HydrogenAudio

Lossy Audio Compression => MP3 => MP3 - General => Topic started by: Pio2001 on 2002-11-12 14:07:23

Title: Explaining Lame Presets
Post by: Pio2001 on 2002-11-12 14:07:23
Being new moderator in CD Freaks, I'm facing the usual trolling "FhG 192 CBR is better than Lame, I can hear it".
I always acknowledged that those people had a valid argument :

http://forum.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?s...=&postid=340907 (http://forum.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?s=&postid=340907)

Quote
instead of just blindly going off someone elses' opions they read from somewhere else, put those 2 encoders head to head and i bet sound forge is as good if not better. and thats from actual testing on my behalf not just passing some review along

(emphasis is mine)

All we currently do is
-linking to the recommended Lame settings
-tell to RTFF, in other words, search the forums...

...but searching for what ?
The only public blind test between 192 CBR, and Lame settings I can remember of was in r3mix.net, before the --alt-presets were made.
After that, the development was slowly commented on the forums, in threads difficult to find for the newbie, and with very specific infos in each one. I once spent hours making a list of all those threads, but the list is now completely unuseable, since both r3mix.net and HydrogenAudio.org have changed all their URLs in the meantime.

So I asked a sample. But, naturally, asking a sample, I must provide one too, so I linked http://static.hydrogenaudio.org/extra/samp...3-Test_Samples/ (http://static.hydrogenaudio.org/extra/samples/3.93-Test_Samples/) and http://www.ff123.net/samples.html (http://www.ff123.net/samples.html)

Dibrom, is it OK to link the first directory ? It was originally made for development purposes, and I'm not sure if I can redirect many people there. Also, will it remain online in the future ?
Title: Explaining Lame Presets
Post by: _Shorty on 2002-11-12 16:38:08
probably best to ask if they've actually done any ABX testing, or if they're just firing up one mp3 and then the other and just convincing themselves that one sounds better without actually comparing either to the original or each other.  There is quite a bit of talk here about how FhG actually does sound better than LAME if for some reason you're using 128Kbps, but at anything much higher than that LAME easily takes the cake, especially when talking about --alt-preset standard, etc.
Title: Explaining Lame Presets
Post by: smok3 on 2002-11-12 17:49:35
i would try to explain the vbr vs cbr thingy 1st to that person, that is the basic concept that goes in favour of vbr, the constant quality vs constant bitrate that is (at least in theory), next i would request the abx test in way that the person would compare '192cbr' vs '--alt-preset standard', if he/she can hear a difference there is something to talk about further on, otherwise the debate can end there imho.
Title: Explaining Lame Presets
Post by: Dibrom on 2002-11-12 18:29:30
Pio2001:

Yes, you can link to that directory.  It will be online indefinitely or at least until it starts taking too much bandwidth for me to host, which will be unlikely to happen in the foreseeable future.

As to what I would do to convince people of the merits of actual blind testing and listening tests to determine quality:

1.  I'd do as smok3 said first.  Explain some of the basic concepts and talk about some of the widely held misconceptions (ie. vbr == bad,  joint stereo == bad, lowpass == bad, etc).
2.  Point them to some general resource of information.  The forums here, specific threads, etc... all are good examples.
3.  Point them to ff123's page or Arny's page and tell them to download an abx utility and try for themselves.
4.  Point them to some test samples.
5.  And finally, and perhaps most importantly, point them to a sample where you know that their setting will fail compared to the others.  The idea isn't to setup the test to where you know that you're side of the debate will win, it's to instead show them that their assumption did not hold true in all cases and to hopefully get them to start thinking about where it might fail elsewhere and that in order to be sure, they need to do more testing.

After this, you really don't need to say anything else until they come up with a useful and relevant response (ie. not just something like "that's dumb, I won't do it").
Title: Explaining Lame Presets
Post by: Pio2001 on 2002-11-12 21:51:04
Thank you for the answers, I do not deal with Mp3 often, but they will be surely useful 
Title: Explaining Lame Presets
Post by: juglesh on 2002-11-19 07:09:37
could you please point to some samples that are bad for specific encoders/settings? as mentioned above.

thanks for your time
juglesh        B>{)}
Title: Explaining Lame Presets
Post by: westgroveg on 2002-11-19 07:45:06
I think it would be a good idea to add to the recommended settings/compile problem samples, “these are samples which show these are the highest quality settings/compile for mp3 encoding, to test d/l  http://ff123.net/abchr/abchr.html.” (http://ff123.net/abchr/abchr.html.”).
Title: Explaining Lame Presets
Post by: guruboolez on 2002-11-19 15:44:43
The HA folder for 3.93 & 3.94 preset tweaking :
http://static.hydrogenaudio.org/extra/samp...3-Test_Samples/ (http://static.hydrogenaudio.org/extra/samples/3.93-Test_Samples/)
Title: Explaining Lame Presets
Post by: Pio2001 on 2002-11-19 22:23:14
Is the problem in "badvilbel" (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=16&t=1059) taken into account in those samples ? It was said to be the same problem as dogwhistle. It is ABXable in alt preset insane.
Title: Explaining Lame Presets
Post by: Dibrom on 2002-11-19 23:44:03
Quote
Is the problem in "badvilbel" (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=16&t=1059) taken into account in those samples ? It was said to be the same problem as dogwhistle. It is ABXable in alt preset insane.

Well.. I assume at least that it's the same problem as the dogwhistle clip, but it might not be.  I don't have badvilbel there though, but I suppose I could add it.
Title: Explaining Lame Presets
Post by: Pio2001 on 2002-11-20 10:21:38
If you need it, you've got the CD : Autechre - Tri Repetae, bonus track Second Bad Vilbel  .
The sample is available at http://www.ff123.net/samples.html (http://www.ff123.net/samples.html). The problems run longer on the CD. The sample is a short example.
Title: Explaining Lame Presets
Post by: KikeG on 2002-11-20 12:08:05
I would add a very obvious problem sample for me: trumpets1.wav, see http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....t=0&#entry44976 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=16&t=3594&st=0&#entry44976)