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Topic: what about new MPC (Read 27332 times) previous topic - next topic
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what about new MPC

Reply #25 –
Yeah, Frank Klemm is a registered member of HA but he had stopped posting a lot the last months after a certain incident. 
If you do a search for "Frank Klemm" I am sure you will have many replies.

what about new MPC

Reply #26 –
Can someone post a link to the thread where this incident occured?  I am interested in reading it.

thanks

what about new MPC

Reply #28 –
Quote
What is preventing Musepack from getting more support (hardware, players, etc.) is patents and popularity. Not open sourceness. :B

I thought Garf had determined that he could not find any applicable patents. http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ic=10072&st=0&&.

Regardless, how feasible would it be to have all of us chip in, get a patent on it, and license mpc for dirt cheap?

The reason it should be licensed is because someone posted a while back claiming that most companies wouldn't touch ogg vorbis because there was no licensing involved (and an increased risk of lawsuit).

what about new MPC

Reply #29 –
Quote
I thought Garf had determined that he could not find any applicable patents. http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ic=10072&st=0&&.

Yeah, but I'm not a lawyer. I wouldn't base my business on my legal opinion.

what about new MPC

Reply #30 –
Quote
Yeah, but I'm not a lawyer. I wouldn't base my business on my legal opinion.

That's exactly my point. Musepack might use no patented algorithms, but without at least a guarantee from a lawyer specialized in patents, hardware manufacturers and software developers won't buy it, because they're afraid of later getting sued by some patent holder.

what about new MPC

Reply #31 –
Quote
Regardless, how feasible would it be to have all of us chip in, get a patent on it, and license mpc for dirt cheap?

Not feasible. Exactly because noone knows if it's patented, and if it is, by who.

Quote
The reason it should be licensed is because someone posted a while back claiming that most companies wouldn't touch ogg vorbis because there was no licensing involved (and an increased risk of lawsuit).


I posted it. And that's the reality.

I'll say it again: Multi-million dolar companies aren't afraid of paying some thousand dollars for a patent. They are afraid of getting something for free and later being taken to court, having to waste hundreds of thousands of dolars in legal fees, licenses, lawyers, etc.

what about new MPC

Reply #32 –
Quote
Quote
What is preventing Musepack from getting more support (hardware, players, etc.) is patents and popularity. Not open sourceness. :B

I thought Garf had determined that he could not find any applicable patents. http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ic=10072&st=0&&.

Regardless, how feasible would it be to have all of us chip in, get a patent on it, and license mpc for dirt cheap?

The reason it should be licensed is because someone posted a while back claiming that most companies wouldn't touch ogg vorbis because there was no licensing involved (and an increased risk of lawsuit).

Yeah I had that thread in mind when I posted.

@Roberto:  What I meant was that open sourceness might make MusePack more popular, thus (hopefully) precipitating more support for MusePack.  That is why Ogg has hardware support, isn't it?

@Garf:  Hmmm maybe I read a little too much into your words.  I really hope MusePack will turn out being patent free.
gentoo ~amd64 + layman | ncmpcpp/mpd | wavpack + vorbis + lame

what about new MPC

Reply #33 –
Quote
@Roberto:  What I meant was that open sourceness might make MusePack more popular, thus (hopefully) precipitating more support for MusePack.  That is why Ogg has hardware support, isn't it?

No. It has hardware support because it's supposedly patent-free and popular.

Even though open source might indeed help, it's not needed at all. The second most popular and most supported codec is completely closed.

what about new MPC

Reply #34 –
Quote
Quote
@Roberto:  What I meant was that open sourceness might make MusePack more popular, thus (hopefully) precipitating more support for MusePack.  That is why Ogg has hardware support, isn't it?

No. It has hardware support because it's supposedly patent-free and popular.

Even though open source might indeed help, it's not needed at all. The second most popular and most supported codec is completely closed.

