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Topic: Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3? (Read 12657 times) previous topic - next topic
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Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Are we nearly to the point where mp3 and all audio compression is no longer necessary?


  I've been considering this possibility for sometime as a mere fantasy of a future far far from now.  Only as each and every year brings with it more and more king-kong size expansion in data storage technology, I'm finally beginning to consider the reality of this possibility.
 
It goes without saying that if there was such a thing as unlimited digital storage capacity, the need for data compression would be unnecessary.  And plain stupid because of the tendency of compression to result in quality loss.  Lossless compression techniques aside for the moment, I don't think anyone would bother to subject their favorite audio to damaging compression if hard drive space was endless.  I'm not quite looking that far in to the future where storage is truly infinite just yet.  Only how many of us computer users have been struck by that same moment of amazement when we first booted up our new PC or hard drive, and stare awestruck at the screen which casually states the 120+ gigabytes of storage we now possess at our mousey fingertips?  And the wonderful sense that there's so much of it there we could never possibly fill it in our short meager lifetime.  A nice illusion as we all know when eventually, inevitably, alot of us come to the maximum of even the largest drives.  However there is some truth to that false sense of unending storage.  And I'm wondering just how much longer it will be before it is no longer practical to compress audio data at all.
 
Last year I read about the first consumer-level 1-terabyte hard drive becoming readily available.  I suddenly pulled out the calculator to see just how many audio cd's it would take to actually fill the whole beast.:


At the maximum of a 807.5 MB standard audio-only CD (not the 700 MB limit for data discs)...
A 1-terabyte hard drive would store 1,298.5 CD's.  -  (1048576 MB / 807.5 MB)

But stop to consider the average length of a normal commercial music CD, and I'd say a drive like that would hold 2000+ full music albums.  Wowzers!



  I do know of a few folks who have more than that many CD's in their collection, but it is a short list.  So in my present line of thinking, it is not a question of whether audio compression will become impractical, but only when.  Considering the tremendous speed in which digital storage capacity has increased and at the same time become much less expensive, it isn't hard to forsee that very large but affordable drives will be available sooner than later.  And with them, wouldn't it be natural for audio enthusiasts to see no need for downsizing their music in order to preserve space?  Especially when that process degrades the quality even ever so slightly?  I certainly do love and respect the ingenuity programmers have put into the compression schemes out there, but I gotta be honest and upfront.  I'd take my 100% uncompromised audio over more economical file sizes any day.  We need to preserve the environment, not digital storage space.
 
With the also rapid integration of very large storage into tiny digital music players, I would expect little delay in the time which passes before the standards for computer hard drive size makes the jump over to such devices.  60GB was already an amazing amount to see when it first arrived for personal computer hard drives, and now there are digital music players to match them.  All in a short handful of years.
 
So I am convinced, more than anything by my own preference, that audio compression in the role it plays today will only enjoy a shortened existence.  Post-cosumer level compression won't be practical to audio enthusiats any longer.  And I often credit A/V enthusiasts for setting the standards of multimedia technology more than the mass market of consumers.  By post-cosumer level compression, I'm referring to compressing digital audio sources again after the mastering and compression which was done by the production studio.  In case anyone forgets that the audio CD bought from the store is already a form of sampled/compressed digital data.  However I do see some holes in my belief that mp3 and it's contemporaries will become extinct quite so fast.
 
  For one thing, I realize that aside from the fact of being able to fit more of your favorite songs on whatever playing device you choose, the other and possibly more widely employed use for compressed audio is transmitting it easily.  As with any form of digital data, the smaller it is the faster it goes over the net.  The fact that telecommunication speeds are not evolving as quickly as storage space is a good point to keep smaller file sizes handy.  Cutting down on the time needed to upload/download data immensely.  I would hazard a guess that many more music files are transferred over networks than actually played and listened to in any single day worldwide.  That is certainly a plus to having compressed audio over very large files.  Keeping those poor servers from overheating to the point of melting due to excessive traffic.
 
