[IIU] Which compressed format sucks the least (was Music for all!)

[Richard Bannister]

On 7 Jan 2005, at 13:23, Colm MacCarthaigh wrote:

> 11 seconds of a same-y piece isn't a very good test! The piece itself 
> is
> isnt a brilliant one for testing either, being percussive and with some
> audio artifacts already present (the fade-out in the last second, and
> the choral recording has a flat "s" sound).

Agreed, it's not the best work for showing artifacts in encoders. 
However, a lot of music *doesn't* show off problems in encoding. If you 
subtract those audio files you can see more clearly what has been lost, 
but for the record,

  1 - Ogg
  2 - MP3
  3 - AAC

I note your caveat about only half a second where the difference was 
audible.

I've noticed that Slashdot readers tend to favour Ogg over everything 
else, despite the fact that it really isn't the be-all and end-all that 
it's made out to be.

Richard