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The Future of Digital Audio
Andru Edwards writes "It can be said that the current digital music scene can be a bit overwhelming with all the competing technologies and file formats. No matter what format you use, these fairly new compression methods make it easy to carry along your entire music collection with you wherever you go, surpassing anything we could have done a decade ago. So where are we headed? This article examines what the future of digital music will bring, both from the hardware and software perpectives."
I'm tired of having to burn CD's if I want to play my files on my car stereo. Future systems will include wireless file transfer, so that you can seamlessly access songs from your player while in your car. Yes, the Griffin iTrip accessory sends the songs over an FM frequency to your car, but it has trouble in certain urban environments, and you have to fish for an available frequency
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He really has a point there. I got sick of burning CD's, so I bought an MP3 player. I use a car-kit (bless those things) to listen the music from my MP3 player. I use the FM transmit sometimes, but just like the article says, I have trouble finding available frequencies. New compression methods/formats are all well and good, but I'd like to see better integration between audio devices. I want to be able to stream music from my audio unit and have my car audio system pick it up and play it
There are car MP3 players, but the ones I have seen require you to burn a CD with MP3's on them.
Vivin Suresh Paliath
http://vivin.net
I like
Hector, I hate to break it to you, but ideas can't be copyrighted. He probably meant to say, "patented" (which would need more rewording to be really correct, but it's close enough). Maybe I'm just nitpicking, but it seems like he's not familiar with patent law terminology. Or else I'm reading it wrong - is he really afraid that somebody will implement the ideas in the article? Why would that be something to be afraid of? Is he afraid he won't get his cut? He's a journalist - he's paid to talk about his ideas. If he wanted more payment, he should be an entrepreneur.
I expected something more visionary in an article that tries to predict the future of Digital Audio.
I intended to suggest headphones that reduce unwanted ambient sounds by cancelling it out with destructive interference or something like it.
But, somewhat to my surprise, Wikipedia told me that Noise-cancelling headphones already exist.
So why haven't I heard of them? Are they disponible everywhere around the world? Are they too expensive? Are they effective?
For me, that pretty well sums up the present: everything just works, and I don't have to worry too much what format AV files are in. I don't know if it's because I don't use them much, or because the Debian packagers have done a really nifty job of getting things set up.
I suppose that if it were my hobby, I'd want to know all about those file formats, but I shouldn't have to know to have things just work.
See what I've been reading.
Have some, they're not terribly effective (but I bought the under $100 ones). They do reduce sound a lot better than normal headphones, but not enough to warrent the additional cost, at least to me. They also require additional power (batteries). I'm assuming that the $300+ varieties are significantly better.
Andru: The thing that I see as being the biggest issue going forward is DRM (digital rights management). iTunes has their DRM for their AAC files, while Microsoft has another for WMA. Of course, they are trying to make it easy with their PlaysForSure initiative. Sony has yet another for it's ATRAC files, and MP3 has none. Therefore, an iPod cannot play any WMA files, and nothing but an iPod can play Apple AAC files. Music purchased from Sony Connect can only be played on Sony digital audio players. Why all the confusion? Fine, we understand that the RIAA wants to protect it's property, but do they have to do it at the expense of causing mass confusion amongst casual music buyers? Even better, why can't these protected files just work across platforms? If you look at DVD's, there is one protection standard. We should have the same thing for our digital music. If there was an effective DRM solution out there, it would seem that the music stores would have no choice but to support it as it would ease the minds of the purchasers, thus bringing in more cash.
That's where it all hits the fan - DRM. If the RIAA wasn't such a greedy bunch of pigfuckers, we could all trade MP3s and get dinged for each trade (say, a dime per trade), and everyone would be happy. Napster had a system like that under works, and were ready to roll it out, then it was reduced to a smoke hole in the ground over in Redwood Shores.
Dime a Trade? I'd do it. Especially if a source got a rating (this way asshats who rip stuff at 64 mono, have clicky messy files, or are shills for the RIAA, can be avoided) like in EBay. You would have to use a specific client, and that client would be wired to your bank account. Everybody happy, and we could all use plain vanilla MP3s - no muss no fuss no chocolate mess.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Hector: I'm almost afraid to comment on what we'll see in the future because some of these ideas aren't copyrighted, and may show up on the next batch of digital players.
"Copyrighted ideas?"
Who the fuck are these people? A bunch of jr. high students? I would call this article a circle jerk, but it's too self indugent for that...
Nah.
You just put very quiet warbly tones into the audio with a binary message encoded in them... When you play it back, the playback machine hears the tones and refuses to play any further.
There is no way of filtering them out as they do a random walk, and you trash audio if you try to remove them with hi-q notch filters anyway.
This system was mooted a few years ago, and got a lot of complaints from 'audiophiles', but it was quickly realised that if you did not tell people the tones were there, they cannot hear them.
So, the tones came back, and are on a large number of CDs released in the last few years, waiting for the DRM tech to catch up to make use of them. They survive analog copying very well.
