Rarewares has announced a new set of public listening tests of various audio codec's encoded around 128kbps. This new listening test has been setup due to further improvements in LAME, AAC, and quality tunings to Vorbis 1.0.1 as well as the PC launch of Sony's MiniDisc Atrac3 format. Some of the codec's in this test are even used in online music stores. These include AAC for iTunes, Atrac3 for Sony's Connect and Windows Media 9 standard for a wide range of other music stores including Napster, OD2 and Microsoft. MP3 is still the world's most popular codec for public distribution and portable audio devices.
There are 12 tests in total which are open to the public and anyone interested can take part. Since most music download stores stick with 128kbps encoding regardless of the codec, these tests may also help users decide on a store by finding out which shop's codec sounds the best for them. To take the tests, a good pair of headphones are a must have as well as decent Internet connection to download one or more tests (~9.1MB per test on average).
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Since the last Multiformat at 128kbps test, some development happened. Apple launched the iTunes music management app for the Windows platform; several developers - in response to Xiph's slow development rhythm - started developing tuning branches to standard Vorbis 1.0.1, improving quality considerably. Lame got tuned further by Gabriel Bouvigne mostly, and Atrac3 became an interesting contender since it's not limited to MiniDisc anymore. Also, this test can be seen as an interesting competition about the quality in online music stores. The ubiquitous iTunes Music Store is represented by iTunes AAC, several other stores are using WMA Std, and Sony is expected to launch their own music store soon, featuring Atrac3. The encoders and parameters tested are:
If you have any other question, please get in touch. The public listening test page can be accessed here. |
On the last multicodec listening test, MPC was the leader with AAC, Vorbis and WMA Pro closely tied. LAME was a fair bit further behind. This time all the codec's have been improved apart from MPC, so it will be interesting to see if MPC can keep its leading position this time round. 😉 Unfortunately, due to licensing issues with MPC using MPEG Layer 2 technologies and discontinued development, it will unlikely ever be supported in portable devices.
Feel free to discuss and read more about audio codec's on our Audio Forum. For discussions on music download stores and its features, check out our Music Downloads, P2P & Legal Issues Forum.
Source: Roberto's Listening Tests
