Re: [LAU] What is the best MP3 encoder?

From: Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@email-addr-hidden-dsl.net>
Date: Tue Apr 02 2013 - 13:35:19 EEST

On Tue, 2013-04-02 at 11:51 +0200, Peder Hedlund wrote:
> Quoting "Jostein Chr. Andersen" <jostein@email-addr-hidden>:
>
> > On 04/02/2013 09:31 AM, Peder Hedlund wrote:
> > ...
> >> 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 :)

Never underestimate the abilities of averaged healthy ears and an
educated listen. Many people don't listen educated and don't have
averaged healthy, but averaged damaged ears, they even wouldn't notice
when comparing two different recordings, one with a cowbell and a
tambourine in unison with the snare and the other recording without. So
next time directly don't record with cowbell and tambourine? And why
listen to lossy formats, but not use a lossy codec for production, if
they are that good? MP3 is pure crap! It might work for the modern pop
music my neighbour blast the whole day, were the wav files already sound
like crap, because the whole production and composition of this music
already is pure crap. Everything is at the same level, the loudest
instrument is the kick and each second word includes "fuck" or "fucker".
I wished there would be a codec that completely eliminates the whole
music, then loss would be an advantage. But for real music, averaged
"normal" production quality, not highbrow, but with a kick that is
silent and some songs where you can't hear "fuck" or "fucker" all the
times, MP3 is bad, loss always is audible.

> 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.

And this wasn't sent at April the first ;). So there are problems with
_some samples_. What is the definition of a really good ear? my
definition is that you should have healthy ears. Today we've got more 20
year old kids with deaf aid, than people who are 60 years older. You
don't need "good ears", you need ears that are as good as ears usually
are regarding to the age, assumed they aren't damaged + you need some
(self-)education in listening to music. At least most young people
aren't educated, because all the music most of them is listening does
sound all the same.

Note even without using a lossy codec, some high quality recordings
sound equal at 48KHz and 32KHz, but some audio material can't be
recorded at 32KHz without getting a recording that is that bad, that you
can't listen to it. _Some samples_ will cause issues and other material
doesn't cause issues.

Too funny that most people who've got 1000000000000000000000 songs on
their MP3 players tend to blast the same maximal 10 songs, sometimes
it's just 1 song, the wohle day.

_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@email-addr-hidden
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
Received on Tue Apr 2 16:15:02 2013

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.8 : Tue Apr 02 2013 - 16:15:02 EEST