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Topic: sound degradation over several generations of lossy compression (Read 8757 times) previous topic - next topic
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sound degradation over several generations of lossy compression

Hello!

I created this video to showcase the generational loss of different lossy compression algorithms:

YouTube / audio degradation lossy compression

Regards

sound degradation over several generations of lossy compression

Reply #1 –
Hi,

can you please upload the video somewhere else? I can't watch it:

"Unfortunately, this video is not available in your country because it could contain music from UMG, for which we could not agree on conditions of use with GEMA."

Also the linked download doesn't work: "Diese Datei wurde vom User oder durch eine Abuse-Meldung gelöscht."

Thank you

sound degradation over several generations of lossy compression

Reply #2 –
Can you point to any study that correlates multi-generation degradation with single-generation degradation?

sound degradation over several generations of lossy compression

Reply #3 –
It doesn't matter if a codec produces horrible sound even for the 2nd generation if it was not specifically designed for transcoding - which I don't think any lossy audio codec is.
"I hear it when I see it."

sound degradation over several generations of lossy compression

Reply #4 –
Quote from: fLOh on
Hello!

I created this video to showcase the generational loss of different lossy compression algorithms:


These results will probably depend unpredictably on the alignment of transforms between encodings.  If any delay or shift is introduced between iterations, the results will be dramatically worse most likely. 

sound degradation over several generations of lossy compression

Reply #5 –
And adding to my previous post, the people who transcode usually have no choice because the format they downloa... eh bought is not supported by their player. So what would be more interesting is 2 generations with different codecs, e.g. AAC -> MP3, OGG -> MP3 ...

You'd probably have to reduce quality (bitrates) to demonstrate which combination works better than others.
"I hear it when I see it."

sound degradation over several generations of lossy compression

Reply #6 –
I seem to recall a similar experiment was conducted on HA years ago. Contrary to many people's expectations (mine included), files encoded many times (was it 100x?) using modern codecs (was it AAC and Ogg Vorbis?) actually remained of fairly high quality.
Every night with my star friends / We eat caviar and drink champagne
Sniffing in the VIP area / We talk about Frank Sinatra
Do you know Frank Sinatra? / He's dead

sound degradation over several generations of lossy compression

Reply #7 –
Quote from: xnor on
And adding to my previous post, the people who transcode usually have no choice because the format they downloa... eh bought is not supported by their player. So what would be more interesting is 2 generations with different codecs, e.g. AAC -> MP3, OGG -> MP3 ...

I do think MP3 -> MP3 and AAC -> AAC are of great practical importance.

E.g., I know many people which create "mixtapes" from their MP3 collection. And then, they distribute their mixtapes in MP3 format via sites such as Mixcloud, Dropify, Soundcloud, Zippyshare, etc. Or people who use iTunes-purchased AACs as background music for videos they upload to YouTube, Vimeo, etc. (I believe YouTube and friends frequently transcode uploaded audio to AAC but I'm not 100% sure.)

sound degradation over several generations of lossy compression

Reply #8 –
This morning I stumbled across a music production plugin that simulates lossy distortion:
goodhertz lossy
Another reason to not trust your ears when listening to modern lossless (or even hi-res) music

Quote
In June of 2014, friend-of-Goodhertz Tyler Duncan (an incredible producer & mixer) wanted a certain drum fill to sound like the year 2001 — that is, like a low bit-rate digital mp3 ripped from KaZaA.
We understood him immediately. Since the dawn of the second recording format, mankind has longed for the aesthetic imperfections of the previous recording format.
“Would a bitcrusher do?” No, Tyler didn’t have 8-bit in mind. He wanted lossy digital audio: streaming music on a 56k modem, an mp3 ripped from a CD-R, light jazz streamed over a cellphone, a YouTube video uploaded in 2007. What if a plugin could degrade digital audio and simulate those quintessential compressed sounds in realtime?
So we built Lossy: artifacts of heavily compressed audio in a highly-tweakable realtime plugin.
Goodhertz asks: are you ready to nostalgize the beautiful harmonics of heavily compressed digital audio? Are you ready to enter the underwater cathedral?

sound degradation over several generations of lossy compression

Reply #9 –
Quote from: Kees de Visser on
This morning I stumbled across a music production plugin that simulates lossy distortion:
goodhertz lossy
Another reason to not trust your ears when listening to modern lossless (or even hi-res) music
I thought that idea sounded really cool, but the demo sounds more like a de-noise algorithm being abused than a lossy encoder.

Cheers,
David.

sound degradation over several generations of lossy compression

Reply #11 –
"the underwater cathedral"

This is a good description of the flappy, wobbly hihats under heavy compression.