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http://web.archive.org/web/19981202072738/http://www.mpeg.org/MPEG/mp3-licensing-faq.html

The following letter from Mr. Henri Linde (Thomson) explains the patent and licensing situation for MP3 (aka Layer-3) as of April 1998.

Business Answers MPEG Layer-3 - Version 04.98-3 ...thank you for your interest in our MPEG Layer-3 audio compression technology.

In this document you will find answers to the most frequently asked questions about MPEG Layer-3, the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, THOMSON multimedia and the licensing of MPEG Layer-3 technology.

The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft.

The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft is the leading organization of applied research in Germany. It operates 47 research centers in Germany with about 9,000 employees, about half of them scientists and engineers. The Fraunhofer Gesellschaft expands to a worldwide Organization, especially in USA and Asia. Home of the Fraunhofer Gesellschaft is Munich.

One of the goals of the Fraunhofer policy is a rapid transfer of innovations into products. The total research expenditure is about US $ 700 million.

The Fraunhofer Institut Integrierte Schaltungen (Fraunhofer IIS), based in Erlangen, is one of the 47 research centers. In the field of high quality low bitrate audio coding, Fraunhofer IIS is the leading international research lab. Fraunhofer IIS has been the main developer of the most advanced audio coding schemes, like MPEG Layer-3 and MPEG-2 AAC (Advanced Audio Coding). Fraunhofer IIS plays a major role in the ongoing work for the MPEG-4 Audio standardization process and contributes to many other standards bodies as well, like ITU-R TG10/4, ITU-R WP10C, AES, MPEG-IPR, and others.

WWW: http://www.iis.fhg.de/audio/

THOMSON multimedia.

The world's fourth-largest consumer electronics group, THOMSON multimedia develops, manufactures and markets: televisions, VCRs, camcorders, audio and communication appliances, satellite decoders, DVD players, as well as color TV tubes and professional television equipment (studio equipment, TV cameras, mixers, etc.).

With its pan-European brands - THOMSON, TELEFUNKEN and SABA - and its American brands - RCA, GE and ProScan - today the group is the leader in the United States, No. 2 in Europe and is strongly increasing its market presence in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

WWW: http://www.thomson-multimedia.com/ http://www.rca-electronics.com/ or
http://www.nipper.com/

OPTICOM

OPTICOM is a "spin-off" firm from Fraunhofer IIS. OPTICOM was founded in 1995 with the intention to assist you in finding the technical solution best suited for you through consulting and specialized tools.

WWW: http://www.opticom.de/

I) GENERAL

Q. I am interested in source coding technology. What can you do for me?

A. Licensing source code, developing real-time DSP code as well as DSP-based hardware, and developing codec libraries for desktop computers is part of the Fraunhofer IIS activities. The focus is on (mobile) high-quality low bitrate audiovisual communications (e.g. digital broadcasting systems or internet services).

Q. Regarding MPEG Layer-3, do any patent rights exist?

A. As for practically any important technology (and particularly for publicly established standards), you should know that patent rights for MPEG Layer-3 exist. Although others may also hold patents related to the MPEG Layer-3 technology, THOMSON multimedia and Fraunhofer IIS have pooled their interests and grant licenses under their combined patent portfolio.

Q. Who grants licenses under this combined portfolio to use MPEG Layer-3?

A. We have split the licensing activities in three parts:

i) THOMSON multimedia ha

Like car mileage, there should be a unit based on standard lighting conditions, and then just give the kWh/square meter, plus the projected cost to produce one square meter.

Theoretically, the watermark should still be there, as the watermark is inaudible noise on the track. The goal of a good watermarking algorithm is to survive longer than the audio. You're not safe from detection by transcoding, as these guys have an algorithm (I'm sure many more do, as well) for the original audio track (off a CD) that can be "retrieved" at various bit rates. At the bottom, you can see a graph on the error rate of recovery, which doesn't really fall off until you get down to 64 kbps. Basically, to remove this watermark without knowing the key (which can be as large as needed), you would do more damage to the sound of the track than the background noise.

