Earlier we announced that Rarewares was doing a public listening test on 64 kb/s compressed audio samples. The site tested the next generation audio codecs; Nero's HE AAC codec, Ogg Vorbis, MP3 Pro, Real Audio Gecko, Windows Media v9, Quicktime AAC LE 6.3 and FhG and compared the results with Lame 3.90.3 at 128 kb/s. Many next generation audio codecs promise that their compression is as good as MP3 at 128 kb/s at half the bit rate, which results in smaller file sizes, unfortunately this doesn't seem to be reality. The conclusion of the test is clear:
Lame MP3 at 128kbps wins, followed by Ahead/Nero HE AAC on 2nd place, CodingTechnologies' MP3pro on 3rd place, Ogg Vorbis on 4th place, Real Audio, QuickTime AAC and WMA9 tied near the middle of the graph, and FhG MP3 definitely at the bottom |
Ahead seems to have done a great job on their AAC codec, because it clearily beats codes from e.g Real, Apple (Quicktime) and Microsoft (WMA). More information about the results can be found on Rarewares.com.
Source: Rarewares.com
