[LAU] How bad is mp3/ogg

[Hartmut Noack]

Am 12.10.2011 18:03, schrieb david:
> Hartmut Noack wrote:
>> Am 11.10.2011 23:07, schrieb Fons Adriaensen:
>>> On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 10:57:38PM +0200, Atte André Jensen wrote:
>>>
>>>> My question is: is this really a fair way to judge the artifacts
>>>> introduced by encoding?
>>
>> No, it is only fair to ask your ears for a judgement.
>>
>> 1.) MP3 and OGG are both *different* compared to the original. So both
>> are not "HiFi" in the sense of the word.
>>
>> 2.) every publisher of music has to make the decision if the sounds
>> he/she wants to share with the world are adeaquately represented by
>> MP3 or OGG or not.
>>
>> To give an quite extreme example: I made a mix of an 50+ track project
>> in Ardour. It did sound OK but for my personal taste it should have
>> been a bit more brilliant/transparent. It was just too fat in a
>> sense... So I transcoded it to OGG and released it on the net to get
>> some ideas of other musicians out there how to make that stuff sound a
>> bit thinner whithout breaking its neck:
>>
>>
>> http://lapoc.de/demos/lapoc-sos-ashita-141008.ogg
>>
>> Test-listening to the OGG-file I discovered, that the process of
>> encoding had made all the difference, I was longing for. So I
>> recoded(sic!) the OGG-file back to WAV to put it on CD.
>>
>> There is no such thing as "good sound" there are right or wrong sound
>> only.
>>
>>>
>>> No, it's completely invalid.
>>>
>>> The correct way would be a double blind A/B/X test between the
>>> original and the encoded versions.
>>
>> Amen to that.
>
> My ears are shot (age and rock'n'roll), and my equipment isn't pro
> level, but I notice a difference between 32-bit WAV recordings and
> resulting MP3s

As I said: there *is* a difference. But MP3 or OGG do not sound "bad", 
they can reproduce the spectrum hearable by most people and they do not 
introduce a relevant amount of noise or distortion. They simply reduce 
the information.

> (LAME's variable bit rate, quality 2). Mostly more high
> frequencies in the WAV vs the MP3s.

I never had the impression, that high frequencies where reduced by 
encoding. But I did hear rather dramatic effects on dynamics and density.

> But this isn't double-blind testing.

Most double-blind-tests are made with released recordings. Such 
recordings are in most cases mixed and mastered to meet the expectations 
of average listeners and to fit the limitations of kitchen-radios and 
MP3-players. Make a double-blind test with a fresh, un-mastered 
recording of say, a band like Mastodon or Kyuss and the difference will 
be obvious. But that does not say, that the listeners in the test will 
actually prefer the un-encoded version....

>
> How about MP4 - any difference between MP3 and MP4 when it comes to sound?

My mobile-phone uses MP4 for its so called "high-quality"-mode for field 
recordings. I do not notice any difference compared with the MP3 or OGG 
used by other cheap field recorders I used.

The only compressed format, I ever found slightly listenable better than 
MP3/OGG was the ATRAC on my old Minidisc-recorder.

But who cares: real recordings may never be compressed and MP3/OGG are 
OK for easy distribution. People may get a CD or LP to get the real 
thing or a flac to have something for net-distribution.

best regs
HZN

>