[icecast] Icecast is cool, but how about video?

[Moritz Grimm]

"Webmaster at chat-radio.de" wrote:
> Real Prducts..
> BUT there is one thing, icecast/MP3 can not give us: Real Audio 8 has a ver
> high compression at
> a very good quality, an 24k Stream in Stereo!! sounds like an MP3 Audio
> Stream @ 40k Mono..

I made some tests lately and compared all I could find with the new low
bitrate modes of Ogg Vorbis RC4 (in CVS). Real is competive in that area
indeed - although it achieves that quality by heavily compressing the
sound, mangling it quite a bit. It's relatively free from "traditional"
artifacts, though. Currently, Vorbis in CVS doesn't go much lower than
35-45 kbps (this is likely to change before the release of RC4), so
below that, low bitrate codecs like Real's sound better. However, at
equal bitrates Vorbis sounds better to me.

My tests showed me that it's not really worth talking about MP3 in that
area. Vorbis, Real and even WMA sound better.

Oh, while I'm at it, CVS' 64kbps mode sounds better than MP3pro. :)
Basicly, they sound pretty equal, but MP3pro comes with drop-outs and
distortions in the high frequency area - seems like their guessing
engine doesn't do a very good job.

What MP3* can't give you, Vorbis can. :) Everyone should check it out
for streaming as soon as RC4 gets released (or earlier if you like to
fiddle around with CVS). Marketing departments of big companies would
sell Vorbis' new ~48kbps mode as "near CD quality". Hooray for Vorbis,
guess that's enough advocating for today. :)

<p>Moritz

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