then .....you all are mad!

Ok, so I think Nero's AAC encoder and Vorbis are the top of the crop
All other Codecs are dust in the wind
Now let's do some 40Kbps tests with some complex music, and see how they both stack up

-kwag

I have not played it with winamp until now... well, I don't know what AAC decoder winamp is using, and even if my winamp is showing it as 44KHz (what version is your winamp?... 5.05 is out already), foobar sound quality is much better.

Check what is the version of your nero aac encoder... my "aacenc32.dll" is v2.5.1.2.
And when you encode with it (at that low bitrate), select HE-AAC and enable PNS.
(use this settings only with low bitrate)

yes it's true....but my Winamp 5.05 show:
mpeg-4, 30.402 secs, 40Kbps, 44100 Hz <--- from file information!

but no matter... the sound is horrible!

hey, is 44,1K than it's worse cos we are thinking that was 22k !

Does Ogg Vorbis sound better than MP3?
judge this for yourself... http://www.vorbis.com/faq.psp#sound

lots of samples and tests:
http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/listen.html

It's strange to quote my self , but now I remember that winamp build in aac decoder is crap... at least with HE-AAC. It can't reproduce the high efficiency model of aac. It will just ignore the HE and will not play the file correctly. If you really want to use winamp with AAC, then use this aac input plugin: in_mp4.zip

It's not possible jorel. Are you really using foobar to do the test
Here they are VERY VERY close in quality.
Try to ABX them in foobar... it's possible, but not an easy task.
Are you using any graphical frequency analyzer to judge this, or are you using just your ears?

edit: even the 32kbps is quite impressive -> test-nero-aac-32kbps.mp4

I wouldn't trust any listening tests/samples provided by any participant of the test. Thus the tests xiph.org or vorbis.com provides are really useless.

ok Boulder, i can understand what you mean.
but what can we do? how can we trust in the results?
doing our tests, right? ok.....send me wave samples or i send to you and we do our own test and post the results...cool?
see that i never post my opinion in lots of tests in hidrogenaudio...why?
simple: they did tests to know what give better results encoding in 128....or less.
for what reason i want to know what's better using crap 128?
no matter the results, for my is a trash! all my mp3 have 192 in minimal or 256....lots of people want to put billions of musics in a simple media with crap sound, but i don't need more than 100 titles with extreme quality(mp3). but here is different...we can trust in our own results and i will get all tests but i never will encode at low bitrates for my backups,no matter how that low bitrates can seems good at first sign.
i'm searching the best to encode in high bitrates. our tests will show it, we can trust in our tests(mine,yours and from our friends here)...we're searching quality.....like kvcd give to images, we're doing the same for sound!

off topic in: i did lots of tests and posted links to show pictures in scripts forum and i'm still waiting everybody to send impression about it at 2 days...nobody post a simple "cool or lame"....what can i do?...i'm doing my part...i'm still waiting for all there and don't want to to tests for "nobody" here too....do you know what i mean? off topic out!


@ all
anyone have space where i can post waves samples ? (~30 seconds)

@ muaddib
i'm with the last winamp to do tests.
i will follow your hints to listen the samples. thanks for that advices!

thank you all!

I don't think it's a bad idea they have done tests with 128kbps, because that is the point in which the differences can still be heard. To my ears, an MPC file with avg bitrate of 128kbps sounds as least as good as an MP3 with an avg bitrate of 160kbps. If both are at avg 160kbps, it gets really hard to distinguish between the two different encoders. That's my point..and I also like to listen to the music instead of picking all the faults encoding has created If you want music without any artifacts, you'll have to go for Monkey's Audio for example.

You have your needs, other people have their needs. It's vital that we don't forget that.

