On Thu, 03 Jul 2003 00:52:51 -0500, Lord Hasenpfeffer
wrote:
ff123 wrote:
There is a similar and very lengthy conversation going on at
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.p...=1&t=10637&hl=
Oh really? Hmmm... Is there like one really arrogant asshole there who
continuously proclaims to know it all and believes that he can teach the
world to sing (or at least drink a bottle of Coke)? If so, I've really
go a mind to slap his fat face! ;-)
Thanks. I'll check it out ASAP.
There is at least one lame developer (Gabriel) who hangs out at this
forum, so you might be able to catch his attention.
As others have already posted, newer versions of Lame have a variable
ATH, which depends on how close the signal is to full scale.
There are a couple of questions this raises:
1) Is it better to try to bring up soft music near 0dBFS and then
apply mp3gain afterwards? How much quality is audibly gained by doing
this?
2) Should loud music be brought down so that the resulting encoded
bitrate is smaller? How much quality is audibly lost by doing this?
Two more excellent questions. And if it is true that "it doesn't really
matter after all", I'm *still* interested in knowing the answers to such
questions just for the sake of knowing more truth about the process.
Whether such truths are evident in the practical or only in the
strictest of abstract philosophical terms, truth is truth and should
always be pursued.
Myke
Apparently the ATH is lowered (made stricter) for soft music, meaning
that if you turn up the volume for soft passages, the encode should
still sound ok (in previous versions of lame people heard problems
when they did this).
There is also a time constant involved in the adaptive ATH, taking
into consideration the fact that the ear does not adjust immediately
to changes in volume.
I think the consensus of the hydrogenaudio.org thread was that it is
best for most people to use --scale for dynamically compressed music
(if they listen to it at normal volumes) to save bits and to still
remain transparent.
Read especially DickD's post on page 4:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.p...t=10637&st=75&
ff123