Another more recent chapter in audio compression are those lossless methods.  They speak for themselves with producing no difference in quality between the originals.  Only the extra storage space saved to benefit by.  Not as much extra as the lossy compression schemes, but still quite alot to look at on a hard drive.  As these lossless techniques become more refined I wouldn't be surprised to see one make the leap into commercial use someday.  So I'll see yet another little logo next to MP3/HDCD/DVDA/SACD/DOLBY/DTS on the front of my DVD player.  In my ideal digital world, I would love to see a lossless compression take over as the best means to traffic audio over the com lines.  And then one could simply revert the data back to it's orginal form without any loss of quality.  And then I'd be all set to go back out singing in the rain.
 
In the end I'm still left guessing just when compression won't be necessary any longer.  I can already see the effects of increased storage space in the fact that higher bitrate compressions are much more prevalent than they were a few years ago.  The next logical step would be to abandon using audio compression all together.  I for one would be more than happy knowing I'm hearing the best possible audio source 100% all the time.  But when?

I would be very interested to hear from anyone who has the intel on what can be expected in storage technology to come in the next few years.  Also has anyone already made the switch from compressed audio to using the real stuff in a small digital player of today?  Who can make a prognosis of mp3's longterm health?
Hypocrisy is better than having no values at all.
-W.  Bennett

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #1 –
Lossy-compressed audio, and even MP3, still has life in it.

As storage capacities get larger, it also gets cheaper to use smaller capacity-devices.

Not to mention, no matter how much uncompressed or losslessly compressed audio you can fit in a device, it's always nice to be able to fit more, albeit lossily compressed audio into it.

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #2 –
Even if storage is not a concern, bandwidth is. No one wants to stream uncompressed audio over a 56k connection.

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #3 –
Yes I think transferring audio or any kind type of media data is the biggest kink in my hopes of having uncompressed audio as the online standard.  Bandwidth is a killer.  But that doesn't necessarily mean that users wouldn't want to have the absolute best quality in their own digital players since bandwidth isn't much a problem dumping from the computer to a player.  Only storage capacity comes in to play there. 

As far as always being nice to have a little more room.  I guess I'm driving at where the human limit to wanting more space ends also.  If Santa went to the future one crisp Xmas eve, and brought back a digital player which held one terabyte of data, you could put over 3 months of constant CD wav files on the bloody thing.  When is enough ENOUGH?
Hypocrisy is better than having no values at all.
-W.  Bennett

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #4 –
Quote
Yes I think transferring audio or any kind type of media data is the biggest kink in my hopes of having uncompressed audio as the online standard.  Bandwidth is a killer.  But that doesn't necessarily mean that users wouldn't want to have the absolute best quality in their own digital players since bandwidth isn't much a problem dumping from the computer to a player.  Only storage capacity comes in to play there. 

As far as always being nice to have a little more room.  I guess I'm driving at where the human limit to wanting more space ends also.  If Santa went to the future one crisp Xmas eve, and brought back a digital player which held one terabyte of data, you could put over 3 months of constant CD wav files on the bloody thing.  When is enough ENOUGH?
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Once the major cities have rolled out ftth (fiber to the home) or fttc (to the curb)
as verizon has been testing in select markets: [a href="http://www.verizon.net/fios]http://www.verizon.net/fios[/url],
we will see lossless quality files. Heck, with that much bandwidth (15 Megabytes per seconds, as one person on broadbandreports.com said)
we'll be able to have p2p radio stations streaming lossless flac files.
You won't ever need to download anything when you could merely find
someone to stream it live from, on the next generation of p2p networks.

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #5 –
Don't forget that possible future audio formats will take more space than standard PCM today. Imagine a CD recorded in 192 kHz / 24 bit, with 10 channels. That would take about 15-20 Gb already.

Therefore, I think compression will continue to be used for a long time.

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #6 –
Quote
Lossy-compressed audio, and even MP3, still has life in it.

As storage capacities get larger, it also gets cheaper to use smaller capacity-devices.

Not to mention, no matter how much uncompressed or losslessly compressed audio you can fit in a device, it's always nice to be able to fit more, albeit lossily compressed audio into it.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=286846"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Agree with all of that, but remember too that when (if) high-res audio becomes more available in the clear (i.e. without DRM) it'll be even bigger files than CDDA, so the need for them to be lossily compressed may still exist because of that.

