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MP3Pro Released
Andrew writes "An initial news story tweaked me to the fact that, "Thomson Multimedia and the Fraunhofer Institute, the two creators of the MP3 format, released a coder and decoder (codec) for the MP3pro format Thursday on the RCA.com Web site". It apparently achieves parity with the MS version 8 player. Their download on their web site is here (Windows only)." *yawn*
I agree. So why post it?
More interesting will be watching if the manufacturers of mp3 portables switch over. Given the price of memory sticks and the low capacity most players have, this is a very appealing way to double storage for the cost burning a chip or two. If the Rio's do go MP3Pro it could have a serious effect on the longevity of standard mp3's.
Compressed 5.1 is called AC3, although the bitrate on a DVD is usually 448kbit/s which is a bit much to put in a divx rip...
It's also possible to put two mp3 or wma streams in a file, giving 4 channel audio.
And vorbis supports multiple channels.
Ogg Vorbis is never going to become popular. For one, it has a really weird name. For another, people don't call it by it's file extension. For another, what IS it's file extension? .OV? People are used to three letter extensions. If it doesn't have a 3 letter extension, it's not gonna become widespread. Name one single format which has a two letter extension and is popular. And no, .GZ is not popular... it's only used by unix and linux guys... you don't find gzipped files on most websites.
Change the name to something that's more normal and give it a 3 letter extension.
I've got an idea... call it MP5. Then people will assume it's a newer version of MP3. I doubt that the company that makes the MP3 format could possibly get away with keeping people from using MP as a file extension in combination with any other letter or number.
We'll see whether or not the piracy groups adopt the new mp3 codec. If they do, then there's a good chance that the rest of us will. If not, we'll stick to mp3's at 160kbps and 44.1kHz.
Personally, I think it's likely LAME/mp3 will remain the standard for quite some time. Bandwidth and storage are cheap.
Which reminds me, when are we going to get a decent compressed surround-sound scheme? Compressing two channels is easy, I want 5.1 though, as will anyone who uses divx in the future.
Apparently OGG Vorbis V1.0 (released next month) is going to achieve near CD quality at the 80Kbit range - whereas MP3Pro gets there at 128. http://www.technologyreview.com/web/kiang/kiang061 401.asp
TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW about this!! IIS/Fraunhofer CAN NOT co-opt our MP3s!!
--
Forget Napster. Why not really break the law?
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Yeah, uh, I knew I'd get a reactoin like that, even after I noted carefully that the fact *I* got rejected wasn't so much an issue to me. My concern is the overall quality of /. and if you give a shit - enough to complain about my post - it should be your concern too.
I submitted this a week ago:
2001-06-08 16:22:29 MP3Pro codec set to debut (articles,music) (rejected)
This isn't sour grapes; I know that there are different editors with different interests and different approaches, and it certainly harms me none to have a submission rejected.
What was accepted on 6/8 - after my rejection - was Thomson Announces Royalties For MP3 Streaming> , an article which referenced the second half of the same Technology Review article that I submitted.
My submission did as the Tech Review article did: made MP3Pro the focus, and included the streaming licensing story as part two. If the editor followed the link in the submission that was posted, he had to skip past the first half of the article - detailing the debut of MP3Pro - to read the paragraphs about mp3 streaming licensing.
I don't point this out to troll. I point this out because it's interesting how /. stories are chosen. And because the readers deserve to know, especially those who rely on /. for news. If you're going to rely on a source, it's good to be aware of how that source operates -- so that it's a more "open source", so to speak.
I believe that Taco et al have hit a snag in how the community operates: what is "news" is determined by the editors. The editors are only human and it would appear they have a pretty tough job on their hands. What's worse, their own bias affects the biases of the community. Then the community is subtlely encouraged through the moderation system to promote articles based on any bias they can find.
One alternative is in use at Kuro5hin, where the community itself votes on the submitted, pending stories. This increases the importance of a strong community, while it decreases the possibility for editor bias or editor error. I'm a big fan, if you couldn't tell.
That system might be unworkable here, but it's not hard to imagine other possible systems that permit the community itself to participate in the article selection process. An increasing number of eyeballs could only help.
A place to meta-discuss /. itself would also be huge. That way, people like me could indulge in that area, instead of polluting story threads with items like this. To Taco et al, it might seem like heresy to give the community any level of editorial control. But how could that be, when the community generates 99.9% of the content?
Think about it, won't you? Thank you.
That's for when you go to the gym or go for a run or a bike ri.... erhmm... never mind. :)
Windows 2000 Pro(fessional)
... Ogg Vorbis has a linux version with sour ...
Oh. Never mind.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Actually the latest versions of Ogg Vorbis are quite competative in quality per filesize, especially with variable bitrate.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
What about <a href=http://flac.sourceforge.net/>FLAC</a> ;? Lossless audio compression, that way I'm not beholden to the latest lossy compression fad, and get true CD quality. And, whenever I want to compress further, I can downsample to MP3, or whatever. XMMS plugin, it's got it all? Or am I missing something?
Of course it will. It just won't come from lossy compression schemes like MP3 and Ogg Vorbis.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Actually, it specifically says on this page ( http://www.codingtechnologies.com/mp3PROzone/faq.h tm ) that: "Libraries for the Linux operating system will be available during the third quarter of 2001."
I think the bigger issue that most slashdoters are concerned about is that the mp3 codec is encumbered by Fraunhofer patents. It's not an open standard, but one that a company owns.
:)
Josh
Yes, I really did mean slashdoters.. it's funny, laugh
You are incorrect.
- --------
It is all under the BSD license since beta4. Even Richard Stallman had to admit that it made more sense for this type of program.
-----------------------------------------------
UNIX isn't dead, it just smells funny...
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UNIX isn't dead, it just sme
Transcoding from one lossy codec to another is not really a useful way to compare them.
... it wasn't THAT good and deserved to die for other reasons, but it's certainly better than you experienced ]
Loss due to lossy compression is cumulative.
You lost some sound quality in the original CD -> MP3 encoding, and then lost some more in the MP3 -> VQF encoding (or MP3 -> WAV -> VQF, same thing).
To sound halfway decent, VQF may well want information that was thrown out in the original MP3 encoding pass.
The only fair comparison would be between CD -> MP3 and CD -> VQF.
