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MP3...in Surround Sound
A number of people sent in the latest news from the fine folks at Frauhofer that they are expecting to have surround sound working for MP3s by July. The details are pretty sketchy in the article, but supposedly it won't be much more space per MP3s, and existing players will work with it.
Does your collection already have surround sound data? A bit pointless to convert, no new data to store.
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Hmm, how does your audio format get any more proprietary than before when the folks who developed it in the first place extend it?
Grandparent is essentially right. MP3 *is* an outdated codec, which is only still here because of it's universality (don't get me wrong - this is a big benefit). While these added features may not actually break the old standard, they do result in bigger files with no discernable benefit for the vast majority of people. If you want to examine the success of previous add-ons to the mp3 standard, take mp3-pro - it's not exactly all over the place. People will take standard mp3 for it's universality, and choose a superior codec (AAC, OGG, MPC, whatever - even WMA) when they aren't concerned about compatibility.
Not to mention how the method of adding pretend "surround sound" that they're proposing is retarded.
For what it's worth, MP3Pro also wasn't really backwards-compatible, even though it claimed to be. In a format that didn't support the extensions, it cut off the entire high end and it sounded like absolute shit. It remains to be seen if the same issue will be seen in these surround MP3s, but if it really doesn't add too much, like the article is implying, I don't imagine it will be a cataclysmic failure.
Besides, there aren't that many surround-sound audio CDs to rip yet, so something like this wouldn't gain in popularity until a more popular codec has already superseded it. I wouldn't worry about it gaining any type of dominance.
Who wants to use a proprietary sound format, when they can use a much more appealing open format.
MP3: Everything supports it, which is very appealing for consumers.
OGG: Few products support it, not very appealing for consumers.
This is the old VHS/BETA debate again. Each one has various advantages over the other, but MP3 has already won mindshare and, as a result, is ubiquitous. In the end, consumers don't really care that Apple has to pay Fraunhofer $1 (or whatever) for licensing iPod's MP3 tech instead of $0 for OGG. After all, you'll never see Apple advertising a regular iPod for $299 -OR- you can get an iPod which doesn't play MP3 for $298.
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One of the places Ogg Vorbis has become surprisingly popular is in soundtracks for computer games. The no licensing fees must be one useful aspect,
No licencing fees doesn't mean just that. It also means no overhead like getting a licencing deal set up, signed, making sure it's paid on time, in right amount, used only in accordance with the terms and so on. I'm seeing this first hand how much time is spent fiddling.
Just the process of going to someone with the authoroty to sign contracts and spend money in the company's name is wasting time, and time is money. That everyone, everywhere can use it for whatever is in itself probably worth as much as the licencing costs themselves.
Kjella
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