MP3 Life?

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MP3 Life?

2003-04-01 02:00:07

Hey Guys. I'm asking this question for predictions obviously. Do you think mp3 will be outdated by a newer format? If so what and how long until it is replaced? (this can be predictions i'm just curious). Also, do you think this will play on mp3 players when this new format is released or do you think it will expand quickly? Thanks alot. I want to know I love mp3 and dont know why it would be outdated but, jw on other peoples opinions because with all these new technologies coming out such as this mpeg-4 stuff i am a little worried my iPOD might get left in the dirt ...

MP3 Life?

Reply #1 – 2003-04-01 02:14:42

I predict that MP3 will become outdated in 2 years, 1 months, 16 days, 9 hours, 12 minutes and 36.7531 seconds, no sooner and no later (According to US Eastern Standard time, of course. ) I think that a MP3 death clock should be created from this estimate.

MP3 Life?

Reply #2 – 2003-04-01 02:21:28

what format do you think will replace it?

MP3 Life?

Reply #3 – 2003-04-01 02:32:11

In all seriousness, I think that MP4 and OGG will be the successors to MP3. OGG support is very near (and is already present in certain portables), and MP4 should have no adoption problems. As for why MP3 will become replaced - there are better sounding alternatives. MP3 is an old standard with limitations, it is closed source, and codecs such as MPC (and to a lesser extent MP4 and OGG) beat MP3 in quality throughout the bitrate spectrum (MPC kills MP3 at higher bitrates, and OGG at 128kbps kills MP3 at similar bitrates.) This is why I feel, in all seriousness, that MP3 will be replaced somewhere down the line.

Edit - I feel that both OGG and MP4 will replace it. B)

MP3 Life?

Reply #4 – 2003-04-01 02:36:18

I see. Thanks a lot. Mp4 sounds better just because it is almost the same name as mp3 and i'm not too familiar with this OGG format. Can mp4 play in mp3 players? and has it started stable development yet?

MP3 Life?

Reply #5 – 2003-04-01 03:53:44

MP4 cannot be played by the same players, and MP4 is just the file extension Apple uses. The actual codec is AAC.

MP3 Life?

Reply #6 – 2003-04-01 05:05:42

mp3 has been getting beated handily in the sound quality/bitrate dept for a few years now. Hopefully, ogg support will be widely adopted soon enough. But don't worry about mp3 becoming obsolete. Its market penetration is too deep for that. People will start encoding their stuff in ogg or whatever, but they're not going to get rid of all their mp3 files. Trust me, it'll be around for a long time still.

MP3 Life?

Reply #7 – 2003-04-01 05:29:43

Ahem... I would not call mp3 exactly "closed source", heavily patent encumbered, yes, but there was a reference "source" (dist10) open for scrutiny... Lame was originally a patch for this.

I think there were mp3 encoders back in 95, its 8 years old at least.

Ogg Vorbis is very attracting, because its not patent encumbered, and manufacturers can add support for it without paying royalties to anyone. In fact, i'm a bit suprised of the long time its taking, but the "domino" effect will prevail. The very first portable mp3 came from an "unknown" (to us) korean brand, and so is the first ogg vorbis portable.

Yet the powers that be wanted aac to be the next generation mp3. And it is expected to be massively supported. Unfortunately, the monopolistic Microsoft sneaked their own wma thing first, using its windows platform, its no wonder they can push whatever they want, no matter how bad it really is.

I think the matter won't be easy, we see so many different and oposing interests confronted here. What the customers wants, what the manufacturers want, what microsoft wants, etc.

My logic tells me Ogg Vorbis should win, it is the best bet, cheapest but good enough. Sure, "big brands" will use their aac/wma first, but wait those korean/taiwanese players flooding the markets... That will teach them some lesson (again).

Will mpc remain as a niche for enthusiasts like us? It rules in computers, dunno about dedicated hardware. Its unresolved patent issues remain a mystery, maybe that will get cleared and there will be an extra format for top quality encodes?

wma s0xx0rs: bad quality, supports drm, microsoft backed, etc

aac.. Hrmmm good question, it may be the mp3 history all over again, who knows? Problem is it has very strong competence, using much simpler encoders. Aac seems very complex and still achieving similar to the rest, not to mention patent/royalties nightmare all over again. I don't think the communities will back aac, its entering too late the race, we will see.

mp3? Its legacy is its only support, the big amount of songs already encoded with it, and hardware capable of playing it. But now you can do better with newer formats. Ogg Vorbis alone, should be able to match its quality, even if by using brute force, since it can go past beyond the 320kbps frame size limit of mp3. Mp3 encoders are very mature and nearing its end of possible improvements, where ogg vorbis encoders are basically just born.

mp4 is a meta format. Are you not confused? Stupid they, using such a silly extension. Its almost like .mov I suppose the idea is to have mpeg4 video streams and aac audio streams within that .mp4 thing.