[ not that I really have any great desire to defend VQF in general
DNA just wants to be free...
Dude, even WinAmp ships with a Vorbis plugin these days.
DNA just wants to be free...
From a quick search most of the important Barnsley patents appear to be circa 1990-1995 so it'll be a few years before they enter the public domain.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
You'd lose quality. This may not be what you want.
But you're building the player yourself. It can handle whatever codecs you can lay your hands on. You can progressively re-rip all your CDs with Ogg Vorbis at 96kbps VBR while leaving the mp3s you don't have CDs of as MP3. Disk is cheap.
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Pretend that something especially witty is here. Thanks.
I just ordered a Soul Player; I've waited a long time for a good product to ship for a good price, and finally this beast is unleashed. I really hope they choose to add an Ogg decoder too; if they do so, they'll sell even more of these things! They've already released several firmware upgrades, each one adding new features to the player (I don't recall seeing any actual bug reports yet; very impressive). If I like it enough that I won't let my wife steal it away from me (she's getting good at stealing my toys, dammit :), we'll undoubtely by another one.
Read my stuff.
Good MP3/CD players already come with upgradable firmware (see www.soulplayer.com and Rio Volt). They already play WMA files, so adding OGG support shouldn't be too much of a problem. That is assuming they want to :-).
Superior technologies often lose. It's just a matter of marketing and timing. Remember Betamax? Where is it now?
I've never used it so I can't comment. But the NeXTSTEP GUI was *definitely* better than anything else ever created and it certainly didn't win in the marketplace. Bad marketing and a bad attitude from Jobs did it in.
Oh Come on.. Lame may add support but Blade sucks, all he did was fix the dist10 source to compile more easily then optomise the code without touching the algorithms. So he ended up with a slightly faster version of the dist10 encoder. All very admirable except that by the time he open sourced it Lame had surpassed it in speed and quality. STOP USING BLADEENC, IT SUCKS
Once PDAs with the processing speed to play back MP3/Ogg Vorbis files become widespread (Palm will be there next year, and the year after that it will be cheap; WinCE is there now, and in a year the current models will be cheap), there will be no reason to buy a dedicated MP3 widget, since the PDAs are at roughly the same price point and do more.
The exception might be the MP3/CD players, but for those the MP3Pro format really isn't a significant advantage (when you already get more than 12 hours of music on a disk, who cares?).
Jon Acheson
All opinions expressed herein are my own, and not those of my employers, who are appalled.
No, you haven't looked into it. There already is a Winamp plugin.
"I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
Err... being open source, doesn't it give you a nice warm-n-fuzzy knowing it will *stay* free?
--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
That's absolutely silly. If you acutally bothered to look at the site, you would have found:
And from the FAQ: In other words, you can do what you damm well want, just don't rip off the tools, write your own. This is made dead simple by having the libraries available and the open source code available to learn from. Sheesh.--
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Yeah but regardless, can't we see how the GPL is far from letting the most people take advantage of the software? I thought that was the idea of Free Software, secondary to pushing the belief onto others is making sure that everyone can use the software?
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I haven't looked into it, but someone needs to write a Winamp plugin to decompress this stuff. Now.
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Maybe they'll rename the old one "MP3Am".
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Oog Vorbis?
You've never heard of Oog Vorbis? Its so easy to remember! Its a great name! why, I can envision the words on the lips of every teenager in the western hemisphere.
If the oog people wanted to change the world and give everyone a new high quality truly open audio standard, they should have freakin' given it a name that's not STUPID.
the MP3 "brand" is huge partly because its easy to remember. WMA? harder to say... Oog Vorbis.. how do you prononuce that? is it "aah-g Vor-bis? or Ooooo-g Vor-bis? help me out here?
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
So suppose MS releases a whole album in WMA format.
Bill Gates singing Start Me Up?
It's amazing that you can brush this off so easily when it's apparent that you haven't even heard (or seen, for that matter) what the latest Windows Media formats can do. Try this link if you're at all interested in scoping out the competition (yes, I realize that's an MS press release, but it does have a few good links to examples of content encoded with the new versions). The quality of the streaming video is no less than astounding, and the audio is right up there with it. So while you may not be excited that MP3Pro is as good as the "windoze AUdio 8 format" (as you put it in your oh-so-leet way), you'd do well not to brush this off lightly, either.
now that'll make everyone cry, not just grown men.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The Amiga GUI was called `Intuition'. As Peter Cherna (I believe), once said, "Intuition is the only one word oxymoron I know."
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
It is Ogg Vorbis, not be confused with "OOG, THE OPEN SOURCE CAVEMAN." OOG BREAK OPEN-SOURCE CD OVER HEAD FOR MAKING DUMB MISTAKE!!!!
Stupid lameness filter............
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
I tought I taw a putty tat.
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Here's an object lesson: look up fractal image compression, invented by Michael Barnsley in the 1980's. It's a hell of a lot better than the DCT approach we use in JPEG, and better even than the wavelet technique used in JPEG-2000, but since Barnsley apparently has NO business sense, (insisting that he MUST get paid each and every time someone uses his compressor) the only place you'll see fractal compression is in things like the MicroSquish Encarta encyclopedia, NOT saving us all about 40% of the bandwidth wasted on P0rn every day.
:) Any idea when those patents expire, and we can actually begin to implement it in something widely used?
I remember seeing this in New Scientist when Barnsley was first hyping it -- they expressed doubts about his business model too
deus does not exist but if he does
I don't know if some people can consciously tell the quality of the MP3s, but a lot of times you can feel it. I know if I listen to poorly encoded music, my ears feel really fatigued after a while and I have to turn it off. I have to encode at at least 160kbps with a good encoder to prevent this from happening.
you know Hitler made the Jews wear pieces of flair also..
The problem is that even though you could do this digitally, with little loss (some due encoding twice), most people wouldn't. .wma, so why bother encoding it in something else?
They run windows, and can play all the
This would mean that the people that DO care about this, is a minority, and the amount of mp3s would diminish.
It's a hell of a lot better than the DCT approach we use in JPEG, and better even than the wavelet technique used in JPEG-2000, ...
Do you have anything to support this claim?
The long encoding time for fractal image compression alone makes it impossible for the method to be "a hell of a lot better".
From the vorbis faq
What software and hardware supports Ogg Vorbis?
