Since the last Rarewares multiformat 128kbps audio quality test, there has been some progress in the audio encoding field. Apple has launched the iTunes for Windows, tuned OGG Vorbis variants have emerged and LAME has taken steps forward as well. The fact that AAC format has been adopted by some commercial music providers, such as iTunes, gives this quality comparison additonal importance. Also featured is the Sony's ATRAC3, which is now used for other than MiniDisc purposes too.
The encoders and parameters tested are:
LAME encoder 3.96 -V5 --athaa-sensitivity 1 Apple iTunes 4.2 128kbps AAC Ogg Vorbis aoTuV tuning b2 -q 4.35 Musepack 1.14b --quality 4.15 --xlevel Sony Atrac3132kbps Microsoft WMA9 Std Bitrate VBR 128kbps
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