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.'"

Comments

Support to open formats

[cr0m0]

I think that open formats as ogg should have a better future if manufactures would offer more support to them. It's in our hand not to buy those gadgets that do not offer support to open formats.

Re:Support to open formats

[Roger Wernersson]

I did this. I switched from MP3 to Ogg a few years back, and boy do I regret it.

A few examples:

I bought a Kiss DVD player because it plays Oggs, however a few percent of my Ogg files makes the player hang. Since you can fit 800 songs on a DVD, it just doesn't work. Sometimes re-encoding them fixes this. I'v been in contact with the manufacturer but got no help there.

I got an Ogg-player for Palm Tungsten, however it doesn't allow you to delete files, so I have to re-format the MMC every time I want to change my selection.

And so many gadgets just doesn't play Ogg.

Now I'm back to MP3. It might be lagging behind technically, but it work everywhere. A bit like "vi".

Re:Support to open formats

[a_nonamiss]

A bit off topic, but I've also been messing around with Monkey's Audio Codec lately, and it seems to be better in most respects than FLAC. Both are lossless, so I can't really claim quality superiority, but MAC is faster to rip, slightly smaller files and is also now open source. (Did not used to be.) But I agree with other posters here, it's not either/or. I use MAC to archive my old CD's, but I convert them to MP3 befire sending them to my iPod. (iPod supports Apple Lossless, but my 4GB iPod would hold about 10-12 albums in that format, and despite being a trained musician, I don't hear much difference.)

Re:Support to open formats

[RpiMatty]

Yeah, but in order to recreate a 20Hz signal from samples, you need a 40kHz sample rate. Since not all ears are created equal some people can hear slightly higher than 20kHz, bump it up to 22.05 kHz, and you get 44.1 kHz sample rate needed. I'm not sure what these is to gain from playing back at a higher sampling rate.

Re:Support to open formats

[soupdevil]

As for your 20khz ears, it's true and not true. If it's about what you hear, 20khz is sufficient for most of us, but it still creates a harsh Nyquist curve.

As for when you hear it, our ears are quite sensitive to the timing of sounds and their reflections. This is how you can hear a sound from all around you (via reverberations off other surfaces) and still know how far away and in which direction the original source is located. Sample rates higher than 20Khz are required for accurate timing of spatial data. It isn't important for electronic music, but is crucial for classical and other forms which are recorded in a complex acoustical environment.

Re:Support to open formats

[TheJorge]

despite being a trained musician, I don't hear much difference.

A-ha! So you say you can't see the emporer's clothes?

Seriously, though, I'm in agreement. As was mentioned earlier, with sufficiently high bitrate, there's not much difference. The problem is, on certain songs or during certain passages there's a huge difference. Variable bitrate formats try to compensate for this but don't always do a good job in my opinion. Unless I choose to simply encode everything in a higher bitrate, I'm reduced to tagging files on the iPod that have artifacts and re-encoding them. Does anyone know of software with a good algorithm for selecting bitrates based on the content, or at least with an interfact to allow me to listen while I encode?

As as aside, how long until we see specific encoding for the young/old/male/female demographics? My listening capacity is not exactly the same as anyone else's, and I want my compression algorithm to reflect that, dammit!

So, why should I use MP3-Surround?

[Stephen Samuel]

Although using MP3 is already pretty questionable, I could almost guarantee that using mm3-surround would start with me firmly in the sights of their patent lawyers. Thanks, but if I'm gonna go past MP3, I'd rather do it on an OGG base.

the answer is in the article:

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Caldwell, MP3 Surround can succeed without the labels' cooperation. "MP3 never had major-label content, and seems to have been relatively successful. On the other hand, Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio both had major label content, and millions, if not tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, spent promoting it and they haven't succeeded, (among other reasons) because they don't address the convenience issue."

So mp3 might survive, if only for the many "mp3" players that are arround. People will forget that they play acc & wma on the mp3 player, they have a "mp3" player, for the rest they do no care. As will the apple format survice since a iPod is just cool.

MP3 is not dead. Not by far.

[Anonymous Coward]

- The volume of MP3 files out there is MUCH larger than anything else.
- Everybody knows MP3. Its to digital music what VHS was to home video before DVDs came along.
- The majority of people DO NOT want their files crippled with DRM.
- Don't assume that everybody always switches to the latest format. I don't know anyone listening to OGG or ACC files.

Surround my ass

[Talez]

"MP3 Surround files are essentially ordinary MP3s with an additional layer of information that tells compatible players where to place sounds. New devices designed to support the format deliver rich and accurate surround sound -- whether through a 5.1-channel system or simulated through a pair of stereo headphones. The format adds minimal overhead, consuming just 15 additional bits per second."

Surround with only 15 bits per second of data?

10 bucks says its just audio steering a'la Dolby Pro Logic

Re:MP3 is dead, long live MP3?

[TeknoHog]

What support do FLAC and Ogg Vorbis have for surround?

Higher number of channels. IIRC, Vorbis has a limit of 256 channels and FLAC has 8. If you need more channels, you can multiplex several Vorbis/FLAC streams in a single Ogg container file.

IMHO, one great thing about these formats is that they don't assume too much. Today's consumer level surround means 5.1 but these formats don't get stuck on it, they just give you channels without assigning them to anything particular (like front, rear, subwoofer). Therefore they can be used for future formats as well.

For a similar reason I encode everything to FLAC these days. It doesn't assume anything about psychoacoustics, which is different for each individual listener. Plus I'll probably have much better equipment and more experienced ears in the future.

ID3v2 backwards compatible?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a bullshit. ID3v2 essentially breaks MP3 standards, making files unplayable on any old MP3 decoder.

Re:MP3, Ogg, Open Formats, and Surround.

