Hello everyone. This topic was already discussed 2 years ago on t/199444/ (I cannot revive it from denied) - but was considered invalid without apparent reasoning, I would like to come through the arguments given against it, give my reasoning and answer those arguments.
Basically what I want is to make osu! support Opus audio codec and maybe even remove the mp3 support in future for following reasons:
If you've never seen ziin's guide on how to determine audio quality, be sure to check it: t/320007 - That's just so I can show a little comparison. I converted a flac file to mp3 (192kbps) and to opus (96kbps), that means I can now put it into a Spek as explained in ziin's guide.
This maybe told you that opus caught some additional frequencies, but it's not that much of a difference, "I cannot hear those frequencies it anyway". The thing is, if you are a healthy person, you should clearly hear up to 20kHz. 128kbps - 192kbps mp3s usually cut somewhere between 15kHz to 18kHz, opus however attempts to cut only above 20kHz and also as you see mp3 skipped even some frequencies in some parts, like beginning, end and all the gaps. This is what makes the mp3 distinctive from flac - the lossless one. If there are less gaps and frequencies are cut higher, it is more near the lossless version and it will be harder to tell the difference.
Above was a visual reference, which is always nice to have, because you can use it as a logical argument. On the other hand, there is also possibility to tell the difference by sound. This is a little bit harder to compare, but is still clearly possible. You don't really need to be audiophile or anything, being audiophile is more like liking the "clarity" of sound than being able to hear better than other people. What matters more here are headphones you are using, I'm not saying you need any professional headphones, you don't need to throw away 400$ for "The headphones used to mix in every major studio." (just making fun of Beats, but you've got the point). Honestly, I just took old 13$ Panasonic headphones and could tell the difference, but it is obviously more distinguishable in better headphones, I could personally tell opus sounded more clean and there was better clarity than the mp3 and in overall is more similar to the original.. Obviously, it's not like you're going to put on headphones and be like: "Oh my god! That's the best quality I ever heard!" - You're most likely not doing this even with lossless audio. If you want to compare yourself, he's the little test on above files.
The best way to compare is opening Audacity, putting one sound to left ear, second to right ear, listen to only one at one time, but swap from time to time.
From two above comparisons, we can say that Opus has slightly better qualities than mp3, now consider that we were using 96kbps Opus versus 192kbps mp3. That turns it into a quite more interesting situation, because for about half the bitrate, we get even better result.
Another reason for Opus being better is its low response time. If you look at wikipedia, you can see that response time of MP3 is higher than 100ms, while Opus is 5-66.5ms.
Now, arguments that were given or could be given, and why I think they're incorrect:
I hope this won't be considered a duplicate, because the old one was already in completed ones, so I cannot bump it. This time, I hope people will try to defend either Opus or mp3 with arguments that make sense and are relevant to the topic and that this won't be rejected for reason as previous. "It's new, we don't want to change the ol' good mp3."
Similar could apply for x265 and VP9 support for videos. It's not that hard to update it and there's essentially no reason to not do that, that's different topic however.
Let out your opinions and discuss!
If I quoted you, it's nothing against you, it's just something against your argument. Nothing is meant offensively.
Basically what I want is to make osu! support Opus audio codec and maybe even remove the mp3 support in future for following reasons:
If you've never seen ziin's guide on how to determine audio quality, be sure to check it: t/320007 - That's just so I can show a little comparison. I converted a flac file to mp3 (192kbps) and to opus (96kbps), that means I can now put it into a Spek as explained in ziin's guide.
This maybe told you that opus caught some additional frequencies, but it's not that much of a difference, "I cannot hear those frequencies it anyway". The thing is, if you are a healthy person, you should clearly hear up to 20kHz. 128kbps - 192kbps mp3s usually cut somewhere between 15kHz to 18kHz, opus however attempts to cut only above 20kHz and also as you see mp3 skipped even some frequencies in some parts, like beginning, end and all the gaps. This is what makes the mp3 distinctive from flac - the lossless one. If there are less gaps and frequencies are cut higher, it is more near the lossless version and it will be harder to tell the difference.
