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who digitizes the music

That would be the compact disc manufacturer. The music is digital before it is even packaged. Who compresses the music, on the other hand...

And I've certainly dl'd MP3's over 56kbps.

But you can't create them in the United States and several other countries without buying licensed software from a software firm that pays the MP3 encoder software patent license royalties, which are currently USD$15,000 for the first 6,000 units shipped yearly and USD$2.50 for each additional unit. This is why official LAME binaries will not be released before around 2010 (good thing what happened to copyright duration hasn't (yet) happened to patent duration). BTW, to compile LAME on Win32, get GCC for Windows.

If you think licensing fees are the problem, it's time for you to upgrade.

I agree totally. After having upgraded from MP3 to OggVorbis, the only MP3 files I encode are Wrapster archives containing .ogg files.

MP3's not free, though. MP3 was great as a proof of concept of digital audio; it was just a coincidence that the "free music" movement got started with a *format* that's not free. Anyone who hasn't heard of Ogg Vorbis needs to go check it out here. The quality is better than mp3 for equivalent bitrates, and the format is free as in both speech and beer. There is of course a winamp plugin to play the files. Unfortunately, the encoder they have created doesn't work all that well, and there aren't many .ogg files out on the net... but the format has a lot of promise.

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. ;-)

I'll keep this comment within the context of music, mp3's, and CD's, rather then venturing off to the related DVD discussion. Traditionally, we receive our own personal copies of music in the form of CD or tape. CD's are really the only choice as a source for converting said music to mp3's. So, if we receive or music in CD format, and we have computers at our disposal with great encoding tools like Lame, BladeEnc, and algorithms like mp3 or Ogg Vorbis, why should we worry about the RIAA?

Seriously, folks. I don't see CD's dying any time soon, and by legal precedence, we have a right to make copies for ourselves or our friends. If this means burning new CD's or encoding an MP3, we have the right. Distributing said MP3's over the Internet may be another discussion, but actually encoding a song to MP3 format is NOT breaking the law. The RIAA is making the same old argument it always has, "We want control." In the end, common sense will hopefully prevail and once again quell the tantrums of the gorilla sized child.

Besides, we all have way too many MP3's by now to switch to any new format but MP4 (someone should hurry up with that too!)

Why not switch to OggVorbis, which is already 33% smaller than MP3 at the same quality? Plugins are available for both Winamp and XMMS. Just because you have a lot of MP3s on CD-R doesn't mean you can't start using OggVorbis today. And because it's completely Free (Lesser GPL libraries; no patents), there will be no SDMI forced on you.

The whole point of SDMI is not to protect artists' IP but to protect the RIAA's monopoly on distribution. The funny thing is that the RIAA's corporate urges are going to work against them, finally, instead of for them. In this case, since Corporate Culture demands that if you spend money on something it Must Be a Success to Save Face, they will press on blindly with SDMI and try to minimize/ignore that 1. it was cracked and 2. watermarking is a foolish method of protection when dealing with lossy compression algorithms anyway. So we will probably get SDMI forced on us despite its obvious flaw. That's fantastic! Because even if all of us wake up tomorrow with SDMI-compliant CD players substituted for our old ones, we can just continue to burn MP3's for time/space-shifting, distribution with friends, sharing, etc as we have always done legally, as is our right. The big fear was that SDMI would take away our fair-use rights. But since SDMI has been proven to be as much a joke as we all knew it would be, SDMI will fail to achieve its primary purpose (taking away our rights). We should all now cheer SDMI on!

remember, there will always be Analog Out, and soundcards, and wave recorders, and Ogg. Only the hard-core audiophiles will find these tools to be insifficent, and those are the people who will buy Super-CD or DVD-A's anyway. But for casual listeners of music, we will always have the tools available to enjoy and legally share music as is our right under fair-use.

Vorbis as a format is definitely there, but the software isn't there yet. The beta reference encoder is quite slow and the beta winamp decoder plugin is too CPU intensive (over 60% CPU usage on a PPro200, 96megs, Win98SE to decode a default quality (VBR up to 160kbps) file... while a similar quality VBR MP3 hovers around 12% CPU usage). I definitely suggest checking it out, but wait for the release version which will undoubtedly be much more optimizied.

BTW - The beta encoder (for Windows, Linux x86 and BeOS) as well as plugins to winamp, xmms and sonique are available at www.vorbis.com.


