Public MP3 Listening Test @ 128 kbps - FINISHED
Reply #186 – 2008-11-30 10:18:05
I wanted to give FhG a try because of this test's outcome, and I wanted to concentrate on the most serious tonal problems I know (herding_calls, trumpet, trumpet_myPrince) which I wanted to have at a non-obvious issue level which should be not a bit annoying when careful listening. And I wanted to stay at around 200 kbps maximum (having to care about file size in the near future). What I learnt from the test is that I don't have to care about the extreme HF region and can be content with HF up to 16 kHz which is very favorable when using mp3. As a refererence I used Lame 3.98.2. I figured out that -V0.5 --lowpass 16.0 is the setting which brings the desired quality for me. With my test set of typical regular music the average bitrate for this setting is 205 kbps. Then I tried FhG surround, but didn't manage to find a competetive setting (even with lowpassing before encoding with one of the higher quality settings). So FhG isn't an alternative to me. Though I didn't want to pick up again Helix as I decided some time ago not to use it I was curious how Helix behaved. At relatively low bitrate Helix has serious problems with all the samples (especially the 'tremolo' effect with trumpet_myPrince). But from a certain point on there is a strong quality increase. With '-X2 -U2 -SBT500 -TX0 -V110' my quality demands are met. With my typical regular music test set the average bitrate for this setting is 179 kbps. As this is a good result I looked up those samples where in the past I found a subtle issue concerning HF behavior and 'vividness'. I couldn't hear an issue, probably due to my reduced demands (and limited time I wanted to spend for this small test). Struggling for lower bitrate with Lame I arrived at --abr 200 --lowpass 16.0 which gives an average bitrate of 191 kbps with my typical regular test set and meets my quality demands for these bad tonal problems. But in this bitrate range and for general usage I prefer VBR, now that I'm happy with Lame's VBR behavior. I will use Lame -V0.5 --lowpass 16.0 in the future. I have no reason to prefer it over Helix. It's just personal - my emotions are more with Lame than with Helix.