On 03/28/2013 04:23 PM, Brett McCoy wrote: ... Thanks Brett, I will start experimenting with Lame. I always upload flac files to Soundcload, but wonders if I upload a high quality MP3, then maybe they will leave it untouched and use the uploaded one? I can imagine that many people uploads MP3 files, but it should sound terrible if they reconvert them also, or maybe they do? Jostein

On Thu, March 28, 2013 8:38 am, Jostein Chr. Andersen wrote: If you think about it from a programing POV, it is easier to treat everything the same... file -> recode -> send adding an extra step to not recode some files is ... well, an extra step. -- Len Ovens www.OvenWerks.net

On 03/28/2013 04:43 PM, Raffaele Morelli wrote: ... The "insane" parameter name led me to understand that Audacity do use Lame as well. I use the insane parameter when exporting to MP3 from Audacity.In that case, I might not be satisfied with Lame at all. But If "lame --preset insane" is the best thing in the Linux audio world, then I might have to rethink how my mixes should be in order to avoid the problems. One thing I have noticed is that esses (mostly when accentuated from compression), dithering (or not) and tape saturation affects the final audio result of a MP3 file. If,

On 03/28/2013 05:48 PM, Raffaele Morelli wrote: .. Yes, it's the same as Audacity do via Lame. Ogg is at the moment not an option when it comes shipping to artists, producers and other people in the music business, for this, MP3s and waves are the standard - and gladly enough: Flac seem to be more and more popular. Personally: I always use Ogg or Flac in my hw/sw music players. 48Khz will not help at all when it comes to artifacts and the raw material is usually in 44.1 (and sometimes in 96 or 192) anyway. Speaking about bitrates higher than what the human ear can hear, here is some cool info about high bit rates: http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html J.

On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 10:31 PM, Chris Bannister < cbannister(a)slingshot.co.nz&gt; wrote: highly controversial in the way that, say, climate change or evolutuon is highly controversial. on one side, we have a group of people dedicated to measurement, reproduceable results, correct testing methodology, science. on the other side, we have a group of people dedicated to woo. that isn't a controversy, it's the endless scream of the stupid in the face of the truth.

On 29/03/13 3:05 AM, Jostein Chr. Andersen wrote: LAME isn't just the best thing in the Linux audio world, it's about the best MP3 encoder out there, full-stop; there's no way you're going to get a better-sounding MP3. Even if you can hear differences, it's incredibly unlikely that anyone else, who doesn't have your familiarity with the source material, is going to be able to hear any. In fact, I'd honestly be surprised if you really are hearing a difference, or hearing the differences you think you're hearing. Doing a proper ABX test, using a tool like Squishyball, could be very instructive here -- you might find that you have a lot more trouble picking the difference between the MP3 and the WAV than you think you would. If you do want to do an ABX test, use LAME to decode the MP3 back to WAV, and then supply that WAV to Squishyball, along with the original WAV from before you encoded it: lame --decode foo.mp3 foo.wav The MP3 format adds a delay to the start of files during the encoding process, and using LAME to decode it in this way will eliminate that delay on decoding (assuming the original file was encoded with LAME, too). If you don't eliminate that delay, then the results of the test would be invalid, since you might end up noticing the delay, rather than any real differences between the files. In fact, I'd recommend this to anyone who's never done it before -- modern encoders are remarkable things, and there's no better way of demonstrating this than with an ABX test. Thanks Leigh

Quoting "Jostein Chr. Andersen" &lt;jostein(a)vait.se&gt;se>: Over at HydrogenAudio they have a rule that you aren't allowed to talk about hearing differences between audio files unless you can prove it in an ABX test. You really should try doing one and check if you *really* can hear the difference between the original wav and an mp3 produced by, say, "lame -V4" ( which would be ~160kbps) or if it's just your mind fooling you into thinking you can. Never underestimate the power of belief :) If you really can I'm sure the people over at HydrogenAudio and others would love to have you helping out in testing new releases of lame and other encoders. - Peder