--

WinAmp Plugin

Well, as the King of the World I regularly travel to Japan and I know the answer to your question, peasant.

Your example of button configuration doesn't fit the idea of a testing ground as they don't sample the local market much, don't do surveys, don't track habits or use of products. They do heavy R&D but don't let much out the door much like most places. There is lots of high-tech-wank about, but that's only as it's made there.

When it's testing market they want they tend to go for Australia, New Zealand. NZ especially due to the variety of cultures*1 and terrain. They've been testing some uber-neato highspeed internet/cellphone things in Wellington, NZ - but they had problems with hills. Somewhat like the digital TV standards having problems if you don't have line-of-sight with the receiver.

It's not really my thing but when I was in Japan recently I was looking at some digital audio toys. They ran QNX with a 10gig drive, small 5" LCD, and they have ogg/mp3/real/wav/aiff/asf/mpeg already and it's make a refreshing change from being stuck with a lousy and lossy format.

You might want to check out Ogg Vorbis

I'd definately recommend this, it can be played on the open source, player Freeamp - which runs on Solaris, Linux, BSD, and Windows.

While I was out looking for a GSM source, I came across this page which has a table of some of the different options, better than I could have put it. They also have sound bites in each format, however, they are in the compressed format so you'll need a decoder for each format to listen.

You may want to check out Ogg Vorbis, which is an alternative patent-free opensource audio compression. I haven't heard any low bitrate samples and the implementation is rather new, so I really can't vouch for this.

Unrestricted? Legally, you should be paying a few cents to Franhauffer (I think through AOL now) every time you encode something. If you want unrestricted use Ogg Vorbis, an audio codec yielding better quality, smaller file sizes, and has no restrictions at all. I've been ripping CDs to that for a few weeks now.

Score: -1, Redundant

I am going to continue to rip my CD's to use the unrestricted MP3 file format

Please remember MP3 is not an unrestricted format, and there are better (as in quality as well as freedom) alternatives, such as Ogg Vorbis.

Personally, I'm very anxiously awaiting the Vorbis encoder to finish its beta stages and start being heavily optimized for quality and speed.

Sure, MP3 over SDMI, but OGG over both :)

--

The article was indeed drivel as another poster pointed out. But all the scary legal compromising going on IS something to be concerned about. Fortunately, there are things we can do with existing technology to preserve our rights...

Software. Use open source. If you need Win32, don't upgrade beyond Win 98.

Hardware. Never buy RDRAM-based motherboards.

Music. Buycott the MPAA but start looking into new indie groups too. Try MOD music. Rip your CD's at home into OGG, not MP3. Share your OGGs via Gnutella. Never buy an Audio CDR - always use data CDrs.

Movies. Watch 'em in the theater and buy DVD's as you see fit. The MPAA has a lock on this one, we don't have much legal opportunity to fight back (ideas anyone?)

Privacy. Use PGP.

Vote! email and write your congressman - get informed about what the DMCA and the UCITA and the other threats are. Slashdot's YRO section is easily one of the best references. Support the EFF. get informed - and help inform.

I give Ogg Vorbis my second highest honour.

(both of which are mangy cats)

I mean, if its in MP3 format, then i guess it should automatically be made illeagal [sic] right?

If you're not an MP3 patent licensee, yes. But there's always the patent-free Vorbis codec.

Peace.

I'm sorry, you seem to miss the point.

If all you wanted was an encoding format, you can get that - eg here.

If what you want is the music, then fine, you can get that too.

If you want your music in MP3 format, you can by the CD and encode it, or get it here.

If you _don't_ want the music, then cool, no problem.

But, just because you have to change it from the format it's sold in, to the format you want to use it in does _not_ give you the right to steal.

Ever copied a CD to tape, to play in the car, or on a walkman? Amounts to the same thing.

By the CD, and use this.

The RIAA sued over MP3.com distributing RIAA members music (right ot wrong, not relevent here).

Notice that all the other online music labels have not been sued for being such. (For example Vorbisonic, which even uses a free [speech and beer] music format).

MP3.com is still distributing music, and selling CD's. Nothing stopping it.

or rather let the artists and the open source community work together to create a an electronic marketplace that does not involve the riaa.

