[vorbis] new MS codecs

[Steven Bailey]

I'll agree with you that MP3's do not sound good at 128.  They've got
swishy artifacts that are apparent on almost any song with percussive
instruments.  But WMA's...  Maybe they've made an improvement in their
latest release, but all the WMA's I've ever encoded at any bitrate sound
like they've got tape-hiss in the background!  That background static is
something I've never been able to get rid of.  I've never noticed it in
any other format.  Tape-hiss is kind of what got me interested in
compressed audio on computers in the first place years back, so hearing
something so similar was a bit of a turnoff.

I'm surprised to hear from anyone else who likes VQF's.  I don't use
them exclusively anymore because hard-drive space is no longer at a
premium, but I haven't re-encoded my library yet.  I've been expecting
.ogg to be the eventual replacement, especially once wavelets get
incorporated into the code.

Steven

Chun-Yu wrote:
> 
> 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
> > >
> > >
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