headAC3he x besweet

[ssjkakaroto]

hi, i currently use headAC3he -> razorlame to convert from ac3 to mp3. is there any real advantage using besweet or should i just stick with the way i'm doing now?

thanks in advance

[DSPguru]

headAC3he IS good.

[DarkAvenger]

Unfortunately to achive best quality, you *have* to use Lame.exe, since the dll doesn't offer to much options and our proggies both use the dll.

Quality of BeSweet 0.9 and HeadAC3he v0.16pre should be the same, but BeSweet (currently ;)) offers more features, like downsampling on-the-fly, but HeadAC3he is faster, esp. if you have a RAID-0.

[DSPguru]

DA,
don't push it ;)
i'm not sure your program IS faster, but i'm sure that the only way your proggy will offer SRC on-the-fly depends on my good-will :cool:

[ChristianHJW]

DSPGuru, DarkAvenger,

I was using HeadAC3 a lot and agree its faster than BeSweet ( thanks to RAID-0 ;-) ). The beauty of BeSweet is of course it doesnt need large WAV files on my HDD.

But right now i hate to say i am using DanniDin's good old GUI with Azid.exe, SSRC.exe and Lame/toolame.exe. Why ?

1. HeadAC3 has perfect and very time effective normalizing of WAV files, but for now still doesnt offer a complete decode/normalize/downsample/encode cycle and i`m a real lazy bastard. Setting DanniDin's GUI up before going to bed and its done in the morning, using some spare cycles from my SMP system while encoding a DivX AVI or SVCD, so i really dont care in most cases how long its going to take. Its just so easy to do and this is my main goal for the moment : reducing my spare time sitting in front of the PC !!!

2. BeSweet really would be the ideal tool for me ! But :
a. latest version ( V 0.9 ) seems to have a bug resulting in crackled sounding MP3 and MP2 and unplayable WAVs ...
b. normalizing is still based on Azid's 'auto find max gain' and this is buggy when being used with higher DRC settings ( 'normal' is default ), resulting in overflow's and even clipping !! So for now the only way to use it fine is to make a 1st pass with Azid to find max gain and then setup the 2nd pass manually with a gain that is 1 - 2 dB lower. Using Danni Din's GUI in normal mode i am now using SSRC to do 2 Pass normalizing and set a normal gain in Azid like +6 dB plus 24 bits output, this will do in most cases and i can set it up in one go again.

Resumee :

BeSweet with corrected bug and better/improved normalizing process or HeadAC3 with SSRC and Lame/tooLame are what i am dreaming of ;-) !!

[DarkAvenger]

@my man DSPGuru
If you're not sure, why not test it? :D I will try something: Copy a ac3 to a ZIP drive and test which proggie is more dependant on HD speed..., oh no, this won't work. The stupid ZIP drive only has PIO0 mode, so need to find something else which is slow. Well, I have an old 0.8GB HD lying somewhere...
I knew you were keeping ssrc.h away from me to be sure that you are a step ahead, but beware, I am coming. ;) Well, where is the GPL? I think there is something written about open-source and stuff... So, in fact it does not depend on your good-will. Nevertheless, you gave me a promise. ;)

Of course I have to push, because of your prog I felt pushed as well!

@Chris

Well, about SSRC: see above.
about tooLame: BeSweet hat mp2 output, but it is *not* based on tooLame, so I decided not to integrate it. I wait until someone make a dll out of tooLame.

If you have RAID-0, you usally have much HD space, so why worry? If you want HeadAC3he (btw, you always leave out the "he" of "HeadAC3he") not to use much HD space, use dumb mode. (But I guess you were referring to needing a WAV output, as you need to resample...)

[pacohaas]

These 2 programs are a great example of why competition is good. Because of the competition, we now have 2 great attempts at direct ac3 to mp3 conversion as well as some nice enhancements to the LAME project. Keep up the good work, one day perhaps the dll will have the missing commands that I need to feel comfortable using it. by the way, there's a program on the mac (mAC3dec) that, while not transcoding directly from ac3 to mp3, has the option to use nspsytune and as it is a mac program, i'm sure it uses a library rather than an external program since nobody has been able to compile LAME directly as a mac program (pre OS-X of course). The program states it uses LAME 3.89, but I'm sure there will soon be a 3.90 version. Anyway, maybe it's something to look at.