But then again .ogg is a meta format as well. You can put video and audio inside ogg. Some lazy people rather renamed the ones containing video to .ogm just so they can tell their file managers to launch "a video player" instead of "an audio player" when "double clicking them".

.ogg with theora video stream and vorbis audio stream is a reasonable prediction, it should go against that .mp4 thing. Backed by the open source community, its future is bright.

MP3 Life?

Reply #8 – 2003-04-01 05:48:29

Quote

Ahem... I would not call mp3 exactly "closed source", heavily patent encumbered, yes, but there was a reference "source" (dist10) open for scrutiny... Lame was originally a patch for this.

Sorry - I don't even know what I was thinking (Obviously not much ), considering I've compiled the freely available LAME source code myself . I feel that OGG will prevail myself, considering that it doesn't require royalty payments, certain file sharing programs already support the distribution of the format (Not that I'm in support this, just stating it as a fact - besides, as it stands now, most Vorbis files available for download are 64-96kbps transcodes of MP3s :x ), and that existing hardware is being modified to take advantage of the format (I-River players, etc...). MP3 is not a bad format (listen to a LAME v3.90.2 encoded --alt-preset file and you will realize this), but when it comes to portables where low bitrate is key, AAC/MP4 and OGG hold a decisive advantage over other formats.

MP3 Life?

Reply #9 – 2003-04-01 16:07:03

Quote

mp3 has been getting beated handily in the sound quality/bitrate dept for a few years now.

Where?

I only see people beating MP3 at this forum. And the amount of forum users is not even statistically significant compared to the amount of MP3 users.

In the end, I believe people will be driven by inertia (MP3) and marketing (WMA). The tech minded ones will use MP4 or OGG. And that's all. (IMO)

MP3 Life?

Reply #10 – 2003-04-01 16:11:40

Quote

MP4 cannot be played by the same players, and MP4 is just the file extension Apple uses. The actual codec is AAC.

This is not true - MP4 file is the container format for audio, video, scene data, etc... (similar to AVI, but much better and more flexible) - one of the codecs which elementary streams could be put in the MP4 file is AAC (audio codec), but there are others as well (CELP for speech, etc...)

MP3 Life?

Reply #11 – 2003-04-04 03:52:35

Mp3 is flawed but it seems to be good enough for most people. I'd move to MPC or OGG in a flash
if I could play them in my car, dvd player, and portable. Until then I see only mp3 in my future.

MP3 Life?

Reply #12 – 2003-04-04 17:08:57

If LAME has made mp3 for the most part transparent (aps, ape) then what is the improvement these other codecs offer? I mean, transparent is transparent and I am aware there are problems with some samples, but aren't these problems fairly rare? So, what is meant by the statement "MPC kills MP3 at higher bitrates" that I saw? Is it that their capability gives them the ability to better encode the very few cases of non-transparency that makes them so much superior? If so, then isn't the small improvement is being given unproportionally high praise?

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not trying to be defensive about mp3. So often I have read how great the LAME encoder has become and how excellent it is and whatever other superlatives given it. Now it seems to be falling out of favor. What percent of people (and I mean the general population) can ABX the best quality produced by any current mp3 codec from the best quality that any other flavor of audio codec can produce. As far as that goes what percent of all the people that follow HA? I consider myself above average when it comes to demanding quality and I am almost certain that I could not on almost any hardware.

MP3 Life?

Reply #13 – 2003-04-04 17:41:48

Quote

So, what is meant by the statement "MPC kills MP3 at higher bitrates" that I saw?

Here are the advantages that I have found for MPC over Lame with Alt Presets

1. MPC is much much faster. On my Duron 800, I am encoding around 7x realtime. When I was using --alt-preset-FAST-standard, I was getting around 3x. Decoding a 5 minute song takes around 1 second. Decoding mp3 is significantly slower (sorry, i don't have measurements!). Thus it works better on slower computers, and it's nice to not have to wait for files to decode when burning an audio cd.

