5 ms·

Opus you'd get away with half the bitrate, or less, than MP3 for a podcast. Gets to be somewhat significant given the length of many podcasts, those 64kbps or s

Opus you'd get away with half the bitrate, or less, than MP3 for a podcast. Gets to be somewhat significant given the length of many podcasts, those 64kbps or so that you save add up over time. Though I agree, the "works everywhere" aspect is really the overriding factor: everyone can play it, all the services will accept it, etc. I think the only way you'd see it get used significantly is if a major service was transcoding to it, but I don't know that podcast bandwidth is a sufficient cost for anyone to bother.

CharlesW 3y ago
HE-AAC is a bit better than Opus, plus has the benefit of MP3's "works everywhere" experience. I posted more detail elsewhere in the thread if you're interested.
- quikee 3y ago
  xHE-AAC from 2016 (also known as USAC) yes. The older HE-AAC from 2003 and HE-AACv2 are not. Codecs have similar names, but they are different and released at different times.
  - CharlesW 3y ago
    USAC doesn't meet the "ubiquitous" requirement for this use case. Regarding your claim that Opus is better than HE-AAC, here's a "Quality vs Bitrate" chart from opus-codec.org, the home of Opus: https://opus-codec.org/static/comparison/quality.svg https://opus-codec.org/static/comparison/quality.svg Note that AAC (presumably they mean "Main Profile" rather than AAC-LC) has effectively the same efficiency as Opus. HE-AAC and HE-AACv2 have a higher efficiency than both Opus and AAC, and works great at lower bitrates in comparison to AAC.
    - quikee 3y ago
      "Regarding your claim that Opus is better than HE-AAC, here's a "Quality vs Bitrate" chart from opus-codec.org, the home of Opus: https://opus-codec.org/static/comparison/quality.svg https://opus-codec.org/static/comparison/quality.svg Note that AAC (presumably they mean "Main Profile" rather than AAC-LC) has effectively the same efficiency as Opus. HE-AAC and HE-AACv2 have a higher efficiency than both Opus and AAC, and works great at lower bitrates in comparison to AAC." This chart just roughly outlines (according to the feeling of Opus developers at that time) what to expect from Opus - a wide range of useful bitrates. It's not anything that was actually measured or something that can be used for drawing any conclusions from it. I mean - those nice curves and lack of any detail about the codecs used should give it away. According to public (double blind) listening test that were performed by the Hydrogen audio group Opus does win over best HE-AAC codecs available at time when the test was performed - both at 64kbps and 96kbps bitrates [1] (Multiformat Tests). [1] https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Hydrogenaudio_Listening_Tests https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Hydrogenaudio_Li...

CharlesW 3y ago

HE-AAC is a bit better than Opus, plus has the benefit of MP3's "works everywhere" experience. I posted more detail elsewhere in the thread if you're interested.

quikee 3y ago
xHE-AAC from 2016 (also known as USAC) yes. The older HE-AAC from 2003 and HE-AACv2 are not. Codecs have similar names, but they are different and released at different times.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  USAC doesn't meet the "ubiquitous" requirement for this use case. Regarding your claim that Opus is better than HE-AAC, here's a "Quality vs Bitrate" chart from opus-codec.org, the home of Opus: https://opus-codec.org/static/comparison/quality.svg https://opus-codec.org/static/comparison/quality.svg Note that AAC (presumably they mean "Main Profile" rather than AAC-LC) has effectively the same efficiency as Opus. HE-AAC and HE-AACv2 have a higher efficiency than both Opus and AAC, and works great at lower bitrates in comparison to AAC.
  - quikee 3y ago
    "Regarding your claim that Opus is better than HE-AAC, here's a "Quality vs Bitrate" chart from opus-codec.org, the home of Opus: https://opus-codec.org/static/comparison/quality.svg https://opus-codec.org/static/comparison/quality.svg Note that AAC (presumably they mean "Main Profile" rather than AAC-LC) has effectively the same efficiency as Opus. HE-AAC and HE-AACv2 have a higher efficiency than both Opus and AAC, and works great at lower bitrates in comparison to AAC." This chart just roughly outlines (according to the feeling of Opus developers at that time) what to expect from Opus - a wide range of useful bitrates. It's not anything that was actually measured or something that can be used for drawing any conclusions from it. I mean - those nice curves and lack of any detail about the codecs used should give it away. According to public (double blind) listening test that were performed by the Hydrogen audio group Opus does win over best HE-AAC codecs available at time when the test was performed - both at 64kbps and 96kbps bitrates [1] (Multiformat Tests). [1] https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Hydrogenaudio_Listening_Tests https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Hydrogenaudio_Li...