[ProFingerSk8er]

Quote:

Originally posted by atici Re: ProFingerSk8er But you also said on some other thread ATRAC beats MP3 hands down, which can't simply be true. Read Hydrogen Audio and see what they said.

if you read carefully on that thread, you will notice i was comparing ATRAC LP2 with <192kbps mp3, if you go to minidisc T board, you will find A LOT of people that will agree ATRAC LP2 sounds better than 192kbps or lower MP3s

also, on that link you gave me, they are talking about ATRAC3+. which is a higher compression ATRAC like MP3pro...i dont see anyone saying anything about listing to their music on MP3pro, why should we talk about music quality on ATRAC3+??

 

[PodMan]

It is very hard to prove which is better because no high fidelity source exists that can play both ATRAC3 and mp3 natively. So basically, source differences can also come into play.

I find LP2 to be overall very good, even when I transcode from mp3s. I only keep mp3s in LAME presets btw. However, if I ever want to keep songs for archiving, I would take my LAME standard preset mp3s over LP2 any day. usually, I just transcode them to LP2, transfer them to my minidisc, then delete the LP2 right away. Sony's software for playing lp2 files on the computer is trash.

The compression folks at hydrogenaudio believe mp3 beats atrac3 at similar bitrate. I tend to agree with them. the presets take advantage of variable bit rate encoding and joint stereo, something that is not found on ATRAC3. Joint stereo is implemented poorly on LP4 and not at all on LP2 (I think).

So lack of those two basically means that LP2 just wastes bitrate and it does not have that high of a bitrate to begin with. Also I am suspicious of how fast LP2 encodes, I believe the compression algorithms are nowhere near as complex as any of the lame presets. I can make lame encode as fast as LP2 but not with the presets.

I have never tested lame at 128kbps but you can implement joint stereo and abr encoding even at that bitrate so that much, it is less wasteful than LP2.

 

[atici]

Re: ProFingerSk8er

Read the thread at Hydrogen Audio carefully. I started it and it was about ATRACplus first. But then a little bit below 128kbps LAME MP3 is compared to ATRAC LP2. Hydrogen Audio people seem to be a lot more knowledgeable when it comes to audio compression and they support their claims with ABX results.

When you say ATRAC is better than MP3 <192kbps, which encoder do you use? Otherwise there's no way! LAME --alt-preset standard -Z does not hit that bitrate and is almost transparent.

ATRAC might sound better to you in the way it distorts or loses information. But that doesn't make it a better way of compression.

 

[blessingx]

It's very easy to screw up even 192 kps mp3's. There's a lot of options and for one reason or another (hardly any of them about quality), people either use an old quick encoder (like iTunes) or CBR (because it's the default). As it's been pointed out, if you do it right, you can get very good sounding mp3's with "average" bitrates below 192. Are the vast majority of mp3's being circulated out there on the net, of this quality. Of course not, though within this discussion who's downloading quality atracs off the net?

Anyway, to your original question, most 128 kps mp3's will loose your battle.

And last WMA comment- they jack the gain so don't confuse volume with quality.

 

[phonatic]

To my ears... ATRAC LP2 (encoded using the hardware codec in my MD recorder) sounds actually a great deal better than even the best 128 Kbps MP3s I've heard. LP2 is more than tolerable... it is basically transparent for portable use. I have yet to find a program that it chokes on, but you can find some examples that will challenge it around the net.

There has been a lot of FUD here about ATRAC. There are some good papers over at minidisc.org for those who care to compare it with MP3. LP2 is approximately 132 Kbps... this is obviously a higher bit rate than 128 Kbps MP3. ATRAC sounds more musical to me than MP3 (I used MP3 long before ATRAC, lest you think I am prejudiced), but different people will value different types of compression for different reasons. I happen to prefer ATRAC. YMMV.

 

[D-EJ915]

Do you guys know of any good .OGG rippers?

 

[atici]

Quote:

Originally posted by D-EJ915 Do you guys know of any good .OGG rippers?

Ripping and encoding are different processes. For ripping you'll need to use EAC or CDEx. Then you'll encode the WAV file (EAC or CDEx does this automatically after extraction when you set it up) into Ogg or MP3 or WMA, etc.

Check out Hydrogen Audio . There're tons of information about these issues there.