As long as a strong watermarking scheme is used, it will still be there, unless you screw up the sound. I don't think it will do anything for the RIAA, but it beats the hell out of DRM and root kits.

Impressive! This could be very useful in a lot of situations.. Keeping in mind that this is the very generation, there could very well be later generations that could map rooms in mere minutes, and then other ones to map rubble in minutes.. then when disaster strikes, in goes the robots to map stuff out, and people to follow.

Actually, the current technology is quite capable of mapping a room in a few seconds - essentially as fast as you can drive a robot through the room with line of sight to all the corners. The application described in TFA is nothing more than a commercialised version of technology that has been around for years.

It is also currently possible to generate a 3D map of a complex environment (such as a pile of rubble). Have a look at Kurt3D, which maps using a laser scanner on a tilting or rotating mount. You can also use an infrared time-of-flight sensor such as the SwissRanger to generate the same sort of datasets.

It's interesting that you should mention the Search and Rescue application. There are numerous robotics groups around the world working on this problem, and testing solutions in the RoboCup Rescue competition, which has been running since 2000. Almost every team in this competition has some sort of automatic mapping technology akin to that desrcibed in TFA. Several also have 3D mapping, and there is also a lot of interesting work going on in user interfaces and remote control, as well as autonomous navigation, exploration, victim identification and decision making.

All the arguments for hardware patents can be made for software patents. All the arguments against hardware patents can be made against software patents.
To object to one but not the other is inconsistent

Or maybe the National Research Council, claiming that the software industry is quite different from traditional industry sectors for various reasons.

Or maybe the Max Planck and Fraunhofer Institutes? (the latter even own some patents on mp3 compression)

Well, they have one that is either a better fake or an actual picture of the technology here.

See here for yourself

If this is a real photo, I'm Father Christmas.

The Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems in Dresden, Germany actually had a similar Projector one year ago.
It works at 640x480 in Full Color (3*8 bit).

It's even smaller at the size of "2 sugar cubes".

See here for yourself

is part of http://www.igd.fhg.de/igd-a8/projects/coseda/index .html

Sorry I should have included a link: http://syscop.igd.fhg.de/audio.html

The technology is developed by Fraunhofer.

http://syscop.igd.fhg.de/audio.html/

http://forums.traxsource.com/viewtopic.php?t=18

http://www.traxsource.com/

Feel stupid now?

When I got my DVD writer I had already been using xcdroast (and implicitly cdrtools) for a long time with CD's. It seemed the simplest to just get cdrecord-prodvd for this setup.

It amounted to downloading one (1) binary file, placing it as executable in the xcdroast bin dir and a copy/paste operation of the license key from a README found at the same place as the binary.

It worked right away, took a couple of minutes not counting the download and now I can use xcdroast with DVD's as well as CD's without any headache at all.

True, the license is only for home and personal use and will expire after about a year, but really, for a home user that's all I need.

I like my DVD/CD writing graphical, so there. By comparison with xcdroast, K3B always seemed like a kitchen sink to me. I've tried it several times but couldn't get used to it. Since so many people seem to be very happy with K3B I must be the odd one out.

Tell me, which is more an incentive to innovate (to the innovator):

A) You come up with an idea and we'll let you fight it out in the marketplace with four other companies OR

B) You come up with an idea and everyone in the U.S. will have to come to you for the solution. And it will be you and only you for the next 20 years.

well? OK.

You are missing several things of the big picture:

• Once someone has a monopoly on something, he will be much less inclined to keep on innovating, since the competition is very much restricted in improving what he did. Therefore, this monopoly is only justifiable if without the outlook to this monopoly, the innovation would never have happened. At least in the software world, this is highly unlikely, since competition is the main drive there to innovate (if you don't innovate, you can as well close up shop). That's confirmed by, among others, this study (presentation slides, see especially slides 15-16) by the Fraunhofer and Max Planck institutes and the FTC report on the effects of patents on innovation.
• An innovator does not live alone in the world. Once he gets a monopoly, he will without a doubt hinder other innovators with this patent. If generally this hindering effect causes more innovation not to happen than the amount of innovation that happens thanks to the fact that patent protection is available, it's also better that you have no patents. Again, the FTC report notes that this is the case in the software field. The main reason is that innovation in the software field is mainly incremental (improving things that other people have done before) instead of revolutionary (doing completely new things).

