[vorbis] new MS codecs

[Chun-Yu]

Try encoding the same album in 128 kbps MP3 and listen to it.  Most of the
time, 128 kbps MP3 sounds terrible to me.  WMA at 128 kbps is also pretty
bad, but not nearly as bad as MP3.  VQF at 96 kbps usually does sound better
than MP3 and WMA at 128 kbps, though.  A friend of mine gave me the Aquarium
CD by Aqua in both VQF and WMA format (he forgot I already had it and gave
it to me again after he switched from VQF to WMA).  The VQFs are 96 kilobit
and the WMAs are 128 kilobit, but the VQF definetely sounds better.  VQF may
suck a lot, but considering the fact that it only goes up to 96 kbps, it's
pretty good.  Also, WMA at 192 kbps is very, very close to CD quality (you
can still sort of tell it's not, but it's quite good).

Chun-Yu

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-vorbis at xiph.org [mailto:owner-vorbis at xiph.org]On Behalf Of
Steven Bailey
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2000 6:41 PM
To: vorbis at xiph.org
Subject: Re: [vorbis] new MS codecs

Say WHAT?!?!
Okay, so my ears aren't as young as some people's and they've gotten a
bit of abuse from reckless use of the volume knob.  But there is no way
they've gotten bad enough to make WMA sound decent at *any* bitrate.  If
you up MP3's bitrate far enough, it can fool me.  It will sound close
enough to the original that I don't notice unless I'm trying to find
artifacts.  But WMA...

Okay, here's a story for you.  I was playing the album Wish by the
Cure.  I had encoded it in VQF, I thought.  (As I've mentioned earlier,
VQF doesn't sound all that bad to me because I have a hard time hearing
good stereo seperation.  Part of that "abuse of the volume knob"
thing.)  Now I'm listening to these songs and something is just
bothering me.  I'm not even paying close attention, mind you.  I'm
trying to wrap up a semester-long project on a PID controller.
Nevertheless, something just doesn't sound right.  I finally in
exasperation call up the ID3 tag, trying to find out what the heck went
wrong when I encoded these songs!

Well, they were WMA's.  At 128kbps, not VQF's current maximum of 96kbps,
mind you.

Now, I KNOW what most people think about the quality of VQF's vs. any of
the high-bitdepth capable formats out there, so you'll pardon me if I
guffaw at anyone trying to tell me that WMA of all things actually
sounds good when matched bit for bit with an mp3!

Steven

Chun-Yu wrote:
>
> Well, actually, WMA isn't that bad.  I would say that it's definetely
> better than MP3 at equal bitrates.  However, at 192 kbps, the highest
> possible setting, it still doesn't sound EXACTLY like the original CD, but
> it's extremely close.
>
> Chun-Yu
>
> On Thu, 14 Dec 2000, Aleksandar Dovnikovic wrote:
>
> > "JD Conley" <jdc at malibuboats.com> wrote:
> >
> > > Oh yeah, they have some samples on their site.  Interestingly enough,
they
> > > don't compare any of their sounds to MP3 or OGG, only Real, which we
all
> > > know is inferior in quality...  Although the original WAV does give
you a
> > > good idea as to the degredation in quality.
> >
> > I remember that Microsoft has compared their codec with MP3 (one of the
> > earlier version of wma) - to show that 64kbps wma sounds as good as
> > MP3 - but they used stereo 128kbps MP3 and 64kbps mono wma !!
> >
> >
> > Greetings,
> > Aleksandar
> >
> >
> > --- >8 ----
> > List archives:  http://www.xiph.org/archives/
> > Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/
> > To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to
'vorbis-request at xiph.org'
> > containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body.  No subject is
needed.
> > Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
> >
> >
>
> --- >8 ----
> List archives:  http://www.xiph.org/archives/
> Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/
> To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request at xiph.org'
> containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body.  No subject is needed.
> Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.

--- >8 ----
List archives:  http://www.xiph.org/archives/
Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request at xiph.org'
containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body.  No subject is needed.
Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.

--- >8 ----
List archives:  http://www.xiph.org/archives/
Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request at xiph.org'
containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body.  No subject is needed.
Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.