[Eug]

See title.

[ 11-26-2001: Message edited by: Eug ]

[Scrod]

Fraunhofer

[iPaul UK]

See "About iTunes" in the Apple menu when iTunes is running.. Seriously! cos it tells you right there.. Anyway, scrod is right

[ 11-24-2001: Message edited by: iPaul UK ]

[Eug]

Originally posted by iPaul UK:
<STRONG>See "About iTunes" in the Apple menu when iTunes is running.. Seriously! cos it tells you right there.. Anyway, scrod is right </STRONG>

Doh! Thanks guys. For CBR I like Fraunhofer much better than Xing, but so far I have little experience in VBR Fraunhofer.

Anyways, that explains why it's so much slower than AudioCatalyst (Xing).

[iKevin]

Xing sucks as a encoder.....leaves out alot of high's....i

[Eug]

Originally posted by iKevin:
<STRONG>Xing sucks as a encoder.....leaves out alot of high's....i</STRONG>

Xing distorts highs. However, I've been told the Fraunhofer VBR isn't the greatest either. But I will have to see for myself.

[iKevin]

I don't think either are really stellar...but i can tell the difference between the two...and i would easily pick iTunes as the better

[iSore]

I'm not sure if this is a weakness with the Fraunhofer encoder, or just its implementation in iTunes, but I've had nothing but bad experiences using VBR: distortion, dropouts, flanging (sp?), the works. If you want to go the VBR route, give the LAME encoder in Audion a whirl. It's very, very slow; but the sound quality is fab.

PS
If you decide to do your encoding using LAME in Audion, you might want to bite the bullet and do it in OS 9 -- still quite slow, but much faster (IIRC) than doing it under X.

[Jerommeke]

fraunhofer

i love it, audion uses it too

[Eug]

Hmmm.... Well, I truly like Fraunhofer 256 CBR but that really wastes space. Plus I wonder how the iTunes2 Fraunhofer 256 compares to the 256 high quality setting of Audioactive Production Studio. At least at lower bit rates, there is a pretty noticeable quality difference between the high quality and high speed settings at the same bitrates with Fraunhofer using this software (on my PC). Have you guys had good luck with iTunes2 at 192 and 224 CBR? I don't want to encode too many discs only to find them problematic.

The only reasons I was using Xing was because of the speed (an entire CD in 5 minutes, encoded on the fly with a Celeron 880) and ease of use. VBR was a bonus because it saved space, but 192 CBR for Fraunhofer beats VBR at the highest settings on Audioactive (which is around 185-ish average).

I haven't used LAME or Blade, simply because they were a pain the @ss to use on a PC at the time I tried them, but I don't know the software front ends for the Mac, esp. OS X. (I would like to avoid OS 9 as much as possible.)

I think in the meantime I'll do some testing at 256 CBR Fraunhofer and see how it goes.

By the way, anyone have good experience with how well the laptop combo drives far for audio ripping? My best drive so far is a Panasonic 12X on my desktop. I keep this aging CD-ROM drive because it seems it rips better without synchronization than 90% of non-Plextor drives out there, including other Panasonics. With other drives I find the file sizes sometimes are off just by a smidgen on repeated rips, and sometimes this translates to a pop at the beginning of a song when played on some machines. This never happens with the Panasonic, no matter what MP3 player I try.

[davecom]

I think the whole quality thing is psychological. At 160 KBPS my CDs sound great to me in iTunes 2. Now somebody is going to go into the whole delicate ears/hearing thing...

[Eug]

Originally posted by davecom:
<STRONG>I think the whole quality thing is psychological. At 160 KBPS my CDs sound great to me in iTunes 2. Now somebody is going to go into the whole delicate ears/hearing thing...</STRONG>

Well, my testing was based on controlled comparisons between different encoders played through either my PC with digital out or else a DVD/MP3 player with digital out, connected to a receiver with a digital input. The speakers were Paradigm Monitor 7 towers. It wasn't too hard to notice differences, at least with bitrates at 160 and below. Even in my car I can sometimes tell Xing encoded songs.

Granted, listening to them on my iBook everything sounds the same, but if I were only going to be using my iBook then I'd just encode everything at 128.