Patents increase innovation by forcing you to tell the world about your invention. Once the patent is up, ANYONE can take you patent and solve the problem you solved.

That's the theory. In practice, programmers can barely understand the legalese of software patents. And since software patents do not even include source code, it's even arguable whether they really contain a usable solution in many cases. Finally, (and this goes for all patents) companies are actively discouraged to go looking in patent databases looking for solutions. The reason is that, even if they did not find a solution and came up with something themselves, if they are sued afterwards, they can be ordered to pay tripple damages, because in that case it's considered "willful infringement".

The quid pro quo though is that in exchange for the disclosure, as a "thank you" for innovating and telling the world, you get the right to prevent others from implementing your solution. Which is a bigger thank you? that you get to fight it out in the marketplace, or that you and you alone can practice the invention?

It has nothing to do with "thank you", but everything with "if we didn't give you this monopoly, we would be even worse off, because we wouldn't know how to solve that particular problem". This monopoly can thus only be justified if there is a very low chance of independent rediscovery by other people and if the original innovator would very likely not have done the innovation himself without the incentive of getting a 20 year monopoly.

Please explain to me how the patent system benefits society as a whole, as you've asserted, other than the quid pro quo I stated above i.e., the patent tells anyone how to solve a given problem, in exchange for which, you get the limited monopoly.

The theory is that the disclosure of the innovation benefits society more than that the 20-year monopoly hampers it. This theory may have held back in the 15th century, when you usually had "on

what experiences does people have with using DVD+RW for packet-writing under Linux

I use dvd+rw-tools but still have to find proper DVD+RW media for my drive. See previous post on same issue...
I use cdrecord for CD+RW and have no problem even doing multisessions.
My main concern is to find the proper DVD+RW media that my drive will support...
Cheers!

nr.1. DVD-R
DVD-R is 100% compatible with the DVD-ROM standard. The DVD-ROM standard is actually closely analoge to the CD-ROM standard upon which the very popular CD-R recordable is based.
burningtools :

• cdrtools-2.0x : cdrecord-prodvd, oss dvd, dvdrecord
• dvd+rw-tools : growisofs

• dvd+rw-tools : growisofs + mkisofs

no.3. DVD-RW
DVD-RW is mostly an analog standard to CD-RW. I use it when designing/creating and debugging new iso's.
burningtools :

• cdrtools-2.0x : cdrecord-prodvd, oss dvd, dvdrecord

no.4. DVD+RW
DVD+RW is where i touch in the dark. Basicly i would assume that DVD+RW is just a DVD+R which can be 100% erased, and thus be used again as Multi-track/Multi-volume archive disc.
burning tools:

• dvd+rw-tools : growisofs + mkisofs

Urls :
dvd+rw-tools: http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/
cdrecord-prodvd: ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/ProDVD/
cdrtools: http://www.fokus.fhg.de/research/cc/glone/employee s/joerg.schilling/private/cdrecord.html
oss dvd: http://crashrecovery.org/oss-dvd.html

Robert

My point was that that patents are allowed in almost all technical areas so why not for software?

If you place one Lego brick on the ground, it will just sit there. Put one or two on top, and you'll still have no problem. If you put 100 Lego bricks right on top of each other, you get a very unstable structure. So even in this very simple physical environment, things that behave one way in the small, may behave quite differently when used in a more complex whole.

With software, this is not the case. One small, sound logical reasoning remains just as valid in a larger whole. Software development by its very nature consists entirely of combining all kinds of small logical constructs into a, non-obvious or not, bigger whole. And software is being innovated every day, because if you don't innovate, your competition will and you will lose whatever edge you had.

Please read this study, carried out by the Max Planck Institute and the Fraunhofer institute (by no means anti-swpat establishments) for more on why software is different and how software development works differently. For a more philosophical approach, in case you want to understand why those empirical results are what they are, see this page.

