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Topic: new in aac what should i do to get cd quality (Read 27409 times) previous topic - next topic
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new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #25 –
Quote from: memomai on
AAC will never catch up MP3. never ever.
Why? Imagine you are a normal non-audio-enthusaistic person:

- you don't know what AAC is about, but you certanly know what MP3 is.

It's not that easy. AAC is the standard format of iTunes. Lots of people buy an iPod and use iTunes. One day they will notice that their iTunes ripped "MP3"s wont play elsewher and will buy iPod adapters, FM Transmitters, etc. to use them in their car too. I've seen this with lots of people. IMHO AAC is already a widely accepted format.
WavPack 4.50.1 -hhx6 | LAME 3.98.2 -V 0

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #26 –
Quote from: MetalMessiah78 on
I'm currently using Foobar as the front end and am using the setting of .43, which produces files about 140 VBR. The reason I settled on that is because I could ABX iTunes AAC 10 out of 10 times all the way to 256 VBR, because I am very sensitive to highs and the smearing of the cymbals. I could ABX Nero AAC about 6 out of 10 times at this setting, but it was about as transparent as LAME at V2 or V3, I don’t remember, but the file size was a lot smaller. 

I have an 80gig and only have 8gigs left for new music, so I couldn’t go higher. I also primarily listen to Metal, so music that is very “noisy” for lack of a better word sounds totally acceptable, though not perfect. Less noisy music, such as Hard Rock, Country, Pop Rock, etc, sounds flawless.

By the way, this is with the last Nero encoder. I have not had a chance to ABX the new one.


Am planning to transcode some albums (from FLAC) at .42 for my old 4gb 2g iPod Nano. I might stick with LAME -V 2 for local use, since most of the time its transparent to me; but it can have trouble with drum smearing though. I have tried V0 and did not bother with it, since its just too huge for Metal music and I have managed to ABX a few tracks from my collection at V0.

But for some reason I have mix luck when testing out Nero AAC, most of time I find it transparent at 0.5 or 0.55 but if not its very noticable to me, and sounds worse then most artifacts I can hear on LAME, IMO.
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #27 –
What always gives it away for me is the cymbals, so as long as the cymbals sound crisp and clean and have the proper decay, I have a hard time ABXing. Nero AAC is the encoder that allows me encode the smallest files with the least noticable artifacts, at least in my case. I was disappointed when I could ABX iTunes on the highest VBR setting as it would be so much easier for me to pop it into iTunes, encode as ALAC and convert to AAC. Either way, 256kbs VBR would have been too large for my portable. Does the newest lame that came out this year sound more transparent to you than the last version?

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #28 –
Quote from: MetalMessiah78 on
What always gives it away for me is the cymbals, so as long as the cymbals sound crisp and clean and have the proper decay, I have a hard time ABXing. Nero AAC is the encoder that allows me encode the smallest files with the least noticable artifacts, at least in my case. I was disappointed when I could ABX iTunes on the highest VBR setting as it would be so much easier for me to pop it into iTunes, encode as ALAC and convert to AAC. Either way, 256kbs VBR would have been too large for my portable. Does the newest lame that came out this year sound more transparent to you than the last version?


LAME 3.98 at V2 is still not transparent to me, and for reason I find V3 to be less annoying but more far away from being transparent then LAME 3.97, but the artifacts on 3.98 are less annoying then 3.97. Most of the drum smearing issues I have have heard and ABX on APS (3.90) and V2 are still appear on 3.98, but atleast the issues I found with --vbr-new on 3.97 has been fixed on the latest version. On LAME sometimes a drum cymbals sound like smashing glases and I hate the bitrate that V2 produces with most Metal music (230 - 260) and sometimes not transparent to me all . Atleast the problems go away with -V1; but its kinda big for portable use.