MP3.com fits every aspect of your comment except the "open source" aspect, which cannot be filled legally until one of these happens:

• MPEG audio layer 3 patents run out around 2010, at which point LAME becomes non-infringing, or
• MP3.com begins offering .ogg (Vorbis codec) format audio files (which sound as good as a 50% higher bitrate .mp3).

this post is 99% recycled

see this comment from a previous story on software freedom.

Re:Free Software = Pompous Bores, discuss (Score:4, Informative)
by iCEBaLM (icebalm@[NOSPAM]bigfoot.com) on Thursday August 24, @05:45PM GMT
(User #34905 Info) http://www.lucid.dyndns.org

Nobody has yet come up with an explanation of why it is that "The Community" has never, once, come up with a major original piece of work.

perl
Ogg Vorbis
Freenet
DRI
OpenAL

-- iCEBaLM

Even if you own the copyright, distributing MP3 files of your own work can be illegal. OGG files, on the other hand...
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!

Nobody has yet come up with an explanation of why it is that "The Community" has never, once, come up with a major original piece of work.

perl
Ogg Vorbis
Freenet
DRI
OpenAL

-- iCEBaLM

http://www.vorbis.com/download.html They already have plugins for Winamp, Sonique, and XMMS.
Also they have ecoders for Linux X86, BEOS and WIN.

Forget Napster Gnutella already has support for every freaking format there is or any new formats you could ever come up with.

I converted a couple of my MP3's to OGG format to test it out.

The Results:

1) The .ogg files was about 1 meg (20%) smaller than the .mp3
2) I couldn't tell the difference in sound quality (although I did notice that the .ogg files use a variable bitrate)
3) On my 266 NT box at work, Winamp playing an .mp3 takes about 4-5% of my CPU time, whereas Winamp playing an .ogg takes about 25-30% of my CPU time. This is a big (and painful) jump for me, especially when I'm compiling.

I wonder if this number will improve as they progress through the beta stages...

Download one of the converters and see. Available for Win32, Linux, and BeOS.

I just tried out OGG by encoding an MP3 file from my Moby CD (Porcelain). MP3 was sized at 5.64mb @ 192kb/s and the OGG file was a nice 3.64mb. I saved 2mb there! Encoding from MP3 to OGG took about 2min on my Athlon Thunderbird 700 @ 950 For arguments sake lets say that encoding to OGG saves 2mb per file then I will save about 300mb! (150 files x2)

As for sound quality I noticed no difference between 192kb/s from the MP3 format to the 119kb/s from the OGG format.

I feel that we have a winner here and it will just be a little longer before that OGG will be dominant over MP3 if not its equal. I just hope they get the support they need.

OT: I did find a small and annoying bug in the plugin player. When you are playing an OGG file and try to peruse the playlist it will always bring you back to the song that is playing. You'll have to stop the track to cycle through the other songs, no biggie though.

Just in case you are wondering where the downloads are, http://www.vorbis.com/download.html

and I expect you to actually make it a link, like this: http://www.vorbis.com/. You shouldn't lambaste /. for being lazy if you are too :)

Check out this page:

http://www.vorbis.com/download.html

As bad as this sounds, perhaps this is what is needed to push along technically superior solutions.
Unisys is pushing PNGs with their licensing, Fraunhofer is pushing Ogg Vorbis with theirs, and now, the RIAA is pushing Freenet and Gnutella.
In all three cases, the Free Software world has overcome litigation be creating open, free, superior alternatives.

Well, judging by this page pointed out in another thread, they're probably just streaming (Dolby) AC-3. No details about the network part, but the compression spec is here or here.

Same stuff that's on a lot of DVDs.

Just as a head's up, there's a plan to add a more flexible surround encoding to the Ogg Vorbis audio format.

I suggest using a free audio compression format, we can't force the music industry to use it, but that's what they thought about mp3 not long ago.

and maybe the licence can forbid the industry to encrypt it or make propritary additions to it.

take a look at http://www.vorbis.com and tell me what you think of it.

MP3 is old, too lossy, sounds bad, and has way too many legal messes surrounding it. I'm sure that eventually all of these can be worked around (MP4?), but why bother? Vorbis is here, and is free (speech) and free (beer). Oh, and It's Just Better (tm), too.

</rant>

Remember the SAT? Windows is to Linux as MP3 is to Vorbis.