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MP3 Firms Clash Over Copyrighted Code
Bored@Home sent us a link to a news.com article that
talks about
PlayMedia suing NullSoft
for $20 million. PlayMedia alleges that NullSoft is violating a copyright
and uses code illegally.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
Seems like IBM wants to be known for distributing
free software without really distributing free
software.
According a statement by Nullsoft, they licensed the code. Which means they can sell the program for... money (gasp!).
;-)
"While it is true that Winamp initially licensed code for the decoding of MPEG audio files from Tomislav Uzelac, this code was replaced with proprietary code developed by Nullsoft as of June 1998" Nullsoft said in a statement.
Go Ducks!
Prior Art
Get it, use it
Well, the guy behind playmedia is an ex-MCA or ex-BMG music exec. So he's got his connections to the RIAA.
I have a slow system and hardley any ram and I've noticed a BIG improvement.
At least on my system, FreeAmp takes 98% of my CPU resources. WinAmp 2.091 only takes about 50%. Plus, WinAmp has options.
from 1.0 versions to 2.0
The RIAA is so hellastupid if theythink they can stop MP3 now. There's no way, it's too big. I can't wait for them to get their "protected" music formats going so I can make a proggy to convert them to MP3. ;)
The MP3 format is worthless. You can't create a free encoder for it, and as this shows people will be fighting over the rights to the free decoders.
It's time to re-engineer a truly free and open high performance audio compression format.
Quayle must be ecstatic. Finally, since the "potatoe" comment, someone else in the political arena has appeared who can fit a bigger foot in his mouth. And it's the democratic front runner for President no less! Oh well, I guess that pretty much seals George W. Bush's victory in next years electrion. Thanks Al.
who cares about nullsoft. I left them behind with winblows. Those lazy bastards didn't port to linux...we had to make our own "interpretation" of winamp -> X11amp.
Make your free encoder, release it free with source and forget about it... hell even use an outside usa website. Once source is released you cant stop it.
There is no way I'm gonna be caught dead using something as ugly and as counterintuitive as FreeAMP on my computer.
just a footnote, diamond won the suit last november. what's up with that October press release?(oldnews.com?)
Why sell a useless mp3 engine? Every Win98 machine can play mp3s, its part of the mediaplayer. BIG DEAL!!!
.www.kjofol.org
Winamp sucks any how, KJOFOL is better
And if the winamp guys had balls, tehy would release it as GPL
> If you use an MP3 player, which is it?
mpg123 -s foo.mp3 | aplay -m &
ac
--
OSS != OSS.
For all intents and purposes, Winamp appears to be fully functional upon downloading the evaluation version. And while the documentation says that after x days, you need to pay for the software, the impression I got from their registration page (https://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi? item=1104-1) seems more of a voluntary registration than say, a Microsoft EULA.
Besides, if you're such a wombat that you wouldn't sink $10 into an app you potentially use more than anything else on your box (besides the OS or Quake), you're strange. I'd sooner pay a company that makes payment optional based on the perceived quality of their product, than one that requires payment upfront for a POS.
Check out the following link: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconV alley/Program/3555
The has source -- and binaries -- for a Windows NT driver (Wave to Disk) -- a Linux version has existed for a long time -- which will save any audio stream to disk by pretending to be a sound card. Proprietary copy protection schemes currently proposed work above the device level, and will fail to this approach.
The RIAA aren't going to win this.
For more information, email us.
/* --"Wanna buy some mandies, Bob?" */
Who you jivin' with that Cozmik Debris?
"I want to be clear that this suit has nothing to do with MP3's intrinsic legitimacy as a format for the playback and enjoyment of music," PlayMedia chief executive Brian Litman said in a statement.
What a moron - anyone who "enjoys" listening it music in 128kbit Layer 3 MPEG is tone def anyway.
I open-mindedly downlaoded this program, and I was not that impressed.
:)
I have really taken the personal inititive to move my cd's to MP3, and I am really starting to use winamp a lot, I think it is quiet nice.
I use it while I am programming, and I have seldom had any problems... FreeAMP just seemed kinda resource intensive, and just plain ugly.
There are COUNTLESS plugins/skins for winamp..
doesn't seem to crash with the newer release either..
I will definately register the program, if something else doesn't come along and catch my eye that is..
Even the "best" Layer 3 encoder set to the higest quality mode still has artifacts at 128kbit - Depending on the material they can be very annoying too.
From what I remember, Justin bought a beta code of the ANP engine from Tomislaw (back then it was most advanced engine). There were maybe max two engines: Farenhoufer and AMP.. AMP being the cheaper one..
Anyways... Justin worked on it and imrpoved it more and more.
During the same time Tomislaw did the same. They never shared their codes (OSS rules). Anyways.. Tomislaw finished the AMP engine, and said that anyone who wants to have official name of ????AMP needs to use the new engine.
Justin refused as he said that he redid most of the engine and taking the official AMP v1 would only cripple him.. (This can be found on mp3.com archives, if they still have it).
And then NullSoft came with Nitrate engine which was promised to be AMP almost recoded for multiple processors support (3d now, pentiums, mmx, 486 and so on)..
--- Thats how much I knew before the article..
The article sais that:
Nullsoft was ordered to quit using the remains of AMP engine (I guess this is where Nitrate was to come from), and to stop using the ?????AMP name which is reserved for players with the AMP engine in them (what about the YAMP (Yet Another Module Player)?).. Anyways..
They are charging for Fraud: Nullsoft indicates in the name of their player that its still using AMP engine while it doesnt.
They are charging for copyright.. They were supposed to stop using AMP engine, and appreantly Tomislav can proove they didnt..
--
There...
its not BS.. they are sued..
Justin sued AMP engine
Tomislaw wrote AMP engine
somewhere along the line there was a break betweeen the two.
And the best engine is StarDust written by Sexorasta... (currently used inside Sonique)..
Please obtain clue before proceeding.
