AAC Put To The Test 353
technology is sexy writes "Following the increasing popularity of AAC in online music stores and the growing amount of implementations in software and hardware, the format is now being put to the test. How well does Apple's implementation fare against Ahead Nero, Sorenson or the Open Source FAAC at the popular bitrate of 128kbps? Find out for yourself and help by submitting the
results. You can find instructions on how to participate here. The best AAC codec gets to face MP3, MP3Pro, Vorbis, MusePack and WMA in the next test. Previous test results at 64kbps can be found here."
crap in, crap out (Score:5, Interesting)
Most mp3s or oggs you find out there are from someone's CD-Rom drive, who knows how the disc looked, or how much jitter there was. I have heard stories of people downloading songs to find a skip or two in the middle, or been an amalgam of two different files accidently spliced together.
I'd hazard a guess that most people that encode with ogg-vorbis do a better ripping and encoding job, though.
An honest question - who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
Please enlighten me, I'm actually, honestly, curious.
MPEG2-AAC not too bad (Score:2, Interesting)
Obviously, the tracks which were bad to begin with will be bad as AACs.
BTW, I have been playing/making music for 14 years and have a pretty good ear when it comes to tone and timbre. Hi-hats on CDs have always bothered me with the lack of warmth and fullness of timbre. So take my word for it if I saw it's not too bad
Sigh. Not a way to get good results (Score:2, Interesting)
1. There is no guarantee of clean data - the users are expected to generate their own files. MIstakes happen.
2. The type of user who participates in this (and more likely in the OGG vs AAC coming debate) may have some predisposed bias. There is no way to weed out any placebo effects.
3. There is no way to weed out folks who have tin ears. I don't want some idiot who loves dance forming an opinion about Bach not sounding "boomy" enough
This may fly in the face of the
Not a good test of iTunes service (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I prefer analog (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:crap in, crap out (Score:0, Interesting)
Jitter? You don't know what you're talking about. Jitter is a phenonema that occurs ONLY in the D to A converter. If you load a program from CD, do you get the wrong bytes because of jitter? If you're going to use an audiophool buzzword, at least understand what it's about beforehand.
I care. (Score:5, Interesting)
If YOU want to use up your hard drive space, internet bandwidth, and blank media with huge lossless encoded files, feel free. But don't get all smug and proclaim to not have any idea why anyone would not want to waste their resources.
Oh, and I'm not going to touch that "mathematically lossless" crap, others have covered that already.
Re-encoding (Score:3, Interesting)
I imagine that an encoder could be optimized for re-encoding. I wonder if anyone is working on this. I'd like to write a program which would automatically do this conversion in my music library, but currently I can't stand the loss of quality.
Re:I prefer analog (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I care. (Score:3, Interesting)
The only problem is, if MP3 or AAC or whatever lossy format fall out of fashion (due to patent or whatever), you could end up with a bunch of files you can't play on the latest gadgets and software. Then you need to re-encode them in whatever the new format, which will add additional lossiness due to the transcoding (unless you re-rip everything, which is a major pain).
If you use a lossless algorithm, you can re-encode to whatever you like. For example, it wouldn't be terribly difficult to take a losslessly-encoded file, decompress it, and run it through a fast MP3 encoder as part of the process of copying the file to your portable. Then if ACC or OGG or whatever displace MP3, you can just change the script when you upgrade your portable.
I agree about the "golden ear" fallacy. Some people avoid lossy because they want "perfect" sound. But there is no "perfect", really... the original recording required sound travelling through air, which is lossy. The recording equipment was also lossy, as is your playback equipment. Your ears and mind are also lossy. Very lossy, in fact... Your ears being lossy is why these lossy audio codecs work as well as they do (they "lose" the parts that your ears/mind would lose anyway).
Re:crap in, crap out (Score:3, Interesting)
Unless you are psychic, you won't be able to tell the difference between an MP3 ripped from a "master recording" (whatever that may be) and an MP3 ripped from a CD. And unless you are an alien, a dog, or an infant, you are lucky to hear anything meaninful above 16khz, which means that 44khz sampling is plenty.
Most mp3s or oggs you find out there are from someone's CD-Rom drive, who knows how the disc looked, or how much jitter there was.
Yeah, those MP3s are even worse when people forget to clean and replace the stylus in their CD-ROM drive regularly. Those CD-ROM diamond styluses sure wear down fast. I expect you clean yours regularly, right?
not likely to make a difference (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Re-encoding (Score:3, Interesting)
I think LAME actually does a pretty good job [cmason.com] of re-encoding AAC to MP3. At least, I can't tell the difference (unlike when using iTunes to re-encode, where I most definitely could). This is good enough for me.
-c
Re:Thank iTunes for the skips etc. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:crap in, crap out (Score:3, Interesting)
These artifacts are almost always the result of early P2P networks, that would download a missing piece of a file from anything that had the same name... Of course you can find these now, because even with the improvements, people often keep their old files.
I will admit that some pops were the results of bad audio rippers, but that was in the infancy of CD ripping. These days, the most basic software can produce a perfect rip 100% of the time, and has great default settings for encoding. The only thing a luser could do to screw things up is to change the quality settings (which few bother with) or screw things up if they transfer the file.
Face it, the problems with audio quality was the software, and it's simply that the old files were still around in force until recently. Now, even the biggest idiots can encode perfect quality files, and can transfer them over P2P networks properly.
Re:An honest question - who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)
For example, I am the researcher, and you are the subject. I am giving you the Pepsi challenge. I do not know which container has Pepsi, and which one was Coke. I administer the test. However, Xavier, the research director has been slowly increasing the temperature in the room to observe if this affects your and my interpersonal communication.
1. You are ignorant of the test data.
2. I am ignorant of the test dat.
3. We are both ignorant of the true test.
AAC 5.1 surround sound work great in matroska (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Oh Brother... (Score:3, Interesting)
No, the only reason Apple is using AAC is because it's an open, documented, non vendor-locked format that cannot be simply hijacked and manipulated by, say, Microsoft.
AAC is cross platform; in fact, AAC is the logical successor to MP3, so everything you love or hate about MP3, ideologically, should apply to AAC. To think otherwise seems silly and ignorant to me.