[vorbis] When will quality increase be unnoticable?

[David Tenser]

Øyvind Stegard wrote:

> 3. Am I able to *hear* the difference between a song encoded with -q7 
> and a song encoded with -q8 ? (nominal 224 kbps vs nominal 256kbps) 
> With the right equipment: maybe, probably not...

Personally, I encode in quality 5 and I haven't yet heard any difference 
from the original and the OGG file although I'm using audio equipment 
worth over $3,000. Of course, the sound card in my computer has its 
limitations, which affects the signal. And I admit that I haven't done a 
real test comparsion, I've just encoded files and listened to them.

> But when I encode my music from CD's, it's also for archival purposes, 
> and thus I would like to preserve as much of the original audio as 
> possible, as I consider this valuable. It is important to me.

My initial point was: Why did you choose q8, when you could might as 
well choose q7, as I'm pretty certain you can't tell the difference? Or 
you could flip the question and ask why you stopped at q8? The 
guidelines are actually very logical: Increase the quality level until 
you can't hear the difference from the original end the encoded file. 
Most people will probably go up to 5-6 and some up to 7. I doubt that 
anyone hear the difference between a q8 and the original, but if anyone 
has really tested that, please let me know of a good song to test with.

<p><p>--- >8 ----
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