SoundExpert

New Nero AAC Codec 1.5.3.0 in 192 kbit/s group

2010-03-09T11:24:18Z

The latest version of free Nero encoder has been just added. According to SE site statistics 192 kbit/s group is the most visited now. So it will be populated with contenders first of all. Thank you, Taras, for the proposal.

Cultural evolution @home

2010-01-03T11:52:40Z

One more Distributed Human Project appeared on the internet. DarwinTunes models cultural evolution using music as an example. The project assumes that there is an analogy between darwinian evolution of species and cultural evolution inside human society, that all cultural diversity exists thanks to continuous copying and modifying of previous cultural artifacts and subsequent selection and preserving of good modifications. For the purpose DarwinTunes continuously produces new generations of music excerpts – loops by modifying the best ones from previous generations. Selection of good ones is entrusted to visitors of the site. Everyone, including you, can participate. You will be asked to express your attitude towards generated music excerpts choosing from “I love it!”, “I like it”, “It's OK”, “I don't like it”, “I can't stand it!”. At the moment more than 60 000 visitors took part in the experiment and we can see\hear music loops after 300 generations of evolution.

If you think the goal of the experiment is creation of some musical masterpiece, you are mistaken. DarwinTunes aimed to research the process of evolution itself, how it develops in time, what factors affect it. The music evolving inside the project is pretty interesting, though.

Besides the main goal of the project there is another one, may be even more important – to show that cultural evolution progresses by means of copying and modifying. So in order to support progress and creativeness we must make available as many objects of culture in public domain as possible. It wouldn't be a big exaggeration to say that promoting such seditious ideas DarwinTunes moves cultural evolution further, not just researches it.

Open DarwinTunes in new window >>>

Vorbis Xiph(1.2.3) vs. aoTuVb5.7 @80kbit/s

2009-12-26T20:49:14Z

It was correctly mentioned by visitors of the site that Ogg Vorbis encoders at SE are a bit outdated now. The more so as there were some developments in this field during 2008-2009. Vorbis encoder became an audio part of Theora – free and open format for multimedia exchange on the internet. Xiph.org foundation which passionately favors the spreading of this open source format, released their version of the encoder – libvorbis 1.2.3. It is used now for encoding in VLC player, RealProducer, multiple command-line utilities and applications for all operating systems. It is a part of Theora package. The same time thanks to Aoyumi who contributed a lot to make this codec sounding better, we have the latest and the most tuned version of the encoder – aoTuVb5.7. Probably all the enhancements made by Aoyumi will be integrated into Xiph's “official” version in some future, but for now the two major versions coexist peacefully along with four or five less widely used ones.

In order to find out how the “official” Xiph version compares to other non-Vorbis encoders and to see how far the latest development by Aoyumi goes, we decided to include them both:

libVorbis 1.2.3 and
aoTuVb5.7

For making this comparison fair a small research was conducted. Below are bit rates of the above encoders depending on -q parameter which sets quality level of encoder output. Nine SE samples are used.

High resolution copy of the chart available in PDF(306kB).

It's clearly seen that the curve consists of several separate monotonous segments indicating stepwise changes in psy-models of the encoders. And their comparison would be more informative for both developers and general public if it is within the bounds of corresponding psy-segments. So the first contenders for SE testing were chosen:

aoTuVb5.7 -q1
libVorbis 1.2.3 -q1.75

They use the same psy-model segment and result in the same target bit rate – 80.4 kbit/s. This quality setting (-q1) could be recommended for streaming purposes. And it perfectly fits SE 80 kbit/s group .

Also all Vorbis entries in SE ratings were renamed according to Xiph example – OGG used for media container and VORBIS – for audio codec.

As usually we thank people who suggested the codec for inclusion - Norz, Morten Wendelboe, Francis Chabot.

Don't forget to take part in testing!
SE Team.

