The question came up the other day, was AAC a superior
compression over say WMA or MP3? As fate would have it, ExtremeTech did a
comparison of four very common codecs, namely Ogg Vorbis, MP3, AAC and WMA.
In addition, this was a human test, not a lab test.
It's fun to read as it is a single blind test, the
people did not know which codec they were hearing and the tracks were of several
genres. A blind test is very surprising sometimes and when used properly, can
really shock some of the testers.
In a blind test of ice cream that I was
once in, the most popular televised brand that everyone "knew" was simply
the best, came in dead last. You could hear people gasp as they unveileded the
products at the end of the comparison. Not only had they been eating the worst
ice cream, they were paying a premium price due to those TV
commercials!
virtually any portable music player or with any audio application, regardless of platform. It's quite simply ubiquitous. We searched far and wide to find the best-sounding encoder around and believe that the latest build of the LAME code is it, yet even then the sound quality didn't quite stand up to the competition, and 64k files sound like they're being played back through a tin can and string. If you want to make sure your digital music can be played anywhere, MP3 is the way to go -- otherwise it should be avoided.
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There is a lot more to this comparison to be found
over at ExtremeTech, including the scores for each codec when played at
64 kbps and 128 kbps. Wonder what experiences our readers have had. What sounds
best to you?
Source: ExtremeTech