Above was a visual reference, which is always nice to have, because you can use it as a logical argument. On the other hand, there is also possibility to tell the difference by sound. This is a little bit harder to compare, but is still clearly possible. You don't really need to be audiophile or anything, being audiophile is more like liking the "clarity" of sound than being able to hear better than other people. What matters more here are headphones you are using, I'm not saying you need any professional headphones, you don't need to throw away 400$ for "The headphones used to mix in every major studio." (just making fun of Beats, but you've got the point). Honestly, I just took old 13$ Panasonic headphones and could tell the difference, but it is obviously more distinguishable in better headphones, I could personally tell opus sounded more clean and there was better clarity than the mp3 and in overall is more similar to the original.. Obviously, it's not like you're going to put on headphones and be like: "Oh my god! That's the best quality I ever heard!" - You're most likely not doing this even with lossless audio. If you want to compare yourself, he's the little test on above files.
The best way to compare is opening Audacity, putting one sound to left ear, second to right ear, listen to only one at one time, but swap from time to time.
From two above comparisons, we can say that Opus has slightly better qualities than mp3, now consider that we were using 96kbps Opus versus 192kbps mp3. That turns it into a quite more interesting situation, because for about half the bitrate, we get even better result.
Another reason for Opus being better is its low response time. If you look at wikipedia, you can see that response time of MP3 is higher than 100ms, while Opus is 5-66.5ms.
Now, arguments that were given or could be given, and why I think they're incorrect:
mp3 is the most used and most famousDon't be so conservative. If something is used often, it doesn't mean it is the best thing in the world. If something is old, it sometimes needs a better replacement. Do you think that 18 years not updated codec will be better than relatively new codec? Possible, but not true in this case. MP3 was never open source, Opus is open source, so it is easier to implement and improve, because community can improve.
Nothing against TheVileOne, but straight up this was a rejection without even thinking about the idea. He gave some arguments for "why", but was rejected with "why are you trying to convince us?" That in my opinion isn't the best answer here and was really irrelevant.TheVileOne wrote:
You seem a little too obsessed with this audio format. Why are you trying so hard to sell us this new format?
It's first time I hear about this codec, we should stick to the standard!Even Opus is standardized, is that what you want? Anyways, have you ever heard of Vorbis or FLAC? These were developed by Xiph. Vorbis was already a bit better than mp3, but we could say that would have no benefit on osu!, the difference wouldn't be noticable at all and it's delay is same as mp3. FLAC is probably the most famous codec for lossless audio. And guess what! Xiph is developer of Opus and is highly supported by Google at current time, therefore it's not just a codec for people who want something different, but it's actually very successful.
That basically means Opus is more appropriate as it has lower delay, which is in my opinion more suitable for rhythm games.Lach wrote:
This is a rhythm game, where the primary objective is to have an audio track that is fine for clicking circles to.
It's just 96kbps difference, that's nothing. It's not gonna help server load either.Let's admit it, mp3s are 1/2 of Songs folder size (actually a little bit below 1/2), at least from what I have on computer. We have videos, backgrounds, storyboards, all that takes space and quite a lot of it, but still, even 1/2 of file size is quite impressive. I made a little program in Python to check length of each mp3 in Songs folder, return it's real size and then potential, if it was Opus with 96kbps. You can see the code here and try it yourself if you don't believe in this result. The output of that was:
- Current size = 44926.39706993103 megabytes
- Potential size = 23457.618713378906 megabytes
I hope this won't be considered a duplicate, because the old one was already in completed ones, so I cannot bump it. This time, I hope people will try to defend either Opus or mp3 with arguments that make sense and are relevant to the topic and that this won't be rejected for reason as previous. "It's new, we don't want to change the ol' good mp3."
Similar could apply for x265 and VP9 support for videos. It's not that hard to update it and there's essentially no reason to not do that, that's different topic however.
Let out your opinions and discuss!
If I quoted you, it's nothing against you, it's just something against your argument. Nothing is meant offensively.