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The Future of MP3 and Surround
An anonymous reader writes "Wired is running an article discussing the future of the MP3 format with the amount of competition out there, especially from the surround sound scene. Thompson, the entity that licenses the MP3 format, released the MP3 Surround format to try to combat this but will it be enough? From the article: 'It may seem as if the venerable MP3 standard is here to stay, but it faces attack from a number of angles. First, it doesn't sound as good, byte-for-byte, as files purchased from iTunes Music Store (in the AAC format) or any of the Microsoft-compliant stores. Second, the CD rippers/encoders that most people use -- iTunes and Windows Media Player -- have encouraged users to rip to AAC and WMA over the years. Third, only one major online music store, eMusic, proffers songs in the MP3 format, and it lacks most major releases. Fourth, geeks who love MP3 for its wide compatibility can now choose from preferable open-source alternatives such as Ogg Vorbis.'"
Finally, today's faster connections and more capacious hard drives have audiophiles turning to lossless codecs such as FLAC and those offered by Apple Computer and Microsoft.
Anyone who has mastery of the word "capacious" knows a little somethin about somethin.
> I don't know a single person who's ever filled up an iPod with greater than 40GB capacity.
Hello. Nice to meet you.
Plus I'll probably have much better equipment and more experienced ears in the future.
Now that I'm getting older, I would rather have less experienced ears to hear clearly with.
The truth shall set you free!
Flacing files only about halves their size, most people won't bother with another format at all for so little. I only bother to use it for archieving large quantities of recordings I can't get again on DVD.
I listen to ogg, nice to meet you
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
Uhh FLAC is usually used in Ogg. One is a codec and the other a container format so it is not an either or thing. Also he said "open formats such as Ogg".
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Their FAQ must be wrong, because it says flac can only handle 65,5350 Hz rate, and I have 96 kHz files already
Check the positioning of your thousand separator
655350 Hz > 96 kHz
He's talking about allofmp3, where you buy music from the Russian mafia for, well, Russian mafia prices. It's a heck of a lot cheaper to fund a crime syndicate than, say, a record label.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Hey. You chose the crooked organization you want to support, and I'll choose mine. :)