be tested.

Quote
Why Nero HE-AAC at 48 kbps? As far as I know, only CT aacPlus is can be considered as popular (Winamp/shoutCAST DSP) an it is tied with Nero AAC in the latest test.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=374865"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Well, they are tied, yes, but Nero has a slightly better ranking and that's why I would say we should test Nero.

New Listening Test

Reply #49 –
any new update on what bitrate or codecs?