SoundExpert 3.0

2009-12-14T01:00:05Z

The third version of SE testing system is here. What's new:

Open source portal engine Liferay is used as a basis for SE project now. It means that such collaboration tools as forums, wiki, polls, blogs and others could be easily integrated into SoundExpert.
Thanks to Konstantin Pupkov code of testing engine was revised and rearranged according to portlet architecture of Liferay. The logic of SE testing remained untouched. Some parts of testing engine were optimized for performance and two bugs were fixed:
- if there were three or more devices on the page with the same rating, only two of them were displayed.
- because of mistakes in MySQL records a few test files have never been downloaded and graded. But because of existence of two versions of each test file (with different position of original) the deviation of affected ratings is inessential and will be corrected naturally with the lapse of time.
After sending back of a grade participants will see results of their listening test including device they tested.
IP addresses of all submitted grades are recorded now
Distribution of test files was switched from FTP to HTTP. For the sake of simplicity and robustness we dropped resume option while downloading. The feature is completely senseless in this particular case as all test files are small and faceless. Just download another one, it doesn't matter.
We are .ORG now. This domain better reflects the nature of SE project – ratings by people and for people. So the canonical name is http://soundexpert.org/ The old domain - .INFO will be alive as well.
You'll be surprised but we became beta. While SoundExpert testing methodology is still not confirmed by independent parties (all interested in are welcome) the beta state of SE research project will indicate that you can use the ratings at your own risk. We do believe the method will be recognized and approved by audio engineers but until then SE will be marked as beta.
And finally, we moved to new server. Usual story, you know …

While working on the new version we didn't add new codecs to the system. All suggestions received during that period will be considered once again and some poll might be organized on the topic. The very next contender for testing is Ogg Vorbis. As usually fill free to contact us with your suggestions, bug reports, critics, ideas, etc.

By the way, testing engine is fully operational already, you can try it right now in Testing Room.

SoundExpert is moving to a new location

2009-12-09T19:22:53Z

New version of SoundExpert testing system is ready and will be launched in a few days. In order to preserve integrity of all collected data (your grades) SE testing engine was stopped. It will be resumed after upgrade of the system. Ratings will be displayed as usually, not updated though. We'll do our best to make this transition as seamless as possible.

Nero AAC Encoder 1.3.3.0

2009-12-11T11:45:39Z

A few days ago the new version of free Nero AAC Encoder (1.3.3.0) became available. According to its change log there are no significant improvements affecting quality of stereo encoding though. But taking into account that previous version (1.1.34.2) didn’t participate in SE testing at all and any version of this encoder never tested at SE at low bit rates where it usually shows the best efficiency we decided to perform extensive testing of the new encoder starting from low bit rates (thank you, Lance Penguin for this proposal). First four settings added are VBR: -q 0.15, -q 0.20, -q 0.25, -q 0.35. They dropped into the sections respectively: 32 kbit/s, 48 kbit/s, 64 kbit/s, 96 kbit/s. We intentionally did not tune resulting bitrates with q – parameter but exercised commonly used anchor values instead. Fine-tuned contenders can be added later if needed. As usually first reliable results will appear in a week or two. Thank you all for participation in listening tests and Vito Marolda personally for donation.

Comment: antk

The previous version of Nero AAC encoder was not tested in the 192kbit/s setting. How about adding it there (as well as in the 224kbit/s section) ?

Lame 3.98 (-V 0) added

2009-12-05T10:20:43Z

Next setting of new Lame mp3 encoder (3.98) to be tested at SE is “–V 0” – the highest quality VBR mode of the encoder. Resulting in 231.9 kbit/s on SE test files it fell into 224 kbit/s group. As usually first reliable results are expected in a week or two. But you can help SE to improve some of its green (grey) ratings faster - just take part in testing … if you want.