What's up with that fixation on MP3 ? Who gives a damn anyway ?
wrong. you lose if you go that way.
you end up with a free encoder that can only be used in a few countries that don't believe math can be patented.
you can't use the encoder for anything useful. if you're a band, you can't use it to distribute your music. you can't bundle it with your linux distribution.
you can't sell it. you can't distribute it.
basically, it's not of much use.
OK, so how fast is "your computer"? I'd like to know if a 486/50 is enough. 486/100? Pentium 133?
who cares!!
let them screw each other.
Perhaps we should give to the word COMPUTING a whole new meaning ?!
All those capitalist pigs are shitting everywhere now and the big responsable for this is MicroCrap!
I heard nullsofts decoder is the worst sounding out there. Others have better optimizations and enhancement etc. and sound better overall!
kjofol is one of em
bladeenc rocks!
not only is it a great encoder, It's the main system benchmark I use these days. I take my standard test wav (how to be a millionaire-abc) and compress it on a system, and it pops out the compression time very simply.
'According to the Accused, he did not kill anyone. I dont care about your video tape! CASE CLOSED!'
Come on! AMP was orignally under a very liberal licence.. Nullsoft completely abused that licence. They get what they deserve.
The 'amp engine' was not designed to handle imperfect streams. Though it is very easy to make it handle them (you just read in whole frames and dump any partials). Any other problems were most likely bugs caused by nullsoft's gooie.
90% of professional listeners can not tell a difference between cd quality and mp3 encoded music. Unless you are listening to a dat tape then I suggest you not criticize the ingenious encoding scheme of mp3. Mp3 only disposes of frequencies that the human ear can not hear (also disposing of alike stereo channels).
the fact that they don't hassle you about it is just them being overly nice to all the cheap bastards...
Or all the poor bastards. Not all of us were born rich.
Where did you get that information? Mpeg-layer3 only scored a 3 out of 5 on the listening scale, which rates differences as "noticable, and slightly annoying" Cd music is 5. To get a 3 rating more that 50% would to have voted 3 or lower. mp3 is a compromise. If you can't hear the difference you are not a professional listeners.
We have known for a long time that WinAMP was based on the AMP MP3 engine (with modifications and enhancements) and that they could get in trouble for that.
Last year we offered NullSoft to license our Xaudio MP3 engine (written from the ground-up, very fast, very portable and not based on AMP), in replacement of their AMP-based code, an offer which they declined.
I am not surprised of what is happening, and NullSoft's bold posture will probably cost them a lot, litterally and figuratively (i.e. image of their company).
Of course we do support this law suit if it can be proven that Nullsoft disregarded Tomislav Uzelac's intellectual property rights.
Yes, Justin Frankel is to be credited for the amazing MP3 explosion, but without Tomislav Uzelac's prior work, WinAMP would not have existed, so it would have been proper for NullSoft to acknoledge this and work out a licensing deal with Tomislav long time ago.
Of course, the first to be credited for MP3 are all the research scientists (from Fraunhofer, Thomson, Philips etc) that developed the MPEG audio algorithms more 10 years ago...
--Tristan Savatier (MpegTV/Xaudio, president)
Ya. I'm poor, but I'm inclined to send nullsoft a few dollars to help with their legal fees. Hell - I might even head up a legal defense fund for them!
- reg'd user of winamp
Play Media is just pissed that they suck and lost out to nulsoft, they're just one more company that is on the verge of bancruptsy and is trying one last dig to get back in the game by sueing its compitors. I can't wait to see them get their asses counter sued.
*To get a 3 rating more that(sic) 50% would to have voted 3 or lower.*
(1 + 4 + 4) = 9
9/3 = 3
1/3 50%
Please attain at least elementary school level math skills before you post.
ooooh! yaaaay a "proggy"
Or did you flunk Reading Comprehension in 3rd grade?
The Recording Industry Association of America is spearheading the
Secure Digital Music Initiative
in an effort to create a specification to ensure that all music
downloads are secure and that
copyright holders collect their royalties. PlayMedia is a member of
the initiative.
sonique is free, got the best mp3 decoding engine ... if only it ran under linux or BeOS.
www.sonique.com
Name the book. Every computer book I have read that touches the subject names several kinds of resources. Network, CPU, Memory, you name it. I can not believe a credible book would decree that "resources means memory". You are full of it, sir.
Ken
But of course he invented most of the technology in use today. Hasn't anybody heard of Al-Gore-rithms?
The reason X11Amp takes up a lot of memory is because it uses the GTK library which takes up ~4 Mb of memory. But this memory space is shared among all programs that use GTK so this isn't a big problem
err..I could have sworn I posted this
to another subject..oh well
No, Diamond didn't win the suit ... yet. A judge decided NOT to put an injunction in place that would've forbid Diamond from selling the Rio. Diamond is also putting back a little money in case they lose (I think I read that it comes out to like a penney per player sold to cover the royalties that might be owed).
Poor ? Winamp is ten bucks ! Even if you work
at McDonald's it'll take you 2 hours to pay for
it !
Dang.. So the potato famine in Ireland was a blight that affected a crop imported from the Americas? (Just trying to get my history straight..)
I can tell the difference. One of the main
things is a sort of "flange" type distortion.
If I listen closely, I can hear more but overall
I consider MP3's enjoyable and will continue
to use them.(Yes, I've ripped songs and
have compared the results.)
To say they're indistinguishable from a
cd is just silly. I'd say they are closer
to the type of quality one gets from an FM
radio.
11th Commandment
-He who doesn't like AC's can kiss thine ass.
Freeamp blows. It is a good idea. I mean a FREE mp3 player. Now only if Winamp was free. :) Plus Freeamp does not allow for much else other than playback. No eq, playlist, nada.
Never ever encode at 128k. It does sound pretty bad. However, try 192k. At 192k you get a pretty good reproduction. If you would like to know why check out dolby digital.
