[vorbis-dev] MP3pro

[Aleksandar Dovnikovic]

"Jeff Squyres" <jsquyres at lsc.nd.edu> wrote:

> I'm also curious: I've seen others on the list say that Ogg/Vorbis' sound
> quality is "better" than MP3.  Can this be quantified (or is this already
> on a web page somewhere)?  I kinda guess that "128kbps/MP3 quality in
> 64kbps" is marketing drivel, but such comparisons would be helpful for
> those of us who don't understand acoustics, etc.  :-)

Well I can't give you a in-depth technical answer why Vorbis is better then
MP3 (except for the obvious advantages over MP3 format, mostly covered
by FAQ at vorbis.com), but currently with beta3 Vorbis is better then MP3
at -b192 and -b256 modes - I have mostly tested these modes because
I'm very interested in quality - just listen to fatboy.wav or castanets.wav.
Modes -b128 and -b160 are pretty good too, but when joint-stereo comes
they will show their full strength (so when you are comparing Vorbis with
MP3 (LAME), be sure to turn off joint-stereo in LAME with -ms). -b128 and
-b160 modes will mostly sound much like MP3 at these bitrates (VBR or
CBR) but Vorbis encodes more high frequencies >16kHz (so does MP3
but it doesn't do it properly and you can easily hear artifacts).
Of course, there are still some bugs in Vorbis encoder but I think that
they are now fixed in CVS so beta4 should clearly be better quality then
MP3 (both Fraunhofer and LAME) at 128-256+ kbps.
As for lower bitrates (mostly used for streaming), I don't know if they
are slated for beta4, but I have no doubt that when wavelets step in,
Vorbis will kick MP3 & WMA's ass in streaming quality. :-)
Probably even without wavelets. :-)

Greetings,
Aleksandar

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