One thing I did note though, was that Fraunhofer (like in iTunes 2), did sound very good at 160 CBR. 256 was slightly better though, and at least on that system essentially indistinguishable from CD.

Now the reason I'm asking these questions was that I didn't feel like doing all the tests yet again. I was hoping somebody had done some real comparisons. In the meantime I'm using VBR, with the minimum set at 192, with the average bit rates coming in around 200+.JS, Filter &lt;10 Hz, and Smart Encoding are checked. I'm happy enough with it for now, but it does seem a bit too heavy on disk space usage.

[ 11-25-2001: Message edited by: Eug ]

[Workers Comp Wampa]

In the end is all this fuss and muss worth the slight difference in sound? Is the experience any different between 160 and 192 bits? If so is this worth the time and extra hard drive space?

[iKevin]

Originally posted by Workers Comp Wampa:
<STRONG>In the end is all this fuss and muss worth the slight difference in sound? Is the experience any different between 160 and 192 bits? If so is this worth the time and extra hard drive space?</STRONG>

It is if you plan on converting the songs back and burning them onto a disk. Anyone that can't notice the difference between 160 and 192 can easily tell the difference by hooking up their audio feed to some better speakers or good stereo system(no Kmart stuff).

Kinda reminds me of the whole Voodoo vs nVidia crowd...sure the voodoo was good....if you'd never used anything from nVidia

[Immortal K-Mart Employee]

Originally posted by iKevin:
<STRONG>easily tell the difference by hooking up their audio feed to some better speakers or good stereo system(no Kmart stuff).</STRONG>

Hey, what is wrong with K-Mart?

[Eug]

I cannot do objective measurements but I have done some subjective testing nonetheless.

Equipment:

iBook 600 MHz with iTunes 2 (Fraunhofer - ? version)

Apex AD-600A DVD/MP3 player with coaxial out.
Panasonic DVD-RP91 DVD/MP3 player with optical out.
Kenwood VR-510 receiver with optical and coaxial in.

Stereo mode: Paradigm Reference Studio/60 speakers.
Pro Logic II mode: above plus Paradigm Studio/CC and Monitor 7 speakers.

Perceived quality, in order of best to worst:

1) CD
2) 256 kbps CBR stereo
3) 256 kbps CBR joint stereo
4) VBR joint stereo with 192 minimum (avg. ~203 kbps)
5) VBR joint stereo with 160 minimum (avg. ~173 kbps)

Note that I thought all of them were pretty damn good though. For general use I figure #4 would be the best space/quality compromise. However, I think I'm just going to use #2 and buy a bigger hard drive later. I didn't bother testing 320 VBR or CBR because I figure 256 CBR S is already close enough.

By the way, 256 CBR S encodes much faster than 192 VBR JS. It's around 5X on my iBook 600 directly off the CD.

iSore, I had no problems with dropouts and stuff. Is your CD-ROM drive a good ripper? That could be a problem.

[ 11-26-2001: Message edited by: Eug ]

[Xeo]

Originally posted by Eug:
<STRONG>
4) VBR joint stereo with 192 minimum (avg. ~203 kbps)</STRONG>

That's what I use.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally posted by davecom:
<STRONG>I think the whole quality thing is psychological. At 160 KBPS my CDs sound great to me in iTunes 2. Now somebody is going to go into the whole delicate ears/hearing thing...</STRONG>

It's actually psychoacoustic, not psychological.

What's "good enough" depends *entirely* on your personal listening experience, preference, playback equipment and environment, listening habits, and encoded material.

CD's by concensus, are good enough for most people (but not all - hence the trend towards the 24-bit 96-KHz audio standard).

Similarly, 192 kbps-encoded .mp3's are good enough for many, but not all.

Saying that 160 kbps sound great *to you* is saying just that, and nothing more.

For me, 160 doesn't do it in most cases, but then, I'm used to actually *listening* to music on my Linn Sondek LP12 turntable and only mp3 stuff for background music or mobility - except for audiobooks.

As always, YMMV.

-chris.

[ 11-27-2001: Message edited by: Spheric Harlot ]

[Vader's Robotic Stump]

What setting is VBR at?

