Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[jolo]

   The plugins for 10 are great, but I have a question.

I use the encoder plug-ins a lot and wonder there is an update on Monkey's Audio or Vorbis or Lame, can the plug-ins be updated to take advantage of the upgraded software ?

Thanks,

Jon

[LonWar]

I do not know about Vorbis, But MC uses the latest lame (99% sure) and the latest .ape (100% sure)

[Sauzee]

I thought MC used quite an old version of Lame.

I checked your update list page and couldn't find anything about changing to a later version of lame in there.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[jolo]

Yes,

I believe 3.97 Lame is the newest.

[Alex B]

Monkey's Audio in MC is the latest. It was upgraded from 3.97 to 3.99 some months ago. That's easy because there is only one source for it (Matt) and there are also no audio quality differences in lossless.

LAME situation is quite mixed. Biggest version number is not always the best in the terms of audio quality and the situation can change with different music samples.  One well-known "authority" here is Hydrogen Audio Forum (www.hydrogenaudio.org). People there are constantly making ABX listening tests with different versions and compilations and the developers are contributing the forum. Their consensus is that the best audio quality for high bitrates is still in version 3.90.3 (with Dibrom's switches - read about it there) although the latest from 3.91-3.9x series - stable LAME 3.96 is out. 3.97 is still at alpha stage and it is intended only for testing.

MC uses internally 3.93, which is a good choice, but better would be 3.96 because there are many enhancements to speed and quality and no known bugs. Versions 3.94-3.95.1 were not so good.

I suggested here some time ago that JRiver could safely upgrade internal encoder to LAME 3.96. In my opinion they also could default --preset settings, because those make the best quality encodings and not everybody is aware enough to learn about them by their selves.

I use 3.90.3 as an external encoder for the quality reasons. Sometimes I change to 3.96 because it's almost twice as fast when making VBR encodings.

I have recently interested about Ogg Vorbis too and I have made some testing with oggdropXPdV1.7.11GT3b2 encoder. There are also many different versions and compilations of Ogg Vorbis encoders. Internal Ogg Vorbis encoder in MC is not any of the newest versions.

Musepack (mpc) situation is quite simple. Most enthusiasts are using mppenc v.1.14 beta (it has been out a long time). There is also version 1.15r alpha. MC uses internally version 1.1, which is the latest "non beta", but generally considered old.

[jolo]

Alex,

You have some very good points. One of them is the subjectivity of the audio compression products. For example, I find Ogg far superior to listen to than MP3, which sounds very flat to me. Am I correct about that ? No, it is my opinion.
Also, I do find the discussions on www.hydrogenaudio.org about this stuff incredibly anal and dominated by whose right and whose wrong and it gets extremely heated at times about some intellectual point.

Plus, a lot of choices on codecs are done to match hardware that people use to play, rip and burn.

What I would like to see is choice for all. Sort of like how you can easily add codecs to Virtualdub of about anything and the ability to load whatever codec we prefer.  Of course there  has to be a some sort of sanity with this.

Maybe a place where people can load their own codecs and versions and can enter their own selections. BUT ... to then to have, like now, a handfull of codecs that are supported and tested by JRiver.  If people point or have access to whatever they want to use, it would be unsupported by JRiver and possibly supported by others who use that codec.

Jon

[Alex B]

I'm constantly using LAME 3.90.3 with MC. I have configured it as an external encoder with parameters: %IN %OUT --alt-preset extreme. It works flawlessly. Maybe that option can be used with external Ogg Vorbis encoders too. I must try it.

It is very difficult to find major audio quality differences between modern encoders at the best quality settings. I have found only few tracks where I can hear any audible differences between e.g. LAME -- alt preset extreme, Ogg q8 and lossless.

As far as I see the Third Party Plug-ins, Programs, and Skins forum can be used for distribution and discussions about users' own codecs and plug-ins.