You might have been waiting for better adoption for your dear codec OPUS in DAPs, Podcasts, Bluetooth, even as a VoLTE codec from your mobile carrier but guess what: instead xHE-AAC will see that adoption. As listening tests in this forum have proved it is already trading blows with OPUS in efficiency. And even the slight edge, going either way, wouldn't matter because again the adoption is going to be almost universal. So, back to the point, will OPUS still be relevant?
Possible, but for a geek like myself, simple (key,value) tagging format, and gapless are basic requirements. Based on that I am in Vorbis land, and possibly soon in Opus land due to its robustness. I do not know much about xHE-AAC, but AAC as a whole is a very poor patchwork of things. No easily comprehedable clear tagging format, and no standard for gapless, either. As if it was designed with no audio professionals at all.
Besides, a few bit/sec gain will not make it worth it for me. I reckon that both Opus and xHE-AAC are close to the limits.
I agree with Triza here.
Also, I find this subject amusing. Opus could lose relevance because an entirely different codec could produce better results on certain devices with certain sources? If that was true, nobody would use MP3 anymore - or FLAC. Yet, both are still the leading lossy/lossless audio codec in Normal People Land.
One could think that technical advantages are not the most interesting attribute of audio files.
I don't think xHE-AAC will be accepted in some areas (e.g. streaming video) for patent reasons. You'll probably see it more in embedded applications where patent licensing is handled by the hardware vendor. Both will probably exist indefinitely, but I doubt either becomes as dominate as AAC or MP3 were.
How is today's situation compared to when Ogg Vorbis had a buzz around it? It never became big, but kept MP3 licensing fees low.
Does Spotify still use Ogg Vorbis? If not then I don't think it is a stretch to call it obsolete. (As well as WMA ... and Real Annoying.) Who knows if Opus will be any more used in ten years. Services like YouTube can just re-encode into the next thing.
The relevant criterion is browser support here.
Opus is extremely relevant, xHE-AAC is not and never will be.
I agree with Triza here.
Also, I find this subject amusing. Opus could lose relevance because an entirely different codec could produce better results on certain devices with certain sources? If that was true, nobody would use MP3 anymore - or FLAC. Yet, both are still the leading lossy/lossless audio codec in Normal People Land.
One could think that technical advantages are not the most interesting attribute of audio files.
The relevant criterion is browser support here.
The relevant criterion is browser support here.
But it not just certain devices: It will be all the devices that would support AAC.
xHE-AAC and MPEG-D DRC patents are included in the AAC patent licensing program administered by VIA Licensing at no additional cost. (http://"https://www.audioblog.iis.fraunhofer.com/fraunhoferiis-xheaac-microsoft")
Apple recommends xHE-AAC for streaming of all audio assets (http://"https://www.audioblog.iis.fraunhofer.com/apple-recommends-xheaac")
xHE-AAC is not a new and loner codec. It will ride the AAC train. So if something supports AAC, the new version of it will support xHE-AAC.
Possible, but for a geek like myself, simple (key,value) tagging format, and gapless are basic requirements. Based on that I am in Vorbis land, and possibly soon in Opus land due to its robustness. I do not know much about xHE-AAC, but AAC as a whole is a very poor patchwork of things. No easily comprehedable clear tagging format, and no standard for gapless, either. As if it was designed with no audio professionals at all.
Besides, a few bit/sec gain will not make it worth it for me. I reckon that both Opus and xHE-AAC are close to the limits.
AAC has always been a mess. The only decent encoders are FDK/QAAC but anyone that cares about saving space will use Vorbis/MP3 & Opus. xHE AAC feels like it just got pumped out because they got upset over Opus beating HE AAC at 32 ~ 96kbps, Same rang true when it was Vorbis with aoTuV.
Possible, but for a geek like myself, simple (key,value) tagging format, and gapless are basic requirements. Based on that I am in Vorbis land, and possibly soon in Opus land due to its robustness. I do not know much about xHE-AAC, but AAC as a whole is a very poor patchwork of things. No easily comprehedable clear tagging format, and no standard for gapless, either. As if it was designed with no audio professionals at all.
Besides, a few bit/sec gain will not make it worth it for me. I reckon that both Opus and xHE-AAC are close to the limits.
AAC has always been a mess. The only decent encoders are FDK/QAAC but anyone that cares about saving space will use Vorbis/MP3 & Opus. xHE AAC feels like it just got pumped out because they got upset over Opus beating HE AAC at 32 ~ 96kbps, Same rang true when it was Vorbis with aoTuV.
Just saying, though, Exhale is pretty dang good, especially for how relatively new the codebase is.
It really is but the fact nothing uses it beyond Foobar with a patch, I don't see much use when at 160kbps Vorbis is as good. It dosen't suffer from pre echo issues & i just tried a poster samples that shows 192 ~ 320k AAC having pre echo on QAAC/Exhale.
Is xHE-AAC as low latency as Opus?
Is xHE-AAC as low latency as Opus?
No. Opus can go down to 120 samples in frame size (2.5ms) whereas USAC generally operates on multiples of 1024 samples. xHE-AAC is not a dedicated low delay codec like AAC-LD, which can go down to 480 samples per frame.
Possible, but for a geek like myself, simple (key,value) tagging format, and gapless are basic requirements. Based on that I am in Vorbis land, and possibly soon in Opus land due to its robustness. I do not know much about xHE-AAC, but AAC as a whole is a very poor patchwork of things. No easily comprehedable clear tagging format, and no standard for gapless, either. As if it was designed with no audio professionals at all.
Besides, a few bit/sec gain will not make it worth it for me. I reckon that both Opus and xHE-AAC are close to the limits.
AAC has always been a mess. The only decent encoders are FDK/QAAC but anyone that cares about saving space will use Vorbis/MP3 & Opus. xHE AAC feels like it just got pumped out because they got upset over Opus beating HE AAC at 32 ~ 96kbps, Same rang true when it was Vorbis with aoTuV.
aoTuv was started many years before Opus started. We did not even heard of Opus, when initially Garf and later Aoyumi etc started tuning Vorbis. Sadly Monty never contested any of these tunings in a open and transparent manner, just refused to incorporate them.
