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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*
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
My guess is that there's a very serious risk of consumers returning any prospective hardware that uses MP3Pro, believing the hardware to be broken. There's only so far you can go with audio garbage before you cause even totally untrained ears to categorize the sound as 'distorted' or 'something in this must be broken, it sounds wrong'. From what I'm seeing in early reports, MP3Pro crosses that line.
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.
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.
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."
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.
Anyone remember VQF - the copyrighted and patented audio compression format that was supossed to bury MP3 ?
Nobody remembers it ?
I tought so...
--
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
...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...
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
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
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!
Right,
If someone writes a decent OggVorbis codec for windows' MP and others start dealing
Cheers,
Ignace
With great power comes great electricity bills.
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
Remind me, where can I buy an Ogg Vorbis portable player? ;p
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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.
The point in all of this is that if a new MP3 standard is raised, with mass media participation, it will supercede the previous MP3 standard and give better audio quality at a lower bandwidth cost to all. Try as I might, I've never even heard of "Ogg Vorbis" (it's like all those naysayers that say "Amiga" had such a "wonderful GUI", when only a small percentage played with it -- whatever), but if you asked the average teenager on the street, most would identify the term "MP3". And if they noticed their MP3's taking up less room (perhaps after a download on the scale of Napster) they would be much happier.