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MP3 Is Not Dead, It's Finally Free (marco.org)
The commentary around IIS Fraunhofer and Technicolor terminating their MP3 licensing program for certain MP3 related patents and software has been amusing. While some are interpreting this development as the demise of the MP3 format, others are cheering about MP3s finally being free. Developer and commentator Marco Arment tries to prevail sense: MP3 is no less alive now than it was last month or will be next year -- the last known MP3 patents have simply expired. So while there's a debate to be had -- in a moment -- about whether MP3 should still be used today, Fraunhofer's announcement has nothing to do with that, and is simply the ending of its patent-licensing program (because the patents have all expired) and a suggestion that we move to a newer, still-patented format. MP3 is supported by everything, everywhere, and is now patent-free. There has never been another audio format as widely supported as MP3, it's good enough for almost anything, and now, over twenty years since it took the world by storm, it's finally free.
accumulated over decades of life in MP3 format. I'm not going to abandon it anytime soon. Just isn't going to happen.
Please tell me the DRM is still patented
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
>> MP3 is not dead
Er...why would it be? This is how music is stored, shared and played for the most part, isn't it?
>> a suggestion that we move to a newer, still-patented format
I don't believe that Ogg Vorbis is patented. That's the next logical place to move, isn't it?
It's technically superior so why not?
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
So apparently some people are incapable of understanding basic legalities or doing basic research before publishing.
While some are interpreting this development as the demise of the MP3 format
We can safely blacklist anyone who ran a story where this was presented as a fact or even a likelihood. Until something better takes the world by storm, the patent expiration will only help the format become more widely available.
Nice chance to see where there is more noise than signal though.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Still dead
Why would anyone except the patent holders weeping over the end of their 20 year gravy train ever suggest that MP3 is "Dead"?
Opus is superior to MP3 and is open source. Actually from the researches I've had it's the best lossy audio codec
There has never been another audio format as widely supported as MP3. CD-DA (2 channels × 44,100 samples per second per channel × 16 bits per sample) is more widely supported than MP3.
"Freee fallin', yes I'm freee fallin'"
Tom Petty
Never understood why, in a time of .ogg files, MP3 was always the defacto format. Ogg was free, and had better a far better compression:quality ratio. The fact that MP3 was ever popular is mindblowing. Glad to hear it's finally free, though.
I used to have over 60,000 tracks stored on my iPod classic. Mostly classical music. Once it went belly up, I replaced it.
Then Spotify and other streaming services implemented offline listening.
Once my second iPod died, I reluctantly gave Spotify a try while deciding to buy a used one, as Apple no longer made the classic.
Been a premium Spotify user ever since and never looked back. I found all the old stuff I cared about, found tons of new music, by different orchestras, conductors, soloists, etc.
My MP3 collection is now filling up a backup HD in a closet.
"There has never been another audio format as widely supported as MP3"
I think WAV might have the lock on this one.
As someone who is wading into video encoding for the first time I'd love it if my first step in development was not to talk to lawyers about codec patents and licensing.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
MP3 may now be free, but it's not high enough quality for many. If only there were some sort of... Free... Lossless... Audio Codec... We could call it FLAC.
In that I don't collect files with MP3 extensions any longer.
Those days are past, now I collect my audio with video attached. Space isn't an issue and I might want to watch something while I listen (and every device I have has a screen...) and I can ignore it if I don't.
I haven't bothered to check, but I assume the audio component of those videos could still be using the MP3 standard.
The lack of patent encumbered algorithms in MP3 means two things:
Audio snobs won't stop arguing about the format of the week or FLAC verses DSD or the best bit rates on PCM encoded WAV files.
Mere consumers shall continue on with our plebeian fidelity sound as always.
Online buyers will continue to download low bit rate MP3s to squeeze a few more hundred tunes onto their Zune. Everyone you know will still play studio damaged music through tiny earbuds.
"You cannot have a General Will unless you have shared experiences. You cannot be fair to people you don't know."
ogg and vorbis FTW!
No patents.
No licenses.
