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Archived from groups: rec.video.desktop (More info?)
> Funny thing was, MPEG Layer 3 was originally defined to offer
> transparent audio quality at ISDN rates (64Kb/s mono, 128kb/s stereo),
> for use in broadcasting. It did that job better than anything that
> came before, no one complained. We had to get the geeks involved for
> that.
There's some in every crowd.
> >Almost none of the "golden ear" crowd participated, not surprisingly.
>
> Some of those folks have issues. Some aren't really golden ears, but
> got that kind of reputation, and hey, if you're not a golden ears guy
> yourself, how do you know they're not wrong? Especially in the
> "Audiophile" world, where most of the audio quality stuff is a little
> science mized with heapin' helpin's of mythology, bad science, snake
> oil salesmen, and "emperor's new clothes" purchase decisions. They
> don't like too much actual reality, like objective blind tests, to be
> introduced into that melee.
That's what this test provided, a totally blind comparison. It's also
why a lot of the "golden ears" crowd didn't participate.
> You probably have a few legit guys, too, who (like me, for example),
> cannot hear as well as we could, say, back in our 20's. I still think
> my ears work very well, I hear things other folks don't, but I'm not
> making a living on 'em. And I'm honestly not sure I could pull 320's
> from 128's. Maybe on my best sound system, on music I know very well.
I did several blind A/B tests on music that I knew, on my system, and I
couldn't. But then again, I'm an over 40 old fart so who knows what a 20
year old could hear. It was still astounding that only one guy could
tell the difference. And there was speculation at the time that he used
Sound Forge or CEP to do a frequency analysis to see what the high
frequency roll off was to identify the encoder. I think the Xing
encoders rolled off at 15 mHz while the FhG encoders were a little
higher than that. But there was no doubt, he could differentiate between
a 160 and a 320, regardless of the encoder.
> But in general? Now, if you're talkin' WMAs, that's another story --
> just listen for the pre-echos. That stuff gives you fatigue; lots of
> people will pick those out easily.
I've been surprised at the quality of WMV's, really surprised. I've
never even listened to WMA's before, didn't seem to offer any
advantages.
> >I've got a lot of irreplaceable family footage on 8mm and VHS tape
that
> >I'm just getting ready to convert. Am I expecting perfection? Not at
> >all. But I'll feel a hell of a lot better, and will have a chance of
> >actually viewing the footage, in 10 years when I've got them archived
on
> >DVD rather than a vhs tape.
>
> Another thing to consider -- are you doing any editing? If you're
> planning to edit your home video, you'll find it easy to bring
> first-generation video into digital, edit there, and produce a DVD
> that's dramatically better than any basic roll-edit to VHS, in both
The plan is to get a VCR with a TBC, capture the output with my AIW card
to uncompressed AVI, edit with PP then encode to DVD format. Something
tells me it won't be that easy. <g>
> Funny thing was, MPEG Layer 3 was originally defined to offer
> transparent audio quality at ISDN rates (64Kb/s mono, 128kb/s stereo),
> for use in broadcasting. It did that job better than anything that
> came before, no one complained. We had to get the geeks involved for
> that.
There's some in every crowd.
> >Almost none of the "golden ear" crowd participated, not surprisingly.
>
> Some of those folks have issues. Some aren't really golden ears, but
> got that kind of reputation, and hey, if you're not a golden ears guy
> yourself, how do you know they're not wrong? Especially in the
> "Audiophile" world, where most of the audio quality stuff is a little
> science mized with heapin' helpin's of mythology, bad science, snake
> oil salesmen, and "emperor's new clothes" purchase decisions. They
> don't like too much actual reality, like objective blind tests, to be
> introduced into that melee.
That's what this test provided, a totally blind comparison. It's also
why a lot of the "golden ears" crowd didn't participate.
> You probably have a few legit guys, too, who (like me, for example),
> cannot hear as well as we could, say, back in our 20's. I still think
> my ears work very well, I hear things other folks don't, but I'm not
> making a living on 'em. And I'm honestly not sure I could pull 320's
> from 128's. Maybe on my best sound system, on music I know very well.
I did several blind A/B tests on music that I knew, on my system, and I
couldn't. But then again, I'm an over 40 old fart so who knows what a 20
year old could hear. It was still astounding that only one guy could
tell the difference. And there was speculation at the time that he used
Sound Forge or CEP to do a frequency analysis to see what the high
frequency roll off was to identify the encoder. I think the Xing
encoders rolled off at 15 mHz while the FhG encoders were a little
higher than that. But there was no doubt, he could differentiate between
a 160 and a 320, regardless of the encoder.
> But in general? Now, if you're talkin' WMAs, that's another story --
> just listen for the pre-echos. That stuff gives you fatigue; lots of
> people will pick those out easily.
I've been surprised at the quality of WMV's, really surprised. I've
never even listened to WMA's before, didn't seem to offer any
advantages.
> >I've got a lot of irreplaceable family footage on 8mm and VHS tape
that
> >I'm just getting ready to convert. Am I expecting perfection? Not at
> >all. But I'll feel a hell of a lot better, and will have a chance of
> >actually viewing the footage, in 10 years when I've got them archived
on
> >DVD rather than a vhs tape.
>
> Another thing to consider -- are you doing any editing? If you're
> planning to edit your home video, you'll find it easy to bring
> first-generation video into digital, edit there, and produce a DVD
> that's dramatically better than any basic roll-edit to VHS, in both
The plan is to get a VCR with a TBC, capture the output with my AIW card
to uncompressed AVI, edit with PP then encode to DVD format. Something
tells me it won't be that easy. <g>