2013/4/2 Jostein Chr. Andersen &lt;jostein(a)vait.se&gt;se>: Does anybody remember the CD vs Vinyl debate? This thread is going in that direction, really the same old thing again and again... Audio geeks will tend to the "best air particles recording ever with hyper-condeser-mics and... To infinity and beyond!", music lovers are happy (even) with crackling Holiday records from '30 or Lomax recordings. /r -- L'unica speranza di catarsi, ammesso che ne esista una, resta affidata all'istinto di ribellione, alla rivolta non isterilita in progetti, alla protesta violenta e viscerale. (V. Evangelisti)

2013/4/2 Jostein Chr. Andersen &lt;jostein(a)vait.se&gt;se>: Reply to your question is LAME IMO you don't need to blame yourself, but just be happy with your mixes, ears... and composition/execution. Too many variables are involved in music listening, more than the "statistic pornografy" of an ABX test can take into accunt IMO (university degree in statistics). /r -- L'unica speranza di catarsi, ammesso che ne esista una, resta affidata all'istinto di ribellione, alla rivolta non isterilita in progetti, alla protesta violenta e viscerale. (V. Evangelisti)

Quoting "Jostein Chr. Andersen" &lt;jostein(a)vait.se&gt;se>: For archiving you should obviously use lossless but for listening I'd say it's highly debatable (unless you can prove that you can hear the difference in an ABX test). You really should try doing an ABX and check out if you really can hear those esses and/or missing tones. Here's how you do it using foobar2000 and the ABX component : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt7GyFW4hOI I think a lot of the bad rep the MP3 format got was due to the many crappy encoders from its early days. Today, using lame, the average listener shouldn't be able to tell the difference between the original and a lame -V5 (~128kbps) file. Lame does have problems with certain types of samples, and good problem samples are listed on http://lame.sourceforge.net/quality.php, but unless you have really good ears and/or happen do have similar passages in your files -V4 or lower should be transparent. As said by others lame or the mp3 format seems to add a bit of gain to the file so you should avoid having the sources really close to 0dB to minimize the risk of clipping. - Peder

Quoting Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt;et>: Prove it in an ABX test. I think you'll be surprised how low in bitrate you need to go before being able to tell which is the "crap mp3" and which is the "pristine, shimmering wav" :) No psychoacoustic encoder is 100% foolproof which means there will always be certain things it'll have problem coding properly and since MP3 is an older technique, as compared to newer algorithms like Vorbis, AAC, Opus and such, it might be slightly more prone to fail on those particularly problematic samples. That's not to say the average listener would be able to hear that anyway. Good ears obviously implies not having been standing next to a jackhammer for your whole life but in the case of audio testing good or "golden" ears often means people who are really good at hearing stuff like encoder added pre-echo, phasing problems and such. You should read Monty's (of Ogg/Vorbis and Opus/CELT fame) 24/192 post : http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html When recording you should obviously go as high as feasible but 16/44.1 is more than adequate for listening. - Peder

Quoting Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt;et>: Feel free to post the results of a double blind test to prove you're right. When recording it's (almost) never wrong to go as high as possible, since your audio will go through a number of different effects, filters and stuff before eventually be summarized on the master bus, so you should try minimizing all the potential loss on the way there. Once you render the file 16/44.1 is all you need - have a look at Monty's really good videos http://video.xiph.org/vid1.shtml and http://video.xiph.org/vid2.shtml Talk is cheap, prove it in a double blind test please. ABX testing isn't about hearing a particular instrument or if the EQ is different in one track - it's being able to tell if track X is the same as track A or B. Do try it yourself on a favourite song; it's as easy as encoding it with lame, decoding it back to wav with lame, importing the original and the original->mp3-new_wav into foobar2000 with the ABX plugin and checking if you can hear which is which. Here's a guide : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt7GyFW4hOI I saw a test where a bunch of professional musicians and engineers listened to a guitar player playing an old $5000 Les Paul and a $500 copy and were asked to tell which was the expensive one. About half of them failed, including the guitar player in the group. The same was true for a Stradivarius and a cheap beginners violin, though IIRC the violin player was correct. - Peder

