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Topic: differences between MP3 decoders (Read 5167 times) previous topic - next topic
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differences between MP3 decoders

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All in a nice small installer and with less resources used during playback. And thats that.

Actually that is not quite that.  I currently have QCD and foobar both minimized and playing the same song of the same playlist. CPU usage is identical, and mem usage:
QCD: 1696kb
foobar: 1728kb

Quote
If you mean 'best' as in best quality, there is probably little to no difference between the players.

QCD has a MAD output plugin. There is definitely a difference between the sound quality of the two. I was able to ABX 14/16 p=0.2%.

There are advantages to both players, and it really is up to personal preference. foobar lets you see advanced info about files and custom tags that QCD currently lacks. QCD has system-wide hotkeys, advanced skinning, cool visuals (can use sonique visuals) and video playback.


differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #1
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QCD has system-wide hotkeys

You can do this in foobar2000 too.  When you setup the keyboard shortcut, check the "Global hotkey" box.

differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #2
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QCD has a MAD output plugin. There is definitely a difference between the sound quality of the two. I was able to ABX 14/16 p=0.2%.

I like how QCD zealots think that MAD has something to do with Vorbis playback quality, and claim that they "hear" differences between players without backing their claims with any reliable info.
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differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #3
Quote
Quote
QCD has a MAD output plugin. There is definitely a difference between the sound quality of the two. I was able to ABX 14/16 p=0.2%.

I like how QCD zealots think that MAD has something to do with Vorbis playback quality, and claim that they "hear" differences between players without backing their claims with any reliable info.

I did not mention vorbis.

My bad, my last post was unclear. What I used to ABX was the standard QCD MP3 plugin and foobar.

Code: [Select]
WinABX v0.4 test report
09/18/2003 21:41:14

A file: ...(Katalyst) Agent Manipulated [03] Passing Of Peace - Danielsan.wav
B file: ...001 Katalyst - 03 - Passing Of Peace - Danielsan.wav

21:42:35    1/1  p=50.0%
21:44:01    2/2  p=25.0%
21:45:53    3/3  p=12.5%
21:47:12    4/4  p=6.2%
21:48:55    4/5  p=18.8%
21:51:17    5/6  p=10.9%
21:52:18    6/7  p=6.2%
21:54:18    6/8  p=14.5%
21:56:20    7/9  p=9.0%
21:57:20   8/10  p=5.5%
21:59:03   9/11  p=3.3%
22:01:29  10/12  p=1.9%
22:03:40  11/13  p=1.1%
22:06:33  12/14  p=0.6%
22:08:43  13/15  p=0.4%
22:10:49  14/16  p=0.2%

differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #4
Quote
Quote
Quote
QCD has a MAD output plugin. There is definitely a difference between the sound quality of the two. I was able to ABX 14/16 p=0.2%.

I like how QCD zealots think that MAD has something to do with Vorbis playback quality, and claim that they "hear" differences between players without backing their claims with any reliable info.

I did not mention vorbis.

My bad, my last post was unclear. What I used to ABX was the standard QCD MP3 plugin and foobar.

Code: [Select]
WinABX v0.4 test report
09/18/2003 21:41:14

A file: ...(Katalyst) Agent Manipulated [03] Passing Of Peace - Danielsan.wav
B file: ...001 Katalyst - 03 - Passing Of Peace - Danielsan.wav

21:42:35    1/1  p=50.0%
21:44:01    2/2  p=25.0%
21:45:53    3/3  p=12.5%
21:47:12    4/4  p=6.2%
21:48:55    4/5  p=18.8%
21:51:17    5/6  p=10.9%
21:52:18    6/7  p=6.2%
21:54:18    6/8  p=14.5%
21:56:20    7/9  p=9.0%
21:57:20   8/10  p=5.5%
21:59:03   9/11  p=3.3%
22:01:29  10/12  p=1.9%
22:03:40  11/13  p=1.1%
22:06:33  12/14  p=0.6%
22:08:43  13/15  p=0.4%
22:10:49  14/16  p=0.2%

How do you compare two digital audio player with an ABX software, developped for comparing two files?
I'd like to compare Winamp/QCD/... to foobar2000, with the use of dithering, 24 bits support for my Terratec DMX6Fire, Kernel or Asio output, and not only diskwritten files.

differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #5
Please also post how you decoded those samples, or upload them somewhere. Something as simple as having replaygain enabled can easily fake ABX results.
Other than that, someone reported QCD's mp3 decoder to have issues with ISO compliance, while mpglib decodes at least all MPEG-1 layer 3 files correcty as far as I'm aware of.
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differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #6
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I did not mention vorbis.

