SoundExpert Guest

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) ?