Ralf, higher sample rates for recording and processing do help with the aliasing effects caused by non-oversampled implementations of software synthesizers, plugins, and any nonlinear aspects of the signal chain, such as gain automation. A non-bandlimited square wave synthesizer, for example, can sound noticeably different at 96 kHz sample rate than at 48 due to lower nonharmonic aliasing in the audible range. Particularly if played in upper octaves. That's not a very interesting synthesizer but it's a decent demonstration. Compressors and other plugins that perform ring modulation/signal multiplication can also have this effect, though at lower magnitudes. Aliasing effects can be avoided by oversampling internally, but if you start and end at 2x sampling rate you don't have to worry so much if every element of the signal chain has been audited for nonlinear operations. For final output, I agree completely that 44.1 or 48 are fine. I personally have never blind ABXed 44.1 vs 48, but on pro and prosumer equipment I have used I have never been able to distinguish reliably between them on program material. I grew up in the CD age so I always think of 44.1 as the "real" final output and prefer to skip 48 completely so as to leave out a SRC step. I also work at 88.2 for recording to make the final SRC trivial. That's just a personal bias. Thanks, Bill Gribble On Apr 2, 2013, at 8:44, Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt; wrote:

On Tue, 2013-04-02 at 15:34 +0200, Peder Hedlund wrote: Yes, but I try to explain that the Stratocaster became successful by some musicians, e.g. Jimi Hendrix and I'm sure every guitarist would notice, if Hendrix would play a Flying V, the guitar Hendrix preferred, but never or seldom used on recordings. If you would make an ABX test people wouldn't notice differences that are audible, even if those differences are different instruments. Btw. it's not always possible to hear the difference between a single coil and a humbucker, but for the averaged Hendrix sound it would be noticeable. What I want to point out is, that those tests are null and void, people without experiences don't listen to single instrument lines, so they won't notice missing early reflections for a hi hat or something similar, caused by a codec. Experienced people will hear a difference. Yes, it's the second sentence :D http://www.rme-audio.de/en_products_hdspe_aio.php . On Tue, 2013-04-02 at 09:27 -0400, Bill Gribble wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_frequency ? Regards, Ralf

On Tuesday 02 April 2013 10:29:48 Ralf Mardorf did opine: One thing that has a huge bearing on "the sound" in the digital realm, a word that I don't believe I have caught yet in this thread, which as predicted will go on long after I'm gone, is aliasing. Digitizers that can run at 192k samples don't have to worry a lot about the brick wall filters to keep the aliasing under control because while they will also do it, the products are them selves well beyond the range of human ears, plus we don't normally feed them with signals that have any great amount of energy above 25 khz anyway. But at 44.1k samples/sec, the requirements of a brick wall anti-aliasing filter are so stringent that they, while controlling most of the aliasing, introduce their own phasing artifacts. Going to 48k samples will result in a filter with a considerable softer cut off, removing enough of those artifacts and ringing from the filter so it makes sense that its going to sound better, and that most ears can easily hear the diff in ABX testing. A 2nd and 3rd contribution, where op-amps are used in the analog circuitry leading to the digitizer, most likely involved in realizing those filters, is crossover distortion in the op-amps output stage at that point where the signal passes thru the zero value point. Problems there I can see on the scope, and I can hear quite easily despite the distortion analyzer sitting there on the back of the bench telling me the distortion in the distribution amplifier card I am servicing after an EMP from a lightning strike blew the opamps, was less than .05%. A value my ears could easily hear, but the scope really had to be worked hard to be able to see it. It was a card I designed, to be both relatively low power consumption and to be able to supply near 30 volts peak to peak so it could handle peaks of + 12 dbm or more since the house std level was 0 dbm. So I used a cmos op-amp which uses very little current at normal signal levels. The TLO74/84 family. These were great, and could make 29 volts P- P on a +-15 volt supply rail at around .007% distortion. But as I found in the real world where mother nature throws million volt lightning bolts around, and the audio cables going 200 feet to the news dept make a real good antenna to pick that up & shove it back into the outputs of those op-amp's, they can and will, long before an outright failure, develop this "crossover" distortion. But in the long view, they were a 10,000% improvement over the audiophiles pet op-amp, the 5532. Its fairly decent at low levels, but it runs so hot it goes to hell in a hand basket. So you socket them, put clip-on heat sinks and fans on them, and keep a tube of them in the closet when you have an audio board with about 50 of them in it. Another is the 4532?. That thing is horrible when you push it as its nothing but a quad of 741's. Slew rate limits rare up and bite you at the higher frequencies at output levels below 1 volt p-p. Crossover distortion starts showing up at 1 volt output at only 1khz frequency. How that chip Ramco was in love with ever got into the audio business in the first place is totally beyond me. But there are thousands of them in use, mucking up the sound, in broadcast facilities all over, or were till it went 99% digital with hi-def tv. Radio is still the same old same old. Distortion is often in the ear of the listener, and mine are going to pot, but they can still hear /that/ stuff. Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> is up! My views <http://www.armchairpatriot.com/What%20Has%20America%20Become.shtml> History is on our side (as long as we can control the historians). A pen in the hand of this president is far more dangerous than a gun in the hands of 200 million law-abiding citizens.

