Public AAC Listening Test @ ~96 Kbps [July 2011]. 277
The folks at the Hydrogen Audio Forums have for years been benefiting the world with their patience, technical skills, and hyper-focus on sound quality, by comparing the real-world sound of various codecs and bit-rates for audio encoding. Under the scope for the latest public listening test (slated to run until July 27) are the following AAC encoders: Nero 1.5.4; Apple QuickTime 7.6.9 true VBR; Apple QuickTime 7.6.9 constrained VBR; Fraunhofer (Winamp 5.62); Coding Technologies (Winamp 5.61); and ffmpeg's AAC (low anchor).
Re:FLAC (Score:5, Insightful)
If you really can easily distinguish well-encoded AAC or MP3 from FLAC you should lend us at HA your golden ears!
I rather strongly suspect once subjected to rigorous double-blinding you might not come back speaking so boldly.
Re:PROBLEM IS TESTERS HAVE CRAP GEAR !! (Score:4, Insightful)
in my experience, the equipment attached to your skull is more important than the equipment you purchased.
I've seen people with complete CRAP gear ABX at higher bitrates than I can, and I've got a pretty stout rig.
Self Proclaimed Golden ears should really step up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than typical net snobbery against lossy encoders, the self proclaimed golden ears should really help out, they are the ones that can spot encodes a mile away, they should be able help find really good/bad encodes here.
I found myself humbled when I attempted to help out before. I had a hard time distinguishing anything but the poor encode used as control.
Really guys this is a chance to help out, or recalibrate your preconceptions about how good/bad modern encoders are.
Or would you rather just keep up with the unjustified snobbery?