[FFmpeg-user] Compare quality of 2 audio files

[Moritz Barsnick]

On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 14:29:40 +0200, Nicolas George wrote:
> Le primidi 11 messidor, an CCXXV, Rodolfo Medina a écrit :
> > Now, supposed one doesn't know, how is it possibile to tell which one of the
> > two is best quality and which one is the worst?
> 
> If we had an automated way of detecting that, life would be much easier
> for people who invent codecs.
> 
> You need to listen to both files and decide which one feels better.

Exactly! I was wondering about the whole point of this thread. The
concept of lossy encoding is of course to introduce a difference to the
original - a difference which allows storing in less bits per (e.g.)
sample. The difference can be visually seen in the waveform or spectrum
(or others), but hardly heard by the ear - that's the magic.

And unlike video, it seems there are few, if any, methods to measure
the *perceived* quality of audio. Check here for some ramblings:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2945531/determining-the-best-audio-quality

But I challange you to find an algorithm which can compare two audio
tracks. (And you need someone with a good ear to confirm its findings.
Or reference material and encodings such as SQAM.) But if you do find
it, and it's "free" to use, please implement an ffmpeg filter with it.
:-)

Cheers,
Moritz