Lame 3.98 in 128 kbit/s group

2009-12-05T10:22:36Z

We must thank developers of Lame mp3 encoder for their time and efforts - Lame 3.98 released to public. In order to compare the new encoder not only with other encoders but also with previous Lame versions SE will add new Lame with the settings which are the same as or similar to the ones already used in Lame SE testing. It will depend on resulting bit rates produced by new Lame on SE test samples, though.

First setting is "-V5" - joint stereo variable bit rate mode resulting in 131.3 kbit/s on nine SE test samples. So it perfectly fits 128 kbit/s group at SE. Previous version (Lame 3.97b2) when using this setting (-V5) showed lower bit rate - 112.7 kbit/s and its comparison with other contenders producing around 128 kbit/s output was not very honest to be true. Now with 131.3 kbit/s the competition will be more fair.

Next setting planned for testing is "-V0" - highest quality VBR mode. It was also used for testing of Lame 3.97b1 at SE. If you have some other suggestions, please, let us know.

Thanks for participation in testing.
The People from SE

Bluetooth audio quality (A2DP)

2009-12-05T11:24:17Z

Bluetooth audio devices become more and more popular today – stereo headsets and headphones, wireless audio transmitters/receivers, cell phones and mp3 players with Bluetooth Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP). Headphones and headsets seems benefit the most from Bluetooth (BT) audio. To be honest first BT stereo headphones were of poor sound quality – dirty sound with annoying “hiss” on background. Definitely that was not because of BT technology limitations but mainly because of poor implementation of the latter and slipshod design of analog audio circuits. The situation changes slowly but steadily. For example modern BT stereo headphones DR-BT50 from Sony can successfully compete with ordinary wired ones already. Their sound quality will be sufficient for vast majority of portable player owners for sure. In no doubt if manufacturers decide they could produce perfectly sounding BT headphones for demanding listeners as well. In that case the way digital audio transmits over BT protocol is a bottleneck in the whole audio transmission chain.

As the data channel used by A2DP is only 721 kbps wide some data reduction scheme is required. While BT specifications allow using of different audio codecs (mp2, mp3, wma, aac and even atrac) the only mandatory codec for all BT audio devices is subband codec (SBC). In fact many BT headphones (including above mentioned DR-BT50) already support mp3 codec but in real life it remains unused. Obviously it was made for the sake of compatibility but the same time portable devices could benefit from direct streaming of mp3 files through BT interface saving both audio quality and battery life. However in today's practice all high quality audio still transfers over A2DP by means of SBC codec.

SBC codec appeared in SoundExpert ratings more than two years ago (see 320+ kbit/s section). The bitrate used for testing (372 kbps) showed good potential of this compression scheme but it’s clear now that above setting doesn’t reflect real-life scenario of the codec use. Let’s look for example at these two major BT applications:

Toshiba Bluetooth stack for Windows (6.10) has three quality modes for SBC codec

High Quality – 328 kbps
Middle Quality – 229kbps
Low Quality – 201 kbps

IVT Corp. Bluesoleil (5.0.5) has two quality modes: High and Middle. It’s not mentioned what bitrates are used but the application has special “Status Window” available for any BT connection. Among other information it shows amount of bytes sent to and received from connected device. Simple calculations reveal the same bit rates for High and Middle quality modes – 328 kbps and 229 kbps. As Bluesoleil is capable of both sending and receiving A2DP audio data its status window helps to discover actual bitrates used by any connected BT device. For example cell phone Nokia 6500 classic also sends music to BT interface at 229 kbps and the bitrate can’t be altered in phone’s settings (may be some advanced music phones and players have such possibility, though).