Ok everyone smoking crack and encoding mp3s in 128k formate can just stop now. (And I only say that is the nicest way) Crack kills, and 128k mp3s hurt. Just say no. I admit I have some 128k mp3s but that is before I saw the light. 192k mp3s is the only way to go. If you don't belive me just try it out. Take a CD (if you have not sold all you old CDs already) and pick a track without lots of base. Try something acoustic. Encode it in 128k and 192k. Then listen to it on your favorite player. Sonique, cough. Now unless you are running some ISA based card that you bought from the Quickemart one late night in the late 70's while searching for something to get a spill off your lesure suit at a party held by cousin/mother. You will see the differance.
Actually, they didn't patent the information. They
used the information to develop a method for
"filtering out" the "less important" parts of
the sounds that are encoded. It's not
significantly different than going out and seeing
how wide most peoples butts are and making a
nice chair.
Agreed. Most people that keep mentioning RAM as a resource...the ONLY resource...are the sort of people who learn to use computers through Windows xx help files...ever seen those? "Q:Why is my computer crashing? A:Your 'resources' are low". 'Resources' is possibly the biggest corporate IT (not the cool ones, there *are* some good IT people out there...somewhere) buzzword I've ever seen. I can just hear it...accounting's "resources" are low. Sheesh. Use "CPU time" or "RAM usage" so people know what you mean, and so you don't sound like an MBA with a week of computer training.
* The first is that Fraunhofer has at least partial public funding. The rest of its funds come from contract research, where most of the contracts belong to public entities. So, if the perceptual encoding research is paid by public money, why are royalties required to use the research? *
Well, the question of course is how you define
public. Fraunhofer is a German company/institution
which means that if you aren't German then you
really aren't part of the "public" that paid
for it. Additionally there are issues about which
funding was used. It's possible that it was
privately funded and public funds were used for
other projects. I don't know, but it's a
possibility.
Aw, did they reject you hitting them up for cash? I can see why you might be happy at the lawsuit. Wonder if you're going to testify in favor of PlayMedia. As for their image, I realize that some people (you, for instance) might consider that people writing their *own* code instead of *licensing* (the accepted corporate way) might be considered "bold" and dangerous. Highly antisocial activity, if you ask me. Nice to see you credit the original scientists. Still, slamming Nullsoft was a bit out of line. How many ground-breaking programs have *you* written? None? Nullsoft brought CD audio to the masses...inexpensively. They could gouge (not much on Win32 compares to WinAmp), and cripple their software, but they don't. I wouldn't say that Nullsoft is perfect, but compared to MediaPlay (and, yes, Xaudio), I'd give it high marks.
Hey, just a quick, useless comment. It's "Nullsoft" not "NullSoft". And "Winamp" not "WinAmp", etc. You wouldn't call /. "SlashDot" or "SlashDOT" would you?
Anonymous Coward wrote:
>>>Aw, did they reject you hitting them up for cash?
No. Actually we do not even charge for freeware players using Xaudio (e.g. C-4, MacAMP), and our licensing fees are fair and in relations with the business models of our customers.
>>> I can see why you
>>>might be happy at the lawsuit. Wonder if you're going to testify in
>>>favor of PlayMedia.
No, we will not. We have no business relations whatsoever with PlayMedia or Brian Litman.
>>> As for their image, I realize that some people
>>>(you, for instance) might consider that people writing their *own*
>>>code instead of *licensing* (the accepted corporate way) might be
>>>considered "bold" and dangerous.
No, on the contrary we consider that it is a choice that people have. Either write their own code, which takes time and does not come for free, or license an existing solution that works. It is a business decision to make when you make a product. The best choice depends on many factors (e.g. time to market, cost of licensing etc).
>>> Highly antisocial activity, if
>>>you ask me.
Then we are antisocial because we wrote Xaudio. We also wrote mtv, the only MPEG Video+audio and VCD player for Linux. Anything bad in doing that ?
>>>Nice to see you credit the original scientists. Still,
>>>slamming Nullsoft was a bit out of line. How many ground-breaking
>>>programs have *you* written? None? Nullsoft brought CD audio to
>>>the masses...inexpensively.
I give Nullsoft credit for that. But as I said, they could not have done that if it was not for the AMP player. WinAMP started as a simple graphic front-end for AMP, if I recall. Any kid good at windows programming can make a GUI. You do not need to be a genius or a great software architect. Justin had a good idea at the right time. But maybe he did not play by the rules of business, and should have gotten a licensing agreement from the AMP guy (Tomislav Uzelac) before making money using WinAMP.
>>> They could gouge (not much on Win32
>>>compares to WinAmp), and cripple their software, but they don't. I
>>>wouldn't say that Nullsoft is perfect, but compared to MediaPlay
>>>(and, yes, Xaudio), I'd give it high marks.
Maybe. But it looks like we are doing a pretty good business at licensing our Xaudio MP3 technology. Let the customers be juges. There is a healthy competition in this market.
--Tristan Savatier (Xaudio)
I have used The Fraunhoffer Professional Codec and there is a big difference between just using the faster codecs such as Xing technologies, I was assuming that most people use Fraunhoffers codec. A good resource for Statistics on encoders and decoders is mp3bench.com but they seem to be down right now, you might want to check back in a couple weeks. The most common audible difference between the real recording and the encoded are the sounds around 20 kHz for Fraunhoffer Codec not sure how Xing works. But anyway that explains why the high sounds like bells and whistles don't sound the same.
winamp sucks. open source software would never have to face this.
Nope, as of 0.9 x11amp uses mpg123
2) start your favourite proprietary audio player program (if any exist)...
3) smile as you rip off the mafioso RIAA
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Shut up.
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I doubt NullSoft even has $20 million. How many people actually register their shareware? It'd take a whole lot of registered shareware to make $20 million, and I don't think that they've managed to sell any corporate licenses of their ShoutCast server yet...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The problem is that X11amp, AFAIK, still uses the AMP engine (as Winamp used to do). The AMP engine is really bad. If you compare NullSoft's Nitrane engine to the AMP engine, Nitrane typically uses less than 1/2 of the CPU cycles that AMP does. Even with a slight gain in speed running a Linux/X setup rather than win95, Win95+Winamp still comes out faster than Linux+X+X11Amp, and Nitrane does a much better job of handling imperfect streams as well.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
...is made by Tomislav Uzelac. He's not the one doing this.