Broadness of initial patents is just a passing phase and open-source fanatics are damaging the overall purpose of software patents which is to develop a repository of knowledge

Some quotes:

• One panelist stated that "the [patent] system discourages you from looking very hard [at patent disclosures] because ... simply by virtue of poking around to find out what patents exist you expose yourself to willfulness claims which can triple the amount of damages and exposure to attorney's fees."
• The panelist summed up the problem with the statement "there's too much information and it is no longer meaningful."

which would otherwise be locked up in the vaults of giant corporations.

How come? Because you publish software, you don't manufacture it (just like you don't publish an industrial valve or a chemical reaction, you manufacture or conduct those). Publishing by definition is "making public". It's the same with business methods: either you use a business method and it automatically becomes public, or you don't use it.

Software patents are a giant corporation's wet dream, because they pretty much only benefit the patent holders.

The original source for the "three-click rule" is Catledge and Pitkow's 1995 paper, Characterizing Browsing Strategies in the World Wide Web.; see an online copy.

To quote: Directions for Design Since users accessed on average 10 pages per server, this would indicate that "must see" information must be accessible within two to three jumps of the initial home page (two/three navigations in, two/three out, performed three/two times). However, [...]

This paper is one of the first, if not the very first, actual user survey studies on the Web. It is very limited in scope, of course, and there may be good arguments to question its validity, but if you're going to do that, at least quote the rule correctly, mention its origins, and mention the fact that it was co-written by James Pitkow, who has continuing this line of research until the present day.

No... I could be wrong ofcourse. It might be some other manufacturer, but it sure looks like a SICK device.

Here's some interesting reading:
Pulsed time-of-flight laser rangefinding
Fast acquiring and analysis of three dimensional laser range data

The second one is by the german guys in the article.

I suggest that business method patents be eliminated by statute to reduce the workload on the patent examiners to improve the amount of time to devote to each patent application.

Chapter 5 again notes all the problems caused by these kind of patents, and the only "solution" they propose is making it easier to challenge a patent. As someone else wrote in an email about this:

Right at the beginning FTC writes that "valid patents" are good for innovation while "invalid" ones aren't, thus making the patent establishment the judge of what is good for innovation instead of looking at it independently.

Whether or not patents have a general positive or negative effect in a certain field, depends on the balance between those positive and negative effects. I have not yet seen one single study (even not by pro-swpat entities, such one by the Fraunhofer institute, holder of the MP3 compression patents) that shows a generally positive effect for software or business method patents. Why don't we ban such patents until someone proposes a way to handle them so that at least theoretically the net result will be positive?

Why is questioning the positive effect of patents in a certain field automatically denounced as "spreading misinformation", "open source zealotry" or "anti-globalism" by the pro-patent movement?

Yep I understand and also think we need a more friendly website to produce information for alternatives to Microsoft software. For those of you that have seen the Blue Screen of Death, goto FuckMicrosoft.com. For those of you that enjoy a little spice with your operating system, try GNU/Lesbian or RTFM OS. And for those of you that always RTFM, try Emacs OS; just remember that when using Emacs OS, you need a good wordprocessor and the best one you can get is here.

to protect us from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beasts of Traal anymore! Hooray for Technology!!

No, Windows is not in the hardware as some posters think. Just imagine if it were. It would require several gigs of non-volatile memory just for the disk image; and how long would it take a BIOS to blit that to a drive? No no no. Use some common sense people.

Instead, this is merely an FYI story about a person who bought a notebook, expecting to have a bona fide OEM cd to install XP home. Well, it's been years since MS has shipped OEM versions of their OS with major brand notebooks. Instead, it's the industry standard to get a system restore CD.

But here's a solution. You can install XP Home on that new notebook, and use fips (available here among other places), or Partition Magic if you want to pay money, to shrink the partition. You should then have enough space to install linux.

