[Dweebgal]

Having been a very proud owner of a iFP-390t for just under a month, I have being trying to put files onto it by what I call the Dweebgal equation (tm):

SQxSmallest Possible file size=Flash Audio Perfection

Now, currently, my iRiver plays only MP3 and WMA, but it will soon be able to play Ogg, so I thought I would test out these formats with settings I would consider adequate for portable use, and I thought I'd share my finding with you.

DISCLAIMER:

These opinions are just that, opinions, and are subjective to my equipment and my ears, and as such are inherrantly flawed. Hopefully though, this will be helpful to someone.

Setup:

Phones: MX400, I am using these because this is what I use with my portable at the moment.

Source: Winamp 2.91 and the headphone out of my Turtle Beach Santa Cruz

Ripping: DBPowerAmp with PowerPack installed.

PC specs: XP2000+ (1.68Ghz), 512MB RAM, 48x Liteon CD/RW Drive.

Test Audio: Funeral for a Friend - Kiss and Makeup (from All Bets are Off) 3m:54s


Audio Formats and Settings:

(I also just ripped the plain .wav file to use as a control)

OGG: -Q4

WMA9: VBR 2Pass 128kbps

LAME: VBR Min. Bitrate 96kbps, Max. Bitrate 192kbps

The reason I chose these settings is becuase on the whole they acheived the same range of bit rates.

File Size:

OGG: 3.42MB

WMA9: 3.61MB

LAME: 4.26MB

As you can see WMA and OGG are much the same file size wise, but LAME is almost a whole MB bigger, although this might not seem like much, when you are limited to 512MB or less on a flash portable, every MB counts!

And the point of this test is to find the best possible quality, whilst acheving the smallest possible file size.

Listening Test:

OGG (time to encode: 30s) :

Listening to the .ogg file first I found that the bass in the audio was not as present, compared to the original wave file, it's was deffinately there, but just slightly deadened.
The treble seemed quite metallic sound to me, which I thought was harsh at first, but after my ears became accustomed to it, it seemed less so.
The vocals seemed quiet quiet as well, although after listenign to teh other formats, I decided that this was not a bad thing, as all though the vocal may not have been as loud as I would have like, they seemed more "natural" and as if the band were standing together as a whole.

WMA (time to encode: 24s) :

I found this (it is important to note I am using WMA9, which is said to significantly different from earlier versions of WMA) not to be overly different sounding from the ogg.
However, I did notice ever so slightly more artifacts on the WMA than the ogg, mainly noticable on the mids. They were not so noticable though as to detract from the enjoyment of listening to the music, I think I may only have noticed them as well, becuase I was specifically listening out for them, and I certainly don't think I would have noticed it at all in an environment with more background noise.
There seemed to be more clarity on the vocals and the bass, however the trebles seem to get slightly "lost" in it all, and could maybe do with being a bit tighter.

LAME (time to encode: 37s) :

I found this the most difficult to listen to critically, becuase it is what I am most used to listening to.
The vocals on the MP3 were slightly more present than with the Ogg and WMA, but however, this I felt lead it to being slightly "overlayed" and unnatural sounding.
The bass was also less noticable than with the Ogg and WMA.
I almost noticed a few artifacts with the MP3, it was around the same amount as with the WMA, i.e. a few, but lesss than Ogg, where I noticed little to none.


In conclusion:

At low bitrates, I think WMA and Ogg definately beat LAME MP3s hands down.

And although Ogg offers slightly smaller file sizes, and would allow me to fit on more tracks, the difference in time to encode would be significantly longer over a number of tracks, so I think I'm sticking with WMA!

I hope this can be of use to soemone else, and I urge any of you who are curious to try out WMA9 (read the sig!).

