Introduction             

In the honored tradition of pitting Winplay against MuseARC, Winamp against NAD, I present Xing AudioCatalyst 1.5 versus Fraunhoffer MP3 Producer 2.1.

Xing is notorious for their 16KHz dropoff which accounted for their speed advantage over other encoders. However, starting with AudioCatalyst 1.5, they introduced a new encoding engine expanding their frequency range past 16KHz to 20KHz.

The results may not be surprising (I can just see you clicking your Back buttons now), but still interesting, so please read on...


Methodology             

Soundclip: INOJ: Love You Down (chorus segment)
Duration: 7.2s
Reasoning: I needed a track w/ a good amount of treble. This is what typically separates the good encoders from the bad ones. Why 7.2 seconds? To generate the spectrum analysis charts below using the entire song would mean having my P2-300 processing away for literally hours. It already took nearly a minute just to make the charts for the 7.2 seconds of audio.

Producer Pro: Encoded WAV clip to MP3 format, then used Fraunhoffer's L3DEC to decode back to WAV format for analyzing inside Cool Edit Pro.

AudioCatalyst: Encoded WAV clip to MP3 format, then used Fraunhoffer's L3DEC to decode back to WAV format for analyzing inside Cool Edit Pro.

Results             

128kbit/s, 9.1% of original size, 1:11 ratio

First, let's look at the 'typical' encoding bitrate of 128000 bit/s. At least AudioCatalyst does a relatively good job at higher than 16KHz frequencies. Though, it seems to call it quits after 17.5-18 KHz. Xing's definitely improved, but Producer still "takes the cake" for best encoding accuracy for this bitrate level.

256kbit/s, 18.2% of original size, 1:5 ratio

As expected, faithful reproduction from both encoders through and beyond 16KHz. However, again Producer is king of the accuracy hill. For what it's worth, Xing's new engine does do a comparatively decent job itself.   Odds are you probably won't notice the difference.

The Bottom Line              

To sum things up, Xing's new engine sure does give Fraunhoffer's a run for its money. Fraunhoffer is still the most accurate encoder to date, but Xing's price and speed makes it a worthy contender. For the better reproduction accuracy, go with Fraunhoffer, but if faster speed is really important to you, then go with Xing.

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