Ogg Vorbis encoding and/or playback is now native in a wide variety of popular software. It's included in popular players such as Sonique, FreeAmp for Windows, and Unsanity Echo for MacOS. It's also supported in popular audio applications such as CDex, Siren Jukebox, and GoldWave. For a more complete list, refer to our software page. On the hardware side, iObjects has announced Ogg Vorbis support in their Dadio 2.0 OS, designed for portable audio players. Along with other hardware providers, this development should ensure that Ogg Vorbis support is widespread in future consumer audio hardware.
What about a four letter extension? .html
.OGG, and Ogg is a general packet based streaming file format. The Vorbis audio format is the first user of this system. So, in a way, .OGG files are intended to be competitors to QuickTime .MOV, which also encompasses a wide variety of codecs.
You'll find that it's quite popular.
But that's beside the point.
Most people don't look at file formats *at all* on Windows these days - they have pretty icons which shows them what the file type is.
But that's beside the point as well.
The Ogg file format extension is
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
You may want to hang on just a little longer, for the 1.0 release candidate -- they're just finished implementing all the features in the Vorbis 1 spec (cascading, etc.) which the beta4 decoder/encoder doesn't understand. beta4 Ogg Vorbis files will still be decoded fine, but 1.0 files may not play correctly under the beta4 decoder (but hey, that's why it's beta :).
This is good news - beta4 already compresses better than standard MP3, and 1.0 should only improve this.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
Asking the average teenager on the street anything and expecting them to tell you anything moderately intelligent is a triumph of hope over experience.
.mp3 was the warez scene, and the same could happen for .ogg.
.wma).
.ogg over *all* the other recent lossy perceptual encoders is that it has *no* patenting issues, *no* licensing issues, and has equal or better performance than the current market leader. All it needs now is for some people with a marketing budget to pick it up :)
All a new file format needs to be successful is for the people that pirate movies and CDs to start using it. One of the triggers for the success of
The alternative route is for the file format to mysteriously become the default on the operating system that all these technically semi-literate people use (as Microsoft will be trying to do with
The real advantage of
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
How about this one? :)
It's currently up to version 1.05, and it'll be in the main Winamp distribution the next time they release an upgrade to Winamp.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
For Linux, use cdparanoia + lame or oggenc, or one of the many good frontends - Grip comes to mind. Additionally, the upcoming KDE 2.2's builtin audiocd IOSlave will allow you to rip CDs very easily (though not yet write them).
You 'gave up after 5 albums' - why? You can use the computer for other things while you're ripping a CD, you know :). Combine ripping and encoding, and it'll probably take about 30 minutes to fully process a CD, but there's no reason why this shouldn't go on in the background.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
The problem with MP3 isn't content protection -- the problem is the licensing. There is no need to pay to get a license to *decode* MP3, but there is to *encode*. Even if you write a free encoder, you are supposed to pay for a license.
Given this, and despite what they say on their website, Lame and all other free MP3 encoders are unlicensed, illegal software in the USA.
The only reason this hasn't been pursued by Fraunhofer is the bad press it would generate -- but never rely on a company not to change its mind. One parallel: GIF and the UNISYS patent.
-- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
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Don't you think that as long as there are no products like Creative Jukebox or the Rio players that play Ogg-Vorbis files, this format is going to have a really tough time gaining wide-spread use? Why would I want to store my music in two formats: Ogg-Vorbis at home because its cool, and MP3 because it's the only way to listen to it on the road? (Sure the manufacturers all promise support of future audio-formats, but will these include Ogg-Vorbis?)
--
Being well balanced is overrated. -- John Carmack
This assumes that the Amiga GUI was superior. Well, I used it for years and guess what, it wasn't that great. The graphics of the Amiga were far ahead of their time, but the GUI left much to be desired.
Mad Software: Rantings on Developing So
So, what does this give us that MP3 doesn't? Better audio quality? (If it doesn't beat Ogg Vorbis at every bitrate, then why bother?) I find I'm not really able to get excited about their claim that they're as good as the windoze AUdio 8 format. -jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Yes, I'm interested. Is it possible to do this without running afoul of Barnsley's patents?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
FYI, I've been involved in signal processing for a *long* time, (around 20 years now) and I certainly *will* brush off a proprietary encoding scheme in favor of an open one.
Here's an object lesson: look up fractal image compression, invented by Michael Barnsley in the 1980's. It's a hell of a lot better than the DCT approach we use in JPEG, and better even than the wavelet technique used in JPEG-2000, but since Barnsley apparently has NO business sense, (insisting that he MUST get paid each and every time someone uses his compressor) the only place you'll see fractal compression is in things like the MicroSquish Encarta encyclopedia, NOT saving us all about 40% of the bandwidth wasted on P0rn every day.
So, even if the MicroSquish audio compression format were significantly better than Vorbis (which it isn't, I've listened to them both), I'd still dismiss it out of hand.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Shhhh!
You'll let the secret of MP3Pro+ out! That's not slated for release until next year!
I wonder if "near-CD-quality" at 128 is the same "near-CD-quality" at 64? Betcha if I tested on some early synthesizers that are basically square waves and sine waves, I could get "near-CD-quality" at 32. Or if I were to do classical music only, with a few megs of ROM space, I could get "near-CD-quality" with a MIDI file.
At least for marketing purposes.
Sorry, Thompson, but taking a wild-ass guess at the frequences above 10K sounds like a neat idea that might work for some tracks, but it sounds like s recipe for disaster on much of what I listen to. It may not be much worse than MP3 at 128, but I'll be comparing against my CDs and MP3s at 160, 192, and up.
My ears will be the judge. Not your marketroids.
Diskspace is cheap. Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 30G drive in a FedEx 747. But sound quality is something that, once lost through overcompression and/or a poor codec, can never be recovered.
what about MP3Enterprise or MP3Datacenter...?
- In Memoriam: Jeroen de Bruin (1972-2004), bye bro
what about MP3Enterprise or MP3Datacenter...?
- In Memoriam: Jeroen de Bruin (1972-2004), bye bro
The point is that both CD and MP3 sources were played using some good equipment, allowing a superior source (if there was one) to sound better - and to most people they sounded about the same. What I am trying to say is that when someone is not sitting in front of perfectly aligned speakers or using nice cans it is is even less likely that they will tell the difference between CD or MP3.