If Nullsoft paid Uzelac, they didn't have to abide by the licence he distributed it to everyone else under.
Very, very sorry for the previous misinformed post.
Posted by oliverc:
l lsoft.htm Mediaplay stat's
I was just wondering something after reading the story on news.com
On http://www.playmediasystems.com/clients.htm Mediaplay says that the below stated.
"Computer Scientist and PlayMedia co-founder Tomislav Uzelac invented and licensed the AMP(TM) L3d 0.7 Series Engine to a 19-year-old student and audio applications hobbyist named Justin Frankel in September of 1997."
But on http://www.playmediasystems.com/playmedia_sues_nu
"PlayMedia's lawsuit alleges that the code for AMP was written by PlayMedia principal Tomislav Uzelac and thereafter copied to create WinAmp as a derivative work. Nullsoft attempted to obtain a license to use AMP in its software early last year, the suit alleges, but an agreement was not reached."
Are there different terms to "licensed"? I Don't understand how one can stat something on one page of there yet another on another section? Will there be fallow up stores of this? Did anyone contact Nullsoft and ask them about the subject? I am a Registered Winamp user and don't wish to see such a great little company get hammered by legal costs.
Myself, I'm somewhat less interested in the performance of Freeamp/Winamp on "lower end" machinery than I am with, say, performace of Linux MP3 decoders/players on low-end machinery. Then again, I tend to avoid Win95 stuff on general principle. :)
Anyhoos...to be honest, I've never had the chance to muck about with playing MP3s on a Linux box. I do know that DOSamp (which is possibly the fastest DOS MP3 player in existance) will play most MP3s without skipping as long as one downmixes and downsamples 44.1KHz stereo ones (so that they play at 22KHz mono) on a 486 DX2/50. Unfortunately, DOSamp doesn't play those odd little "mp2 1/2" MP3s (MPEG-2 level 3).
I have *heard* that Cubic Player is somewhat comparable, but docs there recommend at least a DX4/100...of note, though, is the fact that Cubic Player is now open source and a Linux port is reportedly underway [yay].
Winamp deliberately took amp's code and wrote a shell around it.... It originally just bothered me until they actually started having hte gall to CHARGE for it.
amp still is one of the least resource intensive mp3 players out theee, and I didn't see any difference in resource usage between winamp 1.x, and 2.x, when nullsoft wrote their own engine, and started to charge for the software.
Frankly I'm happier than shit that nullsoft is finally getting what's been coming to them.
-Erik-
Hmm. You mean like X11Amp? (www.x11amp.org) It's not quite at the same level of some other players, but it is moving along fast (I've been hacking on it for the past month, roughly...). Instead of talking about how you don't like what's out there, why not start coding?
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Actually, you *can* use it, even in countries with brain-damaged views on patentability of algorithms. It's just not legal. :-) I've been happily using bladeenc for quite a while now, and Fraunhofer (sp?) hasn't come knocking at my door... The only people that they can (practically speaking, not legally) go after are the producers and distributors of the software. And if they're based in a country with a sane government, they're safe. And people can and will download and use it from other countries, even though it's illegal.
Actually, 'potatoe' is a perfecktly good olde englisch spelling. I'm kinda english (by birth) and an anglophyle of sorts, so I should know.
It may be welsh. I definitely know it flew when chaucer was around. That trailing 'E' absolutely *abounds* in oldE illumated documents.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
I've browsed the above comments, and come to a rather severe conclusion:
RMS is right!
When mere humans feel ownership over a basic mathematical principle, it's like sheep vs cow wars all over again. We have a terrain, built by God. Whose paradigm shall predominate?
Forgodssake, look up the fights over MOVEABLE TYPE!
I'm just plain fried over shit like this. My patience is at an end.
We are a we, aren't we?
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
This is a copyright suit, not a patent one. Prior art invalidates a patent, but if you have a copyright, you have rights to the expression (roughly, the way you coded it), not to the algorithm.
I refuse to believe corporations are people until Texas executes one. -- desert rain on http://www.dailykos.com/user/
MacAmp
MacAmp Lite
SoundApp
Mpecker
etc...
-- Are you an EFF member yet?
The RIAA needs to get over this fact that they're gonna loose, ...
The RIAA has many legal tools at hand because it has money. They may win some key injunctions and get closer to making mp3's contraband material. They are a special interest group and they are interested in closing the market to get the cash flow. I have seen some bad laws passed and they have a chance with the effort they are pushing. If sex toys can be illegal, you can bet mp3's will be next.
As for the future of AMP, do you think that anyone would ever want to work with Brian Litman? Do you think that anyone would want to license software from a company who sued its only potential customer? Would you want to license second-rate code? Clearly, if AMP had any future, it is gone now.
Do us all a favor and die quietly.
David E. Weekly (dew)
David E. Weekly
Code / Think / Teach / Learn
h4x0r for
This is a joke right ?
I think you'll find 'potatoes' were brought to the 'Old World' by Raleigh. If the word existed before then, it was a Native American word. It definitely isn't old-English or even cod-old-English.
BTW 'anglophile' is the generally accepted spelling.
It may be welsh. I definitely know it flew when chaucer was around.
Nope. Nope.
It entered English in the C16th from Spanish who got it from Taino Indians.
-Simon
Yes. Didn't you guys get taught anything about the discovery of America by Europeans ?
Columbus ? Walter Raleigh establishing the first colony in Roanoke - bringing back the potato and tobacco to Queen Elizabeth I ?
Europe didn't have potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco or presidential sex scandals before the discovery of America.
-Simon
BTW, you woudln't notice a resource difference if you're using the same mp3's. Decoding != resources. Decoding = cpu cycles. And there is a difference, just you don't know how to see it.
I wish you would convince my sysadmin at work that CPU cycles aren't a company wide resource so I could run rc5des clients on our SGI/Crays, and Ultra Enterprise servers.