Alternatively You can just hit packetnews.org and search for a nice ISO of XP Home. Fire up your favorite xdcc-capable IRC client, and you're set. Download and install. It's not 100% legal, but WTF. You got shafted on the notebook sourceware, and by getting an ISO, MS is not losing a cent; they already got paid once for the non-working XP Home that can with the notebook. So fsck 'em. (Plus, if you're running linux instead of a *bsd, you're probably into 'pirating' ^H^H^H^H^H^H exercising your freedom anyway.)

After a few years of swapping MP3z, you'll eventually grow up and switch to a dangerously dedicated 'bsd notebook anyway. ;)

I'm getting all nostalgic now. Excuse me.

seriously, /. karma has as much worth as a Pu. Similar, apart from the fact that it's much easier to obtain.

2. Easily implementable in hardware. Especially the *royalty free* fixed point codec drastically reduces time-to-market... you can easily implement that in a $10 TI Fixed point DSP. MP3 too is easy to implement, but now you have to pay fraunhauffer royalty for each decoder you make!!

AFAIK mp3 uses less resources. Alas i don't know how much AAC uses.

BTW its Fraunhofer a german research institute (Fraunhofer Society ) and you won't pay Fraunhofer royalties because mp3 was a thomson multimedia sponsored reasearch effort. (The Fraunhofer Society does sponsored research and developement for companies and government institutions). So you'd actually pay thomson royalties

Regards

Christian

Transparent Alumina has already been produced in Germany. It is tested at 3 times stronger than hardened steel of the same thickness. It is not actually called 'transparent', it is referred to as a translucent ceramic.

Artificial Diamonds ? I was not aware of the connection to "space technology". Most efforts looked rather earth-bound to me like the works of the FHG CVD Diamond group: IAF.

Fraunhofer is somewhat half-government-driven.

All you get if you navigate from the Thomson page over to Fraunhofer IIS's pages is a list of eMail addresses. This is their "Contact" link on the English pages.

Only if you switch to German (little flag on the upper left beneath the search box which only becomes available if you click on "Home" first) and go to "Kontakt", you are shown their postal address.

First is "index.html" , second is "index_d.html" . Surprise, surprise.

Fraunhofer is somewhat half-government-driven.

All you get if you navigate from the Thomson page over to Fraunhofer IIS's pages is a list of eMail addresses. This is their "Contact" link on the English pages.

Only if you switch to German (little flag on the upper left beneath the search box which only becomes available if you click on "Home" first) and go to "Kontakt", you are shown their postal address.

First is "index.html" , second is "index_d.html" . Surprise, surprise.

MP3 only came up because it was available at low-to-no-cost. Regarding some of the patents, of course. Nobody would've had used it if they had charged this decoder fee from the very beginning, and they know!

Do what I am going to do: Write a letter (paper!) to Fraunhofer and Thomson and explain your concerns.

Yes, I know about Ogg Vorbis and stuff, but there's no reason not to protest against changed mp3 licenses.

I don't want to re-compress all my mp3s to Ogg because this will reduce quality. So I will still have mp3s around in several years (don't mention all those CDs I burned). So this is an issue, since I will need a player/decoder to access them.

Contact Fraunhofer:

(Interesting: On the English homepage, their postal address doesn't show up - only eMail addresses. On the German homepage, it does.)

Contact Thomson:

According to the article, the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics is in on this too. But really, we knew that this was coming. Someone was going to do it. Would you have preferred that that someone was hired by Hillary Rosen (RIAA) or Jack Valentini (MPAA) ? This might be the best we can hope for. At least vorbis will provide a way out for those in the know.

This is not really new. At the Fraunhofer institute of Industrial Engineering (IAO) in Germany they already have 6-sided cave running, that uses PC based passive stereo or SGI Onyx based active stereo. A description can be found here.

Actually MP3 is a part of MPEG: MP3 is short for "MPEG Audio Layer 3". More info at this page of the Fraunhofer institute. And yes, I believe it was government funded (but I'm not sure).

I believe it's marketed as TwinVQ and is indeed part of the standard: http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/techinf/mpeg4/scalable.h tml
http://www.mp3-tech.org/programmer/decoding.html

The mp3 engineers hire a bean counter who tells them how much money they are losing annually because of the popularity of their format. They begin to enforce royalty and licensing issues with an iron fist.