Better audio encoding, including multi-channel.
Be happy.
I suppose someone could push for DD or DTS or FLAC. I can't hear the difference (anymore), so it just doesn't matter. Why waste the bits?
Outside of the USA, software patents aren't really a thing. The rest of the world has been happily using mp3 without a license for a couple of decades now. The patents expiring on mp3s is a big non-event for most of the world.
MP3 is a lowest common denominator format. Old as hell, universally supported, good but not great sound. I think of it as equivalent to a high end cassette.
More modern formats (like even AAC, which is not new) clearly fix sound problems that MP3 is prone to.
Still, it's great we do have a lowest common denominator like MP3 available--just so long as it doesn't impede support for newer formats.
... increase the upper limit on acceptable bitrates to more than 320kbps. While the 320kbps bitrate sounds quite good, even in an A/B comparison to Apple's highly touted lossy AAC, allowing MP3 files to use higher bit rates would a nice intermediate alternative to moving to something like FLAC lossless.
Been a premium Spotify user ever since and never looked back.
Nothing wrong with that but what do you plan to do if/when Spotify goes belly up? Not saying it will or won't but it's certainly a realistic possibility since Spotify has never to my knowledge made a profit.
I disagree strongly that streaming will kill stored music. It will complement it nicely but it's not a replacement for many people. Streaming is useless in circumstances where you don't have a reliable or fast internet connection (like on a plane) or if you are data limited for some reason. It also ties you to a business which you may or may not be interested in subscribing to. Plus one of the nice things about stored music is that it can't be taken away from you very easily.
Speaking solely for myself even a relatively cheap streaming service would be a waste of money for me - I simply wouldn't use it enough to justify the cost. (I dropped Netflix for exactly that reason and I watch more video than I listen to music) And I'm not unique in that regard. Streaming has some real advantages and I think it has a big future but it's not going to kill stored music.
MP3 will probably be supported on pretty every device for the foreseeable. There's literally no reason not to.
There's a very clear reason not to :
Force users to rebuy the song they are used to listen to.
If you happen to be in a vertically integrated market, where you both produce the playing device and content shop, you a have a strong incentive to deprecate MP3 on some made-up reason (like low quality per bitrate in such an old format) (like all the modern bells and whistle that supposedly come with newer format), and produce devices that only play the modern format that is also used on your online shop.
Thus lots of users won't have any easy way to play all their old collection of song (they'll need to convert their MP3 into whatever new format is the current one. Of course, you'll try to make the converter specially NOT user-friendly).
The simplest for them would be to re-buy their song from your shop.
If you're only a small player in the field and you're the only one doing it, you're going to lose customers as they move to another manufacturer who won't deprecate their entire collections of old songs.
If you're a major player, holding a huge chunk of the market, the "running away" is going to be a tiny bit more complicated. You have your custommers locked in, let's proceed to make sure that they only play stuff that comes in your DRM'ed format from your store, not whatever old MP3 file they happened to still have laying around.
In other words : Apple could be in a great position to deprecate MP3 files support, forcing all iGadgets users to buy their songs from their store.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
What?? You mean I have to buy the White Album again?
Most mp3 are drm free. Especially if you ripped them yourself.
Yup. Exactly.
And when they look at your collection, the RIAA feels deep disgust.
They would *definitely* prefer no to have to keep the support for your DRM-free MP3,
but have manufacturers only produce players that exclusively only play some modern DRMed music files (probably AAC based).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
A thumb drive with .ogg files won't.
Surprisingly, more of the in-vehicle-infotainment computers support Ogg/Vorbis that you would have though.
(Software comes for free, requirement to add it as yet another supported format are minimal and it adds a nice additionnal checkbox on the feature list).
It's not widespread among standard DIN-format radios, but the big screens with Satnav support it.
(And stand-alone satnav too. It used to be the default audio format for Tomtom).
Also, most modern car IVI also feature an AUX-In jack and/or bluetooth audio link.
