Re: Opus killer @128 kbps
Reply #6 –
What I'd like to see improved with opus is that average bitrate of many tracks corresponds better with nominal bitrate. Sure average bitrate depends on the test set. My personal test set however corresponds well with average bitrate reported by other people (in various non-opus related situations). But average bitrate of my test set is quite a bit higher than opus nominal bitrate (don't remember the exact percentage - it's not a big deal but also not negligible).
It's a futile goal (everyone's music tastes are different), and also it will shift recommended nominal bitrate as Opus encoder gets more smart in future. (less bits would be needed to reach the same quality)
IMO it would be better to eschew "nominal bitrate" notion for VBR mode and instead use a meaningful normalized quality scale, which would use just as many bits as necessary to reach the quality goal. For example, like this:
0.0 (default) = do all what it takes to be transparent for approximately 100% of the population (on any good headphones and for all kinds music; killer samples are to be considered as encoder bugs)
1.0 = spend ~2x as many bits than 0.0 would for the same content
-1.0 = spend ~0.5x as many bits than 0.0 would for the same content
etc.