Most people they asked couldn't tell if they were hearing a Fraunhofer 128kb-MP3 or the original CD.

Interesting. I'm not much of an audiophile but I can clearly tell the difference. I haven't tried a blind test of myself on this, but all of my MP3's are done with Fraunhofer at 128kb, and I can hear the difference in certain kinds of high-frequency artifacts. Mostly white-noise stuff like cymbals or crowds cheering. The encoding adds kind of a swishy sound to the high stuff. I guess it's because that's technically random noise, and compression algorithms can't handle randomness very well.

I'll bet if I pointed it out to "most people", they'd be able to hear what I was talking about, once they knew what to listen for. Fortunately, it's very subtle and you have to listen closely to hear it, so doesn't bug me that much. Once you get used to it, it's not a problem.

Did that magazine mention whether or not Xing's VBR encoding sounded better on the high stuff like cymbals? Was there a magic bitrate in the Fraunhofer encoder where those artifacts disappeared?

Thanks for that report. I was looking for another side-by-side encoder comparison. Does this magazine have an online version of that article?




-- Tony Fabris -- Empeg #144 --
Caution: Do not look into laser with remaining good eye.