So basically cars play anything that your smartphone supports.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Of course there's a bash shebang, improper quoting, breaking conventions (uppercase variables are by convention env-vars), being inconsistent at breaking the conventions (for some reason 'a' is lowercase) and needless bashisms.
People still frequently use GIF, long after the compression patents expired, and long after technically superior replacements were created. PNG is popular, but GIF is still around.
"There has never been another audio format as widely supported as MP3", but you're wrong, WAV and PCM are audio formats and are and were supported by most systems supporting MP3. Thanks for your erroneous opinion, now you can take it, turn it sideways and shove it straight up the ol' poop chute.
Opus is superior to MP3
I agree with you that Opus is technically better. But technically better means little if your listeners' playback application does not support it. Among major web browsers tracked by Can I use..., WebKit-based web browsers do not support Opus sources in <audio> elements. This includes Safari for macOS and every browser for iOS.
It's technically superior so why not?
Why not ?
Because the same developpers - Xiph - this time working in tandem with Skype - brought OPUS to you.
And that one busts nearly everyone else in ABX tests, is considered a IETF web standrad, and thus supported by most browsers and used by several on-line voice-chat apps (Skype, WhatsApp, etc.), there are even informal tools to support it inside Digital Radio Mondial (the digital cousin of AM radio), etc.
It's thus very likely to be supported by your smartphone (e.g.: recent versions of android do play OPUS) and will progressively see wider usage over time.
In other words, unless you're interested in very small bit rates ( 4 kbits , meaningless for the typical design of OPUS ) there is just no argument for not using it.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Long life to ogg!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
To get anything reasonable, I get a maximum 4:1 compression ratio comparing lossless to lossy, 11:1 would be like listening to a concert through a cellular connection.
Try using OPUS at 96kbps
(Also by Xiph, the same guys who made Vorbis - but in collaboration with Skype this time)
Resulting quality is incredibly close to lossless.
(It's also patent-free, consieded a IETF web standard and probably already supported by your current smartphone)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I don't think there will be any further development of MP3. It's a dead end with superior alternatives already available is better sound is your goal. Plus, increasing the bitrate allowed in an MP3 effectively makes it a NEW FORMAT because the other MP3 players out there won't be able to play it. The only thing MP3 has going for it at this point is universality of playback, so your suggested change is not going to be made.
No! No changes. Some asswipe will patent it and it will be patent encumbered again. Leave it alone and let it become a free standard.
Netcraft confirms it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
to do all the cool things it does. That meant more expensive hardware. The $50/512MB mp3 players I was buying in the early 2000s didn't run ogg, but they were $200 cheaper than players that did.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
No, every piece of music is lossy because analog cannot be encoded into digital without an infinite amount of loss.
Usually, we talk in terms of music.
we don't try to record every possible vibration in existance in the universe, we try to record *sound*.
and the human body, due to limitation caused by laws of physics, has a very narrow set of vibration that it can hear and interpret as sound.
you can't hear ultrasound. there's no physiological way for you to hear them. thus there's no point in storing them.
There's a range of frequencies (tactile can feel up to dozens/hundrer of hertz, ears can feel up to somewhere between 10kHz and 20kHz).
There's a range of intensities (between impossible to hear, and causes pain/hearing loss).
By virtue of mathematics of information theory, every possible sound that you could ever hear can nicely fit within a 44kHz to 48kHz samplerate and 16bits to 24bits sample size.
Everything beyond that is just overkill, you're not physically equipped to percieve it. (That would be like trying to see UV, X-Ray, etc.)
---
BTW: A piano is also bound by the laws of physics and the amount of different vibrations it can produce isn't infinite either.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
We don't get to retroactively change a standard; it's not going to magically play anywhere but on a software implementation, because the chips are designed to the standard.
Besides: A higher bitrate than 320 kbit/s has no measurable effect on MP3 quality. We can't really squeeze any more blood from the MP3 stone.
So while MP3 is decent, and it's now free, there are other free alternatives which are much better -- We're even starting to see support in hardware, thanks to RFC 6716, which standardized OPUS for internet audio.
The reason AAC sounds better is because it is better - it has several years worth of additional research and development that MP3 didn't have.