Another thought on this is that everything goes towards sw players. I feel HW players are more and more the past. Everyone has a smartphone which is more than enough to run any decoders. Same will happen soon in car stereo, etc. So proliferation of codecs is possible esp if its container and tagging follows existing standards so they are reasonably easy to adopt. I feel we do not have so many basic codecs just yet that it would be a maintenance problem.
I suspect that the future of lossy is going to look a lot like today, with AAC-LC and MP3 being the big two.
I suspect that the future of lossy is "most nobody will even care what format their audio is in as long as they can play it".
Opus never really caught on in the way many people hoped it would. If xHE-AAC does have advantages over Opus (I don't know, I'm not really interested in doing listening tests), then I am happy for it to bury Opus.
I foresee xHE-AAC becoming the new defacto standard for lossy audio in most applications in the future. Apple are already behind it which is all I need to know https://www.audioblog.iis.fraunhofer.com/apple-recommends-xheaac
Maybe, maybe not.
I mean, there are places where mp3 is still the de-facto standard (points at audio podcasts)
You might have been waiting for better adoption for your dear codec OPUS in DAPs, Podcasts, Bluetooth, even as a VoLTE codec from your mobile carrier but guess what: instead xHE-AAC will see that adoption...
Corrections:
DAP market is dead. Smartphones have replaced it.
Bluetooth requires low-delay. xHE-AAC/USAC won't be used. A new encoder LC3 will be.
VoLTE again, low delay. xHE-AAC/USAC is high delay codec. Opus, SILK, EVS, (E)LD-AAC, G.7xx are popular choices for VoIP.
It's funny to see this "codec death" comments. :D
It's simply an economic convenience. If cost of bandwidth in given situation is higher than licensing xHE-AAC/EVS then company will adopt such codecs... if it's not then they won't.
The only codec that I've heard in my last two jobs from telephony guys was "
Opus". When I've asked why they choose Opus in their VoIP applications (pretending that I've no idea about codecs :) ) the answer was always the same: " We don't see why we should pay additional licensing costs for a paid codec when Opus @ 16 kbps provides us state-of-art audio quality" . This answer causes a big smile on my face, btw.
I've tired to listen the word "
Opus" on my IT jobs from telephony guys.
Every single VoIP app I've touched in last years was using .... Opus. Cisco Webex, MSFT Skype, Whatsapp, Telegram...
Opus was never meant to completely replace MP3, AAC or Vorbis. It's a
low-delay codec . Though it's more efficient and is used in Youtube, Soundcloud etc.
xHE-AAC has its benefits in podcasts, internet radio.
MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus, xHE-AAC do and will coexist for many years as H.264/VP9/HEVC/AV1 do the same way..
P.S. Reminder: both Opus and USAC/xHE-AAC were adopted as standards in 2012. Nothing will change 8 years later.
I don't think Bluetooth necessitates low delay, does it?
A low delay helps with anything interactive, like UIs, games, real-time comms... These are all use cases for Bluetooth.
A low delay helps with anything interactive, like UIs, games, real-time comms... These are all use cases for Bluetooth.
I'm sure it adds to the experience, but there's no prerequisite for low delay with BT, as far as I'm aware. Certainly, if I was given the choice, I would pic the better sounding codec rather than the lowest latency for my use case. Man, BT audio is a bloody mess.
The thing is, xHE-AAC has backing from institutes like Fraunhofer who of course profit from the patents fees it will generate, even if it included with the AAC patent license. This is what Opus is certainly missing. And with Apple backing anything AAC, developers for Apple's OSes will ambrace xHE-AAC and Opus will be an afterthought. Of course it is possible that it stays in the Apple eco sphere like HLS has. If it were for those patents which prevents any actual further improvement and development I wouldn't care about all this to be honest.
Opus was never meant to completely replace MP3, AAC or Vorbis. It's a low-delay codec . Though it's more efficient and is used in Youtube, Soundcloud etc.
xHE-AAC has its benefits in podcasts, internet radio.
MP3, AAC, Vorbis, Opus, xHE-AAC do and will coexist for many years as H.264/VP9/HEVC/AV1 do the same way..
P.S. Reminder: both Opus and USAC/xHE-AAC were adopted as standards in 2012. Nothing will change 8 years later.
MP3 is still the most used lossy codec, not everyone i met even use AAC/Vorbis unless it streaming. Nor can tell a Lame encode at 192kbps from lossless. Just like how Jpeg is still popular despite there being Jpeg2000 or PNG.
I'd argue that AAC might actually be the most used lossy codec. But MP3 certainlly has the biggest mindshare among the general population.
Well, after a year of video and audio conferencing I would not be so sure.
Many VOIP and video conferencing solutions use Opus. And things like Discord, Teamspeak, the in game voice chats in games/launchers and I bet the Xbox/PSX voice chat, too. Then there are Browsers, Youtube, Whatsapp.
And if I understood correctly, the new Bluetooth LC3 codec borrowed quite a bit of Opus, too.
could be as well, I'm just pretty sure MP3 is behind AAC (And I suspect Opus as well)
I aggre with binaryhermit. AAC is probably the most used lossy codec atm.
Apple. Self explanatory.
All smartphones are recording videos using AAC. We are talking about billions of users.
All YouTube/Twitch streamers are using AAC.
YouTube is not using H264+AAC but it still has copy of them on the server.
I am using youtube-dl to download videos directly from YouTube and I am using H264+AAC for maximum compatibility.
All pirated movies are using H264+AAC.
Just for fun I checked a well known XXX website that is used by millions of people. Guess what, AAC again.
Yes,
Add to it that during several years even most inexpensive cars come with bluetooth today so people can use Spotify/Tidal/Apple Music.
So, considering popularity of AAC as described in previous post, MP3 isn't predominant format anymore.
...
All YouTube/Twitch streamers are using AAC.
YouTube is not using H264+AAC but it still has copy of them on the server.
I am using youtube-dl to download videos directly from YouTube and I am using H264+AAC for maximum compatibility.
...
YouTube usually has Opus too, which from a frequency spectrum perspective, provides better audio (can you hear the difference though?). And if it's just the audio that I'm after, then I'll go with it.
But yes, from a compatibility side, then aac in m4a or mp4 is the better option.
"predominant format" is a matter of definition really. Are we counting files/streams in use or are we counting files/streams being encoded or what?
* Even if everyone stopped encoding to MP3, it would be a giant format - there are tons of files that will live (at least among those of use who avoid transcoding lossies). Same with AAC, but to a lesser degree.