On Tue, Apr 02, 2013 at 11:36:47AM -0400, Paul Davis wrote: Great. Just great. Ciao, -- FA A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia. It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)

On Tuesday 02 April 2013 12:46:07 Ralf Mardorf did opine: And I wasn't saying that it was todays cat's meow. I forgot to mention that this was 25 years ago. Should have. The production video switcher we used for many years, a Grass Valley Group 300-3A/B, used a grocery sack full of a slightly bigger than an airmail stamp, custom made op-amp that Grass designed. Of course, as the far end of the bathtub curve of time vs failure rates approached, it lost a channel, one of those little ceramic cards had died. I called Grass, they wanted $1500 and would not guarantee that the remaining ones on the shelf were good. That wasn't good enough for me, so I started scouring catalog's & calling the chip makers. I forget who came to my rescue with a one rail 5 volt video speed op-amp with an in my hand price of less that 2$. So I asked for samples & they sent 5, gratis. I should have bought 50 because it was so much better and faster that it threw the color phase noticeably off when that mixer channel was in use. If I had sufficient stock, I would have shotgunned the other 5 identical boards so they would have all matched again. But changing them out was a good 3 hours a board, so it never got done, but by the time I retired, the other 4 were in it because of more failures. Since one board then had 3 of those in it, the color hue shift was getting to be obnoxiously obvious. When I announced I was retiring, the first thing they did was replace it because they knew I was the only one still living who might be able to fix it. They paid about 100k for another brand new one from a new company, and 4 years later it was on its last legs. Then digital needed to be done, so the building was rebuilt for a brand new rack room and two control rooms, 3 more edit bays, 2 production offices, and an all new area for engineering since there are now 2 tv channels, 4 programs, originating there plus a radio station. That has had its share of 'teething' pains, but the junk seems to have largely been swept out in the 5 years since, so its usually running pretty good. All with gigabit ethernet, and some 10Gb in one instance, its nice to be able to move a 1 hour long program file from one box to another in 2 or 3 seconds. :) Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> is up! My views <http://www.armchairpatriot.com/What%20Has%20America%20Become.shtml> Its name is Public Opinion. It is held in reverence. It settles everything. Some think it is the voice of God. -- Mark Twain A pen in the hand of this president is far more dangerous than a gun in the hands of 200 million law-abiding citizens.

On 04/02/2013 02:35 PM, Peder Hedlund wrote: Anecdote time :D I have a friend who's a mild audiophile. Spends quite a bit of money on his amplifier, D/A and speakers and was firm that his FLAC collection sounded better than 256kbit/s mp3. We discussed this issue quite a bit (there was another friend there who's a musician and he sided with him). After quite some time I convinced them to do a double blind test. We took one of his most familiar albums and encoded it from FLAC to mp3. I then threw a die 20 times and created a list of which version to play in each trial. I handed this list to my other friend who was responsible for playing the files. The first friend then tried to identify which of the versions sounded "better". We went through with the test and there was no statistically significant discrimination. My other friend could not believe it, so we repeated the experiment with him. I threw the die 20 more times, etc.. Again, no statistically significant discrimination. My semi-audiophile friend then exalted: "Gawddammit, from now on I'll encode my music as potato!". A good laugh was had.. Flo -- Florian Paul Schmidt http://fps.io

