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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
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.
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."
...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
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!
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