Post by RockHard on Jul 27, 2016 23:07:57 GMT -5
Better than mp3!
Man, I was real excited when I found hi-rez m4a's the size of 320's had as good audio as flacs & that those same m4a's could be converted to flac & on a spectro looked identical but I read an article on opus audio & the rave reviews about it so I had to check it out & took a flac file that was 37.6 mb's & converted into a 150kbs 48k vbr opus file that was only 4.8 mb's, then compared the opus against the flac it came from, an 11mb hi-rez m4a & an 11mb 320 mp3.
I was totally amazed, the opus had nearly similar the fidelity of the flac or m4a with all the dynamic range & there was no contest comparing it against the mp3 twice it's size, it blew it away! So I'm taking all my flacs & duplicating an opus file as I did with my m4a's.
My flac singles collection of about 9,500 songs takes up 250 gigs. Converting it to opus only took up around 45 gigs & to hi-rez m4a took about 80 gigs.
I figure I'd report this to those who like to convert their hi-rez collections for listening on limited storage portable devices that insist on audio as good as it gets. Only drawback is opus isn't supported on all players yet. News is android 5 will be supporting it. For desktop & lappy users, newer versions of Aimp, VLC, Foobar, & Winamp are the better known that reportedly do & the mobile versions should as well There's a plugin for older versions of winamp @ www.getwinamp.net/mirror/website/FORUMS_WINAMP_C/SHOWTHREADCAFB.HTM?p=2966325
I tried converting the opus back to flac to see if it would do the same as the m4a's with no loss of spectrum but no cigar on that. The flac was past the 22.1k limit of spectro & the opus clocked in at 20.8k which was better than the 320 mp3 @ 20.5k. It sounded still better than the mp3 but was slightly degraded from the original flac.
After looking a bit more, I found that Opus clips all signal above 20k so that explains what I saw on spectro. But unlike mp3 that tapers off well before its upper limit, Opus displayed strong signal to 20k then drops off as sharp as a cliff on the graph.
If you'd like to do some comparing, I'd get a copy of TA audio converter @ sourceforge.net/projects/taudioconverter/files/ & convert some flacs to hear for yourself. I grabbed the oldest portable version which reportedly isn't as good as the current version but I run XP & the latest version wouldn't run from some missing dll I didn't have. The old version sounds awesome, if the newer version has any noticeable improvement, that would have to sound better than a flac. Hmmm, can a flac be out done? that would be even more amazing!
I'm wondering why mp3 is still around with all the better alternatives, kinda reminds me of 8 tracks after cassettes proved to be a better medium to play music but 8 track was slow to fade away.
I was totally amazed, the opus had nearly similar the fidelity of the flac or m4a with all the dynamic range & there was no contest comparing it against the mp3 twice it's size, it blew it away! So I'm taking all my flacs & duplicating an opus file as I did with my m4a's.
My flac singles collection of about 9,500 songs takes up 250 gigs. Converting it to opus only took up around 45 gigs & to hi-rez m4a took about 80 gigs.
I figure I'd report this to those who like to convert their hi-rez collections for listening on limited storage portable devices that insist on audio as good as it gets. Only drawback is opus isn't supported on all players yet. News is android 5 will be supporting it. For desktop & lappy users, newer versions of Aimp, VLC, Foobar, & Winamp are the better known that reportedly do & the mobile versions should as well There's a plugin for older versions of winamp @ www.getwinamp.net/mirror/website/FORUMS_WINAMP_C/SHOWTHREADCAFB.HTM?p=2966325
I tried converting the opus back to flac to see if it would do the same as the m4a's with no loss of spectrum but no cigar on that. The flac was past the 22.1k limit of spectro & the opus clocked in at 20.8k which was better than the 320 mp3 @ 20.5k. It sounded still better than the mp3 but was slightly degraded from the original flac.
After looking a bit more, I found that Opus clips all signal above 20k so that explains what I saw on spectro. But unlike mp3 that tapers off well before its upper limit, Opus displayed strong signal to 20k then drops off as sharp as a cliff on the graph.
If you'd like to do some comparing, I'd get a copy of TA audio converter @ sourceforge.net/projects/taudioconverter/files/ & convert some flacs to hear for yourself. I grabbed the oldest portable version which reportedly isn't as good as the current version but I run XP & the latest version wouldn't run from some missing dll I didn't have. The old version sounds awesome, if the newer version has any noticeable improvement, that would have to sound better than a flac. Hmmm, can a flac be out done? that would be even more amazing!
I'm wondering why mp3 is still around with all the better alternatives, kinda reminds me of 8 tracks after cassettes proved to be a better medium to play music but 8 track was slow to fade away.
