ExtremeTech's Audio comparision (WMA won, then Vorbis, AAC, mp3)

[avih]

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1561566,00.asp
seems a pretty decent technical audio test, but no subjective listenning tests. the results are also based of 'compatibility' (mp3: nearly everywhere, wma: some stand alone and windows, aac: iPod, vorbis: few stand alones)


my BIG mistake. it IS based on subjective listenning tests (the way they defined it, sort of in real-world scenarios), and also show the spectrum of the signal.

sorry for thr rush post. still, it's a good read.

[bond]

this test is totally crap

1) they seemed to have mixed some wma lossless encodes (which are 100% identical quality to the source) between the wma9 encodes "purely out of curiosity" but still counted votes on these for wma9 std (wma lossless is a 100% different codec of course and has only the name in common with wma9 std...):
Notice that we also included a WMA9 Lossless score on the VBR table. We included one such track on each CD, purely out of curiosity. 2) also on their final "overall scores" (http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1560792,00.asp) results table @ 128kbps aac has the same score as wma9 (both 4.27), on their "vbr" table aac has even more than wma9 (aac 4.52 vs wma9 4.10),
but still in the summary at the end they claim that wma9 provides the "best 128k and VBR sound quality", whereas aac provides "good sound quality"...
most people will of course only read the final results and announce them, altough extremetech claims things there, which are different to their own results shown a page before :rolleyes:
is this dumbness or imposture?

but i dont even wonder about this, their video codec comparison was crap already...


i will better wait for the results of rjamorims multiformat @ 128kbps listening test starting next week

[symonjfox]

I think it's a commercial trick to give popularity to WMA.

Also the HD-DVD standard that uses WMV9 and doesn't allow MPEG4 AdvancedSimpleProfile is a commercial move.

I made a lot of tests, and I think that WMA9 is not as good as they want to make us believe (expecially if bitrate > 128 kbs stereo).


They also used LC AAC, but I really think that if they used Nero HE-AAC, the result would be different.

[johnman]

the more i read of the "test" the more i got the feeling it was biased. Besides that the test itself is totaly useless, it also is impossible to reproduce the results since they didnt post their samples. If a test gets surprising results, and it is impossible to repeat the test, the test has no value at all. All the comments on the site itself are also negative. It was nice to read, but thats about it :)

To me its nothing more then a little advertisement for the wma codec, and a little anti-advertisement for mp3.