That person playing tunes while typing in Word is most likely playing either the CD or the MP3 through a Soundblaster... urgh.
A good MP3 doesn't have to be big. The --r3mix option for LAME gives great results using VBR and they're just not that much bigger. Not that size matters much in the days of 30G drives for $100. Flash is also getting bigger and cheaper, it's only a matter of time. I'm puzzled by the emphasis on size when comparing MP3 or Ogg or other codecs, but then again all my MP3s live on big dedicated partitions or the Hango Personal Jukebox.
Please don't take it personally - I wasn't trying to make you out as a foolish "audiophile", but there are plenty out there.
MP3 is not MP3 - you can make good ones and bad ones, and it's easier to make a bad one than a good one, especially if you use many of the commercial all-in-one ripper/encoders. r3mix.net (http://www.r3mix.net if you like cut & paste) has some very interesting analyses of various MP3 codecs, and a link to a series of tests conducted by German magazine C't involving 300 listeners. Bottom line is, at high-enough bitrates most people can't hear the difference between CD and MP3. Now imagine how often people will pick the difference
- in less than ideal listening conditions - like through a Soundblaster card, or even the best "PC Speakers"
- using better options with better encoders (like LAME) (Fraunhofer "high quality" settings can be worse than "low quality"!)
- using the newer "Pro" standard
"But I can always tell the difference!"
Sure you can? Have you had someone prepare good MP3s for you and done a real blind test? Until then you only think you can tell. This is the point where fools stop reading - that is, "audiophiles" who think they know everything. As the Insanely Audiophile story showed, some people just like to spend money regardless of necessity.
"Ogg is better because..."
Great, choose it for your own recordings. The rest of the world, including me, will use what works everywhere - I won't be throwing away my mp3-only portable. I don't actually care how idealogically pure a codec is. Nobody says content protection is to come, only that it is possible. And even if it becomes possible that doesn't mean every MP3 (pro or otherwise) will become protected, only the ones you get from certain sources. If you're interested in creating copies of CDs you own, no problem. If you want to be a pirate, you're SOL and I have no sympathy. Enjoy your Ogg.
Once you accept the quality is there, you may as well make archival-quality MP3s of every CD you have and store those CDs somewhere where they won't take up so much space. Or, keep the CDs close by your CD player and enjoy great sound at work too.
Is "MP3" trademarked? If not, the scope is there to use a confusingly similar name to refer to Ogg Vorbis. Something like "MP3Ultra", perhaps.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
You and I both know that MP refers to MPEG. Most consumers do not. Naming something based on MP3 but not on MPEG may not be a violation.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
What's the problem, though? Do you think your music is going to crash?
Ogg works fine now. Go ahead and use it.
--
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Anyone remember VQF - the copyrighted and patented audio compression format that was supossed to bury MP3 ?
Nobody remembers it ?
I tought so...
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But of course it is important. It is always good to be able to store twice as much music on whatever device. Since the solid-state players still don't have more than 256MB usually, it would still mean an increase from 2 to 4 hours of music to take with you, quite significant IMO.
D'oh! Yes, 30 Gbytes. Mea Culpa...
--
Too stupid to live.
Too stupid to live.
Too stubborn to die.
I seldom notice that MP3s sound bad (at least the properly encoded ones ^_^) but I often get the feeling that there is something missing....like the earlier audiophile article, once you realize what you have been missing it is hard to go back.
I'll have to check out the new LAME encoder...thanks for the info.
Can you back the statement about sound cards up anywhere? I don't have much background in ASP but the little anecdotal testing I've done has shown sound cards to be quite agile in reproducing signals...the combination of a waveform generator program driving the sound card and my oscilliscope have revealed an ability to reproduce waveforms whose characteristics generally exceed the abilities of power amplifiers (let alone loudspeaker drivers) to reproduce. The distortion figures are often craptacular, but the waveform is still within nominal amplitude.
While I'm not saying chopping off this octave is a good thing, I think that the psycoacoustic modeling used can be even more detrimental to the sound quality. What I notice most about MP3s is not the loss of clarity in the high end but the lack of definition in soft passages. (presumably because music content is being guessed to be subaudible when it isn't)
Oh man! 23 CDs times 6 minutes is 138 minutes. This could possibly waste 3 hours of your life with HARD WORK changing discs. I pity you! Your life is truly miserable.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
If he didn't, you would read the story somewhere else and submit it to Slashdot. Or complain about it on another thread.
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
because on my 7000Mhz win2k laptop, playing MP3s kills my compile times.
-no broken link
LAME used to be "Lame Ain't an MP3 Encoder" for precisely the reason you mentioned. It's been more than half a year since that was true. LAME included a completely open, patent-free, license-free codec. While we're at it, it's content-protection free too, because you can rip/encode your own CDs.
____________________
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
MP3Pro files will work on all old MP3 players, just that the quality won't be as good as MP3Pro.
--
Free Mac Mini
...it's horribly patent encumbered, and even more expensive than MP3 to license. At least we have Ogg Vorbis to make up for it. Sure, it may not be quite so small, but at least it's completely *free*, and storage isn't so much of an issue these days...
We could all be forced to "make-do" with applications and tools we develop ourselves when the commercially availible ones suck, but that would require effort, I suppose. As for business ethics, that's sorta like the Sasquatch, everyone's heard of it but no one can prove it exists.
Carpe Deez
So what if it's windows only right now? It's supposed to be half the size of regular mp3, if it's any good it will get adopted as a standard and the open source community will figure out a way to use it. People on this board are too quick to condemn progress because it's on the "wrong" platform. Progress is good, regardless of who it benefits.
Carpe Deez
The big problem with _ripping_ the songs is shitty CD hardware. Even drives that claim (and even deliver) high data transfer rates can choke on Red Book Audio. For some reason, direct audio copying is slow, so you have to look at that and not just the 'x' speed of the drive.
For example, my 40Plex rips audio at 18-19x at the end of a disc, while many drives that are as fast or faster can't hack 10x audio.
I love my Plextor drive. They're expensive, but Plextor doesn't fuck around with their designs.
For people who only steal MP3's yes. But for people like me (empeg owners and other people who rip their own CD's for the purpose of listening to them with something other than a CD player) it won't matter at all.