Such unanimity in choosing SBC codec settings is not surprising. Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) recommends using of those settings in A2DP specifications (A2DP_SPEC, Revision V12):

Table 4.7: Recommended sets of SBC parameters in the SRC device
SBC encoder settings*	Middle Quality				High Quality
SBC encoder settings*	Mono		Joint Stereo		Mono		Joint Stereo
Sampling frequency (kHz)	44.1	48	44.1	48	44.1	48	44.1	48
Bitpool value	19	18	35	33	31	29	53	51
Resulting frame length (bytes)	46	44	83	79	70	66	119	115
Resulting bit rate (kb/s)	127	132	229	237	193	198	328	345
*Other settings: Block length = 16, Allocation method = Loudness, Subbands = 8

Taking all this into account it was decided to add SBC codec to SE testing engine with these new settings:

SBC 229kbps (Middle Quality) – in 224 kbit/s section
SBC 328kbps (High Quality) – in 320+ kbit/s section

It’s worth to add that A2DP limits the available maximum bit rate to 320 kbps for mono and to 512 kbps for stereo modes allowing the use of many other codecs besides SBC. So audio manufacturers (of headphones especially) have wide choice of compression technologies capable of delivering high definition sound through the wireless digital channel at reasonable cost.

AAC VBR@256 from iTunes

2009-12-09T13:02:01Z

New codec in 256kbps section – AAC VBR from iTunes. Now both CBR and VBR modes of iTunes AAC codec @256kbps are under test. Definitely VBR mode consumes a bit more bits for encoding SE test files. Does this lead to any quality improvements? We’ll see. SE thanks Bill Justin for this codec suggestion.

eAAC+ @48 kbps from Winamp 5.53

2009-12-09T13:14:21Z

Low bitrate codec eAAC+ @48 kbps widely used for uploading music to mobile phones is added. Thank you Gert (aka Snoyt) for the proposal.

HE AAC 64kbit/s codec from Winamp added

2009-12-09T13:51:46Z

HE AAC codec from Winamp (aac he, cbr, 64 kbit/s) was added to SE testing system. Low bitrate sections of SE are a bit outdated at the moment, so starting with this codec we plan to fix the situation soon. SE thanks Giulio Franco for this codec proposal.

New iTunes AAC added

2009-12-09T23:35:07Z

Finally AAC encoder in iTunes was updated. The new one is included in iTunes 7.4 shipped with new Mac OS Leopard. Starting from version 7.5 iTunes for Windows also has this AAC coder. The bug of previous release is completely gone and resulting bit rates of encoded files are a little bit lower. That’s all to be said for sure in the beginning of testing it at SoundExpert.

The testing is started with CBR@256kbit/s setting which is used in iTunes music store. It looks like this bit rate will be the most popular soon. In a week or two first reliable results will show new encoder potential. If you want to get them faster, download and grade a test file from SoundExpert. Please, remember, the test file that will fall to your share will not necessarily belong to the newly added codec, it can be any of 95 codecs rotated in SE at the moment. Blind testing is blind testing. Thank you in advance for participation.

WMA 9.2 VBR(Q90) added

2009-12-13T21:06:28Z

Wide support of WMA format along with MP3 by manufacturers of portable players and powerful marketing strategy of MS did the job – WMA is very popular.

Q90 setting was added to 192 kbit/s group although it renders SE test items at average 160 kbit/s bitrate. If there are some other contenders in this bitrate sub-group, new page "Coders 160 kbit/s" will be inserted.

In case of current activity of volunteer testers first reliable values for the rating will appear in a fortnight. SE thanks Stig Lykke Iversen for this codec proposal.

Try to grade one of the 94 codecs rotated in SE system at the moment (ZIP: ~3Mb)

SoundExpert system in simple words

2009-12-09T23:26:46Z

New article explaining SoundExpert functionality in simple words appeared on Testing methodology page. Authors would be thankful for your feedback here.

SoundExpert. How it works (PDF: 236k)

Testing of iTunes AAC@256kbit/s finished

2009-12-09T23:23:58Z

Finally the rating of iTunes AAC codec @256 kbit/s has got into 5% reliability limits and can be safely compared to other SoundExpert (SE) ratings of appropriate reliability. This codec was added to the rating system shortly after EMI/Apple announcement of forthcoming sales of DRM-free and higher quality AAC@256 music files in iTunes Store. The testing ended up with 5.71 points of perceived audio quality for the codec. Not very impressive indeed. One of the reasons is the bug mentioned earlier. The other reason is that the coder was probably optimized for lower bitrates because its quality increases from 128 kbit/s more slowly in comparison with other codecs.