I agree it isn't needed at all.  I was just under the impression that Vorbis is as popular as it is for three reasons:

1.  Open source
2.  Patent free
and 3.  Better quality than mp3.

If MusePack had these three requirements should it not become at least as popular as Vorbis?  Maybe there are other factors I am not seeing and I know it is possible that there is patented technology used in MusePack, but that was the case for Vorbis too until quite recently, was it not?

I don't think WMA is a fair comparison as it is being developed and pushed by the biggest force in the software industry.
gentoo ~amd64 + layman | ncmpcpp/mpd | wavpack + vorbis + lame

what about new MPC

Reply #35 –
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If MusePack had these three requirements should it not become at least as popular as Vorbis?

Musepack is (theoretically) not better than MP3 on low bitrate ranges. And those are the ranges that people have been raving about lately. That alone is a turnoff.

Besides, Musepack has always been touted as for high bitrates only (160+). Those bitrate ranges are only interesting for audiophiles, the average guy wants 128kbps or less.

Last but not least, Vorbis already had the support from the open source comunity on arrival. It was created, among other goals, to be "the codec for the open source community". That surely won't happen with Musepack, specially with it's history of encoder closedness.

Quote
that was the case for Vorbis too until quite recently, was it not?


No. Vorbis uses mostly very old technology (more than 20 years old), and that's why it's supposedly patent-free.

Regards;

Roberto.

what about new MPC

Reply #36 –
Thanks Roberto... didn't see that thread regarding Klemm and David. Sad as it is...

Laters

AgentMil
-=MusePack... Living Audio Compression=-

Honda - The Power of Dreams

what about new MPC

Reply #37 –
Did they have any target date for SV8? I sincerely hope that the development of Musepeack still continue.
Break The Rules!!!

what about new MPC

Reply #38 –
Quote
Did they have any target date for SV8?

The official line is "It'll be ready when it's ready"

what about new MPC

Reply #39 –
I've pretty much allocated SV8 to the dustbin. I remember my first encounter with MPC back in December 2001...the encoder version was 0.90s then. Forum participants at the time warned that SV8 was just around the corner and it may not be wise to start a major encoding project. Good thing I didn't wait. Today I have 7300 SV7 MPCs on my work machine and I'm not losing any sleep about a vaporware SV8 release making them obsolete.

what about new MPC

Reply #40 –
SV7 quality is already very very high anyways, so there was no point really to wait for SV8 unless you were really pedantic about quality. I though that there was a lossless conversion from SV7 to SV8, so that should of prevented any hassles in reencoding.

Regards

AgentMil
-=MusePack... Living Audio Compression=-

Honda - The Power of Dreams

what about new MPC

Reply #41 –
In that case, I wonder when will the support of Musepack in portable player appear.... 
Break The Rules!!!

what about new MPC

Reply #42 –
Quote
SV7 quality is already very very high anyways, so there was no point really to wait for SV8 unless you were really pedantic about quality. I though that there was a lossless conversion from SV7 to SV8, so that should of prevented any hassles in reencoding.

Well, SV8 isn't even meant as a release to improve quality (at least not primarily) - its selling points are rather things like streaming support and integration with container formats like Matroska.

what about new MPC

Reply #43 –
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...a vaporware SV8 release making them obsolete.

Which is yet another reason why MPC will never make it big. You have no certainty that a valid MPC today can be handled by tomorrow's encoders. With the MPEG formats, you have absolute certainty that anything marked MP2, MP3 or AAC in 2050 will be able to decode current files. With Ogg, it's openness gives you some certainty, but you have no guarantee.

what about new MPC

Reply #44 –
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The official line is "It'll be ready when it's ready"

But anyway, after such a long time after announcement I think Frank owes the MPC-users some information about the "roadmap" of SV8. It doesn´t have to be totally concrete and obligatory, like "SV8 will be realeased on 28th of October 2003, 10:50 a.m..". Only a short statement what happened with that project at all, where the problems in development are, and when there will probably be a beta version available.
If he doesn´t want to visit HA, how about the closer friends of Frank Klemm like JohnV? Can´t they try to get a short statement from him and publish it here? - It would be only a thing of a few minutes.
That´s is all what we demand and want. Not too much, as I think.
My used codecs and settings:
FLAC V1.1.2 -4 / APE V3.99 Update 4 -high / MPC V1.15v --q 5 / LAME V3.97b2 -V2 --vbr-new / OGG aoTuV V4.51 Lancer -q5

what about new MPC

Reply #45 –
Quote
You have no certainty that a valid MPC today can be handled by tomorrow's encoders.