It's not all that different from how Vorbis is generally better than AAC, and Opus is better than both. The experts learn more, and do better the next time.
It's a minor nit, but AAC isn't an Apple format - it is an international ISO/IEC standard intended to replace MP3; it's also specified in MPEG-2 part 7, and MPEG-4, part 3, dating all the way back to April 1997. Apple simply adopted the standard a bit earlier - which isn't unusual for them.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
This is an example of how the Patent system should work.
Fraunhofer invented something good. They Patented it. Patents last 20 years, after which they expire forever.
Fraunhofer enjoyed the monopoly on use of this technology, but only for a short time. Now, the Public owns it (it is in the public domain).
If none of the big five can use the ubiquitous and well supported MP3 standard to continue the interminable bludgeoning of the consumer, then it must be killed and replaced with something new - preferably expensive and requiring entire new hardware and CRM dongles - from which to further the feudal system of digital servitude to which we have, each of us, sworn fealty. [It was on page 67 of a terms of use document, somewhere.]
Until something better takes the world by storm, the patent expiration will only help the format become more widely available.
Let me intoduce your to this thing called OPUS.
(It's also by Xiph, the people behind Vorbis, but this time in collaboration with Skype).
It's patent-free, it's free.
it's accepted as a IETF web-standard, it's supported by web browser.
it's already used by lots of voice chat application (Skype - obviously - but also e.g.: WhatsApp)
your smartphone probably already supports it (if it's a recent enough version of android).
there are even informal standards to use it in Digital Radio Mondial (the digital cousin of AM radio).
And it has the best audio quality ever.
Beats nearly anything else in ABX tests.
Except maybe ultra small bandwidths ( 4 kbits ) which are beyond its intended usage anyway.
so it is taking the world by storm (chances are if an app on your smartphone deals with audio, it supports it)
it's just a very silent storm.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Vorbis, which seems to be better in (almost?) all ways except adoption.
Luckily, it's successor OPUS is better at this "adoption" part.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of my awesome music encoded in Holographic Crystal that I listen to on my gold-plated optical wireless VR Headset to as I ride to the Cogswell Cog Factory in my autodriving Hovercar.
There are better (licensed, copyrighted, non-free) codecs for sure. There might also be better free codecs. None of them are ubiquitous as the OP states, and in the end, that's what matters most. MP3 has been so popular because of its ubiquity working so well alongside its versatility - you can encode better or worse depending on your quality and space necessities.
Cloud streaming, be it music or video might be popular, but nobody has the same internet developed countries get. People in Africa, Asia and South America are still pumping those flash memory devices full of 128kbit crappy rips that give joy to their hard days. And nobody can say or do anything about it, no matter their finantial or ethical motivations.
AOMedia's AV-1 is attempting to be exactly that but for video.
A codec that is either patent free or whose patent are free.
Free code implementation.
supported by nearly anyone involved in video, including content providers (includes both Google and Netflix, so a sizeable portion of all video played), software makes (Mozilla, VLC, etc.) and hardware manufacturer (AMD, Intel, Broadcom, ARM, etc.)
And there are quite a few big developpers involved :
- Xiph (makers of Daala), Google (VP10) and Cisco (thor)
It's going to do exactly what OPUS did to audio.
probably within a year.
Until then it's either H264 / AVC if you can afford the patents or Google's VP-9.
Stay away from H265 / HEVC, it's a trap (that was the actual incentive to start AOMedia)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Thanks for repeating everything I said. Your contribution to this site is on point!
I used to see quite a few video game projects use .ogg files [...] . I expect to see more of them ship with MP3s instead.
Unlike a web application, a PC-native video game doesn't have to rely on codecs built into the user's existing operating system. Thus the codec choice depends on licensing and rate-distortion efficiency. Yes, I expect games to switch away from Vorbis, but not to MP3 because MP3 is less space-efficient than Vorbis at a given fidelity level. They'll probably switch to Opus, which beats both MP3 and Vorbis at fidelity per bit.
Outside of the USA, software patents aren't really a thing.