But fortunately for music lovers (and unfortunately for SE) this rating might be pretty useless in the nearest future. There are persistent rumors out there that new Mac OS Leopard scheduled in October will have completely new AAC coder without that bug. And what is more there is no evidence that music in iTunes Store was coded exactly with the coder from iTunes and not the new one. When new AAC coder is available for public it will be added to SE for sure.

Meanwhile the latest iTunes Jukebox still uses AAC codec from previous versions, exactly the one tested here at SoundExpert. So its rating is still useful for Jukebox users. And still … Nero AAC coder is much better.

Thank you all participants of SE listening tests.

Other Russian music stores besides Allofmp3

2009-12-09T23:17:02Z

Making hard work of IFPI and RIAA preventing piracy in Russian Federation a little bit easier here is a list of other Russian on-line music stores besides far-famed Allofmp3 operated under the same licenses from collective rights management organizations as the latter. They and their customers could be successfully alienated exactly the same way – by means of broad educational campaigns in mass media and lobbying on a state level (questioning of Russia’s participation in G8 could be a point for example). All stores listed bellow are fully accessible outside Russia and operate in collusion with Visa, MasterCard and many other international payment services. Some important details of their illegal activities are also included.

GoMusic.ru - http://www.gomusic.ru
Catalog: artists 28 405, albums 35 815, (X72)*
Audio format: mp3 192 vbr
Price: $0.19 per song, $2-$3 per album

LegalSounds.com - http://www.legalsounds.com
Catalog: (X40)*
Audio format: mp3 128-320
Price: $0.09 per song, $1-$2 per album

MP3Sale.ru - http://www.mp3sale.ru
Catalog: artists 20365, albums 83397, (X66)*
Audio format: mp3 128-320
Price: $0.15 per song, $1-$3 per album

MP3fiesta.com - http://www.mp3fiesta.com
Catalog: artists 15 907, tracks 685 494, albums 62 316, storage 4.5Tb, (X53)*
Audio format: mp3 128-192 cbr/vbr
Price: $0.10 per song, $1 per album

MP3Sugar.com - http://www.mp3sugar.com
Catalog: artists 15 057, albums 49 955, tracks 588 357, storage 4.2Tb, (X62)*
Audio format: mp3 192 vbr
Price: $0.18 per song, 10% discont for an album

MusicMP3.RU - http://musicmp3.ru
Catalog: (X18)*
Audio format: mp3 192 vbr
Price: $0.12 per song

mp3stor - http://www.mp3stor.com
Catalog: artists 27 152, albums 76 396, tracks 902 641, storage 5.305Tb, (X78)*
Audio format: mp3 192-320 vbr/cbr
Price: $1-$3 per album

iomoio - http://www.iomoio.com
Catalog: (X160)*
Audio format: mp3 192 vbr/cbr
Price: $0.15 per song

MP3spy - http://mp3spy.ru/en
Catalog: (X200)*
Audio format: mp3 192
Price: $0.15 per song, substantial discont for an album

justmusicstore.com - http://www.justmusicstore.com
Catalog: artists 44 120, albums 159 890, tracks 1 214 560, storage 14.2Tb
Audio format: mp3 192
Price: $0.15 per song

MusicFond - http://musicfond.com (in russian only)
Catalog: (X86)*
Audio format: mp3 192 vbr
Price: free (one by one track only)

AudioStore - http://audiostore.ru
Catalog: (X15)* world and indie music mostly
Audio format: mp3 256
Price: $0.30 per song, $3 per album

CDonPC - http://eng.cdonpc.ru
Catalog: albums 53 011, artists 16 993, tracks 545 959, (X70)*
Audio format: mp3 192 vbr/cbr
Price: $0.15 per song ($0.13 within full album)

* Number of artists in catalog on the letter "X". It gives some additional comparative estimation of catalog size. Other figures (artists, albums, tracks, storage) are taken from site info.

