King's Quest II (remake by AGDI)

[MusicallyInspired]

Encode an MP3 at 60 kbps and you'll get the exact same sound.

[Ghost_Rider]

LOL... what inspired you to record the sound of a toilet flushing?  Actually that would make a good replacement sound effect for when Windows shuts down (or even for when it starts up!)

Oh and Fancia, good point about the possibility updating the firmware... I didn't think of that.

[Tom]

Perfect analogy!  Of course, Ogg's can get pretty bad, too, when you get down to those low bitrates....but they'll still have a more "realistic toilet" sound than an MP3.  

[Alistair]

No, I can honestly say that the thought has never so much as crossed my mind.

LOL... what inspired you to record the sound of a toilet flushing?

Perfect analogy!

I absolutely love the analogy.. click here for just that. Sadly 128 kbps MP3, but OGG wasn't around in the old old days when I recorded this.

Speaking of the OGG debate, I wonder as to OGG's decency at recording high-quality ED files, for example- the files you, Tom, would record at VBR or 48 KHz when you used to use MP3. People have said that OGG is useless at quality 6/7 and higher.. what would you think?
Interested to hear your opinion.

- Alistair

[Tom]

I don't know.  Why would they be "useless" at higher bitrates?  Does that mean, you actually match the original quality of the recording at higher bitrates?  The human ear can't hear all the frequencies a sound card can handle, so I don't know where you would draw the line.  I don't typically record music at 48 kHz, only DVD audio tracks.  But my ears are definitely not sensitive enough anymore to hear the subtle difference between CD and DVD stereo audio tracks.  Maybe if I heard side-by-side comparisons.

The closest thing I have to high-quality Ogg files is the KQ2VGA soundtrack, at 44.1 kHz at an Ogg VBR quality setting of 5.  It just didn't seem necessary to go beyond that level.  Ogg is the perfect choice for ED recordings, but I have no problems with MP3's at higher bitrates.  They're just bigger files than Ogg Vorbis, in general.

[Alistair]

Well, the argument is that as you get to qualities 6/7 and beyond, the savings in bitrate/filesize don't match the losses (or lack of increases) in quality. Or something like that. It's all very technical. Personally, I'd much rather settle for your explanation! Thanks for the info.

- Alistair

[Ghost_Rider]

Yeah, I guess it gets to a point where it's almost not worth it.  For example if you are compressing WAV to MP3, and you set the bitrate to 320 kbps.  You are still saving space by compressing it, but a 192 kbps does not sound much worse than a 320 kbps one.. so might as well use 192 kbps and save more space.  Hard to determine what is the best bitrate to use, and find the balance between space vs. quality - although 192 is pretty decent for both.  

How about we make it simple, just like the good old days, and go back to 2-bit mono internal pc speakers?   :wink:

[Laust]

Well, the argument is that as you get to qualities 6/7 and beyond, the savings in bitrate/filesize don't match the losses (or lack of increases) in quality. Or something like that. It's all very technical. Personally, I'd much rather settle for your explanation! Thanks for the info.

There's some truth to this. Vorbis hasn't been "tuned" or optimized for high bitrates yet as most work has been concentrated on bitrates used for streaming (<128kbps I would guess). This is not to say Vorbis is bad at high bitrates, just not as good as it could be.

Word on the street (heh ) has it that a Japanese spinoff of the Vorbis project currently has the best sound. It scored better in an audio test of various Ogg Vorbis forks over at hydrogenaudio.org. I've been using it myself for a while and it's certainly no worse than Vorbis 1.0.1. It can be found here: http://www.geocities.jp/aoyoume/aotuv/index.html

Speaking of listening tests, here's a link to 128kbps listening test (a blind test, so it should provide a fair assessment of the codecs out there) performed (again) by the Hydrogen Audio people earlier in the year. Vorbis does very well indeed.

http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/results.html