New Lossless MP3 Format Explained

CNETNate writes "Thomson, the company that licenses the MP3 patent, has released a new lossless MP3 format called mp3HD. It utilises both lossless and lossy audio contained inside a single .mp3 file, and the files will play on all existing MP3 players. The idea is simple: lossless files on your desktop that can be transferred without conversion to iPods and MP3 players. The issue, it transpires, is that although the full lossless/lossy hybrid MP3 file is transferred to players, only the lossy element can be played back. A command line encoder can be found on Thomson's Web site."

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why?

[Reality Master 201]

So, it's a container format with two different data streams in it, and you can stuff massively oversized files on your portable player, only you can only play the itty bity portion of that file that's the lossy one.

And the use case for this is?

Re:why?

[aliquis]

And why put the MP3 part there at all? Why would you need it if you already have a lossless file?

If you transfer it to a player not capable of playing the lossless file it doesn't make sense to store it all over there, so converting it to a lossy only file is the way to do it, and well, you can do that while transferring the file ... ... but then using "MP3" and their technology doesn't make sense at all since there already exist plenty of lossless formats and one compressed one would be enough.

It would had been enough if they had made an app which hooked into Windows file copying to UMS devices and encoded any lossless formats into MP3 during the transfer.

All in all, yes, it's useless, and a stupid idea.
(And if you already have a lossless file while not convert to something like AAC or OGG instead?)

Re:why?

[TheGratefulNet]

the use-case is probably some kind of lock-in, either now or later. or licensing fees. or NEW fees.

yup, sounds like container when a container is NOT needed. keeping dual copies makes sense (I do this, I have mp3 and flac of the same file but in diff subdirs) and when I'm home, I play from ./flac and when I'm away, I copied files from ./mp3 to the device. time to encode is still slow so I keep pre-encoded copies on my farm.

but putting flac in a portable and not being able to use it.

dumb. really dumb.

no, no use case. not for us, anyway. there might be a use-case for people making money from this, but not for us users.

Re:why?

[niko9]

Would have been smarter to have the MP3 player know to only download the lossy part of the file and metadata. I'm sure someone
can figure out how to do this with the FLAC container, i.e., the FLAC file would have a .flac and a lossy .ogg, and a program like gtkpod would know
to only import the lossy .ogg.

Re:why?

[wiredlogic]

MP3 by itself is not a container format. It is a raw data stream designed for handling realtime audio processing. It sounds like this is more like a "hacked" MP3 with special invalid frames tacked on to the end with difference data, similar to the way ID3v2 tags and album art are embedded.

Re:why?

[drolli]

Exactly.

which fraction of the population are non-idiots, according to your definition?

Re:why?

[Threni]

Couldn't you have both versions (lossy & lossless) in the same file, but strip the lossless upon copying to the mp3 player (ie by iTunes on an iPod)?

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The use case is providing an avenue for a better format with strong backwards capability.

Phase 1: You can use the file as an MP3 with previous generation software/hardware. Yeah, its a waste of space, but at least it works.

Phase 2: Improvements to software identify hardware devices that cannot play the lossless stream, and instead of dumping the whole oversized file in, extract the lossy stream onto the device. Now, with just a software update, the file is a superior distribution medium without any disadvantage on legacy devices. Plus, cycles are cheap compared to transfer costs -- if the lossy portion can easily be streamed, an isolated lossy stream should be cheap to extract.

A bit of thought instead of instantly throwing your nose in the air goes a long way.

Re:why?

[JoeMerchant]

...copying the huge files to a portable device with limited space is just stupid.

Unless you sell flash memory.

Re:Why?

[BigBuckHunter]

In short, what the fuck were they thinking?

"I wonder if this cow has any milk left in it?"

They're seeing if they can extract more $ for mp3 IP licenses.

Re:why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect this also has to do with digital watermarking and file sharing.

They can uniquely watermark the audio on a trak (either originally on a CD or purchased online). Typically this watermark is destroyed during mp3 encoding (when ripping a CD). But the lossless data would, perhaps, be able to maintain that watermark...

It may be feasible to maintain a database coupling the purchasing credit card to the watermarks of particular songs. This way the RIAA can stop suing the majority of file-sharers, and simply target the original uploader.

Whether this is good or even likely, I'm not sure. Just a thought.

Re:why?

[Schemat1c]

which fraction of the population are non-idiots, according to your definition?

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
  - George Carlin

Re:why?

[JohnBailey]

So, it's a container format with two different data streams in it, and you can stuff massively oversized files on your portable player, only you can only play the itty bity portion of that file that's the lossy one. And the use case for this is?

Isn't the MP3 patent(s) about to run out in a year or two? In which case, would this be a significant enough modification to qualify for a new patent or an extension?

Re:why?

[SirSlud]

Somebody at some point should really rally an army to go around and destroy every compressor and compressor plugin on this stupid planet.

I got nothing against compressing for effect, but the abuse it suffers in the mastering process is heinous. It is hilarious to hear the 'quiet' part of a song be just as loud as the 'loud' part. It's like somebody whispering to you at the top of their lungs.

Re:why?

[tobiasly]

the use-case is probably some kind of lock-in, either now or later. or licensing fees. or NEW fees.

Lock-in? New fees? C'mon, let's get serious. They're giving away the encoder for free on their website! Do you really think that the company that owns the MP3 format would just let this new format, crappy though it is, be used by enough people so that it becomes a de-facto standard and then decide to start enforcing their IP and try to wring money out of something that already has numerous superior free implementations?

Re:why?

[mibus]

Why is it that the software copying the "MP3" over, can't strip out the ID3(v2?) tag containing the extra info, and just save out the "normal" MP3 to the portable device?

Surely that would be a reasonably small change, and solve half of the complaints against the format?

Re:why?