As providers of mp3s encoders and content providers begin to get hit financially by the Germans they set out for a new alternative to mp3. Something similar, if not better in quality than mp3 which would contain no financial implications. Ogg is discovered in 2002! Marketing and PR dollars by many organizations are spent on promoting Ogg as the next evolution in digital music.

Other forward thinking production companies, music labels begin to release music using EFF's new open audio license therefore by passing all the BS of copyrights for music that will be exchanged by the masses anyway.

Additional companies begin to insert FreeDB tags into their ogg files so that players released in 2003 can pull info off their now completely free and open music system. Early adopters include NPR, IndyMedia and other production companies. By 2004 WMP and QuickTime have codecs for playing ogg files.

The only twist here is if Franhofer never attempts to forcefully collect on the mp3 codec formula. If it doesn't cost anything for developers to use, there will never be reason enough to switch at this point of acceptance.

A patent on this type of thing is ludicrous, and I hope there are plenty of people around to challenge it. Apathy is the enemy of freedom.

They have not patented the idea of MP3 streaming. They do hold a bunch of patents for the algorithms used in MP3 encoders and decoders, however, and, thus, can dictate the license conditions at which they are gonna let you use it.

A little bit of history:
MP3 (Audio MPEG Layer 3) was originally developed back in the early 90s (I believe it was 1992, but I'm not sure) by the Fraunhoeffer Institute in Germany, which they patented. At first, I believe they allowed everyone to write encoders/decoders based on the codec for free, but later decided to charge 50 cents per each unit sold (if you don't sell your end product, you don't pay anything)with a minimum fee of $15000 per year.
At some point, Fraunhoeffer let Thomson Multimedia handle the licensing of mp3 and that's where we are at today.

Solar cells based on amorphous silicon are less efficient than their crystalline cousins, but they still have many advantages, he says.

Although I can see some advantages of having flexible solar arrays, some of the issues right now aren't so much the flexibility, as most arrays are flat parts which fold up. If you need to fit to a curved surface, you just use a series of smaller cells to approximate the surface, and then use a conformal coating as a sealant.

The issues that I see, however, is that they admit that these are less efficient, how large of an array are we going to need to get a useful amount of power? Last time I looked into it [1995 or so], agricultural solar cells were considered to be about 20-22% efficient. Hughes Electronics at the time had some that were 35% efficient, but you were looking at paying through the nose for 'em [US$100k per square meter worth, assuming you could find a supplier]

Looking at some current numbers, it looks like these have a chance at being near 10% efficient. To take things into perspective, the typical solar car for the GM Sunrayce in 1995 had an 8 meter squared solar array, and produced at most 200W per square meter under optimal conditions. [Normally 100-150W]. If we assume that we're going to get 50W/meter from these clothes, we can compare them to a standard NiMH rechargable AA battery.

Looking at the battery stats on a very efficient laptop, you're looking at needing 10W to run it [50W*hr battery lasts 5hrs]. The Sony Vaio lists its power requirements as needing a peak of 49.5W. [A single battery is 1.8mAH@19.5V, so about 35W*hr, and lasts 2.5hr, so typical would be 14W draw].

Naturally, a larger, more feature rich portable would require more draw. Realistically, we might assume 20-30W. Which means we'd need 1/2 a meter squared of exposed surface. [about 775 sq in, or 5.4 sq ft]

So, based on these calculations, any of you skinny nerds are going to need to find a few more fat people wearing these shirts to sit next to you while you game.

[oh, and hey, it was 6 years ago when I was working on a solar car. My numbers may be off a bit, as I didn't get much sleep during those days]

... we can track you with those cameras, and an automatic face detection system as introduced by the Frauenhofer Institute at the CeBIT .

You think it is 2001, but in fact we are near to 1984.

BTW: in east germany we also had a lot of cameras. They served the STASI. Now there are new cameras - I wonder who is watching us now.

With cameras you do not fight crime, it only moves to other places.