* There are tons lots of mp2/AC3 over broadcast. They aren't just gonna disappear even if they technically could.
* According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_details_of_Netflix , Netflix delivers AAC but can also deliver Ogg Vorbis to Android devices. (Disregarding deprecated formats.)
* Sure YouTube encodes to Opus, but what devices accept what? By the way, I just checked a few old AND new videos, and it seems that YouTube now delivers Opus/AAC both at around 130, and two lower-bitrate Opus options. I wonder how present-day Opus at 130 compares with oooold AAC at 192. (Yes AAC at 192 should normally be transparent, but did YouTube's AAC encode efficiently or did it try to save CPU time?)
* What the covid-hell is Zoom using? (I'm pretty sure they haven't reinvented anything big, why should they?)
* What the covid-hell is Zoom using? (I'm pretty sure they haven't reinvented anything big, why should they?)
From: https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202920719-Meeting-and-phone-statistics (https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202920719-Meeting-and-phone-statistics)
Codec: The audio being used by Zoom Phone. Usually, you'll see Opus, an audio codec that ensures high-quality audio.
* Sure YouTube encodes to Opus, but what devices accept what?
https://caniuse.com/?search=opus
https://caniuse.com/?search=aac
Means that if your browser is Chrome/Firefox/Edge audio is Opus
I wonder how present-day Opus at 130 compares with oooold AAC at 192.
Ohm, that's a pitty we don't have any test with Opus and AAC . But wait... we actually have, have we? :-X
Anyway for 99.999...% Opus 130-160 is tranparent. Because 96 kbps was already very hard https://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm
oh and another one https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=120166.0
As you can see there is no point to even argue about quality for 128+ kbps area.... Ah yes, I know that some of us hear can do high bitrate but in reality it's transparent for big mass.
Doesn't youtube use FAAC which is apparently really horrible?
Doesn't youtube use FAAC which is apparently really horrible?
FhG, CBR, 128 kbit/s.
I uploaded 30 second clip (with lossless audio) on YouTube so I can compare it.
First picture is from YouTube.
Second picture is fhgaacenc.exe.
Pretty close.
I uploaded 30 second clip (with lossless audio) on YouTube so I can compare it.
First picture is from YouTube.
Second picture is fhgaacenc.exe.
Pretty close.
I like your signature.
I wonder how present-day Opus at 130 compares with oooold AAC at 192.
Ohm, that's a pitty we don't have any test with Opus and AAC . But wait... we actually have, have we? :-X
There was a word there.
And a context.
YouTube deprecated its 192 kbps AAC format. Was that a reasonable decision from the
encoding has improved, we can reduce bitrate argument, or would that just be that they saw 192 as useless-in-the-first-place even without improving the AAC@128 / Opus@130 alternatives?
(That said, YouTube is big enough to negotiate license deals, so they might have had a "per encoded minute" and then for that reason dropped all AAC formats but one. At least it seems that there is
just one non-Opus stream available for fresh uploads.)
I suspect that the future of lossy is "most nobody will even care what format their audio is in as long as they can play it".
Yes, because end users don't encode the files themselves, the services, protocol etc. do this.
* According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_details_of_Netflix , Netflix delivers AAC but can also deliver Ogg Vorbis to Android devices.
Netflix recently announced that they're rolling out xHE-AAC on Android and also taking advantage of it's ability to handle MPEG-D DRC metadata to do "loudness management".
https://netflixtechblog.com/optimizing-the-aural-experience-on-android-devices-with-xhe-aac-c27714292a33?gi=244064d0be08
Back to the topic of other places that AAC audio is found, it's absolutely massive - in the UK alone we have the entirety of the BBC's online output, both "iPlayer" (11 TV Channels) and "Sounds" (~56 Local and National Radio stations (most of which have 4 different quality HLS streams (48kbps & 96kbps HE-AAC available globally plus 128kbps & 320kbps AAC-LC available in the UK only)) though I think some podcasts are still MP3. Also the other major broadcasters that provide streams or catch-up services: these days, certainly: Channel 4, Channel 5, ITVs collection , Britbox, Hulu, Amazon Prime (though I think they still offer MP3s for music), Disney+, and even more Internationally.
But yes, as binary hermit said up-thread "MP3 still has the mindshare", it's the household name of {lossy) audio, and alas most normies have no reason to care that we can do better these days.
AAC killed MP3 about 15 years ago. Interesting that no one told Amazon, as they're still selling MP3's in 2021.
Personally, I think the future is bright for Opus; however, not due to its own merits as an audio codec, but as a side product of being the most likely candidate for use in AV1. And with support from pretty much everyone - from hardware vendors to browser developers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1#Adoption) - AV1 itself is pretty much guaranteed to have widespread support, and it will drag Opus along.
I mean, NPR declared mp3 dead in 2017 https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/05/11/527829909/the-mp3-is-officially-dead-according-to-its-creators
Meanwhile in their podcast department, the Planet Money podcast episode released on January 29 is 128 kbps CBR mp3 and the audio version of the Tiny Desk Concert released on January 21 is 256 kbps CBR mp3...
EDIT: I'm just saying that once a codec gets a certain level of penetration it's virtually impossible to "kill"
I mean, NPR declared mp3 dead in 2017 https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/05/11/527829909/the-mp3-is-officially-dead-according-to-its-creators
The amount to which this never made sense boggles my mind. How in the world does Fraunhofer's patent licensing rights expiring translate to MP3 being dead? "Ah yes, you no longer need to pay Fraunhofer in order to manufacture hardware with MP3 support - therefore, MP3 is dead." I'm having trouble discerning if the person who wrote this article truly had no idea what they were talking about or if this was an intentional attempt of twisting the narrative for some reason.
I mean, NPR declared mp3 dead in 2017 https://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/05/11/527829909/the-mp3-is-officially-dead-according-to-its-creators
The amount to which this never made sense boggles my mind. How in the world does Fraunhofer's patent licensing rights expiring translate to MP3 being dead? "Ah yes, you no longer need to pay Fraunhofer in order to manufacture hardware with MP3 support - therefore, MP3 is dead." I'm having trouble discerning if the person who wrote this article truly had no idea what they were talking about or if this was an intentional attempt of twisting the narrative for some reason.
NPR to MP3: You're dead.
MP3: So is vinyl. Bwahahahahaha.
