How MP3 Was Born

Actual Reality points us to an interview in BusinessWeek.com with the man most often cited as the inventor of the MP3 format — though Karlheinz Brandenburg credits many for the development, including in particular Suzanne Vega.

Comments

I perfer the version

[Timesprout]

where MP2 was recording in studio, gets wasted and gets it on with Suzanne Vega across the mixing deck leading to a bouncing bundle of MP3. It's much more rock and roll.

More cutting-edge innovation?

[terrencefw]

From TFA:

As director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology, Brandenburg continues to be involved in the cutting edge of digital music. Researchers under his supervision are working on technology that would, for example, analyze a user's tastes based on music he or she has already downloaded, search the Internet for other tunes in the same genre, and automatically assemble a playlist. Brandenburg is also involved in research to deliver more realistic, true-to-life media than anything now available. Perhaps he'll even help touch off another revolution.

Er, nothing like audioscrobbler/last.fm then?

Re:More cutting-edge innovation?

[mstra]

Ah, so Pandora, then?

There. Fixed that.

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Researchers under his supervision are working on technology that would, for example, analyze a user's tastes based on music he or she has already downloaded, search the Internet for other tunes in the same genre, and automatically assemble a playlist^W^W^W send cease and desist letters.

Picture of this guy

[FredDC]

I bet a lot of record company executives have a picture of this guy hanging in their office! On top of a darts board...

Re:I've been wondering...

[cyclop]

Yes, but FreeBSD girls rule!.

extended and changed

[Bizzeh]

the mp3 format has been extended and changed so much, and had stuff added and removed (vbr, abr, and tagging.... tagging shouldnt have even been there, since mp3 is a datastream not a container), over time. its hardly the same format now.

Re:if wasn't this format, it would have been anoth

[Random Destruction]

Its much more likely that people can't tell the difference. Most people think 128kbps mp3 is 'cd quality'. For those of us who know that that's a crock, there's V2 and V0, or even 320cbr. Almost nobody can tell the difference between 320 and flac. So why should people who want to download the latest slammin RnB hit want anything else?

Also with the way p2p mp3s are, if flac became popular, people would just transcode their 128kbps mp3s to flac.

Re:if wasn't this format, it would have been anoth

[Hognoxious]

Also with the way p2p mp3s are, if flac became popular, people would just transcode their 128kbps mp3s to flac.

Coool. That would recover the lost quality, then?

Fraunhofer: The people who made piracy possible

[BillGatesLoveChild]

What isn't mentioned in Herr Brandenburg's interview is that Fraunhofer have been playing both sides. If you've bought an MP3 capable player, you've paid Fraunhofer royalties. But Fraunhofer have been playing both sides: developing tools to track MP3s using watermarks so record companies crack down on piracy:

http://www.computerworld.com/securitytopics/securi ty/story/0,10801,108506,00.html
http://p2pnet.net/index.php?page=reply&story=878

They've been expanding their IP business too: Next time you run BitTorrent or eMule (they do both), run it with a network tracker. You'll see computers from Fraunhofer affiliates all over the world taking a peek at what you're downloading.

http://greatinca.net/blog/emule-ip-blocker-hits-04 022006/

Does this mean Fraunhofer's merry band of teutonic scientists can be both co-defendants and expert-witnesses in your case?

Re:if wasn't this format, it would have been anoth

[Yoozer]

Really short explanation: FLAC is like Winzip for .wav files.

Longer explanation: Why you want to do this? You want the originals on your harddisk without bothering about ISO files which you'd have to mount first using Daemon Tools or something (which means you can't play 'm back directly). You don't want the completely ludicrous space requirements .wav demands. This way, you still have the originals - well, at least more "original" if the CD is scratched or stolen or destroyed. It's not even an esoteric audiophile reason; it's just that it works well for archiving (which in turn begs the question why you want to archive something on a portable player that faces risk every day, but hey).

As usual, Wikipedia has a page on the subject :).

Re:When patents expire

[ajs318]

They were never valid anyway in the EU or the UK, since MP3 encoding is a mathematical operation and beyond the scope of patentability in those jurisdictions.