Anyway I just transcoded my flacs to Nero AAC at 0.55, since i found ABXing around 053 gets hard. Also the the bitrates are smaller then V2 with metal music and Metallica's new album was 20mb smaller then my old V2 encode.
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #30 –
Quote from: greynol on
Have you tried -Y with -V(0-2)?


Sorta have, in the past. I was thinking of using -V1 -Y; but does the -Y really hurt hi-freq sounds over 16Khz; I know its solves that horrid sfb21 issue.
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #32 –
Quote from: greynol on
Quote from: /mnt on
does the -Y really hurt hi-freq sounds over 16Khz

Only you can answer that question.

Not really. I heard it just cuts freqs above 16hz from somewere, and hear somewere else thats it  just disables a scaefactor that even CBR does not use.
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #33 –
Yes really.  -Y is not the same as a low-pass as frequencies above 16 kHz can still be encoded; just not to the same extent that they would be without the switch.  Whether the switch preserves transparency, does not worsen audible artifacts, or does worsen audible artifacts solely depends on what you hear.

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #34 –
Quote from: /mnt on
Not really. I heard it just cuts freqs above 16hz from somewere, and hear somewere else thats it  just disables a scaefactor that even CBR does not use.


From my new version of the LAME documentation (post here, which soon I hope developers start talking with me about it)


Quote
-Y Ignore noise in sbf21, like in CBR

Allows -V2, -V1 and -V0 to ignore noise in the scalefactor band 21, like CBR does. Due to the design of the MP3 format, to keep precision in the last scalefactor band, an encoder needs to increase the precision in all the bands (not only this one).
This causes an important increase of bitrate (+60kbps in some cases) compared to not keeping that precision. Generally, this band should allow for distortions, so using it shouldn't cause harm.

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #35 –
so if acc doesn't give me a better quality at 128 or 160 k then mp3

it's in vain to encode to mp4 , i did not find a reason to use a aac encoder

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #37 –
Quote from: francesco on
so if acc doesn't give me a better quality at 128 or 160 k then mp3

it's in vain to encode to mp4 , i did not find a reason to use a aac encoder


I think it depends a lot on the music you listen to and what you are particularly sensitive to when you listen to music. It was harder for me to ABX Nero AAC at 140 vbr than it was to ABX Lame mp3 at 192 vbr, but at the same time I had no problem ABXing iTunes AAC at 256 vbr and Lame mp3 at 192 vbr was more transparent compared to iTunes AAC. Like I mentioned before, the dead giveaway was the crispness of the highs.

edit: When I was ABXing was also in June before Nero and Lame had release new encoders. I'm not sure if iTunes has release any new encoder in that time either, so my past results might not hold true anymore. I haven't had the time to conduct new tests since than.

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #38 –
Nero q 0.75 (~300 kbps). I wonder if you guys hear the cymbals and drums smearing issues you talk about with this Nero setting, taking into account that LAME -V0 is not enough in some cases...

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #39 –
I've never tried anything that high because the file size would be too big for me to fit everything on my iPod. If you really need me to test it, I can, but it won't be for a few days.

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #40 –
Due to saying that LAME -V0/320 is not enough in some cases, I was wondering if NERO q.075 beats LAME down to these very own weakenesses. In that case AAC is really the sucessor of LAME. I am thinking about getting an iPod Video Classic, strange for someone who thought would never want to have an iPod.

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #41 –
Quote from: Neasden on
Nero q 0.75 (~300 kbps). I wonder if you guys hear the cymbals and drums smearing issues you talk about with this Nero setting, taking into account that LAME -V0 is not enough in some cases...


Am not a big fan of high bitrates; if I ABXed a V0 track I find it more unaccepatable then V2, due to to its size. I still find 192 CBR with MS Joint Stereo to be transparent or reasonable most of the time. Some of my issues with V2 seem to go away with 192 - 224 CBR.

Quote from: Neasden on
Due to saying that LAME -V0/320 is not enough in some cases, I was wondering if NERO q.075 beats LAME down to these very own weakenesses. In that case AAC is really the sucessor of LAME. I am thinking about getting an iPod Video Classic, strange for someone who thought would never want to have an iPod.