I honestly almost wonder if Fraunhofer told them to frame it that way and they just did what they were told.
Nor can tell a Lame encode at 192kbps from lossless.
I can't either. Also can't tell a 160k AAC/CoreAudio from lossless.
But my ears are 54 years old and my hearing drops off at 11.5 khz....
I honestly almost wonder if Fraunhofer told them to frame it that way and they just did what they were told.
To be honest, that's definitely not too far fetched in my opinion. This portion of the article hints at that more than anything:
So is it the end of an era? We may still use MP3s, but when the people who spent the better part of a decade creating it say the jig is up, we should probably start paying attention.
"Well actually, MP3
can still be used, but I mean come on guys - Fraunhofer said the jig is up! Just... just stop, ok? I'm sure they'll offer paid licensing programs for some other format. So yeah. :) "
Kinda off-topic but I wanted to share my opinion.
I am pretty sure they will release new codec/"container" within next couple of years because right now things are very complicated.
This codec/"container" will unify all existing codecs, extensions...
Let's start with MP3.
MP3 is very old codec and has some flaws. It was designed for music (stereo) at mid-high bitrates.
It doesn't support multichannel. They tried to fix it with "MP3 Surround" but it failed.
It doesn't support lossless. They tried to fix it with "mp3HD" but it failed.
It sucks at low bitrates. They tried to fix it with "mp3PRO" but it failed.
Let's start with AAC.
It supports multichannel. (Yay!)
Lossless is not really supported. Have you ever heard about SLS? Neither did I. To make it even more confusing, ALAC is also using m4a container.
It sucks at low bitrates. They tried to fix this not once (HE-AACv1), not twice (HE-AACv2) but three times (xHE-AAC).
If device says that it can play m4a files, how are they going to explaing to users why their files are not working?
This kinda reminds me of USB renaming scandal. (Is this USB 3.0? Well yes, but actually no.)
Things are more than complicated for average user.
It sucks at low bitrates
Name any other lossy codec that performs better at those low bitrates.
It doesn't support lossless
Why does it matter if a lossy codec doesn't have a lossless mode?
Let's start with AAC.
It sucks at low bitrates.
wrong
Let's start with AAC.
It sucks at low bitrates.
I can confirm this with any implementation.
To LithosZA:
"Name any other lossy codec that performs better at those low bitrates."
I was talking about standard AAC, better known as AAC-LC.
I consider low bitrates to be 64 kbit/s and less. AAC-LC is just bad there.
Out-of-box Opus sounds amazing at that bitrate.
"Why does it matter if a lossy codec doesn't have a lossless mode?"
It doesn't matter. But if they want to release real MP3 killer then it needs to have more STANDARD features.
You cannot just keep upgrading existing codec and keep the same name just because of popularity.
To peskypesky:
Again, I was talking about standard AAC-LC. It sucks at low bitrates.
If you cannot hear the difference between 64 kbit/s AAC-LC and lossless then you have some serious hearing problems.
I am not saying that AAC is bad in any way, I just don't agree with their naming.
If device says that it can play MP3 files that means it can play MP3 files.
If device says that it can play AAC files, you have no idea what types of AAC files it can actually play.
JPEG is the most popular image format in the world.
Imagine if they released new version of JPEG but kept the same .jpg extension.
Suddenly you have millions of devices that "support" .jpg but actually they don't.
But they did it properly. They released the updated JPEG-2000 and changed the extension to .jp2.
They avoided confusion.
They avoided the confusion, and also avoided becoming a successful replacement. Windows doesn't support the format out of box. macOS does, but nobody knows this, so nobody uses it. Linux probably does thanks to many open source projects being bundled with desktop environments, but again, nobody uses this stuff.
WebM and WebP are supported out of box by Windows 10. WebP is supported by macOS Big Sur and iOS 14, as well as third party browsers. Linux, in all likelihood, supports these just fine. They're probably a way better successor to JPEG than anything else right now, especially with their successful market penetration.
HEIC/HEIF is "sort" of a successor format. iOS tried to make it the default, but you had to buy new devices to expect anything to start generating them at all. And everything just converts things to JPEGs when you step outside of macOS anyway. Windows 10 does support these natively, if you install the right stuff from the Microsoft Store, free if your video card supports HEVC decoding, or for a really small fee to license a software decoder. Linux has a lot of trouble with this one, mostly down to either Git/source plugins for GTK/Qt, or GIMP importing from the format.
There are a lot of other random formats that have tried to declare themselves as successors to various things, but none of them really have market penetration or support much of anywhere other than their respective developers' web sites.
jpeg is just like mp3: good enough and supported everywhere. The average user associates music file = mp3, image = jpeg. They open everywhere, there is no need to know more.
As I see it, there will be no new mp3, or jpg equivalent for a long time no matter how much better the new codecs are.
The success stories we see are when enconding, delivery and decoding are done trasnparently to the user. The user desn't have to do or know anything. This is youtube using opus, discord and video call apps using opus for low latency, spotify with vorbis or netflix switching to xHE-AAC.
jpeg has a succesor format that might take over on the long run. It allows lossless repack of jpeg images, has good lossless and lossy compression, and more features. Success, if it eventually happens, will be transparent to the end-user: a website sends the image and the browser displays it... and the user doesn't notice any difference.
JPEG-XL website: https://jpeg.org/jpegxl/ (https://jpeg.org/jpegxl/)
I fully agree with both of you, especially the part about transparent delivery and decoding but this is far from ideal solution.
Quite a lot of people prefer offline storage for various reasons.
Let's start with Spotify, YouTube and other streaming services.
How many times has your playlist been "decimated" by streaming services?
Yesterday you had 100 songs in your playlist, tomorrow you have 90. 10 of them were removed for unknown reason.
This cannot happen with offline storage.
What about TV shows and movies?
Yesterday streaming service A had movie B, tomorrow that movie was bought by streaming service C and there is no way to watch it.
You are forced to buy another useless subscription service.
With offline storage you can watch anything anytime.
Now that kode54 mentioned WebP.
Two years ago, one of the most popular car selling websites in my country used WebP. Now they are back to using JPEG again.
People used to download pictures and share with their friends but after WebP update they couldn't because noone of the applications outside of Chrome recognized WebP.
Arkhh says that music is MP3 and image is JPEG. That is 100% correct. For most people MP4 means movie.