@ Boulder
first you wrote:
ok , you don't trust in any listening tests/samples provided by any participant of the test..but later...
then...why you trust in hidrogenaudio tests and not in the tests of xiph.org or vorbis.com provides ?.....

but you wrote that don't trust in any listening tests/samples provided by any participant of the test.

who did that tests? how and why can i trust if you don't trust? ...or better,do you trust or not trust!?!?..this is the question!
I'm kiddin!

@ all
i'm not alone.....Boulder it mad TOO!

jorel,

you did not understand what I said. I already said I do not trust any tests done by any participant (that is, a developer of any of the programs in the test) of the test.

A. Hydrogenaudio.org, and especially rjamorim, who has lead most of the listening tests there, does not develop any of the programs and is devoted to all things audio. Therefore, they should not be biased and can be trusted.

B. xiph.org and vorbis.com are sites devoted to Ogg Vorbis, and probably are run by the Ogg team. Do you think they would publish any tests that would not promote their format? They would be very stupid (or soon unemployed) if they did.

Monkey's Audio is lossless, therefore there should be no differences to the original WAV file. Of course, there could be rounding or similar differences, but they are definitely not audible. They can only be found by doing a binary compare. I thought you were into audio, you should know these things

You are quoting me out of context. I said that we should let people test 128kbps if they like - and my reason to it is that at that bitrate the differences are big enough to measure well. Over that point everything starts to sound the same. Some people need 128kbps files, you need something over that. That's why I said "You have your needs, other people have their needs. It's vital that we don't forget that."

all right Boulder, then we have to do our tests here!
in our results we can trust, right? (and i was kiddin in some details,ok?)

@ all
i still need a place to send my wave samples...anyone knows where i can do it? if you know, tell me where (and how) please!
thanks!

Hi Boulder,

Why can't you trust the samples provided by vorbis
They provide the original uncompressed WAV for all samples
Then for every sample, they provide the .ogg, .wma and .mp3 for comparison.
I think that's pretty fair, just because they do provide the original source (WAV), and as a matter of fact, I used the same WAV they provided to encode my own MP3s and WMAs, and I got identical results
So there's nothing hidden there.

-kwag

That I didn't know, I only saw that the domains hosting the comparisons were xiph.org and vorbis.com. However, I prefer a blind test with a large number of people participating in the test to make the random factor smaller. I do know that Vorbis sounds good at lower bitrates Too bad that the OGM container seems to be yesterday's tech and abandoned.

muaddib (and all)
i'm using winamp 505 as posted.
inside have the in_mp4.dll(14-07-04) with 13K that was installed by winamp and it's sounds horrible playing the "test-nero-aac-40kbps.mp4 that you posted.
then i download the in_mp4.dll(09-07-04) with 243kb that you posted and the sound is really better....no "underwater" then i change my "taste" for that file and now my new impressions:

test-uncompressed.wav .......the source!
test-nero-aac-40kbps.mp4 ......really better BUT the reverberation of the chords in the background are rough,uneven. ..(atention in the begining of the music)......and loose trebles,just a little...and basses have littles distortions too.
test-ogg-40kbps.ogg ....still a winner

i'm playing with winamp with the "new" in_mp4.dll that you send,
now i ask:
if i install foobar ( fubá? ) it can sounds better?

hey, i'm using my ears to listen without any graphical frequency analyzer or something like that to judge this!

You mean the Ogg
But its only a container, and there's already the Theora video project, that is also wrapped in Ogg
http://www.theora.org/
And:
http://www.speex.org/
It seems to me Ogg is going very strong

-kwag

Even if the WAVs are provided, different types of music samples can produce drastically different results with the same encoder. I'm not telling xiph/vorbis has done that, but one can pick the samples that will produce perfect results and discard the samples that would produce not so good results for a particular encoder.

Fore sure that’s not just what they do.
They seem to me serious people that deeply love and understand audio.
I do trust in HA tests. I think that HA is for audio as KVCD is for video.
If for nothing else, knowing that the optimized lame compile and alt-presset settings, that I'm using today, came from them is already enough to give them respect.