Hi folks,
A little offtopic, but somebody might be interested...
I repeated the decoder test done by Matthew Lloyd in his post last
month. I compared Sonique 1.51, Winamp using the mpg123 plugin, and
Winamp using the fraunhofer plugin (aka winamp 2.22)
This test involves comparing the right channel produced by one decoder,
the right channel produced by another, inverting one of them and mixing
them together. If you took care to synchronize them exactly beforehand,
this tends to produce a zero waveform. If the decoders work differently,
you get some non-zeros.
My subject material was an mp3 I did not make, and I don't know what the
encoder was. Bitrate was 160kbps. mp3check pronounced it to be within
the mp3 spec, ie, not corrupt. The track was "Standing Stones" by
Loreena McKennitt.
Winamp with the mpg123 plugin and with the fraunhofer plugin produced
nearly identical results, with the only discrepancies being off-by-one
LSB errors.
Most of the time sonique with the AE4 decoder produced the same results,
however there were about two dozen instances (over the whole 7 minute
track) where the was some difference. Each of these was about 600
samples long, I think corresponding to a single mp3 frame. These
differences were 16Khz and up, and the level was about -70 db for the
loudest one.
Many people have sworn sonique sounds best. I'm guilty too. But if two
other decoders agree and sonique disagrees, what does that mean... ?
John
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