[Vorbis-dev] Losing definition on the midrange on latest encoders

[Ivo Gonçalves]

I have found the following opinion on Vorbis' talk page at wikipedia. It 
might be something interesting to consider, I suppose.

~*~

"Quality settings run from -1 to 10 and are an arbitrary metric; files 
encoded at -q5, for example, should have the same quality of sound in all 
versions of the encoder, but newer versions should be able to achieve that 
quality with a lower bitrate."

I would disagree with this. I think the developers have made some poor 
choices of late and the latest encoders are worse than earlier ones.

Basically they allocate much more of bandwidth to the very high treble than 
they used to which shortchanges the midrange - even at the highest bitrates 
they never allocate very much bandwidth to the midrange. Yes the highs are a 
little crisper, but I don't think it was worth losing definition in the 
midrange where our hearing is more accute.

Unfortunately it takes much more bit-bandwidth to improve the treble than it 
does to improve th midrange and base (consider that the highest octave has 
the same amount total entropy as the entire rest of the spectrum combined).

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