Talk:Joint encoding

Some new merge?
Bad suggestion. We can't endlessly merge encodements into bigger and bigger umberellas for every programing group that comes out with them. Then what? Merging the progaming group Wikis? Then all audio-related Wikis?

merge request misguided?
The incentive of my merge request was for merely the edit history from the previous article before it was moved. The only reason I added the merge request was so the history of the old article (before the move) could be spliced into this one.

Was my merge request misguided? Is this kind of merge even possible? Frogtumor 20:54, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Clean-up
Slightly convoluted now. --194.251.240.117 11:06, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Joint stereo poorly defined
I got the impression from the hydrogenaudio forums and wiki that "joint" stereo referred to the ability of a format to support different types of stereo encoding in the same data stream – that is there aren't "types of joint stereo" as this article suggests, but rather just that from frame to frame within the file, the type of stereo encoding (intensity, mid/side, L/R) can vary. Someone please confirm and adjust the article accordingly. Thanks — mjb 07:52, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

The article does not need adjusting. Hydrogenaudio tends to have some slightly inaccurate information in it when it comes to defining some things. The way it's written in this article is correct. Dewdude 01:40, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

References & Human Hearing
I don't think that its proven that all humans cannot tell from where sounds of all such pitches come, or at what point the pitch becomes incomprehendible. Anyways, some good sources need to be cited so we can learn about this. Anyone who knows anything about hearing should be able to correct me on this specific issue, but the issue of having more info in general is important.Dean Sayers 02:15, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

The ability to tell directional sound varies from one person to another. It's been stated that our ears do lose the ability to detect directional sound in the upper part of the frequency range. There are bones in the inner-ear that have more to do with directional sound than the ear-drum itself does. Dewdude 01:48, 14 November 2007 (UTC)

A well-trained or healthy ear can easily determine the direction of a particular sound, as in say, the military. A blind person for that matter, with their heightened remaining senses, could easily tell where you're looking or in general where any given sound comes from. As far as pitch range goes, there is a general audio frequency range among all humans with perhaps some having a slightly more expanded range than others.

-Alan 17:44, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

LP's as an example of joint-stereo
This statement is entirely inaccurate. I have deleted it from the article. LP's do not use a sum/difference method...each channel is cut at a 45 degree angle. Dewdude 01:43, 14 November 2007 (UTC)


 * Oh no! It does. It does M/S with a mechanical encoder/decoder. Artoria2e5 🌉 11:35, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

I must agree partially with Artoria2e5. While stereo LP's are not M/S encoding they do meet the criteria in the first sentence in the article: "joint encoding refers to a joining of several channels of similar information during encoding in order to obtain higher quality, a smaller file size, or both."

Stereo LP's cut each channel at a 45 degree angle to allow for both stereo and monaural compatibility which IMHO obtains a higher quality. The main difference is that it is an analog process not a digital process.

I think stereo LP's should be added back as an early analog example of joint encoding. Robert.Harker (talk) 17:44, 23 April 2023 (UTC)

Co Stereo
Is it worth mentioning Joint Stereo is also called "Co Stereo". In Winamp 5.5 (Windows) it says Co Stereo instead of joint stereo. Image,

Image:CoStereoWinamp.png

Travis (talk) 00:03, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

That may actually mean "OO Stereo" vs. "O Mono" (the 'O' being an icon representing a channel) 65.100.4.221 (talk) (Dylan) 21 January 2008 —Preceding comment was added at 12:55, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Forced Joint Stereo?
I've seen Audio Format Converters which offer in their list of available channel outputs, Forced Joint Stereo separately from standard Joint Stereo, which this article does not make any mentioning of. Such being the case, if anyone or especially the author can elaborate on the difference between the two and what the Forced prefix means, that would be quite helpful.

Thanks, Alan 24.184.184.177 (talk) 17:50, 20 January 2008 (UTC)


 * "forced joint-stereo" within LAME, means that the encoder will always use joint stereo, for all the frames. That is different from the "joint stereo", where the encoder is free to select either joint stereo or left/right stereo, on a frame by frame basis --Gabriel Bouvigne (talk) 08:39, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Joint frequency encoding
This section is pretty redundant in the presence of Intensity stereo coding, since the former is not describing anything that the latter does not. Does it really need a whole section devoted to it? 65.100.4.221 (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 13:39, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Joint Stereo usually gives better quality
From doing a series of my own tests using tracks ripped from CD's, I've come to the conclusion that, when using the LAME or Fraunhofer MP3 Codecs, Joint Stereo gives you better quality MP3 files. From what I can gather, when you have parts of a song that sound the same on both left and right channels, the codec will "merge" them together (effectively creating mono) but will still encode at your predefined bitrate. Using standard stereo, the left and right channels are split and encoded seperately, even if the source is mono - which means this can (up to) halve the overall quality. Say, for example, I was encoding a song at 128kb under standard Stereo mode. The left and right channels will be completely seperated from each other and encoded seperately, which effectively makes the file 64kb bitrate. Using Joint Stereo, when the left and right channels are the same (with no "surround" or "wide" effects) then they will be merged together to effectively give a mono file which is at the full 128kb. Hope I explained myself well lol. Please note, this is how I presume it works, but I'm not entirely sure. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Olorinjoyce (talk • contribs) 21:22, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Joint Stereo vs Stereo?
Since it's been buzzing on the Internet, wouldn't it be nice to have some kind of PROPER (and professional) explanation on Joint Stereo vs Stereo? I personally don't really know if Joint Stereo or Stereo is better (although I've heard Joint Stereo is preferred only for 128kbps MP3's or below), but I'd really like a professional and OBJECTIVE opinion on that.

Agreed. It's funny that through this whole article, joint stereo is never defined in terms of what is actually heard.71.112.33.241 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 01:12, 25 October 2010 (UTC).