John E. Leon Guerrero
2003-Feb-19 20:03 UTC
[vorbis] trying to get better ogg quality for this clip
hi folks, in my (unlucky) first test of ogg vs other encoders, i found a case where wma and mp3pro sound much better than ogg at 64k. can anyone suggest a setting that i haven't tried yet that can rival the wma and mp3pro samples at 64k? it's the "gravel effect" that is troublesome. the part in question is the first 15 seconds of this wave file: http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple.wav this piece starts with a stereo guitar that is rich in harmonic content (like chimes) with some flanging/chorus/delay type effects. way in the background, there is some high frequency delay/reverb that goes easily unnoticed unless using head phones. it sounds like the guitar pick scratching against the strings. using decent (but not top of the line) headphones for evaluation, i found that wma and mp3pro did a very nice job of encoding the file where the differences from the raw wav file were practically imperceptible to me. however, when encoded with ogg q0-q2, the sounds is noticeably altered and the "high frequency guitar pick noise" sounds like someone walking through gravel. at q3 it starts to sound better and at q4 it is about equal to the others. by my ears, the 64k wma file does the best job at avoiding the "gravel effect". it also seems to add some presence & volume that doesn't exist in the original wave but *does* sound good...at least for this clip. focusing on streaming, i also encoded using the options: "-b 64" "-b 64 --managed" "-b 45" "-b 45 --managed" (dunno why, but i couldn't get it to do 32k nor could i get the --advanced-encoder-option bitrate_average_window=3 option to work either.) the directory isn't browsable but here are the links for my test cases: http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple.wav http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_64k.wma http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_pro.mp3 http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_q0.ogg http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_q1.ogg http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_q2.ogg http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_q3.ogg http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_q4.ogg http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_b64.ogg http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_b64managed.ogg http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_b45.ogg http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_b45managed.ogg dunno if these are really 40k and 48k since the encoder only processed 3 seconds of the clip. they sound good though. http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_48k.wma http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_40k.wma thanks, jlg --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
Giuliano Pochini
2003-Feb-22 03:48 UTC
[vorbis] trying to get better ogg quality for this clip
On gio, 2003-02-20 at 04:03, John E. Leon Guerrero wrote:> hi folks, in my (unlucky) first test of ogg vs other encoders, i found a > case where wma and mp3pro sound much better than ogg at 64k. can anyone > suggest a setting that i haven't tried yet that can rival the wma and > mp3pro samples at 64k? it's the "gravel effect" that is troublesome. > > the part in question is the first 15 seconds of this wave file: > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple.wavHeh. That peice is really hard to encode. Apart the infamous high frequencies boost, vorbis amplifies a lot a very backgroung noise at the beginning of the clip (1s:1.8s). Mp3 does a bad job too. VH_simple_pro.mp3 sounds "fine" because there are no hi frq harmonics (22KHz), but chords sound washy (09s:11s). I can't play wma. <p>Bye. <p>--- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
Try resampling the file down to 22050 Hz using a high quality re-sampler(like SSRC by Shibatch(shibatch.sf.net)) with the source before feeding it to Vorbis. I got some pretty good results from that. Here is the output: http://webpages.charter.net/tknott/other/VH_simple-ABR64k.ogg And a front-end to SSRC that I wrote: http://webpages.charter.net/tknott/other/SSRC-Frontend.zip w/ complete sources. --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
Lorenzo Prince
2003-Feb-22 14:51 UTC
[vorbis] trying to get better ogg quality for this clip
I see what you mean about the guitar. However it seemed to me like the b45 sounded better than the b64. I think this may be a bug in the encoder, since b45 sounds better than b64 or q0. I also couldn't get the last two WMA files to play for some reason. Not sure why, unless it has to do with the fact that I am using Winamp to play WMA, although it played the first 64k file with no trouble. I also liked the mp3 pro much better than the WMA, as the WMA file put a lot of ringing in the guitar both in the beginning and at the end of the clip where the guitar plays with the drums. Lorenzo E Pluribus Unix ----- Original Message ----- From: "John E. Leon Guerrero" <jlg2003feb@live365.com> To: <vorbis@xiph.org> Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 11:03 PM Subject: [vorbis] trying to get better ogg quality for this clip <p>> hi folks, in my (unlucky) first test of ogg vs other encoders, i found a> case where wma and mp3pro sound much better than ogg at 64k. can anyone > suggest a setting that i haven't tried yet that can rival the wma and > mp3pro samples at 64k? it's the "gravel effect" that is troublesome. > > the part in question is the first 15 seconds of this wave file: > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple.wav > > this piece starts with a stereo guitar that is rich in harmonic content > (like chimes) with some flanging/chorus/delay type effects. way in the > background, there is some high frequency delay/reverb that goes easily > unnoticed unless using head phones. it sounds like the guitar pick > scratching against the strings. > > using decent (but not top of the line) headphones for evaluation, i > found that wma and mp3pro did a very nice job of encoding the file where > the differences from the raw wav file were practically imperceptible to > me. however, when encoded with ogg q0-q2, the sounds is noticeably > altered and the "high frequency guitar pick noise" sounds like someone > walking through gravel. at q3 it starts to sound better and at q4 it is > about equal to the others. > > by my ears, the 64k wma file does the best job at avoiding the "gravel > effect". it also seems to add some presence & volume that doesn't exist > in the original wave but *does* sound good...at least for this clip. > > focusing on streaming, i also encoded using the options: > "-b 64" > "-b 64 --managed" > "-b 45" > "-b 45 --managed" > > (dunno why, but i couldn't get it to do 32k nor could i get the > --advanced-encoder-option bitrate_average_window=3 option to work either.) > > the directory isn't browsable but here are the links for my test cases: > > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple.wav > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_64k.wma > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_pro.mp3 > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_q0.ogg > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_q1.ogg > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_q2.ogg > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_q3.ogg > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_q4.ogg > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_b64.ogg > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_b64managed.ogg > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_b45.ogg > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_b45managed.ogg > > dunno if these are really 40k and 48k since the encoder only processed 3 > seconds of the clip. they sound good though. > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_48k.wma > http://qa01.live365.com/jlg/VH_simple_40k.wma > > thanks, > jlg > > --- >8 ---- > List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ > Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ > To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' > containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. > Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered. ><p>--- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.