On Tue, 2013-04-02 at 15:11 +0200, Peder Hedlund wrote: Just for the record, I'm using telephone cable, 4 twisted non litz wire, for one speaker pair and very thin loudspeaker cable for another pair and there's no difference to expensive cable, but I'm using different 1/4" and XLR jacks and I experienced the monster-connectors are much better than elCheapo connectors. I hope that Neutric today does use better plastic, I guess my first Neutric's cable reliefs get broken after less than 15 years (not really god quality), but I anyway prefer Neutric and nowadays Rean to other vendors. I've got some connectors that get broken, just by soldering and I know how to solder. I don't own Tuchel at home, but I like the expensive Tuchel big and small very much. The funny thing is, nobody will be able to hear a difference by doing an ABX test. You'll hear the difference, once you hold a microphone in your hand and the XLR connector does cause crackling when moving the hand. You'll experience a difference, if you need to open and close the connector and if you have to solder. And btw. the audiophiles simply won't use the telephone cable or coat hangers for their speakers, regarding to the optical design. It's absolutely ok to sell and to buy "emotions", a "life style". The telephone cable I'm using definitive is not a pretty sight.

On Tue, 2013-04-02 at 15:29 +0200, Florian Paul Schmidt wrote I agree and I love my Ibanez for around 800 DM (lets say it would be around 800 € today), bought around 30 years ago. It has a good sound, action and the form of the neck is okay. But if I could pay for a > 1000 € guitar I would buy one today. I'm not in practise anymore, but I notice that playing a SG is easier than playing my Ibanez (Strat like). I own a Yamaha G-230, it did cost around 200 DM over 30 years ago and can't keep up with expensive acoustic guitars. I heard (and played as good as possible, but don't own) a cheap Dobro and a 10,000 DM Dobro, both not from the Dopyera brothers. The very expensive instrument is played by named bluegrass musicians too, it has much, much longer sustain, a much more transparent sound and the price is ok, it's comparable with an expensive grand piano. You don't needed it, you should remember that some people have not enough to eat, but if somebody would give you such an instrument, you should reconsider to play it.

On Wed, 2013-04-03 at 04:00 +1300, Chris Bannister wrote: Habit, physical and psychical circumstances, e.g. getting stressed by some kind of sound, IOW fatigue too, are important factors. The price of a Stradivarius is that bad, that nobody should play one, but that's another issue. IMO 3000,- EUR for an electric guitar are ok, I just can't spend that much money, but IMO those 3000,- guitars usually are better than 500,- EUR guitars. How do they make statistics? I would make an ABX test like that: Compare ABX with ABX box 1 and compare ABX with box 2. Is there a difference between X and A and B for one of those boxes. I wouldn't ask for the sound quality and I wouldn't ask if they should notice a difference, what does sound better. I bet doing the test like that, people would hear a cowbell in A of box 1, when there is no cowbell, IOW some people wouldn't listen and compare the quality, they would "search" for something, some people perhaps would notice an extra bar in B of box 2 or hear subliminal messages. The so called blind and double blind tests are already manipulated by the question. So if people think most of us won't hear a difference, we just guess that we hear the difference, than the question of the test would manipulate us too. Tests are good to get a rough impression, but they likely say less about real usage and it's similar for statistics. They are helpful, but you must be able to understand that a test is a test and that a statistic is a statistic.