You're right, you won't ever notice the difference with your iPod, certainly with those ear bud headphones but don't insinuate that more resolution doesn't sound better. The truth is that DVD-A and SACD do sound quite a bit better than CD as a format. The actual amount is dependent on how much you want to spend on hardware to play it back. If you play a great SACD on a $20 ghetto blaster, don't expect it to sound any better than an 8-track. But, spend as little as $1000 on a stereo and you will be able to hear the difference. Then you'll start to get out from under the limits of the hardware.
I have been predicting for several years that the ultimate file format that everybody may eventually adopt is a compressed, non-lossy copy of the masters used for a given song, plus a fader moves script and an effects script.
Think about it, the stones have introduced their remastered collection on the new 5.1 CD format. Beyond that home theater has 6.1 and 7.1, and a few other formats that I'm sure I have never heard of. The trend is toward more data being given to the listener in a recording. The logical conclusion is a copy of the master. By including a fader move script and effects script, I can play the recording as it was created by the studio engineer. Or, perhaps I am a fan of the band's bassist, so I push the bass to the front of the mix. Mabey I like the bootygrove music, so I dump the drumline and dub in a drum machine backing track. Perhaps I like to have my rap music with disgusting bass, so I crank all the bass in my favorite gangsta ditty. I can also fool with the balance, effects, etc. as much as I want.
As digital processing power gets cheaper, doing real-time remixing with 24 tracks in realtime becomes a viable option. You already have something similar going on in video games.
Personally, I hope this happens in my lifetime. I can think of several albums that I love that I would spend $100 to have a high quality copy of the master, just to be able to fool with them and listen to the results.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Andru: One thing I do expect in the future, is to see flash MP3 players slowly diminish from the market. While it is more shock absorbent, I just don't see the cost of the medium as being feasible going forward, especially with hard drive prices plummetting.
I don't believe this will be the case.
Flash memory prices are plummetting quite a bit aswell, especially those exchangeable cards like SD, CF, MMC etc. I bought an SD 512 MB card in May for about 200$ which was then the lowest price on a Danish price index site. It is now listed for 35$ on the same site. That's 17,5% of the original price in just 7 months.
Apple too are taking on flash players eventhough they first dizzed them, maybe because they realized that even their iPod mini with its 4 GB is more than enough space for people. Of course people will demand more and more space for their portable media-players, but flash memory prices will probably keep decreasing at the same rate.
Yesterday, there was an article looking at Spam filters. It covered a number of the proprietary ones but NOTHING in the OSS even though it is OSS filters that are doing the real work. It is like covering web servers without mentioning Apache, or talking about web browsers without doing MSIE. But who knows? may be it is not BG or clueless reporters. Perhaps it it the illuminati.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Mobiles will transform into the all-in-one devices the article talks about.
.ogg. You can't do that with an iPod (without hacking). You don't worry that your PC won't play a certain video file, you just download the codec, same with a mobile. People have to beg apple to extend the iPod with .ogg playback support, and they STILL won't add it!
Mobiles will get harddrives. The first one of these is already announced.
Once those micro HDs get cheaper and implemented in more mobiles, mobiles will be at least as functional as an iPod mini.
The reason mobiles will win over all other devices:
1. You might leave home without your music player, but you will always take your mobile. Mobiles far outsell mp3 players. The mobile is the primary gadget, others are secondary. This means mobiles will get more upgrades and get them faster because there's just more money in it.
2. Smartphones are much more flexible than consumer devices like an iPod. They're basically pocket computers. You can just install a java program to teach a mobile how to play
3. Because of Java Micro Edition (J2ME) MIDP2.0 and higher, the mobile is a universal platform. Unlike the iPod, Creative, iRiver, Rio, PC, Mac, Linux which all need a platform specific program. You can just create one type of program, J2ME, and it will run on all mobiles regardless of processor or operating system. And unlike the PC where Java is held back because of Microsoft's opposition and Sun's mistakes. Java on mobiles is pre-installed. You just cannot easily program/extend consumer (mp3) gadgets like you can a mobile.
In my opinion geeks should go for mobiles because of these reasons. In addition, mobiles will give you the same way to escape DRM hell like you're escaping it on your PC. You just use non-DRM playback software and content sources because you're able to. The cool futuristic features the article is talking about like: "we should be able to share songs from one person's player to another. How cool is that?" Are already possible with a bluetooth mobile, Java MIDP2.0 and the bluetooth API for MIDP2.0
At the moment, mobile manufacturers and network operators are often putting up barriers to freely use them any way you like, as you are using your PC. This is because the phone network operators are afraid people will not download their DRM content. However, as people discover their mobiles can be their mobile PCs, phonemakers who don't free up their products from restrictions will lose market share because in the end, the public is the customer. I also think operators will win bigger by a free mobile market than with a restricted one.
Am I missing something important? I don't think so, and so mobiles will be the future all-in-one gadgets.
My next phone/music player/organizer/whatever will be a Nokia 7710. If it's not hobbled.
By the way, for the "I just want a simple phone" naggers:
1. What are you doing on Slashdot?
2. Powerful doesn't automatically mean difficult to use.
3. There ARE simple phones so buy those and don't try to force your view on mobiles on us. Be happy we love our gadgets.
- -- Truth addict for life.