Probaly q 0.60; might be able to beat -V0 on some hard to encode tracks. Since V0 or 320 can sometimes struggle; i find it pointless using those bitrates, unless anything below those bitrates are annyoing.
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #42 –
/mnt, out of curiosity. How well does the latest aoTuV do compared to mpc on the same tracks you abx:ed at similar bitrate.

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #43 –
Quote from: mr budzone on
/mnt, out of curiosity. How well does the latest aoTuV do compared to mpc on the same tracks you abx:ed at similar bitrate.

Could do, but at what setting?

I will also try to ABX those tracks at mpc standard again for warm up, to see if it was not a fluke.
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #44 –
aoTuV is a die hard on the killer samples [ that manifest in LAME and AAC ].

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #45 –
as in shit or as in you will die before you hear artifact?

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #46 –
I just done a quick test with aoTuv 5.5 beta at q 5.5 (176Kbps).

But first I did a warm up test with mpc 1.16 beta --standard

Code: [Select]
foo_abx 1.3.3 report
foobar2000 v0.9.5.5
2008/10/05 20:37:46

File A: C:\Rips\Iron Maiden - Piece Of Mind\03. Flight Of Icarus.flac
File B: C:\Temp\1 Flight Of Icarus.mpc

20:37:46 : Test started.
20:38:41 : 01/01  50.0%
20:38:47 : 02/02  25.0%
20:38:57 : 03/03  12.5%
20:39:07 : 03/04  31.3%
20:39:14 : 04/05  18.8%
20:39:21 : 05/06  10.9%
20:39:27 : 06/07  6.3%
20:39:32 : 07/08  3.5%
20:39:37 : 08/09  2.0%
20:39:45 : 09/10  1.1%
20:39:51 : 10/11  0.6%
20:39:56 : 11/12  0.3%
20:40:01 : 12/13  0.2%
20:40:05 : 13/14  0.1%
20:40:15 : 14/15  0.0%
20:40:21 : 15/16  0.0%
20:40:23 : Test finished.

 ---------- 
Total: 15/16 (0.0%)

Artfact at around 0:06.

Code: [Select]
foo_abx 1.3.3 report
foobar2000 v0.9.5.5
2008/10/05 20:42:15

File A: C:\Rips\Fear Factory - Demanufacture\04. Replica.flac
File B: C:\Temp\Replica q 5.mpc

20:42:15 : Test started.
20:42:45 : 01/01  50.0%
20:42:50 : 02/02  25.0%
20:42:56 : 03/03  12.5%
20:43:01 : 04/04  6.3%
20:43:09 : 05/05  3.1%
20:43:15 : 06/06  1.6%
20:43:20 : 07/07  0.8%
20:43:26 : 08/08  0.4%
20:43:32 : 09/09  0.2%
20:43:38 : 10/10  0.1%
20:43:44 : 11/11  0.0%
20:43:51 : 12/12  0.0%
20:43:53 : Test finished.

 ---------- 
Total: 12/12 (0.0%)

The warbling on Burton C Bell's vocals at around 0:17 is very noticable. A sample of the track can be found here, if anyone wants to try to ABX it.

As for ogg; well i failed miserably.

Code: [Select]
foo_abx 1.3.3 report
foobar2000 v0.9.5.5
2008/10/05 20:55:51

File A: C:\Rips\Fear Factory - Demanufacture\04. Replica.flac
File B: C:\Temp\1 Replica.ogg