:-)
/dev
"There's no secret. You just press the accelerator to the floor and keep turning left." -- Bill Vukovich
You tell'em, baby!
:)
It's nice to see someone that at least has some experience about a thing posting a comment in a cool, calm and professional tone.
I loved the part about mtv for Linux, BTW
Now i the MacAmp (oops...might be time to rename...) could work out shoutcast/icecast support...
-K
One day, you'll learn to watch what you post...
I use X11 amp. While it uses a lot of memory when playing, its quite fast and uses almost no cpu on my system. Very nice program with the source code of course. Interesting that I've not seen X11 amp discussed to any great degree here. It slices, dices and plays mp3's too.
You have been assimilated.
Besides, you don't have to pay for it, you can use it for as long as you wish, and nothing will happen it won't criple like most mp3 players I've seen.
it's shareware, so you technically do have to pay for it if you intend to continue using it beyond the trial period. the fact that they don't hassle you about it is just them being overly nice to all the cheap bastards...
"onward!" cried the copper man, little knowing brass corrupts...
oh? .. hehe,
so what exactly are resources again? =)
t'is unfortunate that people with your "don't give a shit" attitude exist.. people like you should be brought out into the courtyard and raped by deformed circus midgets on estrogen... =)
I, for one, registered it. Just because you're not being forced or annoyed into registering something dosen't mean you shouldn't. Quality software should be supported, and winamp is definitely quality software.
i'm serious. if you will go around and search
for articles that do not interest you, then
comment on your disinterest on said article,
people will flame your ass! it's simple logic!
if it doesn't interest you, leave it alone, and
keep it to yourself. speaking of which, if you
find slashdot's pick of topics so disinteresting,
i suggest you find a different venue of reading
material.
-- adraken
maybe its just me, but MP3 sounds damn realistic to me.
----------
"They misunderestimated me." --George W Bush, Nov. 6, 2000
now we have mp3 companies fighting each other. why do i have a feeling that they are all going to miss out while they are whining in the court room?
the whining will more than likely stunt or kill the growth of mp3's move into the masses.
damon
ROTFLMAO!!!
(Sorry, couldn't resist)
*whips tear from eye*
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
No kidding!! I listen to some Shoutcast streams the entire time while at work. This thing racks up hundreds of minutes of playtime on a crappy 90Mhz computer with a very old and unstable Windows 95 install. Nullsoft deserves a LOT of respect for making a fast, solid product!
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
What does the RIAA have to do with this? Or is this just more geek conspiracy theory?
I read the article. Does the article say that RIAA has anything to do with this whatsoever?
According to your logic:
China is part of the UN. France is part of the UN. Ergo, France is behind all those human rights violations in East Timor.
You stupid little monkey.
"Winamp deliberatly took amp's code and wrote a shell around it" HAH!. I scoff at thee, if you'd care to read the documentation included with winamp 1.x and some of the early releases of 2.x you'll see that there's full credit, and even legal licensing information aswell. Which, last time I checked, allows them to sell it. Besides, you don't have to pay for it, you can use it for as long as you wish, and nothing will happen it won't criple like most mp3 players I've seen.
You sir (or lad) are precicely what is wrong with the online community today, uninformed and uneducated.
BTW, you woudln't notice a resource difference if you're using the same mp3's. Decoding != resources. Decoding = cpu cycles. And there is a difference, just you don't know how to see it.
The type of resources I was specifically adressing was memory. As defined in many books on computer hardware, "resources" always refers to memory and NOTHING related to the cpu.
Actually, the mp3 format isn't necessarily to blame, you'll have far more problems with your Soundblaster making mp3s sound like crap.
:)
Not to beat a dead horse, but I heard the Empeg unit play some songs through its Xaudio DSP, and 128k encoded MP3s sounded crystal clear! I was shocked at how loud we could turn it up without hearing any artifacts in the songs.
Those cheapie DSPs on your soundblaster/gus/etc cards are more of the problem than the codec or the bitrate. Just something to keep in mind, everyones mileage probably varies!
-brian
I've seen a fair amount of improvement in WinAmp. While I can't tell if they're still using Amp, I really don't think they're that dumb to have given credit at first and then to have pulled the credit out later.
Yeah the amount is ludicrious.
Umm where did you get that idea?
According to Play Media's web site the only company that their CEO is said to have worked at is US West.
And the people who actually write the software don't even say who they've worked for, don't you think they'd be making a big deal if they'd worked at MCA or BMG?
Unless he signed something that said he couldn't write a decoder I don't see the problem.
Just because he saw the AMP code before he wrote his doesn't mean he didn't write the code. Heck that's like saying that the Delorian is a rip off of a GM car because the guy who made it used to work for them and obviously saw car designs while he worked there.
I guess if we want to follow what you said Linux would be theft from the BSD guys too. I won't believe you (and I hope no one else does too) if you say that Linus never saw any of the BSD source, or for that matter any of the contributors either.
Playing devil's advocate here, but I was wondering . . .
/dev/audio redirection, i.e. MP3 compression.
/dev/audio would sound all right, but the finished MP3 would be hopelessly mangled. Macrovision for MPEG, if you will. (might even be doable with VQF, AAC/MP4 et. al.)
Assuming that implementing a secure-music system in hardware is completely unfeasible, it might be possible to devise an audio processing scheme that would subvert the next logical step after
It seems plausible that a secure-music system could add certain artifacts to raw digital audio which would wreak havoc with perceptual encoding schemes. So the raw data obtained from
Anyway, this is observing how some CD passages can point out annoying idiosyncracies of the L3 codec. Anyone know if such "flukes" could be engineered in this way?
iSKUNK!
If you use an MP3 player, which is it?
WinAMP registered;
WinAMP unregistered;
Old WinAMP free;
Sonique
FreeAMP
X11AMP
etc...
Or something like that.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
WinAMP is better still, and well worth the 10 dollar registration. I like the options, speed, and reliability of WinAMP...
I'm too busy to take and add to FreeAMP to suit my tastes, so I stick to WinAMP...
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
People who like portability in their music; a 3mb mp3 vs a 30mb wav, despite the loss in quality. It's akin to your asking...
