mp3HD with the tools and CDDA.

Red_Breast · Post by **Red_Breast** » Sun May 03, 2009 3:16 am

I've been experimenting with this new mp3HD format.
I managed to convert .wavs (from redbook CDDA games - actually it was Monkey1) with the encoder and they work fine with ScummVM. (I wasn't expecting any problems here)
I also tried to convert Indy4's monster.sou but it wouldn't work. I can't work out if I'm doing something wrong or not.
Anyway my question is does 'compress_scumm_sou' expect lame as the mp3 encoder? I've never used any other mp3 encoder but I assume there's more command line options than just lame.

If anybody wants to try mp3HD (lossless and lossy in one file) it's by Thomson but they will direct you to All4MP3 if you want to download the command-line encoder/decoders. They have Win/MacOSX/Linux flavors. I think I'll stick with Flac for lossless anyway which also has the open-source advantage.

http://www.all4mp3.com/Learn_mp3_hd_1.aspx

jimbob0i0 · Post by **jimbob0i0** » Sun May 03, 2009 10:38 am

Hmm although it is backwards compatible with current mp3 decoders they won't get the benefit of the mp3HD encoding from what I'm reading (hence why there is a specific winamp plugin). Given that the mp3 decoding support for ScummVM is provided by the MAD library which doesn't support Mp3HD decoding I'm curious as to why you'd try this with ScummVM audio tracks...

Red_Breast · Post by **Red_Breast** » Sun May 03, 2009 8:42 pm

Like I said it works for CDDA but not for compressing file types like .sou. I tried the Monkey1 CDDA with mp3HD and Lame. I'm not much of an audiophile but I can always hear the difference between Flac and Ogg/Lame ripped CDDA. With Monkey1 the mp3HD versions of the tracks were much better quality. For purposes of playing Monkey1 I have Flac versions of the tracks and I was having trouble working out what version I preferred. Flac or mp3HD.
So is MAD only used for playback (in ScummVM) of files like compressed .sous? Seeing as I could play the CDDA. Because if MAD is used for the CDDA as well why did the Monkey1 mp3HD sound so much better than Monkey1 Lame when played in ScummVM?

Like I said for lossless I'm going to carry on with Flac.
Apparently with mp3HD you get better playback on desktop and you can use the same file on your portable mp3 player. If I had a portable mp3 player I'd prefer to make a second version of the music for the player. It seems to be aimed at people who just want to rip once and maybe not so proficient with PCs but don't mind using command line tools

hippy dave · Post by **hippy dave** » Mon May 04, 2009 1:47 pm

yeah mp3hd doesn't seem like an idea that will catch on in any big way. so you can make a file that can be played both as lossless on your computer and as mp3 on your portable player, but portable players generally have less storage space available so why eat it up with lossless data that's not going to be used?
i'll stick with flac for my lossless and mp3 for my, um, mp3s

jimbob0i0 · Post by **jimbob0i0** » Wed May 06, 2009 10:15 am

What was the lossy version bitrate? If it was a higher quality lossy encode then it would have sounded better....

MAD is used for decoding any mp3 encoded data.... ogg for ogg vorbis stuff (or tremor).

So far as the CDDA audio is concerned it is no longer CDDA as soon as it's ripped. It's then just a regular wav file at 44.1KHz, 16bit stereo audio until it's encoded to ogg, mp3, etc.

Lame is a very good encoder (depending on options) but maybe the lossy encoder as part of the mp3HD utilities is just better?