What happened to the Opus Music codec? Quality is awful now.

[Morthawt]

Last time I tested the quality of "Opus Music" on maximum quality on the beta versions it was fantastic. But now that I have upgraded my server and client and tried it there is a quality reduction on the high frequencies. I play some tracks I have made and now high-hats and other high frequency producing instruments sound compressed and have that horrible MP3 sound twinkling effect you get from a low bitrate MP3.

With the beta version I had you could not tell the difference between playing my tracks natively on my own speakers and then listening to them broadcast through TeamSpeak via a virtual audio device.

It is just horrible now.. What has been done? Quality stereo codec was the biggest thing I was anticipating and since experieincing it in the beta I told all my guys to expect to hear my music in crystal clear full stereo sound. This final version makes me out to be a liar.

Here is a youtube video link pre-set to HD quality which will show you the difference between CELT Mono, Opus Voice and Opus Music. The demonstration music is a small snippet of a track I made. You will hear that Opus Music is just horrendously bad quality. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBkAU90_Qgk&hd=1

[Philosound]

Sounds a little like an inversed phase to me, definitely unexpected artefacting.

[Morthawt]

If anyone wants to test on their own system in case its something on my end, or the developers want to do testing, here is the original track you can download: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_gv...it?usp=sharing

[Philosound]

Hm, ok, listening to the original I don't think it's an inversed phase anymore, just bad quality That snare mislead me to it.
I do hope that's not the end of it, I wouldn't like Opus reputation getting hit sounding like that in teamspeak.

[Morthawt]

I know. I would like to get some official feedback on this. It was working flawlessly during the beta tests that I did and now it sounds absolutely terrible. Currently even Opus Voice, while being mono, sounds much clearer than the Opus Music codec..

[PotaBlava]

I know. I would like to get some official feedback on this. It was working flawlessly during the beta tests that I did and now it sounds absolutely terrible. Currently even Opus Voice, while being mono, sounds much clearer than the Opus Music codec..

Do you mind to include an image with the "audio" tab of the channel? and also Settings --> Options --> Playback?

Just for discarding: have you deactivated the 3D sound for the channel? Right-click on the channel --> SetUp 3D sound --> "Enable 3D sound" must be unchecked.

[teampsng]

It was working flawlessly during the beta tests that I did and now it sounds absolutely terrible.

[Morthawt]

Do you mind to include an image with the "audio" tab of the channel? and also Settings --> Options --> Playback?

Just for discarding: have you deactivated the 3D sound for the channel? Right-click on the channel --> SetUp 3D sound --> "Enable 3D sound" must be unchecked.

There is no real point because it is on 10 for quality and codec Opus Music. There are no other settings. I don't use 3D because it's rubbish for what my needs are.

[Morthawt]

Can we get some kind of official acknowledgement / feedback on this problem? The developers should easily be able to fix this problem given that I provided a link to the original track I used for testing.

[Chris]

Listening to the track with Opus Music and locally through some player, didn't sound any different to me.
Also tried the other codecs you tried and it sounded best on opus music (as expected).

[Morthawt]

Well if you have the sensory acuity you can clearly hear the mp3 "twinkle" sound on the snare drum. It sounds awful and other people have detected it also. I guess being someone who actively has a keen ear for music makes it so much easier to tell the horrible quality. It is awful to my ears. Plus if you have a loss of high pitch hearing you may not be physically able to detect it. People with good/average hearing should clearly be able to hear twinkling horrible sounds on the snare drum etc.

[Philosound]

Hm, wondering if report/answer could have anything to do with the discrepancy of reports.
Depending on the way the music is delivered to TS3 (aka some(?) music bots versus loopback methods)?

[Morthawt]

I am using the same method I used when I tested the beta/pre-release version. I play the music in Media Monkey which its output is a "Virtual Audio Cable" device. Then in TS I use that device for the microphone input, that way I get 100% identical quality potential compared to other methods such as simple stereo mix techniques. It is hard to describe, but this horrible effect is like what you end up with on a badly compressed MP3 to where some of the high's have a warbling/twinkling sound distorting them. Its just horrible to listen to.

Someone I know today wanted to test the codec out since I told him it was EPIC, weeks ago. So we went into the server, I set it all up and broadcast my music and his instant reaction was "put the quality on 10, thats sounds s****y". I told him that IS on 10 quality. He was not impressed at all.

[LeonG]

Okay, after playing around with all the Opus encoding settings (Not Teamspeak) I think I know what is causing the issue.
TS3 is using a framesize less than 960 per channel(<20ms delay) which causes those artifacts at low bitrates. Lower framesizes are acceptable at higher bitrates, but not at 64Kbps and lower. I was testing at Mono and it probably will be even worse at Stereo.
Other settings such as 'Expected Packet Loss Percentage' and 'Use Inband Forward Error Correction' only slightly altered the quality unless the percentage is very high.
Is it possible for the developers to confirm what settings they use for the Opus Encoder?

Edit: nm, I think this answers my question:

The delay setting has been removed as it doesn't save enough bandwidth to justify the decrease in sound quality. As such we decided to simplify the client by removing it. The delay is now fixed and cannot be changed.

The delay settings has been removed and is now fixed on the lowest setting that was available in previous releases.

From: http://forum.teamspeak.com/showthrea...-0-10-released

[Morthawt]

So what is causing the terrible quality with my track? The stereo codec should have the highest quality. Even Opus Voice beats the quality of the Opus Music, sure its only mono but the level of distortion is zero compared to the Music version.