I cannot remember how many times people have asked me why their TV is not playing MP4 files.
Have fun explaining them the difference between H.264/H.265, different profiles (baseline, main, high...) and levels.
I'm just saying that we need more "simplified" codec that simply works so people don't have to spend next five hours searching on the internet why "supported" files are not working.
For most people MP4 means movie.
I cannot remember how many times people have asked me why their TV is not playing MP4 files.
Have fun explaining them the difference between H.264/H.265, different profiles (baseline, main, high...) and levels.
In my opinion, the problem here is not on the computer science side. While it is true that the vast majority of users are unaware of the difference between a container format and a video coding format, this - despite being unfortunate - does not mean that this approach to storing video/audio itself is wrong. It would make no sense for every video coding format to have its own container format. In fact, in my opinion, we already have too many.
jpeg is just like mp3: good enough and supported everywhere. The average user associates music file = mp3, image = jpeg. They open everywhere, there is no need to know more.
As I see it, there will be no new mp3, or jpg equivalent for a long time no matter how much better the new codecs are.
...
Sadly I think you may be right... Unfortunately though, whilst people are quite content to download an image in whatever format (jpeg / png / webp etc) and just look at it, the situation is often different for audio. --- Multiple times a week I see people with perfectly usable AAC audio (because of MPEG, ISO, and Industry standards / popularity) but they insist they need to convert it to MP3 -- just because that's what they're used to. Often they'll be turning 96 - 128k AAC -LC into a CBR 320 , or V0 MP3 because they (think they)
know that's "best" , so lose quality in the transcode, risk more artifacts, and waste a ton of space on their precious iDevice.
Quite a lot of people prefer offline storage for various reasons.
Let's start with Spotify, YouTube and other streaming services.
How many times has your playlist been "decimated" by streaming services?
Yesterday you had 100 songs in your playlist, tomorrow you have 90. 10 of them were removed for unknown reason.
This cannot happen with offline storage.
What about TV shows and movies?
Yesterday streaming service A had movie B, tomorrow that movie was bought by streaming service C and there is no way to watch it.
You are forced to buy another useless subscription service.
With offline storage you can watch anything anytime.
Exactly. that's why I never bother with streaming in general, at least for anything I care about and will want to listen to or re-watch here and there as the years pass.
it's always best to have a file stored locally (or physical copy of some type) as then you can always listen/watch it anytime you want. plus, not everyone has a fast internet line and in cases like this, all the more reason to have it locally stored as then ones internet line speed does not matter all that much.
so while some casual YouTube stuff is okay for some basic videos here and there, for music/movies I always prefer to have a locally stored copy, especially when it's a movie/song ill want to see/listen to from time-to-time as the years pass.
Multiple times a week I see people with perfectly usable AAC audio but they insist they need to convert it to MP3 just because that's what they're used to. Often they'll be turning 96 - 128k AAC -LC into a CBR 320 , or V0 MP3 because they (think they) know that's "best" , so lose quality in the transcode, risk more artifacts, and waste a ton of space on their precious iDevice.
It seems anyone with a basic understanding of audio/video compression would now you can't raise quality of something that's already lowered, it just goes downward with each conversion from lossy-to-lossy.
with that said... while not optimal, as you already know, I could possibly see someone going from say a 320kbps MP3, or higher bitrate AAC-LC file (and the like), to a lower bit rate lossy file occasionally. but, as you already know, it makes no sense to go from something already pretty low on bit rate back to a higher rate, especially from say a AAC-LC 96-128kbps up to 320kbps MP3. so it's always higher-to-lower, not lower-to-higher as a general rule.
but with that said... if I have a rough understanding of how many see this stuff, which probably sums up the group of people your talking about, they probably don't care all that much as long as the audio file still sounds 'good enough' to them. which pretty much means as long as the audio is not obviously bad to them and remains close to what you hear on a radio for example. hence, even doing those 96kbps AAC-LC to 320kbps MP3 probably won't matter to them since the quality will not degrade enough for it to matter to them and they think the conversion worked perfectly okay, even though it just wasted some storage space. but even this won't matter to them when they got storage space to burn as it seems the only time this would matter is if they can't fit the songs they want onto a device at which point they might be forced to learn more about it, which probably won't happen nowadays given storage space of music is dirt cheap compared to what it used to be say about 10-15 years ago or so. like back in the old days when 512MB or 2GB cost quite a bit, bit rate of encoded music was much more important. but once 8-16GB or so started to become reasonably priced, short of people who wanted to store boatloads of music on their device, you could pretty much fit ones entire collection on there at a decent enough bit rate.
The state of lossy music encoding is disheartening. Breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity rather than for profit, such as Vorbis and Musepack, faded before reaching an apex because the authors changed the priorities for some reason. LAME also stalled. Yet killer samples to illustrate the flaws are still here. Some audiophiles with coding skills who patched psychoacoustic models disappeared. Dear visionaries who are good at math, has your mojo dried up, swallowed up by age, illnesses, streaming services and the petty bourgeois swamp? Or are all your efforts now focused on improving hash functions and quantum-resistant cryptography? It seems that only
@bryant is still kicking with the development of lossless WavPack, although we recently discussed how to refine (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,124188.msg1040140.html#msg1040140) its hybrid mode. And QOA (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,123838.0.html), the only fresh lossy codec in recent times, gains no traction as if the author released it only to prove the idea of doing better than Vorbis, hoping that Public domain license would encourage others to continue the undertaking.
The state of lossy music encoding is disheartening. Breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity rather than for profit, such as Vorbis and Musepack, faded before reaching an apex because the authors changed the priorities for some reason. LAME improvement also stalled. Yet killer samples to illustrate the flaws are still here.
You seem to be working under the delusion that it is possible to create a codec that is 100% transparent for all input and for which no killer samples exist. You seem to think this holy grail is only impeded by "lazy developers".
To me, that would be the same as saying developers of lossless codecs are lazy because codecs are stuck at no more than 50% compression generally. There is simply no way to get much better. Same goes for lossy codecs, at some point there is only so little to be gained from further development no-one bothers anymore.
If you want 100% transparency all the time, take a lossless codec. If you want lower bitrates, you'll need to accept the reality that there might be audible distortion.