Why the comparison of software to pharmaceuticals? Both are industries with extremely high research costs, and many companies never see payoffs for the majority of that research. Fraunhofer poured over fifteen years and millions of DM into the MP3 encoding and collecting the psychoacoustic data for spectral encoding. Damn right they have an interest in protecting it!

The only problem I see with software patents as opposed to other patents is that, since the law hasn't caught up with the tech, the patents are overly broad and, in many cases, serve to stifle innovation. However, not all patents are bad. In many cases, the only incentive for research is the potential that it might someday become a successful product, and patents provide the guarantee that the innovators may profit. I realize this may not be a popular view here, but I still feel it's valid.

Unfortunately, Free software advocates will have a problem in this war: in many cases Free software is not funded, and the developers are "hackers" -- skilled programmers, but not necessarily CS researchers. Since researchers cost money, and many problem domains are still the subject of active research, only a very special Free program in one of these domains will embody an innovation which is superior to an equivalent encumbered program. I believe Ogg may be such a program, but they'd have been wise to secure a patent lawyer to make sure they're treading on solid ground legally, and perhaps patent their techniques themselves!

the key point here is that mp3 encoding is in fact a process of two separate transformations (both of which consist of many processes, of course), the first of these is my bone of contention as it seems less well-known than the second, which i will address first.

the "second transformation" is the one familiar to most people, the iterative fractal encoding procedure, which simply adds information to that audio frame until it a) either hits a "quality threshold" (ie is consider good enough), or b) fills up its bitrate allocation. it's similar in many ways to making a "jpeg of sound". you can get a good view of this whole process by following this link to a graphic of the aac encoding process on fraunhofer's website. It is the stuff inside the box at the lower left that this concerns.

however the first transformation here is the important one, this is the stuff outside and above the box in the graphic linked above. (i am not sure the graphic is detailed enough, there may be some missing, from what i remember) - this is a series of transformations to limit the amount of data the second transformation has to deal with (and hence get essentially better encoding for the same bitrate), according to the way the human ear works. our ears have "features" like having a dead area in frequencies near loud noises, which means these bits can be cut out, and other bits and pieces that i can't remember and don't have to hand ;) this is of course psychoacoustics, as other people have commented. there is a _very_ basic primer on this at the fraunhofer site here, but it doesn't go into any technical detail.

as an aside, there used to be some fantastic and informative articles on these subjects at mp3.org back in the day (1997-1998?), may it rest in peace. does anyone have some links for where something as good on this subject is? i haven't been as in touch with the technical side of mpeg encoding as i used to be...

but anyway back on subject, this first transformation actually distorts the signal *significantly*, but only in a way that makes it easier to process, while still sounding the same (or close) to the human ear. it may be an interesting exercise to isolate this first transformation, apply it and then save without any fractal encoding, and compare that to the original signal. this transformation will cause great "visual degradation", as shown in the article, but imho this is not an accurate criteria for measuring audio quality. still interesting, and a good read, though :)

fross

the key point here is that mp3 encoding is in fact a process of two separate transformations (both of which consist of many processes, of course), the first of these is my bone of contention as it seems less well-known than the second, which i will address first.

the "second transformation" is the one familiar to most people, the iterative fractal encoding procedure, which simply adds information to that audio frame until it a) either hits a "quality threshold" (ie is consider good enough), or b) fills up its bitrate allocation. it's similar in many ways to making a "jpeg of sound". you can get a good view of this whole process by following this link to a graphic of the aac encoding process on fraunhofer's website. It is the stuff inside the box at the lower left that this concerns.

however the first transformation here is the important one, this is the stuff outside and above the box in the graphic linked above. (i am not sure the graphic is detailed enough, there may be some missing, from what i remember) - this is a series of transformations to limit the amount of data the second transformation has to deal with (and hence get essentially better encoding for the same bitrate), according to the way the human ear works. our ears have "features" like having a dead area in frequencies near loud noises, which means these bits can be cut out, and other bits and pieces that i can't remember and don't have to hand ;) this is of course psychoacoustics, as other people have commented. there is a _very_ basic primer on this at the fraunhofer site here, but it doesn't go into any technical detail.

