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

[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.)

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.

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.

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.

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" :)