What's up with that fixation on JPEG? Who gives a damn anyway?
Any answer you can give for one, you can give for the other, and I'm sure you'll think JPEG is useless too.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
What, brave enough to make an insult under cover of anonymity?
Its a legitamate trade off between quality, size, and performance. Not wanting to waste bandwidth on flames, but it's like labeling those who enjoy JPEG pictures blind, or who enjoy fast food without taste or culture. If you happen to be driving a no-compromise car, with a no-compromise engine, and no-compromise performance, its easy to label all other cars as weak, ineffectual, and pointless, except that they hit different price, performance, convenience points. I would like to hear what you use to listen and share music with if not mp3 or some other similar compressed standard.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Not saying its technically difficult, because it isn't, but it's laborious and time consuming and expensive as hell, which is why Fraunhoffer has a patent on the perceptual encoding used in the best MP3 encoders. It isn't the encoding itself, which is stupidly easy for MP3, but the special discard functions that cost money.
If I'm not mistaken, here's how MP3 encoding works. This is the simple, easy, free part:
Take a wave source; break it up into samples. Take a sample, use discrete cosine/sine transforms, and break it into a bunch of frequencies and coefficients. The compression part is the expensive part; select components that are inaudible, masked, or undetectable and discard or discount their value. Which frequencies do you want to throw out? That's what Fraunhoffer has patented. You could pick and choose until it sounds right, but that is essentially what Fraunhoffer did. The problem is that you need to experiment with many different kind of instruments, music, data types, and against very many people to ensure broadest possible reach, and not just optimization against a few people who may have odd hearing response.
Once the proprietary part is done, you have a bunch of coefficients for cos and sin terms, which are further compressed using Huffman bitrate encoding, which is fine, though not the best. This is free too, as the algorithm is pretty well known. Morse code happens to work on a similar principle; frequent characters get the shorter combinations of dits and dahs, while the rare characters get the longer combinations.
Decoding is left as an exercise for the reader =)
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Well duh!
Even a JPEG at highest quality encoding has visual artifacts visible to an eye trained to see such things, and if the source image is of poor quality, the artifacts themselves may get worse.
So what? MP3 quality is about 'good enough', not best. A Toyota Camry is good enough, where a Corvette or Ferrari or Volvo or Mercedes is best. Not everyone can afford those high end cars, and likewise, I'm not sure we could afford in memory, hard disk space, and CPU cycles a much better standard than MP3
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
They didn't patent the software, the encryption method, or the concept.
What they have patented is the perceptual encoding schema; the data this research institute gathered was which frequencies, amplitudes, and combinations of the two are important, with all the others either discared since they aren't perceptably audible, are represented by other data, or cannot be heard outright. Anyone can make up this data, and many fast encoders out there do that for 'good enough' quality, but they have noticible artifacts and errors in encoding. Fraunhoffer's data is exactly a statistical model and sample of audible frequencies and dominant frequencies.
I don't know how to make an analogy; Perhaps with a loose analogy. The data Fraunhoffer holds is like a survey of a quarter of the people in the US. If you want to use their info, you can pay for it. If you don't want to pay for it, you can go out and get this info yourself, which is prohibatively expensive, or you can guess what the information is, with much larger margins of error and such. In the same way then if you buy the codec from Fraunhoffer, you can get the smallest best quality files, or you can go out and collect the data yourself, or you can guess based of your own hearing and reasonable assumptions what data is important and what isn't.
If that analogy didn't work, think of Fraunhoffer as cataloguing all the stars visible with a telescope, and sorting the data by size, color, distance, etc. Either you can buy this data to create your star maps, you can guess(ick), or you can go get it yourself. Fraunhoffer has some useful info, and as such have every right to sell it, I think.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I would like to find out where these statistics are, personally.
If you only ask professional listeners, then it is without doubt you would get a lower score than if you asked Joe Blow at home.
Another difference is testing differences. If you play an MP3 and a high quality vinyl on a high end system, even Joe Blow has a chance at discerning the loss of quality in the MP3; but if you play both on the same system that Joe Blow uses at home(cheap mini-stereo, most likely), then I willing to say the ratings would be bumped up from indistinquishable.
Analogy for those who are clueless; even novices can discern wine quality in the ideal setup in Napa Valley, but at home, with poor temperature control, mixed quality of foods, and inappropriate food/wine combinations, those novices wouldn't be able to tell a medium quality wine from a high quality wine, though they can still tell cheap wine is crap.
So give us those stats, AC!
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I made several posts about a previous thread thinking of writing a free open music compression standard... The code, the algorithms, the math behind MP3s are all free and freely available. What isn't available, and that Fraunhoffer charges to liscense for, is the statistical sampling of the populace at large. This is hard to do for the open source movement, unless there is released a self correcting self calibrating quality compensating sampling method that people can download, run a battery of tests, and upload the data back to a central agency to use the data into the new compression format.
If that made no sense to you, some background. MP3 is composed of 2 compression methods, neither of which is proprietary. A data stream is broken into chunks, samples if you will. A sample is composed of several frequencies of different strengths added together. A fourier transform is used to break this sample into the component frequencies and their relative strenghts. Great, we just took raw data and broke it into frequencies and amplitudes. If we got rid of Fraunhoffer's contribution, you could just perform a Huffman encode on the data itself, but don't expect much compression, maybe 4:1 or 3:1 if you're lucky. I am pulling this number out of my butt. However, don't expect the 10:1 compression that MP3 routinely achieves!
The part of MP3 compression that Fraunhoffer spent a lot of money discovering and is charging for is a special set of filters that when applied to the component frequencies and amplitudes that are returned by the Fourier transform actually throw away data that is unheard by 9x% of the populace. Data that can't be heard, that isn't noticed, that is masked by other frequences are all thrown out. Since this is the patented part, I can't actually say how much is thrown out; If we say 0.66% of the data is thrown away and still leaves a 9x% quality to the sound, then we have something workable. Now if we apply the Huffman encoding on it, we can get that 3:1 or 4:1 compression on top of the 'perceptual encoding'. A 10mb wave is now 3mb after perceptual encoding, and then 1mb if the low value of 3:1 is applied. This is pretty close to MP3, since a 1 minute 10mb wave is readily encoded into a 1 minute 1mb MP3.