I guess I _never_ failed a blind test, but that's not important. Most people are comfortable with MP3s, but if I talk to them and point them to the lossy parts, they're able to notice the loss too, they are usually not annoyed by the loss. Tests with uneducated people are useless, those tests just should ensure how far the industry could go. Most people of my generation know how milk does taste and some people, e.g. me, are unable to drink the heated piss they sell as milk today. In the first tests they found out that heated milk does taste equal to real milk, after a while they noticed that too many people of my generation still remember the taste of real milk, so the next claim was, just some people are able to taste a difference, but only when comparing it. My claim is that everybody > than 30 years is able to taste a difference, without the need to compare milk A and B. Back to audio ;), if you aren't accustomed to MP3s, but accustomed to listen to productions in good audio studios, than you can't stand MP3s. If something is good enough for averaged consumers, it doesn't mean it's good. Sure, at home perhaps most of us don't have good audio conditions by their flats. Inexperienced people might think that standing waves and all the issues we are accustomed to, from our homes, are "normal" = ok, but it isn't ok, it's crap, just hard to avoid at home. What happens to the stereo impression of MP3s? Keep those high quality MP3s microphony for headphones, for speakers as it was done by the engineer? What kind of audio material is tested in what way? Is it a room with less stimuli, IOW a completely unnatural situation? Etc. pp.. many people won't notice if one speaker is out of phase, other people might not only notice it, but keel over, caused by the acoustic impression, when walking through a room with wrong connected speakers. Some people see colors when listening to music, other people have no connections amongst the senses. But ok, a soccer player should be asked, if he is able to hear loss or not and the audio engineer than has to fix all the issues of all the possible medias/codecs. It already is hard to mix music in a way that it does sound good on most stereo equipment, it becomes harder, if you need to take care about issues caused by all codecs that possibly could be used or when mixing for more than 2 channels.

On Wed, 2013-04-03 at 08:18 +0200, Raffaele Morelli wrote: I know what double blind tests are. The pharmaceutical industry are a good example to prove that I'm not mistaken. My claim isn't that tests are completely useless, it's just that especially for the pharmaceutical industry and food mafia those tests are done in a way that it's clear, what the result will be. But ok, we can claim that the earth is a disc and centre of the universe and everything was made by a god and the audio ABX tests are absolutely correct, MP3s not only sound lossless, they improve the sound a lot. So lets spread this news and burn everybody who doesn't believe in this :p. It reminds me to that video where the guy is talking about "steps" caused by AD conversion. Since the 80s when it was introduced to the consumer marked this nonsense never stopped. When I was a teen I tried to explain that it's nonsense to guess the wave converted back to analog has got steps and I hoped that people will understand it after a while, now more than 30 years later people still repeat that claim. It's useless to discuss those things. As long as people pray to a god, eat at McDonalds, fight "real" wars etc. pp. the human evolution does stagnate and we will get one new technical invention after the other only, if they are useful or not. I'm convinced that this will continue until our economies will break down, at that point when exploitation is overdone. It's not boring conspiration theory, it's that boring because it isn't a concpiration theory. I can't continue this discussion, I've to do some ABX tests to find out what washing agent makes white clothes the most white and what motor oil of the thinking motor oils has got the highest IQ. Just claim your motor oil is able to think and people will believe it, comprehensible since it's more present than a god, ghosts, souls etc. and people already believe this nonsense. Regards, Ralf

On Wed, 2013-04-03 at 11:01 +0200, Raffaele Morelli wrote: And in addition I wrote Could you please quote where I ever claimed that "every and all university PhDs are aiming at selling drugs instead of a cure"? Just a rhetorical question. You judge that I don't know what I'm talking about, by insinuate on claims I never made ;D.

You are free to ignore my mails ;). If you read the mails you should be aware that my English is broken. I'm not implicitly saying that everyone manipulate double blind tests, this is at least is a misinterpretation.

Quoting Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt;et>: Despite your slight sarcasm an ABX audio test *is* correct. For that particular song, that particular encoder and that particular listener. If you score, say, a 5% guessing probabililty in a 10 run test that means that it's very likely you really *can* hear the difference between the two files and hence the encoder isn't transparent. And, to clarify if it hasnt been made clear before, an ABX when it comes to testing a particular codec (lame, FhG, Xing) or encoder type (mp3, vorbis, opus, aac) really isn't "which file sounds better", it's "do I hear the difference between the two files". If you *do* hear the difference it's obviously your prerogative to claim that the encoded file sound shite, even though the test in itself doesn't ask that question, but if your score is around 50% you really wouldn't have a leg to stand on then it comes to such a claim. Since you don't list any encoder test you really should try one once, just to be able to say "been there, done that, beat it". If you look at the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt7GyFW4hOI) it really isn't that complicated to set up and with your golden ears you should be able to fly through a 10 run test with a 0.1% guess probability in less than 2 minutes. - Peder