I think you meant decoder. And since the decoder is open source, you have the same security as with ogg vorbis.

I guess 99% of the mpcs on people's machines are SV7 and I am sure that these can be decoded in a more distant future as well. Much more if there will be a SV8 conversion utility. SV8 is just a more efficient container which among other things will get rid of encoder side clipping. It will mainly improve usability and Frank has hinted that some of the remaining artifacts are hard to eliminate in the current stream version; so with proper tuning we can expect a minor quality improvement. (Of course only for freshly encoded files, not for converted ones.)

Having access to the sourcecode of the decoder lets you port it to other future platforms while a company can just decide to drop support some point in the future and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

what about new MPC

Reply #46 –
IMHO, Frank Klemm doesn't owe us anything...
I for one didn't do much for him, whereas he brought me a great encoder ! 

Still, we can pray...

krys

what about new MPC

Reply #47 –
Quote
Which is yet another reason why MPC will never make it big. You have no certainty that a valid MPC today can be handled by tomorrow's encoders.

Actually, I don't think MPC is going to bit the dust because of future compability or anything. Even though there is absolutely no documentation, an open-sourced decoder is already of much help.

What will ultimately drive business interests away from MPC is the absolutely non-existent development schedule. For starters, no hardware manufacturer in his right mind would invest time and money to support SV7, since sooner or later SV8 might be launched making his effort useless.

SV8 is another bad marketing for this format. As Mithrandir pointed out, it has been advertized since the end of 2001, and still there's nothing substantial to be shown besides some backward and forward incompatible test builds. That just shows how lousy MPC development is.

Another understandable fear is that all development is in the hands of one person. And this person works on it in his free time. So, if suddenly Frank gets bored and stops developing it, or maybe he gets too busy, who would keep the project alive? The industry doesn't want to support a format that might die one day in the near future, like VQF died some years ago.

Anyway, I'm not criticizing MPC or anything here, so no point in flaming me. I'm just playing Devil's Advocate, speculating what a businessman would think of MPC if he saw the current state of things.

Regards;

Roberto.

what about new MPC

Reply #48 –
Quote
That just shows how lousy MPC development is.

Without getting into the other arguments, I certainly don't think "lousy" is a good way to describe MPC development.  Most MPC development has been anything but lousy.

Erratic and unreliable maybe, but lousy, I don't think so.

Sorry if this is not exactly the way you meant things.  I'm not really trying to nitpick on semantics, but I don't think it's really fair to portray the MPC development effort as being poor quality or inferior simply because SV8 hasn't been publically shown in a substantial sense (though as far as I understand there actually has been a fair amount of work done).

I think there may actually be some very valid reasons as to why MPC development has slowed (as far as Frank is concerned), though I don't really want to publically speculate about the matter...

what about new MPC

Reply #49 –
Quote
Without getting into the other arguments, I certainly don't think "lousy" is a good way to describe MPC development.  Most MPC development has been anything but lousy.

Erratic and unreliable maybe, but lousy, I don't think so.

Sorry if this is not exactly the way you meant things.

No, it's not what I meant, definitely. My point, as I explained, was supposing what a businessman would think of it.

Think about it, SV8 release has been announced "just around the corner" since late 2001. The main (only) developer is hardly reachable. It's nightmarish to attempt to find info at the "official" page. From these evidences, a potential executive interested in this format would be turned off, and, quite righteously, consider it "lousy" and "messy".


Edit: the bottom line is, I don't think it's lousy, but an outsider that never had any experience with the ways MPC is developed and sees what is the state of things might well think it is.