EDIT:Bug80 beat me to it...
 

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #7 –
I doubt that bandwidths on the inet will grow as fast as storage-capacities. Even if it does, if you would want to host a private radio-stream and would have the choice to have a max of 100 listeners or 15, what would you choose? Lossy compression will stay viable for many years to come - but the scenarios in which it is used may change. MP3 obsolete? Funny joke.

- Lyx
I am arrogant and I can afford it because I deliver.

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #8 –
Quote
I suddenly pulled out the calculator to see just how many audio cd's it would take to actually fill the whole beast.:


At the maximum of a 700MB standard CD, a 1-terabyte hard drive would store 1,497.96 CD's.   -   (1048576 MB / 700 MB)

Considering the average length of a normal music CD, I'd say a drive like that would hold atleast 2,300 full length music albums.  Wowzers!

[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=286842"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


You have to use 807.5 MB since it's an audio CD and not a data CD. That makes only 1298 CDs.

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #9 –
Quote
Don't forget that possible future audio formats will take more space than standard PCM today. Imagine a CD recorded in 192 kHz / 24 bit, with 10 channels. That would take about 15-20 Gb already.

Therefore, I think compression will continue to be used for a long time.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=286877"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]



Yeah I don't have much to say about the compression which is done on the recording studio end.  That's going to be a given no matter what when converting from real analog sounds to digital.  Standard CD PCM is pretty old by today's reckoning so I wouldn't mind if there was some more serious weight put behind the other higher quality audio formats already available.  Enough to make them more common and then affordable.  It would make alot of sense to have DVDA or SACD in mind when recording anything new.  I thought it was pretty rockin of all people to see Joey Ramone put out his solo record in DVDA.  But PCM already allows for an excellent level of fidelity to show through from studio to stereo. 

What I'd like to see an end to is compression which is being done after the fact.  Basically keeping true to whatever format was put on the disc when it was plucked off the shelf.  Instead of squashing it down to save on drive space.
Hypocrisy is better than having no values at all.
-W.  Bennett

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #10 –
Quote
Quote
I suddenly pulled out the calculator to see just how many audio cd's it would take to actually fill the whole beast.:


At the maximum of a 700MB standard CD, a 1-terabyte hard drive would store 1,497.96 CD's.   -   (1048576 MB / 700 MB)

Considering the average length of a normal music CD, I'd say a drive like that would hold atleast 2,300 full length music albums.  Wowzers!

[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=286842"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


You have to use 807.5 MB since it's an audio CD and not a data CD. That makes only 1298 CDs.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=286883"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]



Byte me, I forgot that point.  Very true.  However what really counts is how much of a commercial CD is really occupied by anything?  I made a rough guess that an average CD would contain about 60 mins. of content.  If you happen to listen to pop music of any kind, then that's a generous estimate.  So you should stillbe able to fit some 2000+ music albums of varying lengths on a terror-byte drive.

Evidence:
The Clash - London Calling(1979) = 65 mins. total, and back then that's what they called a double album.
Hypocrisy is better than having no values at all.
-W.  Bennett

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #11 –
hmm.  also remember there's a huge inertia involved in shifting people to new formats... look how long it took for mp3 to become standard (and it took even loonger for it to sound good via Lame presets, etc).

also, things like DVD will be around a very long time, meaning the shitty ac3 format will stay in use for a long time to come.  ditto with digital radio and the mp2 format.  a lot of satellite radio uses mp3 (often transcoded from mp2... yeuck).  all this equipment represents a significant investment to a lot of people, and i doubt they'll want to ditch it all for the next new thing just yet.

also, i'm going to keep using mp3 while my dodgy old mp3 discman continues to work.

formats i'd like to see die:

-mp2
-ATRAC (and all its variants)
-DTS (unjustifiable waste of bitrate IMHO - mediocre to good sound, but to the detriment of the video)
-ac3 (pre-echo, anyone? there's a reason those fancy Dolby intros to movies don't have 5.1 applause in them...)

these formats are still in wide usage despite their massive shortcomings, and it looks like it's not going to change for a good while yet.