I actually agree that Fraunhoffer has every right to charge for the labor and services for the data they collected. Perhaps someone could talk to distributed.net into making some sort of data collection utility so an open source alternative to Fraunhoffer's perceptual encoding could be created. Someone has to defray the costs, effort, and initiative Fraunhoffer displayed in collecting this data.
I may hate it if some capitalist discovers a way to collect and process SETI data 10x faster and decides to charge for it, but hey, if this is something that took years an millions to discover, it also seems appropriate that the costs must be defrayed, either through government support(taxes) or through capitalistic economics. I prefer capitalistic econmics over the blundering government most of the time.
Counterpoint?
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I don't actually know that they patented the data itself, which means it's theoretically possible that they could give you terabytes of information if you asked for it, and it would still be useless. Rather they have a process of variable precision and weight as well as discard functions, so while common chemical compounds, such as steel, aren't patented, there very well can be processes that produce said steel that are patented, even though the chemical composition, data, and reaction theories are all public knowledge. In this sense if Fraunhoffer does this, ie use public knowledge in a unique way that is their perceptual encoding, I think it is fair game for them to charge for it.
If all they have is reams of data, they have the right to charge for a processing fee, esp if their funding isn't totally self sufficient.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I actually find I can hear distortions on my music on my PC system. I'm not sure what a flange type distortion, but bells and whistles, once shimmery and very clear, come out sounding like lots of slightly disharmonic bits of metal clanging around. They still ring, but their tone is not so pure. And I can hear very audible distortion on some extended sythnesizer notes, but I admit I'm also not using Fraunhoffer's 'amazing' compression, instead using some of the faster 'good enough' compression.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
The AMP engine sucks anyway... the original versions of winamp that had them were buggy and inaccurate, and couldnt handle 'skips' in the stream. The new Nitrane engine is SO much better. Ive been running it on a 36 hour playlist for several days straignt with no problems. The whole lawsuit is just pure crap (With the RIAA involved no doubt...) LET Nullsoft LIVE!!!
Sure you could probably do something to that effect, but the sound would definitely be noticable in the wav file as well. The down side about mp3 is that it actually removes a lot of the frequencies. Add a bunch of frequencies and mp3 falls flat. But, you hear those frequencies too, as mp3 only really kills off the ones you are least likely to hear.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
I`ve found that down at 112 and 128KBps there is a definate lack of sound quality (especially among the highs) so I tend to encode at 160KBps 48KHz or better.
I`m using an L3enc compatible encoder (bladeenc actually) and playback with Winamp. I can`t live without either one.
pardon the babble.
Tone hearing-impaired, maybe, but not tone deaf
--
perl -e'$_=shift;die eval' '"$^X $0\047\$_=shift;die eval\047 \047$_\047"' at -e line 1.
How can Frauenhoffer have a patent on this?
They are a German tax-financed research institute. Software patents are not granted in the EU and hopefully never will be. Did they patent it in the US?
I still don't like their selling scheme though, since it is a breach of the nice academic tradition to publish your results freely. Being a german government sponsered institute their results should be free for academic and non-commercial usage. Heck, even the 100% commercial StarDivision Inc. allows free-usage of their OfficeSuit for those purposes.
Gore 1999!
Gore 1999!
Gore 1999!
--
Beef
"Raging Moderate" of the
Apparently the RIAA has still got their head up their ass. It's well known that they're spearheading the Secure Music initiative, I think that they probably just convinced (or threatened) PlayMedia into suing NullSoft. Once again, RIAA bullies the little guys - indirectly though it may be. The RIAA needs to get over this fact that they're gonna loose, and stop trying to push around the little guys that are actually helping the progression of modern music.
I toggled a toggle and buttoned a button, but when I got done, I was done doin' nothin'.
Is it just me, or does RIAA seem to be the Devil?
Did RIAA get the idea in their collective head that if they killed the most popular (win32) player they'd be able to catch up with mp3?
Screw this shit, I've had it/I ain't no mister cool./I'm a pig, I'm a dog/Excuse me if I drool./stm
it might be the first, but I'd assume that Grand Royal has a corp license (maybe a free one since they kick so much ass) but at any rate they're a big deal record label, shoutcasting 24/7 stuff from their albums.
http://www.grandroyal.com/grRadio/index.html
Coldcut/NinjaTune may have one as well although I think they're using RealServer right now for their live streams.
I think a LOT of major players in the music industry are realizing the power of Mp3/Winamp/Shoutcast right now, and this is going to spark a LOT of legal battles concerning who REALLY owns the music, the record companies or the artists.
I dunno if I'd call mp3 worthless, but it certainly isn't top of the line, that is for sure. Not that I am abig supporter of it or anything but to name one, VQF, is better than mp3 in most respects. The sound quality is better and the size is smaller (the only downside is that decoding it is a little more work for the old processor). Now we just need one twice as good that's open source. Anyone wanna help me? hehehehe.
>And if the winamp guys had balls, tehy would >release it as GPL
:)
And you you had any balls. you wouldn't post this as an 'Anonymous Coward'.
Im sorry, but this crap im hearing now is just total BS. I mean, NullSoft has made the "best" MPEG 2, & 3 decoder I have used. If people in the computer industry wanna be total pricks, then they can goto h311 for all im concerned.
NullSoft ROCKS.
Erik, your an IDIOT. WinAMP is the only good MP3 player out there. Why do you think soooooo many people use it? Not because NullSoft tells them to, or any other company for that matter. The makers of the AMP engine are just fools, I hope their whole idea of suing NullSoft goes bad on them.
-Jarred
Well now that the software is out I doubt that killing the maker will have any effect on MP3s. I think it is alittle late to try to kill the MP3. I have well over 200 mp3s and even if there was NO new winamp's etc.. it wouldn't matter to me. Face it Mp3s are here. Trying to stop to use to MP3s would be like shuting down all the porn sites on the internet. It ant happin'!
