Hydrogenaudio Listening Tests
From time to time, various HydrogenAudio members have conducted listening tests, both private and public, to evaluate the merit of lossy encoding technologies at a point in time. These test results are provided for the explicit purpose of documenting the performance of various codecs in relation to one another, in turn providing useful data in gauging the best, most efficient encoder over certain bitrates at the time the test was conducted.
It should be noted that these tests may become obsolete over time as development of the tested codecs progress. With that in mind, please ensure that you consult the most recent test results before drawing conclusions.
When you read the test results, you may come across unfamiliar terminology, especially concerning artifacts. ff123's Artifact Training Page is the place to go to understand what these 'artifacts' are all about.
Note: There is no such thing as listening tests for Lossless compression, as recordings encoded using Lossless codecs are, by nature, bit-identical in their output to their respective original uncompressed recordings. When testing Lossless codecs, only performance characteristics are taken into account (e.g. compression ration, encode/decode speed, etc). If you are interested in these aspects of lossless encoding, take a look at the Lossless comparison page, instead.
Format-specific Tests
All tests sorted by date, with older ones at top. All dates are in ISO8601 format.
AAC
| Date | Title Samples |
Performed by | Type | Codecs | Links |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004-12-09 | Ahead vs Apple 128-kbps Classical |
Guruboolez | Private | iTunes 4.1.052, 4.7.042; Nero 2.5.9.7, 2.9.998 CBR, 2.9.998 VBR |
HA Thread |
| 2005-09-05 | 48- & 64-kbps HE-AAC Classical |
Guruboolez | Private | CT aacPlus v.2 48- & 64-kbps Helix 11.0.0.1897, Nero 3.2.0.20 VBR |
HA Thread |
| 2006-02-05 | 48-kbps HE-AAC Classical |
Ivan Dimkovic | Public | Nero HE-AAC v1 & v2 | HA Thread |
| 2006-02-20 | 48-kbps HE-AAC General |
Gabriel | Public | 3gpp (v1), CT (v1 & v2), Nero (v1 & v2) | HA Thread Complete Result |
MP3
| Date | Title Samples |
Performed by | Type | Codecs | Links | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 2004-01-18 | Dithering Test (1) Special |
Guruboolez | Private | MP3 Decoders: MAD, LAME, Fraunhofer, foobar2000 |
HA Thread | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2004-11-15 | 130-kbps LAME rjamorim |
Guruboolez | Private | LAME 3.90.3 ABR, 3.96.1 ABR, 3.96.1 VBR | HA Thread | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2005-01-11 | 128-kbps LAME ff123 |
Guruboolez | Private | LAME 3.90.3, 3.96.1, 3.97a5 | HA Thread | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2005-10-17 | LAME 3.98 -V5 Classical |
Guruboolez | Private | LAME 3.98: -V5, -V5 --vbr-new, -V5 --vbr-new --athaa-sensitivity 1 |
HA Thread | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| 2008-10-17 | 128-kbps Various |
Sebastian Mares | Public | LAME 3.97, LAME 3.98.2, iTunes, FhG, Helix | HA Thread Complete Result } Notes: (1) Performed under extreme listening conditions not reproducible on daily listening. MPC
Vorbis
WMA
Multiformat Tests
External TestsOther people have held listening tests in venues outside of Hydrogenaudio (although the organizers of the tests tend to be HA members :). The results of these tests are found below:
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