@ktf, I'm sorry, but you missed the point. I didn't use the word transparency and didn't set the goal of getting closer to any value of the very transparency. I see killer samples as bug reports that should be taken into account during development, that's all. Point is that promising codecs are abandoned halfway through. Musepack and Vorbis are abandoned, the room for improvement is there, but ignored, which gives the false impression they are outdated.
What room for improvement? Just because you think there is any doesn't mean there is, that is called wishful thinking. Also, you can't just fix one "killer sample" in lossy codecs without it having negative consequences somewhere else.
It's funny to see this "codec death" comments. :D
Fanboys' wishful thinking, quite possibly?
I work in the realm of embedded development and electronics engineering.
Products and infrastructure systems that use audio in any shape or form, be id devices that play alert sounds, do some sort of voice communication (like VoIP), or even do some sort of content delivery of streaming audio, tend to use Opus and/or Vorbis.
So it's not a question of *if* there's gonna be an adoption of it, the question has been already answered.
A good example I like to bring up to kinda drive this home: remember when you were using a GPS SatNav in your car 10 years ago? Remember how it played turn instructions? Well, those were Opus files stored on the device, even older devices used Vorbis.
Opus is relatively easy to use, there are no hidden costs attached to it, and it has been in use for a very long time, so there's simply no reason to switch over to xHE-AAC or any other codec for that matter. Modern SoCs make using Opus rather simple, there's no real reason to use a specific codec because it's easier on the micro controller, etc.
Content delivery isn't really where I work at, but I've yet to see people veering away from Opus where it's already implemented. One such place is Youtube.
Twitch and many other content delivery platforms use other codecs, but I don't see them changing over to xHE-AAC from what they're already using. Now I don't see them switching over to Opus either, but I can see how this might actually be something they'd consider in the future, simply because Opus has been established for a long time by now. And yes - it's kinda crazy to say it but Opus is kindof an "old codec" by now... Old doesn't mean bad, and tbh, xHE-AAC doesn't bring enough benefits to the table...
There's one thing where I've observed xHE-AAC to be kind of being viable **perhaps**, and that's DAB-T. DAB-T is already locked-in with AAC codecs, iirc they use HE-AAC v2, but that's not the only one they use. The problem with that is, however, that once consumers bought their DAB-T kitchen radios, it'd require at least a firmware upgrade and sometimes a new DSP to decode a new codec, that's why you don't see a lot of them be rolled out each year. I think in Europe (at least the parts I know of) they're currently at "DAB-T2" which basically means they switched over to a newer (or set of those) codecs. They'd need to switch over to yet another version of DAB-T if they'd want to use xHE-AAC. And even though this might not happen for a couple more years, I can see that happen eventually.
In other words: where hardware lock-in is just so strong it takes years and political decisions to change them, that's where I can see xHE-AAC being adopted. Anywhere else, not so much. This isn't something I feel like having to look into a crystal ball for, but rather it's what we've seen in the last ten years, so I think it's sensible to assume those trends will pertain at least another five to ten years.
After that, we might have a bunch more codecs to look at, who knows.
You work as an electronics engineer but you don't seem to know the industry regulations very well. MPEG-D USAC (the real name of xHE-AAC) is already part of some TV and DRM radio standards. When it was proposed, it had on paper everything needed for broadcasting.
In my opinion we must ask ourselves whether we are not also part of the problem; for example, I am an early adopter and I tend to evaluate products, especially open-source ones, at a non-optimal stage, it also happened here with Exhale, which didn't convince me, I published some tables (which ended up in the trash) in which I tried to compress the voices at different sampling frequencies and bitrates to see how the encoder behaved, which I use very little today (I use a paid encoder), because I didn't find a solution for archiving (at high bitrates the advantages disappear compared to LC-AAC and at low bitrates the compatibility for the common user was not satisfactory).
Today, after some time, the situation on the compatibility front has remained approximately the same, Windows 11 has not taken the place of Windows 10, leaving the absolute majority of users unable to use xHE-AAC without installing third-party software. At the same time the diffusion of Linux and various BSDs has doubled, and even in this case third-party software will be needed. It goes better with mobile phones, tablets and smart speakers where the user almost never encounters problems, e.g. Sonos speakers receive the decompressed audio and work around the problem.
We come to Opus which in the meantime is not dead, on the contrary it has constantly improved and in my opinion today its strong point is precisely that it can be used everywhere, what was missing was the iPhone which has a significant market share in smartphones and which now reproduces it both in ISOBMFF than in Webm better than in the more efficient CAF. On the Android front, all the non-user upgradeable models that required an extension other than Opus are ending up in landfill, and therefore the situation has improved.
As you can see there are external factors that are much more important for those who produce content than our mental wanks, and we get to today where the first strong point of Opus is that you can compress and decompress on any device, on the user side MPEG-D has the advantage USAC, production side wins Opus which also works well with the recent ISA RISC-V, and completes the job in less time (which means costs).
For my loved music I have singular theories, I don't convert it, I keep it in the format in which it is provided to me because any manipulation can introduce an error and a loss of information. I'm not keen on comparing the various encoders because the space is worth less than my time to compare them. For me, listening to music is an activity to be carried out without other competing tasks, otherwise it becomes like listening to the radio, a musical background from which to distract yourself.
However, I work with voices, and in the broadcast sector they occupy a fundamental part of the schedules, and I have to get them to future generations, so I even use MPEG-D USAC to preserve them (rather LC-AAC, not HE-AAC which in my country is not is much loved, it's the main problem with DAB, people till date have preferred to use FM), otherwise the benefits costs are eliminated. From today I could even imagine using Opus, which has advantages (many for me) and fewer disadvantages than before (for others).
The war of formats, now the war of containers, does not exist in the broadcast sector, earlier I gave the example of the not very widespread DRM radio, the use of Opus was foreseen from the beginning, but the greatest advantages can be had on the internet and precisely for predominantly verbal products such as podcasts or others that use a scarce resource in nature, the bandwidth.
To put it bluntly, today the problems are different, the enormous waste of energy in data centers, the use of video when not necessary, the use of generative artificial intelligence by the many who lack their own, today in the country that knows it does not being the most advanced on the planet cause blockages to services and electricity interruptions over large areas because it is not sustainable to have data centers that consume as much as small cities with 200,000 inhabitants.
You can bet on it but in the future the choices will be political and the result of new taxes to contain abuse, the model of the internet as a landfill with content paid for by advertising is unsustainable and destined to change.