as an aside, there used to be some fantastic and informative articles on these subjects at mp3.org back in the day (1997-1998?), may it rest in peace. does anyone have some links for where something as good on this subject is? i haven't been as in touch with the technical side of mpeg encoding as i used to be...

but anyway back on subject, this first transformation actually distorts the signal *significantly*, but only in a way that makes it easier to process, while still sounding the same (or close) to the human ear. it may be an interesting exercise to isolate this first transformation, apply it and then save without any fractal encoding, and compare that to the original signal. this transformation will cause great "visual degradation", as shown in the article, but imho this is not an accurate criteria for measuring audio quality. still interesting, and a good read, though :)

fross

For all the popularity of MP3, remember that Fraunhofer holds patents on it, making the creation of a legal, legitimate, Free encoder impossible.

Support Ogg ... use Ogg Vorbis for your audio encoding/storage needs. ;-)

For all the popularity of MP3, remember that Fraunhofer holds patents on it, making the creation of a legal, legitimate, Free encoder impossible.

Support Ogg ... use Ogg Vorbis for your audio encoding/storage needs. ;-)

EAX is not like A3D. EAX is reverb. A3D was a proprietary API and hardware for 3D positional audio. In computer games. Implemented on sound cards. It makes me feel like a rebel to cheer for the underdog, too, but I think we should be fighting for open standards, not just turnover among proprietary corporate initiatives. PS: I could have sworn we were talking about MP3 players anyway. Chris Owens
San Carlos, CA

http://www.igd.fhg.de/CP/kahlua/

All I have to say is look how the world has changed since then; computers are now standard issue college equipement, and we have 100 times the willing manpower (programmer power, especially those with a strong sharing ethic) to speed up development of new "standards". We live in interesting times...

I browsed this book last month and found it informative and quite well-written.

The author explains the thorny issues of patents pertaining to MP3. Two corporations have patents on MP3 technologies:

• the Fraunhofer institute, a German state-run research venture;
• Thomson Multimedia, a French electronics company.

However, as it has been pointed out, the law section is US-centric. It would be interesting to know where in the world the said patents apply. Theoretically, Europe does not allow patents on algorithms and mathematical formulas, but this provision can be circumvented by patenting an overall technique using an algorithm.

As some above have said, (and I'm not trying to be redundant) there are many other places to get MP3s, most of which existed before Napster.
Oth.net used to be an amazing source for them by listing searchable FTP sites full with albums and singles. There's always other less dependable websites like AudioGalaxy.com and LycosMP3. There are all BIG, well-known WWW sites, which, although not quite 100% reliable are well established. This does not cover the thousands of pages you can find if you go to Hotbot and search for 'mp3'.
Then, of course, there's IRC. Here again, there are hundreds of communities across dozens of servers all working on one thing: getting/trading MP3s. (My recommendation is to try some of the IRC servers on the Eris Free Network).
Then of course, you've got other Napster-like clients like GNUtella, FreeNet, and Globalscape's CuteMX (most of these share more than MP3 files).
And college students will always have the trusty, reliable LANs where students share their large collections.

Ok, so you knew this already. Bottom line: MP3 is not going away, not now, and especially not at the hands of the RIAA. If they are only half as smart as their lawyers are blockheaded, they would work with some of these companies, as well as organizations like the Frauenhoffer Institute to develop a replacement for the MP3 file format. One that maybe sounds twice as good for half the file size, so you can get 320kbps encoded songs for 3MB or so. New technology is the way to fight MP3. If enough people think it's worth it to pay $0.50 for a song that sounds twice as good and can be downloaded in half the time, guess what? They'll be more likely to get that song as opposed to an .mp3 file. Relatively secure encoding already exists. The band Phish released MP3s that you could listen to for free three times, then a window popped up that reuqired you to enter a credit card number and pay some small amount of money to continue listening to the song (apparently, an executable was appended to the WAV file before it was encoded... You couldn't remove this prompt, or extract a WAV file with WinAmp).

If Lars is reading this, spend money on getting new media developed, not on paying your lawyers. You may win against Napster, but not against MP3.