This topic was originally in Vorbis forum, talking about Vorbis playback only, and you mentioned MAD in it. Speaking of resource usage, MAD is also three times slower than mpglib (tested on athlonxp, exact number may vary on really old machines with weak FPU).
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differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #7
I decoded using the 'convert' function of QCD and foobar. I also notice just recently that the files have a tiny difference in number of samples. After decoding a couple of different files in each, it seems that foobar consistently produces files which are 529 samples smaller than QCD's MAD or standard mp3 decoder (checking in foobar). This is very strange because checking in EAC's WAV processor, the beginning and end of the QCD file are non-zero samples. Could foobar be chopping something off? Or QCD adding random noise?

Why or how this is happening I have no idea, perhaps someone could enlighten me. However I don't think that 1/100 of a second difference in song length is going to change ABX results (or do you think that it would?)

I made sure that replaygain and everything else I could find was turned off.
I'll try and find somewhere to upload those files to.

Thanks for the interest!

differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #8
Quote
I decoded using the 'convert' function of QCD and foobar. I also notice just recently that the files have a tiny difference in number of samples. After decoding a couple of different files in each, it seems that foobar consistently produces files which are 529 samples smaller than QCD's MAD or standard mp3 decoder (checking in foobar). This is very strange because checking in EAC's WAV processor, the beginning and end of the QCD file are non-zero samples. Could foobar be chopping something off? Or QCD adding random noise?

Why or how this is happening I have no idea, perhaps someone could enlighten me. However I don't think that 1/100 of a second difference in song length is going to change ABX results (or do you think that it would?)

I made sure that replaygain and everything else I could find was turned off.
I'll try and find somewhere to upload those files to.

Thanks for the interest!

Because fb2k uses gapless playback info from LAME headers, while nothing else currently does that.
That might be enough to interfere with ABX results.
Microsoft Windows: We can't script here, this is bat country.

differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #9
Quote
I decoded using the 'convert' function of QCD and foobar. I also notice just recently that the files have a tiny difference in number of samples. After decoding a couple of different files in each, it seems that foobar consistently produces files which are 529 samples smaller than QCD's MAD or standard mp3 decoder (checking in foobar). This is very strange because checking in EAC's WAV processor, the beginning and end of the QCD file are non-zero samples. Could foobar be chopping something off? Or QCD adding random noise?

Why or how this is happening I have no idea, perhaps someone could enlighten me. However I don't think that 1/100 of a second difference in song length is going to change ABX results (or do you think that it would?)

I made sure that replaygain and everything else I could find was turned off.
I'll try and find somewhere to upload those files to.

Thanks for the interest!

I know from experience that 25 milliseconds difference in time alignment can be audible, and can affect ABX results (if your ABX strategy is mainly to pay attention to the beginning of either sample).

However, 12 milliseconds is pretty small.

Did you check to make sure each sample has the same volume?

ff123

Edit:  time mis-alignment is most audible if you set the selection bar to interrupt the music during a transient of some sort.

differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #10
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Because fb2k uses gapless playback info from LAME headers, while nothing else currently does that.

Otachan's in_mpg123 also does since ver. 1.18y ot43k.

differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #11
Okay, I found a place to upload to. B)
The files are compressed with APE and zipped with a text file containing the original name and CRC of the wav as reported by EAC.
foobar decoded here.
QCD decoded here.

@zZzZzZz
Is there any way to turn this off? Does it do this to all mp3's regardless of whether they were created using LAME --nogap?

@ff123
I didn't concentrate on the start/end of the song, or transients, and I didn't notice any volume difference (although I don't know how to check). I suppose that I could be subconciously noticing the differences though...

Also, shouldn't the volumes of the decoded wav's be the same anyway if replaygain and DSP's are turned off for both players?

differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #12
It's not "nogap" or whatever, it just uses info in LAME headers to make decoded file have exactly same length as original track before encoding, and all files encoded with LAME 3.90+ have those headers. Remove first 1105 samples from file decoded with other decoder to correct the offset problem.
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differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #13
Site went offline before I could download the files. I recommend that you post shorter samples in uploads forum.
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differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #14
...I just thought that since those ABX results were using the whole song, there wouldn't be much point in uploading just 30 seconds. Anyway, I'll have a shot at chopping out a 30sec chunk for uploading. Any advice on the best way to do this?

Edit: Sites are up again as of this post.

differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #15
Any sound editor will do (audacity ? cool edit / adobe audition ? soundforge ?)
(resumed download now...)
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differences between MP3 decoders

Reply #16
foobar.zip is 404 now, and I'm not done getting it
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