Is most of the world willing to accept refugees from U.S. software patent holders' oppression?
Aoyumi's Tuned Vorbis encoder (aoTuV) is believed transparent at quality 5, which is roughly 160 kbps.
And you're right that Opus is too new. It still has artifacts on "killer samples" in the 128-192 kbps range that make it little better than Vorbis at transparency under quiet listening conditions. But it wins listening tests in the 64-96 kbps range for streaming to relatively noisy vehicular and outdoor environments.
This news that MP3 is now free means an audio format has died. But the dead format is not MP3.
R.I.P. Ogg Vorbis
I have to admit that the announcement was one of the most strangely worded announcements. It was really hard to tell whether the end of the licensing program meant that the format was free or that it was totally unavailable for use. Glad to see that it was the former, after all.
It is not dead, but migrate to ogg vorbis anyway, it compress more with better quality and it is a totally open and free codec. Even the license (BSD) is one that allows anyone to add ogg vorbis support to any app or firmware
So yes, ignore mp3 and use ogg vorbis... and demand hardware with support for it
Higuita
...if the Nyquist limit is observed.
Really? "There has never been another audio format as widely supported as MP3?" Not, oh, I don't know, WAVE or raw PCM? Come on...
I'd say moving to FLAC is a better idea. What with storage and bandwidth no longer being an issue, lets eliminate lossy audio compression once and for all!
transcode to whatever the formate de jour is without loss of quality.
See the irony here, MP3 has always been lossy, that means you can't get the original quality back whether for playback or transcoding.
Gizmodo piece was shady as hell... but probably just poorly researched, like many other pieces these days. Straight press release to article.
Sure, some audiophiles might not like the format, there are some more advanced standards in the market right now, and some companies (like Apple) don't use it anymore for their stores. It's old, other formats compress better, preserve more information, blah blah.
But mp3 quality is perfectly fine for most people, it really doesn't make that much of a difference. If you really need to know where you stand at, just get some piece of music of the sort you like, convert it into multiple codecs and bitrates you wanna evaluate and more importantly: get a friend and tell him to make a blind test for you. Because there's a whole truckload of people who think they can hear better when they actually have no clue. Oh, also do it with the equipment you personally use for listening to music... chances are, those will have a bigger influence then the codec itself. It's no use listening to raw music if your DAC, headphones, speakers, wiring and whatnot is pure crap that will lose quality along the way anyways.
Thing is, the same institute (Fraunhofer) who made the press release and announced the end of the format licensing is also involved with development of new formats like AAC. Of course they'd like mp3 to just end out of nowhere because then businesses would be forced to switch to formats like AAC which still require paying royalties to use.
It's a bit like the iPhone 7 justification for not putting a headphone jack there because it's "outdated". Vast majority of the market is plenty fine with regular headphone jacks, the real problem is not being able to charge other businesses to use a proprietary connector, and charging costumers more to get stuff like headphones and whatnot.
and you got everything for free again like a good little socialist
Listening to recorded sound (on anything but high-quality equipment and in a dedicated environment) only requires 192 VBR MP3 compression. Every speaker and earbud with drivers doing more than a few kHz of range is more "lossy" than increasing the bitrate. 192 will exhibit some artifacts, which can be heard in quiet surroundings with good speakers, but for 99% of the environments people listen to music, it wouldnt distract.
That said, storage is cheap and one can always store more bits with little if any cost increase. People also wait in traffic on urban streets in aspiring-racecar vehicles. Meh. Oppulence is subjective and only lightly related to practicality.
I'm probably the few people in the world who thinks MP3 sound quality sucks, so I have persisted for many years in buying CD's which I could then convert to FLAC format. Just for consistency I converted my existing MP3's to FLAC knowing full well the crappy sound quality would be converted with it. As most music published online these days is not available in FLAC format, I've elected to do without. My condition has been called the "Golden Ear" syndrome--you you guys be happy you don't have it.
Distortion is 'improvement' according to them.