I suspect that it's because you can play an MP3Pro stream with an MP3 player (but it'll sound worse than with an MP3Pro player).
Why doesn't Microsoft just start their own record label and buy some of the more popular bands for release under Windows Media format only?
If we don't see it from Microsoft, then I have a feeling that we will see it from elsewhere...
More
Adding 'pro' to a name like that sounds really silly if you ask me, I cant think of many other cases at the moment but I know there are pleanty of such names... Im sure you all can name a few more...
-- - e.m.p.t.y - --
psxndc
/. - *yawn*
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
we should pay more attention to this kind of news. without sufficient multimedia formats available on linux, it will be very hard for linux to root on most users desktop. and we definitely won't want to have every linux distro to pay $7.50 per codec as license fees.
one solution would be to encourage everyone to use free (read: ogg) or more-or-less free formats (like mpeg 1 video, mpeg 1 audio layer 3 etc). once this area is saturated by proprietary formats it will be harder to revamp than usual software market.
Apparently you're a moron too, since you switched the two M-words...
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Anyway, it's not really a play on words, it just sounds nonsensical.
The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
--Henry Kissinger
Beyond that, you're Windows bashing is getting tired. Have you even *seen* Media Player 8? It's very sweet. The media it supports is incredible, and the DVD performance coupled with it's on-screen disappearing controls (when in full-screen mode) are great.
Jump off your bandwagon long enough to see the rest of the world, man. I challenge you to show me a media player for Linux that is as versitle, good looking, easy to use, highly supported and overall *good* as Windows Media Player 8. If you can't, you should consider switching.
--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
I swore I would migrate to Ogg the moment they release a stable version, but they seem to have gotten stuck on Beta 4 for about the last 6 months. What's going on, fellas?
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I'm sitting on about 8 Gigabytes, and still haven't ripped all my CDs yet. (Got about 350 CDs) And then they tell me "Oh, but you should be doing Ogg Vorbis" - sorry, but until there's Ogg-support in my video editing software, I am stuck with MP3. Not to mention, I didn't find any easy Windows software to decode Ogg - just encoding... what happens when I want to make that music mix for mah car?
Who Wants To Date A Norwegian?
and anyone can put together an encoder or decoder for any purpose as long as they're willing to pay the licence fees
From mp3licensing.com: "All agreements with running royalties have an annual minimum of US$ 15,000, creditable against annual royalties." What independent free software developer has $15,000 per year to spend?
which for free decoders is $0.
Only on two brands of proprietary operating systems: Windows and Mac OS.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Is "MP3" trademarked?
Go to TESS and look for trademark serial numbers 78063353 (automobiles and parts, registered to Mazda), 75634171 (clothing), 74126256 (air compressor microcontroller), and 78023779 (a top level domain). MP3+ is 76172490. MP3PRO is 76185872. MP3 CAT (no connection to cuecat) is 75723781 and 75722814. Note that in the registration for the official MP3 Logo (75856706), Thomson makes no claim to "MP3" apart from the logo.
If not, the scope is there to use a confusingly similar name to refer to Ogg Vorbis.
However, the "MP" in MP3 refers to the standardization of it in a Motion Picture codec from MPEG. (The video portion of MPEG is largely JPEG-like with motion compensation at the 16x16 pixel tile level.) The first popular version of MPEG used MPEG layer 2 ("MP2") audio (at 256 kbps, it sounds like a 160 kbps MP3). Because OggVorbis is not an MPEG standard, it shouldn't be called MPEG. The MPEG LA might have something to say in that regard.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Not to mention, I didn't find any easy Windows software to decode Ogg - just encoding
AOL's Winamp, the most popular audio player for Windows, can decode and play Ogg Vorbis content with a plugin. To decode to .wav instead of to the speaker, simply open Preferences, set the output plugin to Disk Writer, tell it where to stash the .wav files, and then play your .ogg/.mp3 playlist. (Set it back to waveOut to play them.) Use an audio editor to touch up the files, and burn away.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Why Ogg Vorbis will not fail:
...because independent developers like me are going to use Ogg or someone at his family reunion to internally store audio. (and video, and images, etc.) Game developers and developers of other software that works extensively with media have a lot to gain by using a free algorithm, and a lot to lose by embedding support for proprietary algorithms. With Ogg Vorbis, I can embed support for compressed audio in my application easily and in good conscience without becoming hopelessly tied to a company who patented a mathematical formula for digitally encoding audio. Which is all any audio "format" is. If I take a chance with MP3 or MP3Pro, I risk owing royalties or being forced to cripple all or part of my application (at least nominally for the countries that force software patents on the public.)
For me, it's a no-brainer.
If I wanted my MP3s to sound like shit I'd download them.
Ok, subtle difference :)You're right, if you would use an algorithm that would show no difference between a decompressed file and the original recording, you're talking state-of-the-art audio from a compressed file. I stand corrected :)
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
all on cdrs and played in a Recording Studio on:
Now how realistic does that sound? The article I referred to in my first post obviously shows that there actually are people who have this kind of expensive devices in their houses, but how many percent of the total population is that? So how does this laboratory test translate to a home situation in which someone has Winamp play some tunes while typing in Word?
This is exactly what I meant. People don't listen to MP3 because of their quality, but because the ease of use. Sure, you can buy expensive software to make almost-perfect MP3's, but what's the use? Who'd want an MP3 that's twice as big as a normal one? The people who really want this quality (whether they can actually discern between a good and a bad one or not) will not bother to do so: they'll simply feed their CD-player with a good CD. I'm not talking about Naxos and the likes, more about Deutsche Grammophon and Decca, but you seem to know about differences in quality.
And please don't make it look like I said things like but I can always tell the difference! and Ogg is better because... because I didn't say that. I tried quite some different encoders in the past and I indeed could hear the difference between a few of them (Xing was terrible), but none of them could encode at 256kb/s and of course I didn't have the expensive stuff that C'T used. I didn't say that Ogg was better either, just that this is one piece of software that you can use the way you like, no strings attached. Ever tried the Fraunhofer encoder? I did, but it took me quite some time to have it cracked (yeah, sure, as if you're really going to pay for it...). Ogg is better in that it's free from whatever registration or content protection whatsoever. And that's a thing I treasure, as do a lot of folks here on /.