Comment: john liken

Good list, you can find some good reviews of those shops at the allofmp3 community forums: http://www.aom3.org

Pingback: Pito’s Blog

AllOfMp3 saga continues

Comment: jason

After spending a day on comparison I found that www.justmusicstore.com is the best way to shop for mp3 music. nothing compares to their catalogue. I'm a club DJ and they surely beat any other site listed here in my music interests genres.

Comment: Mel

Hi, great list! There is a decent review of musicmp3 here

How good will iTunes Store AAC@256 files be?

2009-12-09T22:48:14Z

EMI/Apple announcement of forthcoming sales of DRM-free and higher quality AAC 256kbit/s songs from iTunes music store is heavily discussed now. While almost everybody agree that this is a move to the right direction (final point probably means reasonably priced lossless downloads) there is no consensus about the reasons of choosing exactly 256 kbit/s. This bitrate seems too high for an average listener (which is quite happy with existing AAC 128kbit/s) and the same time it’s definitely inadequate for demanding listeners especially taking into account that Apple’s AAC encoder is not state-of-the-art one. Most prolate guesses explaining the choice are:

Stimulation of higher-cappasity iPod sales as increased bitrate needs doubling of memory size for storing music
Cleaver decision from the marketing standpoint – consumer gets twice as good sound quality for only 30% price increase. Now songs look even cheaper
Stimulation of legal downloads as they are of better quality than most music in P2P networks (128-192kbit/s)
Getting of additional advantage over Microsoft since many digital audio players supporting WMA are limited by 192kbit/s for this audio format
Providing with some headroom for inserting watermarks which can help to track iTunes songs in P2P networks

Watermarking point seems to be a wild assumption though because …. Apple has much wiser marketing strategy than the RIAA does. It will take (let me guess) one week for A-students from any university campus to discover the fact and the principles of watermarking used and one week more for internet community to discuss possible consequences for file-sharers, music industry and Apple itself and to develop methods for destroying watermarked information. After that the whole following year any person interested will throw mud at Steve Jobs and the Co. So watermarking technique is conceived only for research purposes (like birds tagging) which have to be clearly stated beforehand.

SoundExpert contributes its 2 cents to the discussion by adding AAC@256 from the latest iTunes to the rating system. Though new audio metrics used by SoundExpert is still experimental it’s the only testing methodology today capable of measuring perceptual audio quality margin. It helps not only to grade the quality of AAC@256 audio format but also to compare it with other formats such as mp3 or wma at different bitrates.

Blind listening tests conducted over the internet are essential part of the new metrics. These tests designed in a way that everyone, including you, can participate. Just download a test file, listen it and feedback your grade (all details inside test file). Downloading a test file from SoundExpert you can get randomly one of 93 audio codecs rotated in the system at the moment including newly added AAC 256 kbit/s codec from iTunes.

First results for the rating are available on “Coders 256 kbit/s” page. Light-grey color of the bar indicates low reliability of the rating caused by insufficient number of returned grades. In order to be reliable each rating needs about 300 test files to be downloaded and graded. So, it will take some time (depending of volunteer testers’ activity) to get final results for iTunes AAC@256 codec.