[DSPguru]

@ChristianHJW
- auto find maximum gain is implemented by BeSweet and not by the GUI.
- i know there's a bug in v0.9 causing choppy output, it won't be a big problem to fix it, just need to find couple of free hours.
- you might want to know that the big change between v0.8 & v0.9 is that v0.9 is written in a very modular manner, as if i it used plug-ins. so i have decoding-codecs (ac3..) & output codecs(mp3/mp2/wavs) and other plug-ins for vobs & ssrc.
this new attidute have becmoe a MUST due to the huge count of features i'm offering in BeSweet.
v0.9 is also dynamiclly allocating memory, depanding on the selected method, and this explains why the choppy bug is tricky.
- beware (regarding what you posted in another thread), the choppy output is not clipping noise, it's just when encoding bigger frames than needed.

@DarkAvenger
i promised you, and will give it to you.
but.. there's one thing i expect from you - be a friend !
you know that i worked very hard on creating this ssrc.dll (which is under lgpl, btw), and you know that many ppl tried doing this before, but faileD, drowning in Naoki's code ('cause he's implementing high-level dsp, and the algorithm nor code aren't documented).
i think I'M acting like a good friend. see the start of the thread :
ssjkakaroto : "i'm using headAC3he, should i move to BeSweet..?"
DSPguru : "headAC3he IS good".

[DarkAvenger]

@DSPGuru

Of course I appreciate your work and I greatly respect it, esp if you consider the short time you needed. If you look into my WhatsNew.txt you'll find credits going to you because of enhancing the Lame dll. Yes, I do see you as a friend, and not foe. That's why I recommended both our proggies at q-bert.org. Don't be afraid.

But you must admit that mine is faster. :)

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by DSPguru @ChristianHJW
- auto find maximum gain is implemented by BeSweet and not by the GUI.


... but it is still using Azid's 'auto find max gain' process, correct ?

Ist it possible to detract a certain number from the max gain found in 1st pass when loading this number as gain for 2nd pass, depending on DRC setting ?

Like 'Gain = AutoGain - x ' and x being

x = 1.0 db for DRC light
x = 2.0 dB for DRC normal
x = 4.0 dB for DRC heavy

I'm not sure about these numbers, but the overflows i got recently were all smaller.

[ssjkakaroto]

thanks for all the replies. now i have another question, can i use --alt-presets in besweet if i use LAME v3.90.2 dll?

[MaTTeR]

Originally posted by ssjkakaroto
thanks for all the replies. now i have another question, can i use --alt-presets in besweet if i use LAME v3.90.2 dll?

As far as I know this isn't really possible at the moement. They are working on a new DLL that will alow this though. Soon we should have it.

[DSPguru]

Originally posted by DarkAvenger
But you must admit that mine is faster. :)
a. you ARE a friend.
b. i never tested it, but if you say it is. i accept it !

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
... but it is still using Azid's 'auto find max gain' process, correct ?
nope. it computes the maxmium gain by ITSELF, and max gain depends on all the settings you set to azid.
did you get overflow in BeSweet's "-g max" mode ?

Originally posted by ssjkakaroto
can i use --alt-presets in besweet if i use LAME v3.90.2 dll?
there are few "hacked" dlls that supports those presets, each dll comes with a text-file describing the mapping of the presets to "quality" values.
i never tested those hacked dlls, but you can Pasqui's post here (http://rilanparty.com/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=11868&pagenumber=1).
it should work fine.


Originally posted by matter
They are working on a new DLL that will alow this though. Soon we should have it.
wish me luck.. ;)

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by DSPguru
nope. it computes the maxmium gain by ITSELF, and max gain depends on all the settings you set to azid.
did you get overflow in BeSweet's "-g max" mode ?

No, never !! In fact i hate to admit i was convinced there were overfows but it wouldnt report them . Hmmmmm ..... very very interesting !!

One point less on my list that needs to be fixed ;) !!

So ..... if the problem with the crackling sound is finally corrected BeSweet and BeSweet GUI are my preferred audio tools ! Time to overwork my Shortguide .... :D

[DSPguru]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
So ..... if the problem with the crackling sound is finally corrected BeSweet and BeSweet GUI are my preferred audio tools ! Time to overwork my Shortguide .... :D
will be corrected soon !