[Eug]

Originally posted by Vader's Robotic Stump:
<STRONG>What setting is VBR at?</STRONG>

Highest quality.

[iSore]

iSore, I had no problems with dropouts and stuff. Is your CD-ROM drive a good ripper? That could be a problem.

Just the (old) standard CD/DVD ROM drive my G4 came with. I should have noted that I did most of my encoding in the background while busy in other apps: was I putting too great a strain on the CPU, perhaps?

[Mildly OT]
Does anyone know of a LAME encoder I could run from the command line (or as a X-Windows application)?

[ 11-30-2001: Message edited by: iSore ]

[Eug]

I did it running a distributed net client in the background and playing MP3 at the same time. Definitely slowed things down, but didn't give me artifacts. It's a Toshiba DVD/CDRW combo drive (iBook). Actually, I'm pleasantly surprised, because CDRW drives of the past were often terrible rippers. Clean only at 1X or something.

[shellsuit]

Originally posted by iSore:
<STRONG>

Just the (old) standard CD/DVD ROM drive my G4 came with. I should have noted that I did most of my encoding in the background while busy in other apps: was I putting to great a strain on the CPU, perhaps?

[Mildly OT]
Does anyone know of a LAME encoder I could run from the command line (or as a X-Windows application)?</STRONG>

You can get the source at

sourceforge

It's easy to compile.. just do the following after grabbing the source tarball:

tar zxf lame3.89beta.tar.gz
cd lame*9
setenv CPPFLAGS -no-cpp-precomp
setenv LDFLAGS -flat_namespace
./configure
make
sudo make install
rehash

[ 11-27-2001: Message edited by: shellsuit ]

[Vader's Robotic Stump]

Originally posted by Eug:
<STRONG>Actually, I'm pleasantly surprised, because CDRW drives of the past were often terrible rippers. Clean only at 1X or something.</STRONG>

That has never been the case with any Apple CD-RW.

[Eug]

My iTunes library.

So, after the initial bunch of disks, using 256 kbps I've used up 1925037159 bytes of space. ie. 1.9 GB by misleading hard drive adverts, or 1.8 GB in real disk space. (How is the 5 GB on the iPod measured?) That's for 21 albums with 45 bands, with 226 songs and 16 hours and 40 minutes. Note the file sizes for the individual MP3 files.

ie. At 256 kbps, 1000 minutes of music takes just under 2 "GB". So 5 GB should give me a shade over 2500 minutes of music. I think my collection is about 15000 minutes or so, which would require 30 GB (not including the Napsterized stuff I never listen to).

[ 11-27-2001: Message edited by: Eug ]

[Vader's Robotic Stump]

Originally posted by Eug:
<STRONG>My iTunes library.
(How is the 5 GB on the iPod measured?) That's for 21 albums with 45 bands, with 226 songs and 16 hours and 40 minutes. Note the file sizes for the individual MP3 files.</STRONG>

Apple mesures it as 1000 songs at 160kbps.

After the iPod disk if formated it is 4.6 GIGS.

[Brazuca]

So if I'm looking for the best quality rips, should I set it to 320kbps and disable VBR?

Should I also uncheck the box that filters out levels below 10hz?

[Eug]

I'd like to know what that "Smart Encoding Adjustments" checkbox does. I have it checked and have no idea what it does.

As for the 10 Hz, unless the filtering algorithms are doing something wonky it won't hurt. It is extremely rare to have any audio below 10 Hz. I think the soundtrack for The Phantom Menace may reach that and who knows maybe The Haunting, but there is essentially nothing else. In any case unless you have VERY high end equipment, your speakers and subs won't output anything usable at 10 Hz. I have an SVS 25-31PC which craps out below about 23 Hz. (measured myself). Their top end subs won't really do much under 15 Hz, and the new THX standard specifies a good output down to 20 Hz for certification.

As for the iPod's 1000 songs, it seems a bit optimistic judging by my own music and disk usage. If 160 kbit can hold 1.6X 256 bit, I'd suggest their estimates are off by about 10%, but that's still quite a lot of songs obviously.