2. MPC has a lower average bitrate. My average is around 170kbps. My Lame apfs average was around 200, which is more than my highest MPC (195). Also, mp3 is forced to use bitrates such as 128, 160, 192, etc... whereas MPC can use _any_ bitrate value for each frame.

3. MPC does transparent quality by default. Lame requires users to learn about highly-tuned tweaks and options to achieve transparent quality. The only option I use for MPC is --xlevel (which gives a bit more dynamic range for loud music).

4. The vast majority of people using VBR mp3 formats complain about gaps between songs. For example, if you rip all the songs off a CD to separate files and play them in order in Winamp, you will notice that any tracks that are mixed together will have a pop or gap in between them. This is an intrinsic problem of VBR mp3 -- it is a design flaw that cannot be fixed without hacking the specs of the format, resulting in non-standard mp3s. MPC does not suffer from this problem, and the decoder handles gapless playback by default.

The real big points are 1 and 2. While Lame APS may be transparent for you, it is much slower and larger -- it is less efficient. The standard sentiment of this forum seems to be "only use MP3 if you want portable player support".

MP3 Life?

Reply #14 – 2003-04-04 18:05:25

harryzonker (Posted on Apr 4 2003 - 04:08 PM)

Quote

So, what is meant by the statement "MPC kills MP3 at higher bitrates" that I saw? Is it that their capability gives them the ability to better encode the very few cases of non-transparency that makes them so much superior? If so, then isn't the small improvement is being given unproportionally high praise?

Any improvement is an improvement, and should be given such praise. We could all still be using FhG @ 256kbps according to r3mix.net's definition of transparency, and yes, it would sound good and be transparent in MOST cases, but it would fail under demanding samples. LAME and it's --alt-presets improve upon creating a transparent compression scheme at about 190-210 kbps, but it still fails at times, as all lossy codecs do. MPC is an improvement over LAME in the fact that it does not fail nearly as often on critical samples. It still fails from time to time, but I would rather have my music collection backed up with MPC -q5 as opposed to LAME --alt-preset standard, as I feel more confident that MPC wont fail if it has to encode a complicated section of music. Paranoos gave a host of other reasons why MPC is a superior format to MP3. All things fall out of favor over time - this is the only way that progress is made.

MP3 Life?

Reply #15 – 2003-04-04 18:17:25

Great summaries paranoos and ViPER1313, worthy of mention the FAQ, IMHO. However, addressing paranoos' post, I think the gaps between tracks are not a problem with "VBR MP3", but with all MP3's. My CBR MP3's don't have gapless transitions, either. Hopefully, the development of that OFL Playback technology might one day make this a moot point.

Also, it's my impression that the people with really good ears on this forum can routinely find flaws in the --alt-presets with certain music types (Autechre-type music with many computer-generated transients, for example).

MP3 Life?

Reply #16 – 2003-04-04 19:54:09

Quote

Any improvement is an improvement, and should be given such praise.

Absolutely.

I guess what I don't understand are the superlatives given to the current favorite flavor. Sure it's an improvement but it's not like there is this vast improvement that absolutely trashes the previous. It is an evolution in sound processing. The improvements are real but not revolutionary and the improvements are not just in audio quality but also in file size and processing time.

Still, I would hate to see lame alt-preset trashed as being so much inferior when it is, sonically, an excellent encoder with +99% transparency. As I see it, sonically, unless you have the type of music that SometimesWarrior mentioned, there is still no compelling reason for redoing your entire alt-preset collection. However, for future encodings you should switch to another encoder. Man I have a lot of my own aps rips that I will not redo. Apparently, the greatest improvement achieved by the newer encoders are in file size, processing time and simplicity.

Thanks to paranoos for making some good points especially #3. It would be nice if any encoder would give you the same quality and without having to obssess over options.

MP3 Life?

Reply #17 – 2003-04-05 03:28:48

Quote

when it comes to portables where low bitrate is key

Sillyness. I'd think people would be used to Moore's law by now.

Let me put it this way:

By the time AAC makes enough inroads among average consumers (the ones who use Xing and wma now) that typical portables begin to widely support it, NVRAM will make today's Ipods look quaint.

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