I did a subjective listening comparison of three encoders this weekend - mp3enc, bladeenc and AudioCatalyst 2.1.

I encoded at 128 on mp3enc (its maximum), 192 on bladeenc and VBR-High (160-256) on AudioCatalyst 2.1. Surprisingly, AudioCatalyst sounded the best to my ears, although even with VBR the filesizes were slightly larger. Compared to the original CD, all three weren't quite as bright, with some loss at the top end, but the AC one had the least audible defects in the playback and the best dynamic range.

Even increasing the encoding to 256 on bladeenc did not noticibly increase the quality. I was dissapointed with mp3enc, which was supposed to encode 128 like others encode at 192, as it sounded just like 128 from AudioCatalyst to me. Oh well. The commerical version is too expensive for me to test it.

As for rippers, CDDA does the best job - far superior to the ripper in AC in terms of speed. But I'll use the ripper in AC, as it automates the process more to my liking.

For reference, listening was done with Dynaudio 240mkII 2-way separates and two JL Audio 12W6s via 2 McIntosh MC420 amps.

As for rippers, CDDA does the best job - far superior to the ripper in AC in terms of speed. But I'll use the ripper in AC, as it automates the process more to my liking.

It seems that the thing with rippers is that different rippers prefer different CD drives. I never could get CDDA to rip reliably above 2x speed on my drive, whereas AC rips along at 4x (and works most of the time at 8x, but then most of the time isn't good enough, so I stick to 4x).

The other good thing about AC is that it encodes so damn fast. I can rip and encode at 4x speed, a CD every 15 minutes, excellent !


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Unit serial number 47 (was 330 in the queue)...

I agree, I had previously been using Musicmatch but recently purchased AudioCatalyst Workshop from WorstBuy. I thought Musicmatch was fast at approx 4x but then was amazed when AC could rip and encode reliably at 8x! I fully recommend spending the 29.99 for AudioCatalyst now.

Jake

I have a Plextor UltraPlex32 and I use a combination of WinDAC and Telos Systems Audioactive. Expensive yes, but I get high speed (16x+) ripping and good quality, high speed encoding (1 gig in less than 45 mins). Keep in mind that while I encode to mp3 I am also still working on the PC.

Mors Tua
Vita Mea

Has anybody out there tried using MP2 compression instead of MP3? I would be very interested in hearing of a subjective comparison between the two.

tanstaafl.

"There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"

I purchased AC for $29 becuase i think they did an excellent job with the software and i hope to see updates.


-CHiP

I'd like to see someone test Audioactive's MP3 encoder, or the Fraunhofer MP3 encoder. These are supposed to be the best MP3 encoders available (they'd better be, at the prices they're being sold at), so I'd like to hear what an audiophile with some high-quality sound equipment says about these encoders.

I can send an "expanded demo" (cough) to anyone who's willing to do a test like this. AudioCatalyst worked well for me, and it's fast, but with a SB32 and Sennheiser 545 headphones, I'm not really justified in critiquing MP3 quality (it's all the same to me, the computer fans kind of drown out the nuances).

Just give me a buzz on ICQ (4910633) if you can do this test and need the encoder. No, I'm not going to send this stuff to any other warez collectors, this is purely for testing purposes.

I've already done this, as I mentioned in the previous post. Note, however, I used the consumer version of the Fraunhofer MP3 encoder. not the "pro" one. It's supposedly the best but I found its 128 encoding no better than other 128 encoding.

I would be interested to try it at higher bitrates.

Email me at [email protected] (remove the "-NOSPAM"s, they're just there to defer any email address-collecting Web scanners). I can send you a copy, I'd like to hear your opinion on higher bitrates because I have not seen many articles on the web that discuss bitrate-vs-bitrate. If and when I get my Empeg, or I convert all of my CD's for permanent MP3 archive, I'd like to get some opinions on the most appropriate bitrate for encoding ,if I'll be listening on higher-end audio equipment.

Tanstaafl wrote:

Has anybody out there tried using MP2 compression instead of MP3? I would be very interested in hearing of a subjective comparison between the two.

To get technical, MP3 is actually "MPEG Layer 3 - Audio". The format is allowed to use both MPEG 1 and MPEG 2 encoding methods, as both have different combinations of bitrates. The best explanation of this I've seen is the private life of MP3 frames, by the ID3 organisation.

So the answer to your question is mu.

Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.