[MEncoder-users] Why use TOOLS/calcbpp.pl and scale ?

[RC]

On Fri, 3 Mar 2006 09:30:06 +0000
Martin Collins <martin at mkcollins.org> wrote:

> > or the metallic sounds of the hull being
> > compressed and the engine noise in Das Boot.  They sound like
> > they're being played back through a tin can... underwater.  
> 
> Entirely appropriate, surely :-)

Unfortunately, better terms to describe audio distortion just don't
exist.  Unlike the distortions you hear with lame, toolame, etc., you
can't even GUESS what these noises are supposed to sound like.  I guess
you could say it sounds like parts of the audio were downsampled to
8000Hz (yes, it's really that bad) while the rest sound perfect.

> I've not done much encoding lately so I doubt I've used aoTuv. That's
> not to say aoTuv is to blame for your distortions but newer software
> is not always better.

Official libvorbis-1.1 (and up) is based on AoTuv v2.

I also heard very similar artifacts when encoding different movies with
Vorbis 1.0, so it's obviously not exclusive to Aotuv.

> I recently upgraded to alsa and it produces horrible distortion, even
> when playing CDs, which the old OSS driver didn't do.

There are sometimes bugs in soundcard drivers, but it sounds more likely
you haven't gotten the hang of the different style of mixer yet...