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #12 –
Like others have said, bandwidth will be the killer. We already have multi-mbit lines as it is, and those are getting cheaper each day might I add, yet a large percentage still remain on dialup connections. I don't see that changing the near future.

I see lossy compression being still being used, and as bandwidth increases, lossless compression being used more. But I don't see raw WAV files being used extensively in the near future.
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Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #13 –
I'm not sure if this is what downtimeguy meant, but I believe that lossless audio compression will always make sense in the future.  Especially with some of the modern codecs (FLAC, WavPack) that can operate very quickly, and given that processing speed of computers is only going to increase.  With the super-duper-overkill-umpteen channel audio that consumers seem to be all hyped up about, lossless compression will probably be even more advantageous than ever, because a lot of its impact is in compressing the redundant overlapping signal between channels.

(Personally, I think it's silly to have seven channel audio when we only have two ears.  What happened to binaural recording techniques, and speakers that could accurately reproduce such recordings?  Maybe this does have its applications in the theater, but not on studio music recordings for personal enjoyment.)

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #14 –
Quote
(Personally, I think it's silly to have seven channel audio when we only have two ears.  What happened to binaural recording techniques, and speakers that could accurately reproduce such recordings?  Maybe this does have its applications in the theater, but not on studio music recordings for personal enjoyment.)
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Ever heard of [a href="http://www.iosono-sound.com/]Wave Field Synthesis[/url]? With this application, I can assure you having a lot of channels can lead to very nice results 

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #15 –
I am focused mostly on music on a portable player. I think lossy is still very important for portables. Although the capacity of portables is growing quickly, other things, like battery life, are not. I know that certain formats, such as Ogg and FLAC, drain the battery more quickly than MP3. I think this goes for WAV files too, it's just more spinning for the harddrive to do.

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #16 –
I think we're still in the beginning of lossy audio compression. In five years or so, it's very likely most music will be bought as lossy files online..

Just as with CPU's, storage will also hit the roof one day. With lossy formats continuing to improve in quality, the demand for lossless will probably be reserved for the small elite.

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #17 –
Quote
-DTS (unjustifiable waste of bitrate IMHO - mediocre to good sound, but to the detriment of the video)
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=286895"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

  DTS is still the best largely compatible 5.1 format. Currently, for music I don’t see another interesting option. At 1.5 mb/s, you are nearly lossless.
I reckon that the size optimisation isn’t DTS strength but it’s still the best option you have if you want to hear a 5.1 with a standard player and according this topic, I don’t really care about size (and I do care about quality).

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #18 –
Quote
Just as with CPU's, storage will also hit the roof one day.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=286943"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Well CPU hasn't hit the roof yet. Maybe in terms of GHz but not in terms of design, looking at the Pentium M, the new dual core CPUs that are coming and the Cell processor that will power the new PS3. Innovation is alive and kicking :-).

It's inherent in the human nature to try and push the boundaries of anything. As new materials are discovered and people can engineer on even smaller scales (up to the level of atoms) storage, speed, quality (you name it) will keep increasing.

And since alot of people tend to maximize the usefulness of their stuff, the quest to find the best compression algorithm will continue whether it is in MP3, MP4, MP99 or whatever.

So if you give me 1TB of space I'll want to squeeze as much in there as possible and not waste any bits.
No inspiration

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #19 –
Quote
I think we're still in the beginning of lossy audio compression. In five years or so, it's very likely most music will be bought as lossy files online..
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=286943"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


Damn right.  Record companies know that the way forward is internet music sales - just look at iTunes, Napster, Bleep and many more.  They also know that by selling these lossy compressed files will satisfy say 70% (a guess maybe it's more/less??) of people.  However, the other 30% (or more/less) will always want the physical object... and then there's us that want the very best source possible.  So we buy the CD (or we buy the lossless files if they sell them).

Also, the Record companies may start to give us free (yes I did say that) lossy files at a very low quality (just as tasters to get us interested, which I think is quite a good idea myself) so we have no other alternative than to buy the CD or buy to d/l the lossy or lossless compressed files.  Whatever, I see a market/need for lossy files for quite a while yet.