U.S. patents filed before mid-1995 expire the later of 20 years after filing or 17 years after grant. The grant date for these patents can be extended through various procedural tricks. In order to be sure about this, I'd need to see a list of AAC LC-related essential patent numbers in Via's pool, and Via's website didn't make such a list easy for me to find.
. . . ogg is better. Better quality for the same filesize, or smaller files for the same quality. MP3 simply has no use case. Why rip to mp3 when you can rip to ogg?
There was never scope to patent what is just a software algorithm in the first place.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Can you let us know the size differences
All the death criers about MP3 have been wildly short sighted. If anything MP3 should get a bump as the already ubiquitous format can now be used without a license. There's no reason it shouldn't just be everywhere as a starter format now. No more downloading mp3 codecs because they'll be embedded. Maybe the official defaulting of MP3 can now begin the rise of ogg but for now mp3 is far from dead.
Just another second banana
no. storage is still an issue. Especially in IOTs where you might want mp3 playback but only in a limited capacity. Flac is a fine format but it's no replacement for mp3 we're a long long way from being in a world wehre every instance of audio is storage independent.
Just another second banana
Want to see real fake news in motion. Go read the nonsense at many mainstream tech sites aimed at the sheeple all proclaiming that MP3 is 'dead'. Large 'technical' sounding articles 'explaining' why this laughably fake fact is 'true'. Then understand this is standard practice for mainstream news outlets.
Like any good conman, mainstream media outlets - that all peddle fake news- dress themselves up in the clothes of 'respectability'. Their NSA/GCHQ/Deep State crafted/approved messages are couched in standard journo-speak, because the average target of such dribble lacks both the critical faculties and knowledge to see thru the lies. The self same sites were all telling people to vote Clinton a few months back.
Open Source is the enemy of the Deep State. The Deep State would have patents and copyrights that never expire. And Kodi is receiving the same demonising treatment as I type, with sheeple informed that Kodi boxes are 'illegal'.
I agree with all you said. That is why I used the word "if" in my comment (which the replies to my comment all seem to have ignored. I even put it in the title so it would be obvious!). As for me, I use MP3 when I need lossy compression, and only when I need lossy compression. I still find MP3 is more widely supported than any of the lossy alternatives. However, starting about five years ago, my main format of choice has been FLAC. All the master audio files I make are FLAC, and the MP3 files are derived from those FLAC masters.
Finally, MP3 Pro will have its day!
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Not as always. Back when Rock Music was a thing, it used to be cool to buy big sound systems and dip a toe into the audiophile pool.
Then the MP3 happened, and studio damaged music was a response to that. They're mastering their CDs for cheap "tinny" speakers.
You can hear it yourself. Pick any band that's been around for 20+ years, listen to an old album and a new one back to back. The difference in volume is not subtle.
storage and bandwidth is not a problem, FOR YOU!
not everyone have big disks and pipes, you have from small phones and IOT devices to huge clusters, from dial-up to fiber, assuming that everyone is in the big side is a big mistake.
Also, most people do not ear any difference between a (good) raw audio, flac, aac, mp3, ogg, whatever, so why waste extra resources? It is just like saying we should store every pictures as RAW, where (good) jpeg is perfectly normal, but 1/10 to 1/100 the size
So no, lossy compressions are good, when used with good settings, you get almost the same thing but with a huge difference in size.
but you can even ignore ogg vorbis, there is a new kid in the block (sort of, it was born in 2013, but just last year it start to be used more) that i forgot, the ogg opus, even smaller, even better quality and lot more flexible, can use replace all other codecs in almost any place
Higuita
MP3 will probably be supported on pretty every device for the foreseeable. There's literally no reason not to.
There's a very clear reason not to :
Force users to rebuy the song they are used to listen to.
Armor piercing question: How is this a concern for the makers of MP3 PLAYERS and software that plays/encodes MP3s?
Hint: It isn't...
Yes it *DOES*. :
I'm quoting 1 sentence further into my post
If you happen to be in a vertically integrated market, where you both produce the playing device and content shop,
If the manufacturer of the music player and writer of software, happens to *ALSO* be the owner of the shop where the content is sold (and *USUALLY* also produce part of the content),
they have a strong incentive to phase out support for the older formats which are not featured in the shop.