20:55:51 : Test started.
20:56:35 : 00/01  100.0%
20:56:42 : 01/02  75.0%
20:56:47 : 01/03  87.5%
20:56:50 : 01/04  93.8%
20:56:57 : 01/05  96.9%
20:57:02 : 01/06  98.4%
20:57:24 : 02/07  93.8%
20:57:32 : 03/08  85.5%
20:57:44 : 04/09  74.6%
20:57:51 : 05/10  62.3%
20:57:58 : 06/11  50.0%
20:58:09 : 06/12  61.3%
20:58:12 : 07/13  50.0%
20:58:24 : 07/14  60.5%
20:58:29 : 07/15  69.6%
20:58:35 : 08/16  59.8%
20:58:54 : 08/17  68.5%
20:59:13 : 09/18  59.3%
20:59:18 : 10/19  50.0%
20:59:23 : 10/20  58.8%
20:59:27 : 11/21  50.0%
20:59:32 : 11/22  58.4%
20:59:38 : 12/23  50.0%
20:59:41 : 13/24  41.9%
20:59:59 : 13/25  50.0%
21:00:02 : Test finished.

 ---------- 
Total: 13/25 (50.0%)

I thought there was a artifact at certain areas but it seems to be transparent. But the bitrate is 193 which is 13kbps bigger then the mpc encode; but this track is a bitrate bloat on VBR mp3 (242 at V2) and Nero AAC.

Code: [Select]
foo_abx 1.3.3 report
foobar2000 v0.9.5.5
2008/10/05 21:02:52

File A: C:\Rips\Iron Maiden - Piece Of Mind\03. Flight Of Icarus.flac
File B: C:\Temp\2 Flight Of Icarus.ogg

21:02:52 : Test started.
21:03:13 : 00/01  100.0%
21:03:37 : 01/02  75.0%
21:03:47 : 01/03  87.5%
21:03:56 : 02/04  68.8%
21:04:00 : 02/05  81.3%
21:04:03 : 03/06  65.6%
21:04:06 : 03/07  77.3%
21:04:12 : 03/08  85.5%
21:04:53 : 03/09  91.0%
21:05:22 : 03/10  94.5%
21:05:26 : 04/11  88.7%
21:05:29 : 05/12  80.6%
21:05:54 : 05/13  86.7%
21:06:00 : 06/14  78.8%
21:06:05 : 07/15  69.6%
21:06:10 : 07/16  77.3%
21:06:14 : 07/17  83.4%
21:06:20 : 07/18  88.1%
21:06:31 : 07/19  91.6%
21:06:42 : 07/20  94.2%
21:06:46 : 07/21  96.1%
21:06:50 : 08/22  93.3%
21:06:54 : 09/23  89.5%
21:06:59 : 10/24  84.6%
21:07:05 : 11/25  78.8%
21:07:08 : 12/26  72.1%
21:07:12 : 12/27  77.9%
21:07:19 : 12/28  82.8%
21:07:21 : Test finished.

 ---------- 
Total: 12/28 (82.8%)

Same bitrate as the mpc encode. I thought the warbling at 1:52 on Nero AAC was present on ogg aswell; but was not and i thought there was certain artifacts aswell; but it turned out as a placebo.
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #47 –
wow, ogg <3 
=)  thx for making these tests

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #48 –
@ /mnt: I thought that Ogg Vorbis could be very good but your tests showed it is. Thank you for posting!

If I'd ever switch from MP3 to another lossy codec it would be Ogg Vorbis.
Sorry for my poor English, I'm trying to get better... ;)
"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn't exist."

new in aac what should i do to get cd quality

Reply #49 –
Quote from: k.eight.a on
@ /mnt: I thought that Ogg Vorbis could be very good but your tests showed it is. Thank you for posting!

If I'd ever switch from MP3 to another lossy codec it would be Ogg Vorbis.

Same here, if my iPod support Vorbis with gapless playback aswell.

I had to revert back to LAME V2, since i found some really annoying artifacts (possibly ringing) and some tracks don't sound right on Nero AAC at 0.50 and 0:55. Would have ended up using q 0.6; but that just ruins the perpose of moving to AAC. I might have think about using V0, before i burn my FLACs to DVD. But am still gonna use Nero AAC for my old 4gb Nano at q 0.42.
"I never thought I'd see this much candy in one mission!"