[Anonymous Coward]

The reason I hang out with my geek babe is that I love her!

It's true that we should support devices which support ogg and other open formats. On the other hand there's no wrong in say buying an ipod.

lossless compression

[Bombula]

I may be a bit behind the times, but I'm surprised there hasn't been more of a shift away from lossy compression algorithms to lossless compression. As more and more of the market shifts away from the 650-700MB capacity constraint of traditional CDs, file sizes for songs are becoming less of an issue. As portable players get up to 60GB+ capacity, having files that are 6MB instead of 3MB starts to have less of an impact on people's ability to have the music they want at hand - since, if my math is correct, that's still enough memory for 10,000 songs. I mean, I don't personally know anyone who has more than a couple thousand songs - I'm sure there are people out there with much more - and that at least indicates that file size is not going to affect the average user that much.

Obviously there is room above lossless compression to improve quality - higher sample rates, multi-channel sound as this article says. Nevertheless, I'm just surprised there isn't more demand for audio that hasn't been poluted by compression.

Re:huh?

[smallfries]

I call bullshit. We did some research into this a few years ago and producing spatialised sound through eyebud headphones is not realistic. Each person has a unique head-transform based on the curves of the earlobes amongst other things. What is feasible is telling people that it is spatialised audio and then allowing a suggestive / placebo effect to work. As they're going for surround rather than full spatialisation it is also possible that they've just boosted the bitrate on the bass frequencies so that it sounds less tiny. This gives a 'fuller volume' effect which most people will accept as surround if you suggest it.

Sorry for the rant, but we spent a long time dicking around with spatialised audio until we did 'blind' listening trials to confirm that it was bollocks. Also, if they do get some kind of spatialisation working then it would require earbuds as oppoosed to fullsize headphones. The fullsize ones have a sound source outside of the ear canal which means that the outer ear picks up its own localisation cues.

MP3 is here to say in my house.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you can all think what you like but the future of MP3 but in my household it's there to stay until I die.

I've currently got 35,000 + mp3s on my home server; a good 80%+ of which I've ripped from my own CD collection with the remainder mostly coming from mates CDs. All of these are encoded with lame using the VBR --alt-preset-extreme setting and amount to about 150 Gb of fully IDV tagged data. Playback is handled in three rooms via Slim MP3 players.

To make sure these stay with me I've got the lot backed up onto external hard drives. One is used for a weekly backup. One is used for a monthly back up and which spends the remainder of its time "hidden" in my loft. One is a copy of the loft drive which is backed up every two or three months and is then taken to a friends house; at which point I take one of her removables back to my loft.

I've also taken the step of stocking up on some "cheap & cheerful", reasonable sound quality, DRM free, flash based mp3 players and have one 512Mb and two 1Gb units stored in various places. That way when my current 512Mb player gives up the ghost/gets lost/stolen etc. I have backup hardware.

Thanks to the latest Sony rootkit fiasco though I've now stopped buying CDs altogether. If I want any new music I intend to get it from "the source that must not be named" :) The idea that I would ever spend my hard earned money to buy a compressed, DRM encumbered soundfile from something like iTunes is laughable, toatally laughable. I'll only pay for full CD quality, 441.1Khz, stereo WAV or better, files and then only if they're pressed onto a CD. No I won't pay for CDs burnt for me by a shop.

So I for one..

1 Will not have any DRM crippled device in the house.
2 Am not interested in transcoding my collection to some other format as one lossy encoding is quite enough.
3 Couldn't give a shit about surround sound audio etc.
4 Am quite happy with mp3 for either playing off my PC or playing in my portable.

You may of course choose to follow the new "best ever" format of the day but me, I couln't care less. Non DRM mp3 works for me and I'm sticking with it.

P.S. And in case you're wondering why yes I do share my files. On a private FTP network and by occassional post to the "the source that must not be named" :)

Re:Deja Vu

[jesterpilot]

Two reasons: A well-recorded vinyl record played on an audiophylic turntable has simply a better resolution. When the CD came to the market, technology simply was unable to reach the same resolution. Further, the spectrum has no sharp cut-off on a record. On a CD, when its 19999 Hz, the frequency is there, when it's 20001 Hz, it isn't. This sounds not natural, since you are used to hear high frequency worse the higher they are. You can hear this when a cymbal is played: this instrument has very strong, high harmonics. On an audiophylic record, they sound clear, on a CD a little sharp en fuzzed.
 
The second reason is more historical: when the first CD players appeared, they sounded horrible. The high frequencies were sharp, a pain in the ear. Gadget-eager people not used to the sound quality of a good turntable, liked the sound, and they thought this was how sound should be. So the general public got used to an audio sound with a way to sharp high. The typical Sony-sound was born, and the British and German sound lost ground. Audio industry is still not completely recovered from this. Since the record only survived in audiophylic form, and on the dancefloor (where a sharp high also isn't exactly what you want), chances are your vinyl record and player have a more balanced sound than their digital equivalents.

Correction:

[Anonymous Coward]

Phonograph records sounded the best, but they're fragile and non-portable. Casettes are portable, but they sound horrible.

No, they don't. It's your cassette deck that sounds horrible.

With Dolby C and a good low-grain tape, cassettes rival CDs. With a shitty player, the best cassette sounds like shit.

LPs are superior to any format except the 30 inch per second reel they were mastered on. However, put a top of the line cassette player against a cheap turntable and the cassette will win. See, that's the thing with analog -- the equipment you play it on really matters, unlike digital. With digital sound, all that matters is how good your speakers or headphones are.

Check the specs on your cassette, you may only be getting a response of 200-11k Hz. Many cassette players are far worse than this even. However, the format is capable of a flat response from below 20 to ~18k Hz.

cheating MRC="aurally"