If said manufacturer has a strong market share and brand loyalty (specially if users of their shop are already locked-in by their already-bought music collection, e.g. due to DRM), they can leverage it to try to pull the trick.
Currently Apple, could be in a position where they could realistically try to phase out MP3, and pressure their users to re-buy their old tracks as AAC from iTunes.
I'm not say that they *will*, just that they are in a position where *they could risk trying* even if they probably won't.
(Probably because they are already busy phasing out analog 3mm jacks because... huh... "reasons ?"... in order to pressure their users to re-buy new Apple approved earphones with lightning port or bluetooth wireless).
Historically, Microsoft has been in a slightly different position, a tried to pull one reminiscent of this :
Tried to build a music market - or at least a microsoft standard for music markets to use (remember the "Play for sure" era, before they tried it again with Zune ?), and indirectly tried to pressure hardware player manufacturer :
the certification for "Play for sure" specified an explicit exhaustive list of the format that a device should support.
They could not unlist MP3 - it was way too popular, would have been a commercial suicide.
But OGG/Vorbis was suspiciously missing (and the certification term worded in such an ambiguous way, that supporting OGG/Vorbis might exclude from being "Plays for sure" certified) - probably because it was a format competing favorably in terms of quality back then.
(On other hand, no name Asian manufacturer kept support for Vorbis, they just didn't advertise it, or sometime even advertised both "Plays for sure" and support for Vorbis).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Too bad Apple refuses to even acknowledge the existence of AV-1,
Again, the other side has Netflix, Google and Amazon on board. (Pretty much nearly all content viewed on-line).
Apple isn't even in a dominant position on this market.
So if they want to make themselves irrelevant, let them...
let alone talk about supporting it on Apple gear or in Apple software.
That's probably due to the fact that they *DO HAVE* H265 licenses,
and they produce their own hardware (which is one of the few that keeps supporting H265 despite the current mayhem).
on the other hand, given the track record of Xiph (Vorbis, FLAC, Speex, OPUS, Theora, etc.), and of such IETF-aproved standards in general (Matroska),
there's going to be beer/free libraries supporting AV-1 under permissive license (short BSD and similar) that can be included easily even in commercial apps.
In other words :
- No, iPhone 8 & 9 will still not support AV-1 because Apple will still be trying to push H265/HEVC using their license into the GPU core of their "A" processors.
- But yes, Netflix and Youtube apps on iPhones, iPad and AppleTV will stream AOMedia AV-1 none the less, simply by embeding their own copy of "libavone.dynlib" or whatever. (Same for Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and other browser apps following IETF standards).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Browser support? Only relevant to web developers (users don't know or care what format the file is).
...they don't care. But most of the web apps they are using are switching or have already switched.
(a different exemple: Spotify doesn't use MP3. Spotify actually uses OGG/Vorbis.
meaning that tons of people use OGG/Vorbis for their music collection instead of MP3 or AAC.
Phasing the system's MP3 codec won't even affect them)
Android support? Might be nice, but without iOS support it's irrelevant as a mobile format.
OPUS is available as a library under a permissive license (same as Vorbis and FLAC, BTW).
Means that for the iOS version, most App can simply package "libopus.dynlib" (or "libvorbis.dynlib") even if Apple doesn't botters.
(Luckily, means that now that the patent expired, a "liblame.dynlib" could be similarly possible)
Meanwhile, there is nothing to indicate OPUS will get wider traction than VORBIS did.
Nothing, except all the application currently installed on your smartphone that already support it and use it.
(most of the voice chat applications, most of the media player, etc.)
If you've talked to someone or left a voice message in WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook Messenger (and countless others), your voice was transmitted using OPUS codec.
Face it, MP3 is still the superior format because no other format can replace it.
MP3 is currently widely available and supported.
OPUS is currently widely available and supported, and has much better quality than anything available for internet use today.