2013/4/3 Florian Paul Schmidt &lt;mista.tapas(a)gmx.net&gt;et>: +1 I want to see the trials in streaming B-) /r -- L'unica speranza di catarsi, ammesso che ne esista una, resta affidata all'istinto di ribellione, alla rivolta non isterilita in progetti, alla protesta violenta e viscerale. (V. Evangelisti)

Quoting Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt;et>: If that's true you really should offer your ears to the codec creators. They want people with golden ears who can hear if their tweeks are for the better or worse. And feel free to post your ABX score of the files in http://www.musikhuset.org/~peder/AxelF.zip . AxelF.wav is the CD original, AxelFMP3-165.wav is made with lame-3.99.4 -V4, resulting in an 165.2 kbps file, and AxelFMP3-124.wav is made with -V6, resulting in an 124 kbps file Compare the original with the 124 and see if you can tell which is which. Assuming you can, do the same with the original and the 165. Or you can send me a 10s snippet of your favorite music and I'll make MP3s of that for ABX:ing. That's very likely "the power of suggestion". Do try and point out the "lossy" part while they're listening to the original. It wouldn't surprise me if they started noticing the "loss" in that all of a sudden. Which might very well be because you know that it's an MP3 and you "know" MP3s sound bad. Please do show that you can't stand MP3s by providing an ABX score. - Peder

On 04/03/2013 09:12 AM, Florian Paul Schmidt wrote: And sorry for misspelling your name, Peder :D Flo -- Florian Paul Schmidt http://fps.io

On 04/03/2013 08:20 PM, J. Liles wrote: Maybe I'm just stupid. I thought I read about one somewhere in this thread. But there does seem to be an ABX test software out there.. Flo -- Florian Paul Schmidt http://fps.io

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Squishyball. It's the ABX tester I wrote for use here at Xiph. Runs nicely on *nixes and Mac OS X. Monty

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 2:34 PM, J. Liles &lt;malnourite(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: If your distro hasn't packaged it, you can get it from xiph.org svn: https://svn.xiph.org/trunk/squishyball Monty

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 1:44 AM, Raffaele Morelli &lt;raffaele.morelli(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: opusfile is an opus convenience library similar to 'vorbisfile'. Unlike vorbisfile, it's in its own source repo: https://git.xiph.org/?p=opusfile.git;a=summary Kinda surprised Debian doesn't have it yet. Monty

2013/4/4 J. Liles &lt;malnourite(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: a debian mantainer is needed, with some interest for your stuff, you could apply if you're willing http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/ /r

On Thursday 04 April 2013 09:37:12 Paul Davis wrote: Fine but it looks like the question is why you can't configure without that dependency and just lose that ability. At least that is what I understood was being asked. (Could easily have missed something.) all the best, drew

On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 10:53 AM, Monty Montgomery &lt;xiphmont(a)gmail.com&gt;wrote;wrote: You're going to regret posting in this thread, Monty--I can tell.

On Wed, Apr 3, 2013 at 5:18 PM, Leigh Dyer &lt;lsd(a)wootangent.net&gt; wrote: Ah! I'd missed it. Monty

Quoting "J. Liles" &lt;malnourite(a)gmail.com&gt;om>: As previously mentioned there is squishyball and the ABX Tester. If your distro don't provide these and you're uncomfortable compiling stuff yourself you can install WINE and run foobar2000 and the abx component (http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_abx) instead. - Peder

Quoting Ralf Mardorf &lt;ralf.mardorf(a)alice-dsl.net&gt;et>: You don't have to do the ABX audio test in an 8 hour non-stop session. You can do two test runs, go to sleep, do three more, go to a movie, do one more, play some soccer and then do the remaining four. And if you have golden ears each run shouldn't have to take more than 20 seconds or so. We don't know the settings used to make your friend's MP3s so it's hard to say anything specific about that test case. He might have used "-b 64" or something. As said before; there are MP3 encoders (at least many of the older ones) that produce lots of audible artifacts. Recent versions of lame happens to be among the ones that produces the least. If you can truthfully ABX my files then you're perfectly entitled to claim MP3s sound bad to you. At least we won't be able to say that *you* can't hear the difference. - Peder