Consider that those who wastes more than others in the world will be the last to understand it. After all, they are the same people who haven't understood that the great mass of content present today will disappear tomorrow.
By the way, the codecs (AAC-LC and Opus) that giants like YouTube impose hardly change the preferences of pirates. Having started listening to MP3 on a Rio player back in the 1990s, I still see the dominance of this lossy format on the well-known, little-known and private sharing sites. The only thing that has changed is that FLAC is posted next to it. Curiously, I got a Cowon player in the mid 2000s with Vorbis support out of the box, but this format remained more of a home one due to suboptimal seeking and higher battery consumption; it came in handy for the mentioned lossless.
Truth is, just because most us here on HA, at a personal level, are a bunch of format skippers (myself included), we cannot automatically naively assume it is that easy (better: tempting) for large corporations and Big Tech names consortia to do so with the same easiness and lightheartedness.
Edit: I daresay they're not batting eyelids at whichever new-kid-on-the-block CODEC pops up now and then as often as we do.
What room for improvement?
I'd say Opus LACE/NoLACE seems like an improvement - and a pretty significant one, listening to the samples provided on https://opus-codec.org/demo/opus-1.5/
I agree. That reply was in the context of using lossy codecs at high bitrates to encode music to achieve transparency for all possible inputs. It seems there is little room for improvement there. At the bottom end, there are still lots of opportunities.
The state of lossy music encoding is disheartening. Breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity rather than for profit, such as Vorbis and Musepack, faded before reaching an apex because the authors changed the priorities for some reason. LAME also stalled. Yet killer samples to illustrate the flaws are still here. Some audiophiles with coding skills who patched psychoacoustic models disappeared. Dear visionaries who are good at math, has your mojo dried up, swallowed up by age, illnesses, streaming services and the petty bourgeois swamp? Or are all your efforts now focused on improving hash functions and quantum-resistant cryptography? It seems that only @bryant is still kicking with the development of lossless WavPack, although we recently discussed how to refine (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,124188.msg1040140.html#msg1040140) its hybrid mode. And QOA (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,123838.0.html), the only fresh lossy codec in recent times, gains no traction as if the author released it only to prove the idea of doing better than Vorbis, hoping that Public domain license would encourage others to continue the undertaking.
Developers are not robots or isolated nerds/geeks.
They have lives and families. Life (and regrettably death) happens to them.
These codecs are their creation and the fruit of their efforts. If they can no longer sustain the efforts or are no longer around on earth, the right thing to do with one's hyperpassion for codecs is to pick up the skillsets where they left off and continue investing the same efforts they made. Not make a point of scolding them at every forum opportunity.
The active zone is now in the sub-30 kbps voice region. I don't see Opus going away any time soon.
> If you want 100% transparency all the time, take a lossless codec
In principle nothing stops something like LossyFLAC or maybe even ("up-tuned") Musepack from guaranteeing 100% transparency due to the way they work. (you can basically require them to maintain a certain SNR at all times, no matter how many bits that would take)
Pure lossless-compressed PCM is always going to use more bits than necessary for louder intervals and that's the lowest hanging fruit to shave off some % of bits.
The state of lossy music encoding is disheartening.
Developers are not robots or isolated nerds/geeks. If they can no longer sustain the efforts … pick up the skillsets where they left off and continue investing the same efforts they made. Not make a point of scolding them at every forum opportunity.
The absence of a loud and clear message expressing dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs is often mistaken for satisfaction. "People don't complain, so why bother?" And more often than not, I've seen development resume not because someone decided to dust off abandonware out of boredom, but because they faced the pain and showed empathy for those who reported how this or that change would make life easier or happier. Certainly, there are various ways to report: a hit between the eyes and a sugar-coated plea to name a few. Just as there are original editions of Mark Twain and Agatha Christie novels with words of their era like the N-word (https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jan/05/censoring-mark-twain-n-word-unacceptable) and orientals (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/26/agatha-christie-novels-reworked-to-remove-potentially-offensive-language), and there are expurgated editions for a fragile, resentful mindset. For example, a few weeks ago I complained that Helix MP3 encoder, officially abandoned 20 years ago, was not capable of handling more than 16-bit input, and the miracle happened (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,123331.msg1040083.html#msg1040083). God bless
@Case for that.
Mod edit: Defused potentially offensive word.
The state of lossy music encoding is disheartening.
Developers are not robots or isolated nerds/geeks. If they can no longer sustain the efforts … pick up the skillsets where they left off and continue investing the same efforts they made. Not make a point of scolding them at every forum opportunity.
The absence of a loud and clear message expressing dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs is often mistaken for satisfaction. "People don't complain, so why bother?" And more often than not, I've seen development resume not because someone decided to dust off abandonware out of boredom, but because they faced the pain and showed empathy for those who reported how this or that change would make life easier or happier. Certainly, there are various ways to report: a hit between the eyes and a sugar-coated plea to name a few. Just as there are original editions of Mark Twain and Agatha Christie novels with words of their era like the N-word (https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jan/05/censoring-mark-twain-n-word-unacceptable) and orientals (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/26/agatha-christie-novels-reworked-to-remove-potentially-offensive-language), and there are expurgated editions for a fragile, resentful mindset. For example, a few weeks ago I complained that Helix MP3 encoder, officially abandoned 20 years ago, was not capable of handling more than 16-bit input, and the miracle happened (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,123331.msg1040083.html#msg1040083). God bless @Case for that.
Mod edit: Defused potentially offensive word.
Its a catch 22 situation. With Mp3 / AAC it can work due to high user demand. With less popular codecs like mpc, WV, vorbis
the opposite can happen and already small userbase is further decimated . That may slow down development even more.
> If you want 100% transparency all the time, take a lossless codec
In principle nothing stops something like LossyFLAC or maybe even ("up-tuned") Musepack from guaranteeing 100% transparency due to the way they work. (you can basically require them to maintain a certain SNR at all times, no matter how many bits that would take)
Pure lossless-compressed PCM is always going to use more bits than necessary for louder intervals and that's the lowest hanging fruit to shave off some % of bits.
In addtion to lossyflac, loaded mpc ,High bitrate WV lossy can be used confidently from around 500kbps . something like -b500x4s1 or more.
What room for improvement? Just because you think there is any doesn't mean there is, that is called wishful thinking. Also, you can't just fix one "killer sample" in lossy codecs without it having negative consequences somewhere else.
