Cheers Chrisīefore doing in-depth comparisons of coders/bitrates, I still think you should begin by testing the hypothesis that it is actually the mp3 encoding step (and not just the original audio) that is causing the sibilance. What I will do, however, prompted by your comments, is to investigate some settings tweaks to see if we can achieve slightly better results whilst still minimising the bandwidth and download times. Sure, but the industry benchmark remains FhG, and we're using their latest protocol, so I'd be surprised if we could improve markedly just by switching codec. I have no idea which encoder is best at 48-64kbps today (and I cant find any modern blind listening tests at low bitrates), but I know that a lot of development on audio compression has taken place in the last 8 years. This was even before napster came out! Most people had never heard of mp3, using the internet needed a dial-up modem and the first iPod didn't exist. The article you have quoted tests LAME v3.61beta which was released 14th Jan 2000. This was back in the days when I was the proud owner of a super powerful Pentium p233mmx. It was by far the best quality mp3 encoder but took a lot longer than others like Xing. And with its superior measurements, it clearly beat out the other encoders at 128 kbs." This was also my opinion, which is why we use this encoder. While not CD quality, the FhG encoder was sonically the least offensive. And if you look at the article's verdict you'll see that, at low bitrates, the FhG comes off best, in the author's opinion: "The envelop please: Low bit rate winner (128 kbs): Fraunhofer. There's a diminishing rate of return as the bit rate increases past 192 kbs - improvements continue with higher bit rates but relative gains become smaller and smaller." So FhG is superior to LAME at all except very high bitrates. FhG continues to have the least error up until a bit rate of 256 kbs, at which point all the encoders essentially have the same MSE. Note that the Fraunhofer (FhG) encoder has the lowest MSE at 128 kbs by a large margin. I have looked for some independent data on the integrity of MP3 encoders as this graph shows, the FhG encoder (which we use) produces the best compression integrity and is significantly better than LAME at the low bitrates we are using (which is why we're using it!) This graph and the accompanying paragraph are published in an article by Will Ryu "The above graph shows the MSE (arbitrary units) (on the Y axis) between the original waveform and the encoded signal at various bit rates (x-axis). Maybe we could do our own double-blind listening experiment to find out the best encoder/settings to use Hmmmm It has been shown to be superior in quality compared to other mp3 encoders in blind public listening tests such as newbielink. It is open source and is the result of endless tweaking by very clever audiophiles with golden ears. Hey Chris, thanks for considering upping the bitrate I think it'll be worth it! Regarding the encoder, a convenient way to encode using LAME is by using LAMEdrop which can be found newbielink. General Discussion & Feedback > Radio Show & Podcast Feedback
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