And as Insolent and others have said, the bandwith issue will still be around for a long time.  The ISPs I'm sure would rather we downloaded 1 million lossy files a sec (total for their server, not just one person like! ) than say 1 million lossless or wav files per sec.  An then there's those people staying on dial-up... yuck

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #20 –
Downtimeguy, I know exactly what you mean.  I'm currently ripping all my CDs and backing up to DVDs for archiving purposes.  At one point while sorting out my approach to doing so- choosing codecs, programs, writing scripts, etc- I thought, you know, for an extra $15 worth of DVDs I can just record the raw information and not have to worry about encoding speeds, compatibilty, or any of that junk.

This exercise has also made me realize just how big a 160gig drive is.  I'm trying to rip as many CDs as I can before I start transferring to DVD (so I have time to catch mistakes in my metadata).  I'm about 150 albums in and my drive still has room to spare.  I suddenly realized that 160gigs is a LOT of space, and that a 700 meg uncompressed WAV isn't as big as it used to be.

I think some might make the argument that, yeah, we might have nice big storage devices, but compressing means, hey, we can get maybe can get even MORE music on a disk the same size!  However, it's going to quickly get to the point where the typical person- even a music lover- won't have enough albums to fill the space freed by compression.  Space will be so cheap that dealing with codecs will more of a hassle than going out to get another drive. 

I mean, if I had that terabyte drive, and I was doing the same thing I am now: waiting until the drive is full before I started offloading.  I'd be waiting a damn long time.  And in 4 years, that terabyte drive will cost as much as my 160 gig drive cost me last october. 

edit: brain going too fast for the fingers.

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #21 –
Quote
Also, the Record companies may start to give us free (yes I did say that) lossy files at a very low quality (just as tasters to get us interested, which I think is quite a good idea myself) so we have no other alternative than to buy the CD or buy to d/l the lossy or lossless compressed files.  Whatever, I see a market/need for lossy files for quite a while yet.[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=286948"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I always thought that it would be great if all music-content below 80kbps should be legal(if tech increases, a readjustment may be necessary). That way you could freely explore the entire world of music without any legal restrictions and then buy those which you like also after you listened to them for a week. Unfortunatelly, thats impossible to control for the same reasons as why copyright of digital media cannot be controlled anymore. And not to forget - the major labels wouldn't want you to so easily explore the entire world of music, since they only control a fraction of it :-)

- Lyx
I am arrogant and I can afford it because I deliver.

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #22 –
Lyx, some of the best low bitrate codecs (ogg vorbis, aac) sound nearly transparent to me at 80kbit/s, unless I'm using some very good equipment and straining to listen for artifacts.  Surely the average dude out there would be happy with it.  That would just make the files all even easier to pirate anyways.  Probably not what the record companies have in mind.

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #23 –
Quote
Lyx, some of the best low bitrate codecs (ogg vorbis, aac) sound nearly transparent to me at 80kbit/s, unless I'm using some very good equipment and straining to listen for artifacts.  Surely the average dude out there would be happy with it.  That would just make the files all even easier to pirate anyways.  Probably not what the record companies have in mind.
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=286996"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Hmm, seems like this depends on music. When i did some webradio events a while back and when we tried to broadcast at ogg-vorbis 75kbps, it was a piece of cake to distinguish them from the high-bitrate versions. But that was less pop-music but instead more difficult and experimental stuff. Seems like my little idea sounds good on first sight but would already fail on the technical hurdle - because different styles of music sound good at different bitrate-ranges.

- Lyx
I am arrogant and I can afford it because I deliver.

Do you hear it yet? The sound of the end for MP3?

Reply #24 –
The hds are getting big, as we are gainning access to more information on the net. (ilegally or not, thats not the point.)

I think compression will not die because of that. The hds are bigger, but using my 256k adsl connection, i keep downloading files that are bigger than my whole hd. I just imagine if all my mp3s, all my videos, and all my files werent compressed.
Alguém pare o mundo que eu quero descer!!