You are correct. Who is doing regression testing ? Not many like that and most don't have time.
I still see the dominance of this lossy format on the well-known, little-known and private sharing sites. The only thing that has changed is that FLAC is posted next to it.
This seems pretty disingenuous to me. I happen to be on quite a few of those sites and MP3 hardly is 'dominant'. It is provided as a legacy option for compatibility purposes or for people with very low bandwidth, but no one cares about it. Everything is FLAC and the amount traffic MP3 gets is at least a whole order of magnitude smaller. This tiny minority is not relevant enough to be split further into Vorbis, Opus, AAC, Musepack or whatever else.. it's not the year 2000 any more.
No one in music sharing cares about lossy formats anymore (and rightfully so). I download FLACs and encode them to my favorite bleeding edge lossy format of choice to save space. And if I were OCD obsessed with archival, I'd just keep my whole library as FLAC because lossy is called lossy for a reason.
It'll be a while when Youtube and stuff puts FLAC bitstreams in their videos. If you scan the available codecs it's all just Opus and AAC-LC.
No one in music sharing cares about lossy formats anymore (and rightfully so). I download FLACs and encode them to my favorite bleeding edge lossy format of choice to save space. And if I were OCD obsessed with archival, I'd just keep my whole library as FLAC because lossy is called lossy for a reason.
Additionally, people with a "decent enough" music library and whatnot, tend to put on-the-fly re-encoding to a lossy format in place, such that they don't have to actually manage multiple versions of the same song, etc. Home automation stuff usually takes care of that around the home etc.
What room for improvement? Just because you think there is any doesn't mean there is, that is called wishful thinking. Also, you can't just fix one "killer sample" in lossy codecs without it having negative consequences somewhere else.
You are correct.
No, I believe what
@ktf said is not consistent with practice.
How did they improve LAME codec quality? It's not a secret. Users shared problematic samples, including those that sounded better when encoded in other ways, e.g. via Fraunhofer encoder, then LAME psychoacoustic model was patched accordingly. Its official website has a section with samples (https://lame.sourceforge.io/quality.php) that still require attention, other samples are available on the bug tracker (https://sourceforge.net/p/lame/bugs/). They are not addressed not because it will worsen the sound “somewhere else”, but because the relevant specialists retired or passed away. And there are no signs that someone has come to take over the baton.
Luckily, prolific programmers like
@Case are still around to optimize things that don't affect the sound, which made it possible, for example, to revive Helix (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,123331.msg1043308.html#msg1043308) MP3 encoder — it is amazingly fast and more resistant to problematic samples. Also, LAME's changelog (https://svn.code.sf.net/p/lame/svn/trunk/lame/doc/html/history.html) still grows and its version 3.101b3 (https://www.free-codecs.com/lame_encoder_download.htm) was released in December 2023. Recently, I discovered a bug in Vorbis (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,109239.msg1043325.html#msg1043325) reference encoder, the WAV reader part of it, and a faint pulse on Github gives me hope that it will be fixed. But the underrated Musepack seems to be buried and it is unlikely that anyone will make it possible to encode input with a bit depth greater than 16 (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,125586.msg1040531.html#msg1040531), which forces to reduce bit depth and use dither when compressing hi-res records.
So there is definitely room for improvement in the lossy niche, both theoretically imaginable and practically necessary. However, the creative juices (or what's left of them) are currently flowing towards battery-draining (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,124857.0.html) complexity of Opus, low bitrate USAC (xHE-AAC), repulsive by its name alone due to USA & YOU-SUCK connotations, and outlandish things such as buy-modern-GPU-first TSAC (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,125765.msg1042623.html#msg1042623). For audiophiles like me, who are trained in fields other than programming, it remains only to pray that there are fewer aberrations on the path of progress, e.g. I pray that David
@bryant improve WavPack hybrid mode (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,125718.msg1042172.html#msg1042172), because it is a bridge connecting two worlds (lossy and lossless).
Yes, I've lived long enough to be able to compare: a bottom up excitement that comes from the challenge of creating something that brings relief and joy to people from all walks of life, as LAME did, has been replaced by a top down imposed dull substitutes, akin to changing the skin color of Ariel's character from The Little Mermaid (https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/148tdxl/why_did_they_make_a_black_little_mermaid/) cartoon, allegedly to promote diversity and inclusion, whereas in fact it caused a backlash and a box office failure, not only in Disney's homeland, but all over the world.
I still see the dominance of this lossy format on the well-known, little-known and private sharing sites. The only thing that has changed is that FLAC is posted next to it.
I happen to be on quite a few of those sites and MP3 hardly is 'dominant'. It is provided as a legacy option for compatibility purposes or for people with very low bandwidth, but no one cares about it. Everything is FLAC and the amount traffic MP3 gets is at least a whole order of magnitude smaller. This tiny minority is not relevant enough to be split further into Vorbis, Opus, AAC, Musepack or whatever else.. it's not the year 2000 any more. No one in music sharing cares about lossy formats anymore (and rightfully so).
MP3 still dominates among other lossy formats
there, not among audio formats in general. You can easily verify this by entering the format extension in the search bar and comparing the number of releases in each lossy format over at least the last 5 years. As for the demand, today alone, on the site with ~14 million peers (12.5 mln seeds and 1.5 mln leeches) that has a rather long list of requirements when you're about to share, I see 98 new MP3 and 63 FLAC releases.
Living in a cocoon of relative wealth, you tend to make generalizations that are at odds with reality, which for you boils down to choosing one of three bicycles (https://alchemyrider.me/2024/03/20/how-many-road-bikes-do-you-own/) to ride, and for others, how not to look for a third job (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/nov/05/multiple-jobs-census-data-inflation-us). To keep lossless audio, especially hi-res records, you need a lot of space, but the mantra that space is cheap does not apply to the entire planet. Have you ever wondered how many Earths would we need if everyone lived like, say, Americans? At least 5, according to Google. Also, the consumption of audio (music, books, podcasts, etc) does not differ much from the consumption of food — the less energy-intensive click'n'listen (or download'n'listen) strategy turns out to be more in demand than manual conversion of lossless audio files (cooking), which requires knowledge and time. It explains the increase in profits of streaming services (https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,121741.msg1042120.html#msg1042120) such as Spotify (whose main format, by the way, is lossy Vorbis).