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
Hehehe, don't worry, I don't take it personally. We're obviously talking in a different direction. What I wanted to say is that MP3pro has only a very small advantage over plain vanilla MP3, because it is basically an improvement of a property that doesn't matter too much to most people.
That person playing tunes while typing in Word is most likely playing either the CD or the MP3 through a Soundblaster... urgh.
Exactly. Do you think he/she can hear the difference between a good MP3 and a CD? Small chance. And the chance that he can hear the difference between MP3 and MP3pro is even smaller.
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
The first comment on my post mentioned the same and I reacted in this post, agreeing on the idea of lossless compression. I think this makes your post redundant, but obviously the moderator didn't read all the articles either.
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
Yup. One more strong reason to go for open source :)
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
So I don't see huge benifits in MP3pro just because it's smaller and slightly better. I do however see a disadvantage: the content protection that is to come. That would take away a lot of its convenience. I'd say let's go for Ogg.
Woefdram, l'apprenti sorcier
Actually, they said half of the MP3Pro stream would play on MP3 players. So, I think saying that the quality won't be as good is understating it. The quality will be piss-poor.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
If the one stream is "basically a standard mp3", then the filesize wouldn't be reduced by half. At any rate, since my post that you replied to I have found out that MP3Pro is essentially a normal MP3 with a filter placed on it eliminated frequencies above 10 or 15kHz (I can't remember which), and an "exciter" that simulates frequencies above that point.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
From the Ogg Vorbis - www site.
:)
---
Decoder 1.0 release candidate 1 (1.0rc1) scheduledfor June 17th, 2001
With good fortune, the fully completed 1.0 decoderwill be in CVS this weekend. This represents completion of the final decoding features missing in beta release 4 that are needed for 1.0. Specifically, this decoder release includes cascading, channel coupling, and sparse codebook support. Aside from bugfixes, no additional changes will be made to decoding through 1.0. This decoder implements all Vorbis 1.0 specification features.
---
Keep up the good work Monty and the rest of the crew!
Many readers are taking pot shots at the SBR technology used with MP3Pro. However, the comments are along the lines of 'it must sound horrible, becuase they throw away all everything over 10K'.
The folks making these statement obviously don't understand that existing compression schemes already make good use of 'throwing away' lots of info...but that's the entire idea of a perceptual audio codec, isn't it...
I've worked with and have conducted many listening tests with SBR-based CODECs, and personally I think it works great for many types of audio, including music.
If you really want 'perfect' audio, however, you should stay away from lossy compression to start with...(and, of course, you need to use LP's, tube amps, etc.)
Your monitor is staring at you.
Why wait?
You can always listen later to what you encode now.
If 1.0 comes out just upgrade. It's backwards-
compatible.
Also, I was under the impression that any decoder
can decode files from any encoder, but I may have
been wrong.
--
GCP
>But there is virtually nothing over 15 KHz on
>most music and many sound cards/speakers have
>rolled off response in that range, so we aren't
>missing much.
Thats true. Most (cheap) cards have a little
more distortion and less response in that range,
but it's still quite audible. Do a CD rip, make
a copy of the wav and pass it through a 15Khz
lowpass filter. Now listen to both in sucsession.
On most music it's quite easy to hear the
difference, although having your card connected
to your stereo helps a lot. It also depends on
the CD. Your more likely to hear difference
on DDD (digital recoding/mastering ) CD's than
on AAD (analog recording/mastering) CD's.
Now pass it through a 10Khz lowpass filter. No
matter what equipment you are using, it will
suck. That is the real quality MP3Pro brings you.
The range between 10-15Khz is just 'made up'.
(It's harder to store higher frequencies, hence
by cutting 33% of the frequency range they can
cut bandwidth in half)
--
GCP
You need more resolution in the temporal domain.
Actually, its quite more complex than that, since
there are usually fewer high-frequency sounds and
the ATH is higher, but the huffman coding is less
efficient, and probably a few other issues I dont
even know of.
I'm sorry that I can't give you more information,
but this isn't my domain.
Interesting reading on the subject:
http://www.helsinki.fi/~ssyreeni/dsound/dsnda03
--
GCP
>which is why it can be omitted without immediate
>notice to most listeners.
Up to here I agree. But I am sure even an
untrained listener will be able to pick up a
signal that has been through a 10Khz lowpass
filter. It causes a dull sound, without
definition. Most people will immediately recognize
this as a noticeable quality loss.
It's harder, but very possible to pick out a
16Khz lowpass filter like early MP3 encoders
used, by ear. With 10Khz it's trivial.
MP3Pro tries to hide this via some clever tricks
which make it harder to identify...if you haven't
heard the original recording. Judging by some of
the other posts here there really is a noticable
quality loss, as was to be expected.
Saying this technique gives 'near CD quality' is
the same as saying an audio cassette with Dolby C
is giving 'near CD quality' too. I wanted to
emphasize this fact.
>I think that the psycoacoustic modeling used can
>be even more detrimental to the sound quality.
Yes. Even in the original Mp3 encoders this is
still being improved. LAME for example even
has significant improvements in this regard
with the latest betas (3.88). If you use lame,
experiment a bit with the --athtype 1/2/3 option.
This is good news for projects like Ogg...the
sound quality is already very good now. By
further tuning the psychoacoustics it will only
get better. They are not even using joint stereo
yet!
--
GCP
If you like your records, MP3Pro is something to
stay away from.
It attains such a high compression by using a
technique of constructing the higher frequencies
by _guessing_ what the ones that the compression
left out where, based on the lower frequencies,
and amplifying the rest.
You could compare this to saying that a cassette
sounds just as good as a CD if you just use
Dobly B/C. Not.
MP3Pro is limited to 10Khz, and can replicate
the sounds up to 15Khz. A cd is 22Khz and the
human ear can go to 19Khz for a normal healty
person. This means that you LOSE over half
the spectrum. Sure, you may not notice it
immediately because of the 'guessing' and the
'replictation', but if will be gruesome when
compared to the original CD.
Face it, you can't do wonders AND stay compatible
with old mp3 players.
Sure, it's a nice trick for streaming if 64Kbps
is all you have, but it's not fundamentally
different from the old mp3 format and using an
exciter plugin. The utility is severly limited.