Do you have any proof that the RIAA convinced the makers of AMP to sue or is this the usual speculation / conspiracy theory?
Nix absolutably seriousness.
I think their heads are stuck... If they want to sue someone, sue Microsoft!
Tedd Hansen [Weathros@IRC.Undernet] Networking / Programming ChristianiaNett AS Mobile: (+47) 92 02 83 55 FAX: (+4
Doesn't the RIAA get its funding from a tax imposed on all recording media and equipment? Should this be legal?
I don't care how much it cost them to get the results, natural measurements are not patentable. You can't patent the speed of light, you can't patent the range of colors that human beings can see, so why should you be able to patent the range of sounds that human beings can hear? It makes no sense, it's unethical, and it should be illegal. The fact that they hold a patent on this data means that no-one can use this data even if they gather it themselves, because, provided the data is valid, anyone else doing the same thing will record the same data within a certain error rate.
Perhaps they could use some sort of compilation copyright, although that's really, really iffy, but there is no way they should be allowed a patent on this stuff. I can't say that enough times.
Your analogy about star maps doesn't work because, in that situation, I'm allowed to gather the same data myself. Would it be reasonable to say that I'm not allowed to make my own star maps from my own collected data just because someone else has done it first? No, of course it wouldn't be reasonable, just like Fraunhofer's patent isn't reasonable.
But I don't see my comment here now. Either it's a bug, or I just forgot to hit the submit button.
Anyhow, I have two things to say about your assertion that Fraunhofer has every right to do what it does. The first is that Fraunhofer has at least partial public funding. The rest of its funds come from contract research, where most of the contracts belong to public entities. So, if the perceptual encoding research is paid by public money, why are royalties required to use the research?
The other thing I have to point out is that under any sane system of patent laws, and in fact even under the insane ones like the US uses, natural measurements are not patentable. Patenting natural measurements is essentially what Fraunhofer has done here. You evidently agree with me on that, which is why I'm confused about the way you seem to think that an Open Source alternative can be made. The patent stops anyone, even if they do the same research all over again, or make up their own research method, from using the results that Fraunhofer got. If Fraunhofer's results are not flawed, then no-one will get different results than thos Fraunhofer got, and they will not be able to use their results. So, in my opinion, this is a patent that should never have been granted since it's a flagrant violation of patent standards. Also, even if the patent is only on use of such data in a sound compression scheme, then it's also unreasonable, since that's not "non-obvious". In fact, that's about the only obvious use of such data.
Well, yes. But, if you've patented the shape of this ideal chair, isn't that pretty much the same thing as patenting the data? I mean, the data is freely available, it's just that no-one can use it.
Well, yes, their patent may not only be on the data, that's true. But, as I understand it, and I admit I'm no audio expert, their results are basically a set of ranges and special conditions that occur in recorded sounds that most people don't even hear. I would consider those ranges to be natural measurements, and I don't really see how anyone can disagree on that point. And as you point out, their patent isn't technically on that data, because a patent has to be on a process or invention of some kind. I have not seen Fraunhofer's patent, but I imagine it boils down to: "discard these particular ranges from a sound stream". In other words, any set of data can be turned into a set of instructions as anyone who has ever taken a computer science course should know. If that's not how Fraunhofer's patent goes, and we really are open to make our own alternative, well then, I won't worry, and I agree that there's nothing wrong with rewarding them for their efforts (although I do get the feeling that they pulled a bit of a gif: i.e., they waited until a format using their technique had become widely used and many applications were available to encode it before swooping down with licensing terms). But, if that is the way that their patent goes, then what they are doing is theft from the public domain. Yes, they worked hard to steal the use of that information from all of us, but that doesn't make it right. They don't deserve it any more than a bank robber who has planned for months deserves to succeed at the first national.
All of that aside, I don't really feel that software patents are moral anyway. Until fairly recently, they weren't even legal. As it is, it seems that the US patent office is handing the things out hand over foot without any decent quality control or regard to the damage that may be done. I, for one, do not like to be made to wait twenty years to use an idea or technique that should belong to everyone.
Ok, I read about this lawsuit and decided to check out the Amp site. Now I know that my web page needs some work, but why is it that the Playmedia site looks like it was last updated 5 years ago? At that it seems that they at one time provided a player. Is this true? If so why is it that they do not offer any information on it? If you offer a product (atleast one that is actually worth selling) shouldn't you advertize?
It is true that winamp started as just a cheap amp port with a GUI... And I do consider it very annoying that he charged for a product that wasn't even made by him. However, he paid royalties to Tomislav Uzelac throughout that time period, so at least until he stopped paying those royalties, he was covered. He probably may be in huge trouble still, though, because he didn't bother to really make it a clean operation -- he both wrote the new code /and/ saw the old code. I don't know how that works in the software application world, but at least in the world of cloning BIOS ROMs, that was a significant no-no.
Maby no one thaught of this so i put the players to the test... The suspects are
.2b 11%-13%
Winamp 0.2b (Based On Amp)
Winamp 1.9 (Last Version Before Nitrane)
Winamp 2.091 (Latest Release)
Wintop is in the ms powertoys
I played Ace of base cruel summer (just ripped and encoded it off one of my sisters cd's..)
The Cpu Times
Winamp
Winamp 1.91 9%-11%
Winamp 2.091 5%-6%
All Players were running @ full quality..
Aka, winamp 1.9 had 64bit decoding on, winamp 2.91 was running as pentium cpu and was not using mmx acceleration.
Juggie @ efnet
I forgot to mention this, but after those cpu
:)
times i think it's "QUITE" obvious that
1) Nitrane is MUCH faster an is compleletly rewritten
2) Someone did a heck of alot of work on it to cut
it's cpu use in half.
I'll go with the first one. Another thing as well
play media say they researched this, but they
think nullsoft has 20Mil?? nullsoft don't have
100,000 not alone 20 million