Websound.Ru listening tests

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This page is devoted to realization of listening tests of lossy audio compression codecs.

If you aren't familiar with lossy audio compression codecs (such as MPEG-1 Layer III - MP3, Windows Media Audio - WMA, Ogg Vorbis - OGG and so on), you may need to read about these techniques in different papers available in the Internet (you can get very useful information at http://hydrogenaudio.org).

Those, who are interested to test the quality of newly-made lossy codecs, are more than welcome to participate in the listening test organized on this page. On this page we will organize listening test and will collect listening test results. Everyone who wants to participate in current listening test will need to follow these instructions:

1. Download ABC/HR utility here. This utility will be used to perform our listening test(s).
2. Download package of testing samples. Each package consists of original audio fragment (generally ripped from some quality audio CD) and number of samples (which were get by decompressing of encoded by tested codecs original sample).
3. Place unpacked ABC/HR utility and unpacked samples package (in the form of .WAV-files) in some folder.
4. Run ABC/HR utility specifying a special configuration file which is provided with the samples package.
5. Perform the listening test using the methods offered by ABC/HR utility (you may need to read these instructions: http://ff123.net/64test/practice.htm).
6. Send to the author of this page a file with listening test results (obtained from ABC/HR).

After the test is finished, all obtained obtained test results from all participants are summarized and published on this page.

NOTE! If the test consists of several testing audio packages, you DO NOT have to perform the listening test for each package. You can participate in testing even of only one package.

If you have any corrections to this page (including grammar corrections :-) ), please, feel free to contact the author of WebSound.Ru.

Test #1 (23.Jul.2003 - ??.Aug.2003) - the test is in progress

Tested codecs and encoders:

MPEG-4 AAC, Sorenson Squeeze v3.5 (sor)
MPEG-4 AAC, QuickTime Pro v6.3 (qt)
MPEG-1 Layer III, Lame Encoder v3.90.3 stable bundle (lame)
MPEG-1 Layer III, codec Fhg MP3 from CoolEdit Pro 2.1, High Quality Codec (fhg)
MP3 Pro, codec Fhg MP3 from CoolEdit Pro 2.1, High Quality Codec (fhgpro)
MPEG-4 AAC, PSYTel encoder v2.15 (psy)
Ogg Vorbis, oggenc 1.0 (ogg)
Ogg Vorbis GT3, OggEncGT3v1 (ogt)
MusePack, mppenc 1.15r (mpc)
WMA9, MS WMA9 encoder (wma)

Notes:

Tested bitrates niches: 96 Kbps, 128 Kbps, 192 Kbps, 256 Kbps and 320 Kbps.

Some of the the tested codecs do not support compression at constant bitrate. Thus, their encoding parameters were taken in such a way, that the resulting encoded files have the same size (+/- 10-15%).

All tested MPEG-4 AAC encoders use LC profile.

All used encoding parameters you can see here.

Testing samples packages:

All the files were encoded by Monkey's Audio Compressor. Don't forget to download ABC/HR utility.
Each package is about 4-10 Mb.

-= 96 Kbps =-

bach-96.zip + bachpsichord.zip (10,7 Mb)
cat-96.zip + cat.zip (9,1 Mb)
fools-96.zip + fools.zip (4,1 Mb)
jarre-96.zip + jarre.zip (14,7 Mb)
rem-96.zip + rem.zip (6,5 Mb)