Katt

 

[matheis]

dweebgal

possibly try --alt-preset 128 -Y or --alt-preset 144 -Y for more consistent and smaller file sizes than lame setting you mentioned. it'll cut down on the file size and allow for a more direct comparison to the bit rates you're using with ogg and wma. trying them out outside of your ifp390 might not necessarily indicate how good they'll sound on the portable device. perhaps the ifp390'll decode the ogg much better than wma? who knows...

finally, what are you using to encode wma? i'm using windows media player and the thing is HUGE!!! it encodes quickly, but man what a footprint it has!!! i'm using the 85 - 145kbps vbr setting, and it's okay for a potrable. i wouldn't use it for critical listening, of course!

anyway, thanks for the test. i just got an ifp390, as well, and am looking for what format/bitrate to use to balance storage and sound quality.

later
nikolaus

 

[Dweebgal]

To answer your questions:

The reason I tested it all on my PC rather than my player, is becuase I can't as of yet play ogg on it, and I wanted to keep everything consistent and fair. I will test on my player as soon as possible, and who knows maybe the the results will be different.

I used DBPowerAMp (www.dbpoweramp.com) for all the encoding, and this is why I didn;t use the LAME settings you reccomend in your post, as far as I can tell there is no CLI with dbpoweramp, although I could be wrong.

Your right about teh critical listening thing though, however, my test was purely for portable purposes. Best possible sound, smallest possible file size.

 

[lini]

Interesting post - and cute new avatar, btw!

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[minya]

matheis: What does the -Y switch do? By the way, blue text is ... distracting.

Dweebgal, I highly recommend you use LAME's --alt-presets. They're very finely-tuned and offer much better performance than you could get otherwise.

Also, get better headphones.

- Chris

 

[Dweebgal]

@Minya:

I am hoping to get some ex71s/70s soon. Being a poor student sucks.

Eventually I hope to get some shure e2cs.

I'll try the alt presets with the -y switch (so i have been told, it makes the file size that little bit smaller), see what i think of that

 

[matheis]

dweebgal: having an ifp390 as well, i know that there's no ogg support yet. i was pointing out that the results you posted might be influenced by the decoding abilities of the player and thus your opinion might change once you *can* listen to ogg on your ifp390. and which dbpoweramp version are you using? i looked at their site recently and thought that they claimed wma8 as the latest supported wma version. i'll go look again and give it a try! much smaller than wmp, i bet!!! thanks for the tip

minya: blue, blue, blue ;P the -Y tag uses a high-frequency cut-off @ 15kHz, if i'm remembering correctly. i'm sure about the high-frequency cut-off just not 100% about the frequency. so, you sacrifice a little off the high-end for a reduction in file size. blessingx did some really nice format/bitrate comparisons recently that you should search for. incorporating the -Y tag onto --aps gave a ~10% reduction in file size in those tests. not too shabby, eh!!! and using a postable, you probably won't notice the difference.

later
nikolaus

 

[Fish Tank X]

Also, joint stereo also gives you a much better quality/file size ratio. I thin it's a LAME only option, so far, though.

 

[blessingx]

As matheis said...

There's an album size comparison here (LAME, Ogg, AAC). You may be able to use AAC sizes to approximate WMA (assuming its VBR is actually ABR).

Joint Stereo is an option in several MP3 encoders and nearly all newer formats (WMA, AAC, Ogg, MPC, etc.). LAME presets are joint.

-Y is a 16 KHz lowpass filter. You can find a little info here.

 

[Born2bwire]

Quote:

when you are limited to 512MB or less on a flash portable, every MB counts!

Back in my day we only had 64 MB and WE LIKED IT!!

EAC will allow you to choose an external encoder like LAME and enter the CLI though if you just want to do the encoding and still use your program for the ripper I think there was just a standalone encoding program, RazorLame was it? I think I've removed it from my computer but as I recall it was just a small encoding wrapper program.

On -Y: Ewwwww. They do that for the Fast Fhg I believe (though at a different frequency I think, 18Khz) and I know one guy who will complain to no end when it's the fast Fhg over the other version. You'll notice the difference if you use your computer and I think you'd probably notice it on your portable given the quality of sources and headphones that people use on this site. I would try messing with the target frequencies and the presets first to get a more similar compression rate.