West of Scotland Hi-Fi Club

2010-2011 season

Considering Codecs

On Friday 9th March 2007 the club did some blind listening on different codecs with interesting results:-

The test was split into 3 groups the first comparing popular high end codecs.WMA,MP3, AAC and OGG VORBIS Here are these results:

TEST A

* denotes original uncompressed file

From the above we can see that Ogg Vorbis was the best in the Orchestral section, and AAC won the Jazz. So much for MP3.

TEST B

Now we went on to DVI APCM, IMA 4:1, and uLaw 2:1

* denotes original uncompressed file

From the above we see that for an 18M file DVI APCM won in the Orchestral section, and also in the Jazz section.

TEST C

Now we went onto codecs with a very high compression rate  QDesign Music 2 and Qualcomm Purevoice

* denotes original uncompressed file

From the above we can see that for a 340K file!!! QDM2 won in the orchestral section and also for a 1M file it also won in the Jazz section.

So the best codecs are Ogg Vorbis, AAC, DVI APCM and QDM 2

Try the 340K file yourself here

Here are the details of each Codec Setting

Copyright Alistair Biggar
For problems or questions regarding this web contact albiggar@ntlworld.com 
Last updated: 03 May, 2010.