That said, just use Ogg. It works. Yes, I really
mean that. The sound quality is great, the tools
are stable enough (beta4), and plugins are available
for most importants apps.
All it's missing is an ACM plugin for Windows so
non-Ogg-aware can deal with it too. Not that there
are many left. All serious sound editing packages
have native support now. And yes, it's being worked
on.
--
GCP
...when do we get mp3AM?
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
Listen to the bass line. Compression works reasonably well for mid-range instruments, but a stringed bass instrument (acoustic or electric) gets a lot of its personality from overtones that are also up into the mid-range of pitch. Most all of these overtones are thrown out by the psycho-acoustic compression algorithms, which tend to see them as noise you won't notice as missing behind the mid-range instruments.
Of course, most people don't consciously listen to the bass line, so most don't notice the difference. But if you do, it's easy to spot compressed music on any system with good enough fidelity to hear the bass as more than a thumping to begin with.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Real state-of-the-art quality will never come from a compressed file
:-)
It is quite simple to compress and decompress, in real time, audio that is identical bit-for-bit with the original.
It's called lossless compression -- I'm tired of people equating compression with data loss. Think of run-length encoding, Lempel-Ziv (PKZIP), etc. and you're on the right track.
Now, you're going to have a devil of a time compressing digital audio 10:1 without loss. Impossible? Not sure, but it hasn't been done yet. And the real-time requirement makes it harder.
Anyway, back to your original claim... hand me your favorite, highest quality CD WAV file and I can hand it back to you, compressed along with a codec that will replay it identically to the original, bit for bit. It's a start, but it ain't gonna be anywhere near 10:1...
Wow, 30 Mbytes? That must have taken you, what, 15 minutes to encode? Oh the humanity!!
ducks and runs for cover
Sorry, too easy a target to resist.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
MP3pro.com is already taken
There goes my chance to create a massive "independent" distribution channel and lawsuit target for the RIAA. I never get to have any fun.
He who joyfully marches in rank and file has already earned my contempt. - "Big Al" Einstein
On a more serious note: If anyone had bothered to look at the format, it's compatible to MP3!!! No need to rip files again! Your new player still plays MP3s, and the old player even plays the new MP3s, though you obviously get slighly lower quality...
Okay, I agree....I have a miserable life because in my free time I enjoy doing other things than waiting for a CD to get ripped. Instead sitting in the sun with a nice book, is of course a real waste of time. :-)
Besides, I'm lazy....
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
The ripping itself took ages under NT4 on a 4x SCSI CD-Rom. The CPU I had in that time (still have it) was a Pentium Pro 200 wwith 32Meg RAM, and encoding one song took up to 30 minutes (if not longer, and some Pink Floyd songs are extremely long). I automated the encoding with batch files, but the ripping still took too much time.
I know the tools are better now, but I just didn't know any good ones. I'll surely give a try to CDEx and cdparanoia. You know: desolation at first try can be quite a demotivator. Damnit, that explains why I never get women interested in me ;-)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
To make my point, some days ago my sister came along to ask what to do with a WMA file. She plays MP3s all day, but WMA? What is WMA? (yes, I know what it is and I told her) The same would happen for OGG files, I'm sure. MP3Pro will be accepted for the name and not the merits.
Besides, brand recognition is something Mircosoft has a big advantage over Linux...ask you Joe Sixpack about Linux and he'll give you a strange look. (Best luck with girls, they often know Tux or the BSD Deamon because they are cute, but not for what they represent)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Bah, you know very well that it is not the encoding that takes time. (tough, I tried it with the original Fraunhofer IIS encoder and that was sloooow) I have the most problems with ripping itself: That takes time due to changing disk, even at 10x it takes 6 minutes to rip one CD. I wanted to rip all my Pink Floyd CDs (I've got about 23) and I gave up after 5 albums. :-)
Besides, anybody know a good free (GNU) ripper? If it works on both Win and Lin it's a plus.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
From the article: Windows media files carry digital rights management (DRM) protections, preventing unauthorised copying. MP3 files do not, and neither do MP3pro files, for now.
Why is it always companies want to prevent us from *breaking teh law* by copying music. I personally do not copy music that I do not own on CD or tape; but how can they tell what I own on tape or CD, and so they will stop me doing what I want to do.
Great. I hope that "now" lasts for good.
better not play it out of an good quality analog port and record on another sound card as a wav, compressed to mp3
If that is the that case it's a cool name because anything to do with the Stooges is cool, so we should all use it then, nuk-nuk-nuk...you numbskull..I'll moida you!
Yeah, I noticed that too. But I think there is a difference between what he finds interesting and what others will find interesting.
Plus, i think the *yawn* actually meant "Yeah, yeah. I've heard this all before. They released a 'better' mp3 format but its still closed source. When will this people ever learn. Go Sixers." I think... ;)
They wont give a license for Open Sourced implementations, and I really doubt its possible to avoid the patents (or rather avoid getting your ass sued if you try to implement mp3pro any which way, which for anyone without a couple of million to spend in court is just about the same thing) this time around.
> Besides, anybody know a good free (GNU) ripper? :)
Take grip (http://nostatic.org/grip/)
It uses cdparanoia, so you might get a headache about the ripping gettig slower again, but hey, your Pink Floyd won't skip
>Not to mention, I didn't find any easy Windows software to decode Ogg
Dude, there's always the ogg-winamp plugin!
Ok I got a shed load of MP3s floating around, I booted up the dusty box and DL'd this thing, at the moment you can only convert wav files..... talk about hanging out the carrot
Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
Yes, an MP3Pro format might not do much for all the songs you downloaded from Napster, but it can enable people to encode sound at better quality on portable devices, and reduce bandwith/improve quality on streaming music.
On a related theme, microsoft is now trying to tie music to windows. In this wired story, it is explained that they trie to convince music publishers to release the music in their wma audio format. They also have a deal with upcoming music service from sony / universal.
Do you also feel that we'll soon have microsoft music ?
See also : http://www.strom.com/awards/210.html
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
TechTV tries really hard, but the teleprompter reading drones they've got in front of their cameras are hardly the people I want to rely on for meaningful technical information.
1. If a significant number of streaming sites switch to Ogg Vorbis, people will switch to it, too. The question is how to influence webcasters.
