MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain

nadamsieee refers us to a piece up at Wired on the fallout from Microsoft's recent courtroom loss to Alcatel-Lucent over MP3 patents. From the article: "Alcatel-Lucent isn't the only winner in a federal jury's $1.52 billion patent infringement award against Microsoft this week. Other beneficiaries are the many rivals to the MP3 audio-compression format... Now, with a cloud over the de facto industry standard, companies that rely on MP3 may finally have sufficient motivation to move on. And that raises some tantalizing possibilities, including a real long shot: Open-source, royalty-free formats win."

Comments

Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore?

[CRCulver]

Because lossy and lossless formats fill different niches.

AAC is the most likely winner

[TedTodorov]

As much as we may wish for Ogg Vorbis to succeed, the most likely beneficiary is AAC, simply because of iTunes' default settings. I strongly suspect AAC has already caught up to MP3 in popularity.

Most people just rip their CDs using the defaults, and thanks to the iPod, iTunes is surely the most popular digital audio program out there. I haven't heard with any patent threats to AAC, so I would suspect that more companies and people will move in that direction.

Bonus: AAC sounds better than MP3 at the same bit rate.

Re:There's a worry here

[imbaczek]

Are linux distros about to get hit with a torrent of C&D letters? Nah, nobody will seed.

Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

So I should buy better hardware so I can hear the noise in my MP3s?

Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore?

[JohnnyLocust]

Ogg Vorbis is the Xiph.org foundation's lossy format. FLAC is the Xiph.org foundation's lossless format. Clear now?

Ogg is Xiph.org foundation's streaming container format. Vorbis is Xiph.org foundation's lossy audio codec. FLAC is Xiph.org foundation's lossless audio codec. Everyone's clear now :)

Re:Portable turntable

[kbielefe]

I can really hear the difference between crappy digital and the analog

That's why I got one of those new-fangled mp3 players that converts the digital music to analog when outputting it to the speakers.

Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore?

[Jesselnz]

iPods can play ogg/flac files, as can any mp3 player supported by Rockbox.

http://rockbox.org

Even more anal retentive

[DrYak]

Ogg is Xiph.org foundation's streaming container format. Vorbis is Xiph.org foundation's lossy audio codec. FLAC is Xiph.org foundation's lossless audio codec. Everyone's clear now :)

- Ogg is a container like Matroshka (MSK) or AVI (but better than that one. Almost anything is better than AVI)
- Vorbis is a sound codec, just like AAC.

FLAC is a format that considers both the compression codec AND the container (something like MPEG : you have both codecs, like MPEG-2 MPEG-4, MPEG Audio Layer III, and containers like MPEG Programm (MPG files)).
You can have a stand alone FLAC file (with one given container format) or by using another switch on the command line, you can have FLAC compressed audio inside an OGG container.
The first is called "Native FLAC", the second "Ogg FLAC". See here