[Brazuca]

Originally posted by Eug:
<STRONG>I'd like to know what that "Smart Encoding Adjustments" checkbox does. I have it checked and have no idea what it does.

As for the 10 Hz, unless the filtering algorithms are doing something wonky it won't hurt. It is extremely rare to have any audio below 10 Hz. I think the soundtrack for The Phantom Menace may reach that and who knows maybe The Haunting, but there is essentially nothing else. In any case unless you have VERY high end equipment, your speakers and subs won't output anything usable at 10 Hz. I have an SVS 25-31PC which craps out below about 23 Hz. (measured myself). Their top end subs won't really do much under 15 Hz, and the new THX standard specifies a good output down to 20 Hz for certification.

As for the iPod's 1000 songs, it seems a bit optimistic judging by my own music and disk usage. If 160 kbit can hold 1.6X 256 bit, I'd suggest their estimates are off by about 10%, but that's still quite a lot of songs obviously.</STRONG>

Good to know. I am using iTunes to output sound from my cpu into my A/V system, which is pretty good but doesn't quite reach THX certification.

So, should I be using VBR? Storage space is not an issue. What is the best quality setting?

[qnxde]

Explanations:

"Smart Encoding Adjustments" Will change the codec depending on the source file. A normal CD rip is 44.1Khz, and will be encoded in MPEG1 Layer III. A 22Khz file will be encoded into MPEG2. MPEG2 is an extension of the MPEG1 format, which allows for lower bitrate encoding for lower quality files. A 16kbps file encoded with MPEG2 will be quite listenable, mostly suited for speech and so forth, but if this same file was encoded with MPEG1, it would sound terrible as MPEG1 is designed for higher bitrates.

"Filter Frequencies below 10hz" Should always be checked, as even the best subwoofers cannot produce anything below about 20-25hz, and you're better off leaving the space in the mp3 file for more important frequencies.

"Channels" should be set to auto, unless you want to force either Mono or Stereo for whatever reason.

"Stereo Mode" is a debatable one. Take a 128kbps file as an example. In Normal stereo mode, that file will be made up of two 64kbps streams, one for left, and one for right. When you select "Joint Stereo", it uses a completely different technique, where anything that is the same on both channels gets a full 64-128k to itself (there is not difference between the sound on either channel) and what's left is used for the difference between both channels. If you find this difficult to understand, a good rule is to use joint stereo for anything 128k and under. 160 and upwards should really use normal stereo mode, because joint stereo can somewhat cripple the stereo image under some circumstances.

"Sample Rate" should be set to auto, unless you are creating a very low bitrate music file. The best settings for low bitrate music is probably 22khz, joint stereo, filter frequencies, and about 56kbps. It should sound ok.

My personal preference for mp3 is Filter frequencies below 10hz, normal stereo mode, and 160kbps with high VBR. I find this a good combination of file size and quality. If you're encoding classical music, 192 with high vbr is probably better.

later,

queenxyde

[Brazuca]

Thanks for all the info.

But I though from the discussion above that VBR was bad for quality.

[Eug]

But I though from the discussion above that VBR was bad for quality.

I didn't say VBR was inherently bad for quality. I said two things:

1) 256 CBR S sounded better than VBR 192 JS. However, this is not a fair comparison, since the former uses up MUCH more space than the latter.
2) Some Fraunhofer codecs (at least with the PC implementations of them) MAY may be problematic in VBR mode. However, in my limited testing iTunes 2 VBR sounds pretty good.

Storage space is not an issue. What is the best quality setting?

I guess with info we have, the best setting is 320 normal stereo, filter below 10 Hz. However. I have not compared 320 to 256 to really confirm if the difference is relevant. I am VERY happy with 256 normal S.

"Filter Frequencies below 10hz" Should always be checked, as even the best subwoofers cannot produce anything below about 20-25hz, and you're better off leaving the space in the mp3 file for more important frequencies.

So I'll keep filter frequencies below 10 Hz checked. Just a note though that several consumer level subs do reach below 20 Hz nowadays with reasonable volumes. Mind you, that's really the domain of the 4-digit US$ range, and if you're going to be spending that kind of dough on speakers, MP3 probably shouldn't even considered. (However, my sub does start to drop at around 25+ Hz and essentially is useless below 23.)

