@Kwag,

Kwag wrote:
I assumed that was true, but the sound is very good (not perfect)
I have a flash drive of approximately 300 aac+ tunes now for portable
playing which would be a lot of CD's.

-BP

I encoded the Beatles sample and the waiting sample with -V 6 --vbr-new.

I still have not tried to ABX the Beatles sample - I can't hear any flaws so I would really be guessing from the start. I'll try this at home with better headphones (I'm using earbuds now - I'm at work ).

edit: This Beatles song is hard to encode because it is not a "natural" stereo - you have instruments hard panned to each channel. That ruins any space saving you might have had with the use of joint stero or parametric stereo etc. If I'm not mistaken in the USA these early Beatles records were only released as mono.

I tried to ABX the waiting sample:

foo_abx v1.2 report
foobar2000 v0.8.3
2006/03/17 09:20:33

File A: file://E:\downloads\mais\Waiting.flac
File B: file://E:\lixo\001 Waiting.mp3

09:20:33 : Test started.
09:23:03 : 01/01 50.0%
09:23:21 : 02/02 25.0%
09:23:37 : 03/03 12.5%
09:23:53 : 04/04 6.3%
09:24:10 : 05/05 3.1%
09:24:16 : 06/06 1.6%
09:24:32 : 07/07 0.8%
09:24:53 : 08/08 0.4%
09:25:02 : 09/09 0.2%
09:25:18 : 10/10 0.1%
09:25:22 : Test finished.

----------
Total: 10/10 (0.1%)

I was surprised

Those breathing noises are really hard on the encoder

I must admit I'm being very picky. If I just sit back and enjoy the music, it's a good sounding encode.

GFR wrote:
Amen!!!

-BP

The Beatles sample with lame -V 6 --vbr-new.

foo_abx v1.2 report
foobar2000 v0.8.3
2006/03/17 09:41:32

File A: file://E:\downloads\mais\youcantdothat.flac
File B: file://E:\lixo\002 youcantdothat.mp3

09:41:32 : Test started.
09:45:23 : 00/01 100.0%
09:45:43 : 00/02 100.0%
09:46:03 : 00/03 100.0%
09:46:22 : 01/04 93.8%
09:46:51 : 02/05 81.3%
09:47:35 : 02/06 89.1%
09:48:09 : 03/07 77.3%
09:48:39 : 03/08 85.5%
09:48:55 : 03/09 91.0%
09:49:19 : 03/10 94.5%
09:49:32 : Test finished.

----------
Total: 3/10 (94.5%)

It's definetely transparent for me. I'll try with a different pair of headphones later.

Great tests GFR
And now, one more test to add

Go here: http://homepage3.nifty.com/blacksword/

Download the latest oggenc2.exe and all necessary dlls (so you have the latest), and encode those clips like this:

C:\testing>\vorbis\oggenc2.exe -b 48 --advanced-encode-option impulse_noisetune=-15 C:\downloads\youcantdothat.flac -o youcantdothat.ogg

That's my command line, because I have oggenc2.exe installed at C:\vorbis

NOW ABX that, and see your results
But note the file size compare to a 48Kbps AAC+ file, but I can't hear any artifacts on the Ogg
The average bitrate is 48Kbps (-b 48 ) as shown on the command line, but there are no MIN/MAX bitrate restrictions, so on complex music the bitrate will go high, and way down on silence spots.
Anyway, the file size is WAY smaller than the MP3 file encoded as -V 6 --vbr-new but audio is as good, or better

MP3 601,389KB
Ogg: 194,802KB
AAC+ 183,217KB


The AAC+ is just a little smaller than the Ogg, but the Ogg is almost identical to source in quality
And I can ABX that 48Kbps AAC+ and hit 10/10, but not the case with the Ogg or even the MP3

Give that a shot

-kwag

0.3.9 build 1872
----------------
1. added mobile phone transcoder (very beta, still under dev)
2. added showing details of transcoded file function in "Item" menu
3. fixed subtitle setting not kept bug
4. DVD Chinese subtitle can now display properly
5. fixed a bug in "Add Track"
6. another attempt to fix start/end position issue

http://mediacoder.sourceforge.net/

-kwag