[Chyeld]

Lock-in? New fees? C'mon, let's get serious. They're giving away the encoder for free on their website! Do you really think that the company that owns the MP3 format would just let this new format, crappy though it is, be used by enough people so that it becomes a de-facto standard and then decide to start enforcing their IP and try to wring money out of something that already has numerous superior free implementations?

At the risk of getting a *whoosh* directed at me, isn't that exactly what they did with the mp3 format/patent?

Really, I can't tell if you have successfully trolled me or honestly didn't remember that...

This is useless.

[twitchingbug]

Great. I'll have 80% of the capacity of my MP3 player used up by bits I will never access. Great job solving the problem fellas.

Re:This is useless.

[m0rbidini]

No really. It is useless and a lousy hack. It's just a way for Thomson and FhG to further milk the mp3 buzzword, one more time.

Useless format:
        * The lossless part is stored in ID3v2 tags.
        * Size of ID3v2 tags is limited to 256MB by specifications; as a result, lossless part of an mp3hd file can't be larger than 256MB.

Addendum:
Current tagging software isn't prepared to deal with this kind of situation, so you're going to see various disturbing behaviors such as:
        * Very slow tag updates (near-full-file-rewrite with each edit).
        * Heavy memory usage of tag editors.
        * Retagging stripping correction data.
        * Tag editing or even reading failures when approaching the 256MB limit because software will try to put each ID3v2 frame in a single memory block and allocating a single block of such size is likely to fail in 32-bit address space because of fragmentation issues.

From: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=70548

Loudness war

[BrookHarty]

Good idea, but with music being recorded with horrible loudness levels, its a waste. But I do like being able to not use something other than MP3, and burning back to a CD anytime I want.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war

Re:Loudness war

[travbrad]

There is plenty of music still being recorded with reasonable mastering and EQ. Sure, most popular stuff is really annoyingly loud, but that music tends to be crap anyway (IMO). Also, there was a ton of music which was recorded before the loudness wars really 'started'.

If all you like are top40 hits, I think the loudness is the least of your concerns. Them music is so simple that you're not missing out on much.

All we need...

[mister_playboy]

is more FLAC support in portables. Problem solved more elegantly and without yet more proprietary codecs.

Why?

[ColaMan]

My P-133 could do better than real time encoding of .wav -> .mp3

So why, when computers are now routinely 50 or 60 times faster than that, would I bother with two separate file formats crammed into one blob on the relatively tiny memory of my portable device?

Why, when disk space is now so cheap on my pc, can't I have a simple background process converting .flac into.mp3, to be stored separately for transfer to my portable device?

Why would I suddenly want to put up with 9/10th's of the storage capacity of my portable device being used for useless data?

In short, what the fuck were they thinking?

Give me lossless!

[Godji]

This is completely dumb, but if it finally makes LOSSLESS digital music stores a reality (that have no DRM and are not watermarked), I'm all for it!

Didn't RTFA (duh), but I wonder what codec they use for the lossless part? Not that I care, since I would transcode that to FLAC before I even played it.

Re:The only loss...

[PopeRatzo]

When you can define "fair compensation", we can start to worry about whether or not artists are getting it.

Re:I'm the only one that thinks this is a good ide

[nedlohs]

So when driving to work your fuel economy sucks because you have second engine that probably doubles the weight of the car that you don't use.

And when you are at the race track you lose all your races because you have a second engine you aren't using adding weight to slow you down.

Another extension

[icebike]

Oh, yes, lets tweak this patent just a tad and see if we can extend it for another 20 years.

Re:I'm the only one that thinks this is a good ide

[yuna49]

My reply is why bother supporting a proprietary format to incorporate lossless audio when there's already a well-developed open standard already, namely FLAC? By your argument, the expansion of disk space makes lossless storage more attractive. I agree with that, but what I don't want is for everyone to hop on board another standard from Thomson and friends which can't legally be supported in free and open software.

Forward-thinking companies like COWON support open formats like FLAC and Matroska. Other players should as well. We've all suffered long enough with proprietary formats that bring nothing extra to the table other than the marketing power of large corporate backers.

Re:The obvious problem

[jandrese]

Space isn't so cheap when you're buying it from Apple.

Re:The obvious problem

[PayPaI]

Indeed, a 120GB Zune can be had for $234 where a 120GB iPod Classic can be had for $249. I'm sure the $15 price difference is the difference between paying your rent on time or not.

Re:The obvious problem

[Chyeld]

Actually the smallest iPod you can get is 4G.

The smallest iPod classic, now considered a clunky dinosaur by Apple, is 120G.

A 4G iPod can hold 11 CD's of your 350mb Flac variety.

But that doesn't matter. Because the point was, a 120G iPod classic costs $250. I can walk into Best Buy, that overpriced mecca of electronic goods, and buy a terabyte USB drive for $150. And the classic is the iPod with the best 'storage vs cost' ratio.

That 4G shuffle costs $79 and it's nearest cousins, the 8G iPods cost $150.

At the same price: 8G vs 1000G (round about) Or in other words: 22 CDs vs just under 3,000 CDs

Portable storage is expensive. Home storage is cheap.

Wasting portable storage on something that would only be used at home, is pointless to the extreme.

Re:A Far Less Brain-Damaged Solution (for Linux)

[pyite]

...is MP3FS, a virtual file system that transcodes your FLAC files to MP3 on the fly (including metadata).

Thank you for the link. This seems like a sane solution to an annoying problem.

Re:I'm the only one that thinks this is a good ide

[mcgrew]

This is like a car with two motors. One motor is street legal and can be driven in all fifty states. The second is a fully modified fire-breathing 800HP monster that can only be used in closed-course racing.

This is an apt comparison - the extra weight of the street legal motor will ensure that you lose every race you compete in.