On 04/02/2013 01:38 PM, Paul Davis wrote: I will have to come back to this with some real life examples, but will have to do this later this spring or summer (unless it's legal to provide a clip that last some seconds). I'll have to check. When you say that less than 10% of the population can hear the difference, I believe you, but I have problem to see what this have to do with my case. Producer's and engineers often want to hear a pre-mix or examples in MP3 and DropBox is a common tool for this, and I can assure you that many of them belongs to the 10% club. Me myself is for sure in the 90% group (I on't here the difference og 44.1 or 48 samples either or 60 vs 24 bit), but when I've done a final mix (before mastering) that I know, I hear the differences. I've said it before: his don't happen often and differences are subtle, but when when it comes to 125-bit on SoundCload, then the the differences are huge. Jostein

On Tue, 2013-04-02 at 08:08 -0400, Paul Davis wrote: And why tend non-musicians to miss radical differences between two versions of the same song, while musicians _always_ notice the differences? Make ABX tests yourself with non musicians and replace a snare with a cowbell, I suspect that even this is a difference, some people won't notice. I produced a lot of music with non-musicians, they miss such radical differences very easy, but sure, the hobby guitarist does notice a difference for the sound, when you move an EQ at the mixer that isn't used by the audio chain. Most people do this tests with expectations. Because they experienced at home that sound becomes muddy when they copy their records with elCheapo equipment and auto-leveling etc., this is what they take care about + that the rhythm and tune _seem_ to be equal, but even here, they won't notice differences in phrasing that easy. Less people are educated to listen to individual musical lines by all the aspects an audio engineer and musician should be able to listen to music. You can train your listening! Filtering audio btw. is an issue for many people, that's why speech therapist educate listening.

On Tue, 2013-04-02 at 12:51 +0000, Fons Adriaensen wrote: +1 That's what I'm talking about. In the background of a simple, but nice pop song there might be some sequence including a special kind of "room reverb". An audio engineer isn't always a savant and able to count how many early reflections were played, but an engineer does know that a reverb does provide options such as setting values for the early reflection or simply how much delay there should be before the reverb starts playing. A musician even might be confused, if the delay of a reverb is to asynchronous, while a non-musician wouldn't notice it. The difference between a good professional recording and a less good home recording often isn't the less good audio quality, but the drum machine that isn't optimal tuned and something similar. Experienced people notice such an issue, inexperienced people might notice a difference, but are unable to explain what is different.

On Tue, Apr 2, 2013 at 8:56 AM, Felix Homann &lt;linuxaudio(a)showlabor.de&gt;wrote;wrote: i knew someone was going to ask me for this. every time i (re)google the stuff i found before on this, i seem to find different studies, and the old ones are gone. i should keep/host the PDF's. i know that some of the papers i've read have been hosted (but not done by) hydrogen audio. beyond that, i would just google for "double blind mp3 test" and start reading. sorry to not be able to point at "my sources"

Quoting "Jostein Chr. Andersen" &lt;jostein(a)vait.se&gt;se>: If they're fine with an MP3 and the size of it is not an issue then "lame -b 320" or "lame -V0" is the best you can get. And if they complain you might want to ask them to do an ABX :) - Peder

Le 29/03/2013 08:27, Leigh Dyer a écrit : Hello, I have not followed completely this thread, but i wonder if the question should be "what is the best MP3 decoder" instead of "encoder". I almost always used lame (or liblame) as an encoder, but with the same mp3 file encoded by lame, i could actually _hear_ a diffenrence among several mp3 decoders. AFAIR, in the early 2k years, mpg123 was far better than mpg321, if i remember well. I hope my memory doesn't fail.. cheers, - Ben

On 03/28/2013 05:01 PM, Brett McCoy wrote: Thanks for checking it and writing about it, Brett, that's helpful, then I don't have to make my hands dirty and try it! :-) Jostein