"Smart Encoding Adjustments" Will change the codec depending on the source file. A normal CD rip is 44.1Khz, and will be encoded in MPEG1 Layer III. A 22Khz file will be encoded into MPEG2. MPEG2 is an extension of the MPEG1 format, which allows for lower bitrate encoding for lower quality files. A 16kbps file encoded with MPEG2 will be quite listenable, mostly suited for speech and so forth, but if this same file was encoded with MPEG1, it would sound terrible as MPEG1 is designed for higher bitrates.

Good to know, thanks.

"Stereo Mode" is a debatable one. Take a 128kbps file as an example. In Normal stereo mode, that file will be made up of two 64kbps streams, one for left, and one for right. When you select "Joint Stereo", it uses a completely different technique, where anything that is the same on both channels gets a full 64-128k to itself (there is not difference between the sound on either channel) and what's left is used for the difference between both channels. If you find this difficult to understand, a good rule is to use joint stereo for anything 128k and under. 160 and upwards should really use normal stereo mode, because joint stereo can somewhat cripple the stereo image under some circumstances.

Yes, with 256 normal S vs 256 JS, this was precisely the issue. The sound quality of both in the test above seemed excellent, except for the spatial image. Most of the time they were quite close, but every so often JS seemed "less stereo", for obvious reasons. I should have tested 224 or 192 normal stereo though to see how that fares vs. 256 normal S.

P.S. iTunes seems to measure time this way:
Days:hours:minutes:seconds. I have just hit 1 day 00 hours 20 minutes and 15 seconds of music stored on my hard drive, with 330 songs over 30 Albums, and 2.62 GB.

[ 11-28-2001: Message edited by: Eug ]

[qnxde]

Seriously, DO NOT use joint stereo for anything 160 or above, it really really fscks with the stereo image, and it's not necessary on a high bitrate.

[Agent69]

I am in the process of encoding my CD collection into MP3s so that when I travel, I can listen to them on my new iBook. For this, I am using my P4 computer running Windows. (I do this because my desktop system is faster and it saves wear and tear on my iBook)

For ripping, I am using a program called Exact Audio Copy (EAC). It works like CD-Paranoia does, by making sure and verifing that you have a true digital copy of the music. It will also download all of the track info for you, if you are on the Internet.

After pulling the audio and correcting any bit errors, EAC then runs Lame (MMX-enabled). Lame encodes the wav file into an MP3. I have set Lame to encode at 256kb bitrate with high quality (-h) in Stereo, the default at 256kb bitrates.

After encoding, I use MacOS X's SMB client to access the MP3 files. From there, I can play them across the network or download them for playback while away. The tracks I have tested on my iBook with headphones sound great!


Agent69

[Dr Evil]

I installed Lame the other day and conducted my own tests for quality at different settings. I took the song encoded by iTunes at 160kbps CBR and compared it against four different settings in Lame:
160kbps CBR
160kbps High Quality CBR
192kbps CBR
192kbps High Quality CBR
and the R3mix which has custom settings and is ~160kbps VBR

listening equipment was a Quicksilver G4 outputting to a Harman/Kardon AVR 300 receiver into (better than kmart, but not comparable to my home theatre) KLH platinum surround speakers.

Both the 160 lame encoded versions were very close to the itunes encoded version. Obviously the 192 high quality was the best sounding, but the r3mix mix sounded way better than the cbr 160 versions, either in itunes or lame. Another bonus point is that the r3mix vbr was the same file size as the 160 encoded versions.

Problems with the r3mix and lame include very long and tedious encoding. Encoding vbr with the r3mix settings is barely faster than real time. i ended up writing a shell script to name the songs with id3 tags and encode them all without having to type in the same lengthy commmand 13 times. I am in the process of writing a cocoa application to generate a shell script with tags to make things a little easier.

Overall, i've decided that the material i listen to the most and is important to me, i'll encode with lame vbr. otherwise, itunes 160 cbr is fine by me, especially at 14x on my Quicksilver G4.