The 1st of April - Audiophiles Day

2009-12-10T00:43:19Z

Yes, this is our holiday. It’s really funny that most of us having good education and common sense are easily assified by marketers and sales persons. Have you ever dreamed about those fascinating tube amplifiers with miraculous warm sound and hot air over device? (recommended for countries with cold climate). And how about those funny tiny glittering cones, advanced power cords and precious interconnection cables with very strict and serious arrows? You might think that wireless audio connections will put an end to this cable cheating. I’m not sure; I’m waiting for the first air conditioning system specially designed for listening/home theater rooms (... you know, some wireless audio digits could be slow because of dust particles causing so called “air-jitter” ...). It’s worth to mention the quality of modern over-compressed audio CDs and prices of iTunes songs with just tolerable 128kbit/s quality and restricted usability. And finally if you still want to have clear sound at home you have to buy Blue-Ray player and wait a little bit for all your favorite music reissued on new media by recording industry. Looks like joke, isn’t it? Definitely it’s our Day.

Why this happens. In layman’s terms this could be explained as follows. On the one side there are users of audio equipment (audio consumers) – emotional and even passionate music lovers having only their subjective impressions for grading sound quality and measuring their satisfaction. In practice it’s too hard to evaluate sound quality ignoring music used, appearance of audio equipment, its brand and price. Very often consumers are disunited, misinformed and manipulated by the other side – manufacturers. The latter are better organized and like any business they have clear goal and simple parameter for measuring their satisfaction – profit. Do you think now the manufacturers are the evil? In no way! Quite the contrary they operate almost perfectly using every market opportunity to be successful. The problem is that they don’t receive appropriate feedback from consuming side. Formally we can vote with our money for one or another manufacturer but we actually don’t know for whom. Our decisions are mostly emotional and driven by false concepts and ideas. In short: manufacturers know almost everything about sound quality, consumers – very little. Economists will tell you that such asymmetric information leads to marketing of low-quality goods as higher-quality ones. And we ourselves are responsible for the situation. We just love miracles and ready to be fooled by supplying side. Definitely it’s our Day.

What to do. Generally talking we (consumers) have to be better informed and organized in order to be able to influence the audio market which is driven by audio manufacturers today. Being more specific our purchasing decisions:

have to reflect our real needs
have to be cooperative

Obviously this is not possible without both existence of audio quality metrics and broad interchange of information and opinions between members of audio community. While reliable hearing-wise quality metrics is still under development (SoundExpert proposed its own one) effective communication environment already appeared. Forums, blogs, social networks and collaborative recommendation services are excellent places for consumer’s cooperation (and even for cooperation between both sides – consuming and producing). Of cause, due to democratic and free nature of discussions the results can also be misleading and even completely unexpected (favorite example from my own experience is on Winamp forum where I announced possibility of testing high bitrate coders at SoundExpert; few minutes later my post was suspected of SPAM and “changed slightly” by admins; since then I visit this wonderful thread from time to time as a self-training practice). Nevertheless freedom of expressing opinions, critical state of mind and self-irony are the virtues equally necessary for audiophiles and the market nowadays.

Have a nice Day! Our Day.

ATRAC3plus 352 kbit/s added

2009-12-09T22:24:53Z

ATRAC3plus codec from SonicStage 4.3 was added to 320+ group:

ATRAC3plus CBR@360.6 - ATRAC3plus 352 kbps (360.6 kbit/s FBR)
ENCODER: SonicStage 4.3.01.14050
- Import a CD
- Format: ATRAC
- Recording Quality: High
- Bit rate: 352 kbps
- 44100 Hz Stereo
DECODER: SonicStage 4.3.01.14050
- Save in WAV Format

Please don’t forget that each rating needs about 300 returned grades in order to be reliable. So initial values of any newly born rating are pretty random. This is indicated by color of bar – lighter ones are less representative, less reliable and need more grades to be returned. The system offers test files of such unreliable ratings a bit more often trying to maintain approximately equal reliability for all ratings.

SoundExpert thanks Osiris Walstra, Navneet Alang and others for this codec proposal. If you’d like some other codecs to be added to the rating system, please drop us a line.

You can help this and other ratings become reliable faster by downloading and grading a test file. It can be any of 92 codecs rotated in the system at the moment.