(The exception are non-internet use for 4kbps)
If you are starting an application today that has audio, guess which you are going to pick ?
Current trends in apps show that OPUS is picked.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
but I'm going to be that pedantic twat and point out that some people can reportedly perceive UV light, particularly after cataract surgery. Claude Monet is an oft-cited example.
And I'm going to out-predant you be making you notice I didn't mention which band of UV (UV-A, UV-B, UV-C, etc.)
the rods and cones can perceive UV down to 280nm (but they are blocked out by the len, so if you still have your natural born len, you don't see anything below 390nm).
You can't see 240-260nm UV, even with an artificial eye len, that's why you need a spectrometer to measure DNA content in a sample, you can't do it by naked eye.
UV extends down to 10nm.
Also UV wavelengths are dangerously damaging to the retina (that's why lens evolved to filter them).
Modern artificial lens used in cataract operation do filter UV light for this exact reason.
(Unlike back in Monet's era)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
However, if you understand Fourier's theorm, then you understand you can only capture a 22kHz sine wave. The harmonics get cut off. Even 22kHz is rather high, but its there to get the second harmonic of 11kHz.
I'm not saying that higher frequencies than 22kHz to not exist.
I'm just saying that we lack the receptor to even detect it.
33kHz could be emitted as a harmonic of a source tuned for 11kHz base note (though a 11kHz base note is quite high already and doesn't make much sens musically).
But there's no sane reason to record it and reproduce it.
You're just wasting storage space on something that you'll never be able to perceive.
Translated into the light domain :
I'm not saying that X-Rays do not exist.
I'm just saying that the human eye lack any receptor to detect them.
If your purpose is only to store a photo, you're wasting storage space on storing the x-rays value of image pixels and then trying to reproduce it :
your watchers will never be able to see it, they only see the visual domain.
(If you're a radiologist looking at X-ray picture, it's an entire different story.
the sound domain equivalent is :
Similar to ultra-sound sonars used by the parking assistance of cars)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Not OP but I can easily discern the harmonic beat between ultrasonic and sonic combinations.
In practice :
- actually not at all.
the "beat" frequency is calculated by the delta of the 2 frequencies.
to be able to hear the "beat" you'd need a frequency that is clearly in the hearing domain.
to make it beat with an inaudible ultra-sound you would need a frequency that is clearly above the hearing domain.
(i.e.: We're not speaking 10'000 Hz vs 10'001 Hz)
a delta between such two frequencies is sure to gives a beat frequencies that is beyond the response time of the ear.
i.e.: your inner ear labyrinth receptor won't be able to notice a sound going on and off that fast.
not to mention that the delta might end up being higher than the lower frequency at which point there's no really beat to be heard at all.
(a beat frequency is usuabl <<sound frequency)
in theory :
a beat is just a sound oscillating in volume over time (a type of tremolo if you wish).
in this case you're not actually hearing utlra sound (you don't have receptors for that), you're hearing distorsions in the audible domain, for which you DO have a receptor.
and similarly a sampling rate of 48kHz won't be able to code the ultra sound frequency (beyond nyquist frequency), but can clearly code an audible frequency whose amplitude varies over time.
but that's just about the theory of perceiving or recording a beat a.k.a. an osciliation of volume a.k.a. a tremolo.
for the practicality of a setup with a beat between an audible and inaudible frequency, see above.
for more informations :
- watch this video
- read this wiki
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I write this from a wholly sideways perspective, because I have been using mp3 technology for so long. However, it's in the form of using L.A.M.E. ( Lame Ain't an Mp3 Encoder ) to process my audio recordings for my band & my personal singer-songwriter drizzle. And, since LAME denies being an mp3 encoder, I guess for me, it's always been a somewhat vexing question of whether or not I ever made an mp3 file in the first place. In any case, special thanks to him & the other fine people at the Fraunhofer Institute, which, I guess now that I think about it, might be a made-up fairy tale as well, but no matter. Thanks again, Dr. Fraunhofer.
I measured the audio signal quality of the Lenovo T470s and Microsoft Surface 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ;-)