2. High profile anti-piracy lawsuit. Many people learned about Napster and started to use it after RIAA first moves against it (and the accompanying media coverage)
it didn't say,
but, does anyone think it is possible to rerip a 128kb Mp3 to become a 64kb Mp3pro file?
I am building a mp3player for my car, and this would save a ton of disk space.
And, do you think a p120 would play them ok?
or would they require too much power than that cand provide?
For Lossless Compression what about .ape from monkey's audio.
Actually, the streams aren't 50/50. Think of it as one large stream that's basically a standard mp3, and another, smaller stream that contains high-frequency data.
GeekNights!
Late Night Radio for Geeks!
Exact Audio Copy (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/) is the best ripper for Windows I've seen yet. Fast, accurate (lots of features for error detection and removal) and free (though not GNU unfortunately). CDDB support as well (though it would be nice if FreeDB support was implemented).
-- No, no gems to be found in this sig.
If all the Windows users switch to mp3Pro, there won't be much for you to listen to except what you rip yourself, will there? Which pretty much kills mp3, no?
--
"I'm not downloaded, I'm just loaded and down"
Business can't just walk into the digital music market in 2001 and think that a crippling, proprietary compression format is going to take off just because it yields small files. That isn't enough. They are ignoring three things:
It's not that cripple-formats won't work, it's that people don't need them and don't want them.
go read up on Secure Audio Path... they (MS) have thought about this too
if it's so easy to halve the file size ("An MP3pro recording uses two tracks, one like the old MP3 and another just for high-frequency sounds"), why don't they halve it now to 32kbs, and again have the edge over msft?
I know plenty about SPA. It's not around now so no problems. Also, to get it to happen they have to get the soundcard manufacturers to cooperate. I can already tell you my pro card manufacturer won't. And, if worse comes to worse, you just do an analogue phase. With hish quality 24-bit converters the loss won't be audible.
Ok, you don't seem to understand. At this point, SPA isn't live. The infastructure may be there, but it is not Live. Neither of my soundcard drivers comply with SPA (I have an SBLive and an M-Audio). Also no, Windows will NOT disable my pro card, SPA songs just won't play through it. Also please don't think that SPA is uncrackable. Software companies have been using hardware level challenge/response tricks for ever and the crackers have been releasing patches to disable it.
So suppose MS releases a whole album in WMA format. Joe D. Windowsuser downloads the whole thing, and digitally rerecords it and recompressess it as MP3, then puts it up on Gnutella. Now anyone who wants it in MP3 can get it and redistribute it. Soon (if it is an indemand album) it's all over the internet.
Don't forget he's got to take the CD out of the Case and that's really a hard piece of work ;-)
Huh?
It is a play on words. It is nonsensical.
Sure you can? Have you had someone prepare good MP3s for you and done a real blind test? Until then you only think you can tell. This is the point where fools stop reading - that is, "audiophiles" who think they know everything. As the Insanely Audiophile story showed, some people just like to spend money regardless of necessity.
I wanted the answer to this very same question, so I ran my own listen test. I ripped some of the highest quality tracks I had, encoded at 256, 128, and 64 bitrates, then dumped them back to CD. The process was completely digital, I could be sure that any issues I heard were a result of mp3 encoding. I then played the CD on the better audio systems I had access to.
I determined that 128kb was pretty close to CD quality, I was straining to hear any differences between that and the original. I couldn't tell the difference between the original and 256kb. If I had really wanted to be exact, I could have done a second CD exploring the ranges between 128 and 256 but at that point I'd be pretty much guessing. As a result I'll probably be slowly switching to mp3 for storage purposes, and I can always play the CD in my good system if I decide it matters.
yes! thank u , instead of all these comments about platform and crap, this is about the mp3pro format. people need to really go out and beat some extra stress off instead of unleashing their ill will hatred here.
i would try it yourself before trusting the media. i ripped a 45meg wav file down to a 2megs mp3pro , compared to a 4-5meg mp3.
Reading this, the .gif format comes to mind.
It's also patented and licensed - so what? File formats are just vehicles which are easily exchanged if they prove cumbersome.
I thought the content is important, but maybe that's just too idealistic
-- sigs are like parking spaces - all the good ones are occupied
OK, so Fraunhoffer / Thomson have released it as Windows only for now, but it's like the original MP3 in that decoding is free for non-commercial use.
I expect XMMS to include a plug-in for it within a week, and for T0rd to have bladeencPro written real soon now.
The months are just too short. I can count the number of days on one hand.
I tried encoding some pieces of music, and it sounded even worse than normal 128kbps mp3. /me puts on a real CD instead...
Its seems to me that the more options you have to choose, the better your chances of finding the ones you like. So far there is very few encoders that can make files sound cd quality at 64kb/s. Even less so when its limited for the time bieng when its limited to certain OS's. But if something is worth it, even to one person, it will spread and be able to be used by all that would like to. Also its by these latest ways to compress files that we get the most inspiration to create new and better ways. Even if its nothing more then a hack of a standard encoder.
-------------------
Insert Witty Remark Here ===>____________________________
well, that was a waist of money on their part. as i see it, the mp3 format is arleady starting to slow down since it's main reason for populatity (napster) is of no use anymore to find any *good* mp3s. All these other smaller programs will support ogg vorbis in the near future, almost absolutely. it's just a matter of time before vorbis takes over, and stays everyone's choice for music formatting since everyone will keep on improveing on it, and makeing it so that it will take up less space and sound better.
Compared to each other, MP3Pro is no major enhancement. In fact - it's crap. The sound quality is sub-par (even for a 128kbps MP3), the encoding time is slow (even on a PIII 933) and its inability to playback properly on normal MP3 players (I know -- new format) makes me give it a double thumbs-down (gets off soapbox).
I encoded a jazz song (for frequency range) with Audiocatalyst at 128kbps which took about 34 seconds while ripping from CD. I then ripped the file from CD to WAV and encoded it with the MP3Pro encoder (same bitrate, took 56 seconds). Tested side-by-side (for 5 playbacks) MP3 was the clear winner. MP3Pro sounded flat and dead, while the normal MP3 had bright, clear horns and a solid bassline.
I can only hope that MP3-hardware manufacturers aren't planning on implementing MP3Pro codecs into their systems anytime soon - might hurt their business for good.
Anyone can walk on water....think WINTERTIME.