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I tip the bottle to the awful MP3 format.. .farewell

Flint

Flint

Prodigal Son
Superstar
https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/12/mp3-is-dead-long-live-aac/?sr_source=Facebook

It is coming to an end. Existing products will always be able to use the format as long as they are functioning, and new players will continue to decode the format, but people who license encoders to get finely tuned results won't have access to the encoders after their existing licenses expire.

That leave my favorite WMA and the fantastic AAC (not Apple's AAC) which may pick up steam in my world. Of course, FLAC isn't going anywhere. The article makes it sound like Apple was ahead of the curve by offering AAC for store downloads, but remember that they employed an extremely limiting DRM with AAC which allowed the user to only play the music on their iPods and Mac products, later letting Windows users use AAC DRM with iTunes on their PCs, but only with the iTunes player, and eventually adding support for iPhones and iPads. I don't know if Apple is still employing their "Apple-only" DRM with iTunes Store downloads.
 
Flint said:
https://www.engadget.com/2017/05/12/mp3-is-dead-long-live-aac/?sr_source=Facebook

It is coming to an end. Existing products will always be able to use the format as long as they are functioning, and new players will continue to decode the format, but people who license encoders to get finely tuned results won't have access to the encoders after their existing licenses expire.

That leave my favorite WMA and the fantastic AAC (not Apple's AAC) which may pick up steam in my world. Of course, FLAC isn't going anywhere. The article makes it sound like Apple was ahead of the curve by offering AAC for store downloads, but remember that they employed an extremely limiting DRM with AAC which allowed the user to only play the music on their iPods and Mac products, later letting Windows users use AAC DRM with iTunes on their PCs, but only with the iTunes player, and eventually adding support for iPhones and iPads. I don't know if Apple is still employing their "Apple-only" DRM with iTunes Store downloads.
Click to expand...

They dropped DRM entirely years ago. There has been zero DRM on iTunes purchases for at least six years.
 
Really sucks that they are not simply going to put it in the public domain. That's kind of a dick move. I agree that AAC is a better format, but huge numbers of devices (car audio systems come to mind) do not support it. MP3 is supported by nearly everything.
 
Free versions of MP3 Encoders will be around forever. The high quality encoders you licensed directly from the Fraunhofer Institute (like the one included in my high end audio edited suite, Wavelab), are going away making commercial MP3 releases slowly fade away.
 
Haywood said:
I agree that AAC is a better format, but huge numbers of devices (car audio systems come to mind) do not support it. MP3 is supported by nearly everything.
Click to expand...
Please help me reconcile the claim with the statements. Given that 320MP3 is indistinguishable from "CD" sound quality-wise, how is AAC "better." Smaller size files for equivalent sound quality? (But given how cheap "space" is, and how fast one can stream / download nowadays, even if MP3 is not "as good" what practical effect does this have.) Call me curious.
 
JeffMackwood said:
Please help me reconcile the claim with the statements. Given that 320MP3 is indistinguishable from "CD" sound quality-wise, how is AAC "better." Smaller size files for equivalent sound quality? (But given how cheap "space" is, and how fast one can stream / download nowadays, even if MP3 is not "as good" what practical effect does this have.) Call me curious.
Click to expand...

AAC is more space efficient. It doesn't sound any better.
 
Flint said:
Free versions of MP3 Encoders will be around forever. The high quality encoders you licensed directly from the Fraunhofer Institute (like the one included in my high end audio edited suite, Wavelab), are going away making commercial MP3 releases slowly fade away.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I usually buy discs and rip them. My wife buys her music almost exclusively through iTunes. I abandoned AAC for my music a long time ago, due to lack of support with all devices. That is the same reason why I only use FLAC for an archival format. This is becoming increasingly irrelevant as more and more of my listening moves to streaming, even when listening to my own library.
 
JeffMackwood said:
Please help me reconcile the claim with the statements. Given that 320MP3 is indistinguishable from "CD" sound quality-wise, how is AAC "better." Smaller size files for equivalent sound quality? (But given how cheap "space" is, and how fast one can stream / download nowadays, even if MP3 is not "as good" what practical effect does this have.) Call me curious.
Click to expand...

I do not accept the premise that MP4 at 320kbps is indistinguishable from CD. In many cases with popular music which has extreme dynamic compression, limited frequency response, and distorted harmonic interactions in the instruments already masking each other, the lossy compression at high bitrates is fully sufficient at reproducing an audibly identical sound. But with outstanding recordings miked acoustic instruments in real ambient environments without much dynamic compression, I don't think MP3 can pull it off unless lossless, like FLAC.
 
Flint said:
I do not accept the premise that MP4 at 320kbps is indistinguishable from CD. In many cases with popular music which has extreme dynamic compression, limited frequency response, and distorted harmonic interactions in the instruments already masking each other, the lossy compression at high bitrates is fully sufficient at reproducing an audibly identical sound. But with outstanding recordings miked acoustic instruments in real ambient environments without much dynamic compression, I don't think MP3 can pull it off unless lossless, like FLAC.
Click to expand...
Perhaps.

I based my claim on my recollections of a peer-reviewed published paper on the topic, which was discussed on this forum some time ago. It was from (I think) a Quebec / Montreal university; Concordia, Ecole Polytechnique, or McGill. I can't seem to track it down.

Again from my recollections, the study involved listening tests by both lay people and trained professional sound engineers, and at 320kbps and higher, the stats showed no ability to distinguish.

If there are other such papers that dispute that, it would be good to give them a read.

Jeff
 
I just found the paper - or at least a presentation summary of it.

http://www.music.mcgill.ca/~hockman/documents/Pras_presentation2009.pdf

I am somewhat wrong. Here were the conclusions.


Conclusion


- Trained listeners can hear differences between

CD quality and mp3 compression (96-192 kb/s)

and prefer CD quality.

- Trained listeners can not discriminate between

CD quality and mp3 compression (256-320 kb/s)

while expert listeners could.

- Ability to discriminate depends on listeners’

expertise and musical genre

- Artifacts can be verbalized and do not depend

on musical genre



My recollection is supported by the first part of the second bullet and was the basis for my claim. The second part of that bullet supports Flint's claim.

Jeff
 
That paper was presented at AES in 2009. It ended with a hint that a comparison of CD and high resolution formats could be next. I'll look to see if there are any.
 
Also keep in mind that the trained listeners were all recording engineers and that the study was conducted in an acoustically tuned room with equipment beyond the wildest dreams of most members of this forum (due to cost). If those guys cannot tell the difference and even the "experts" in the study could only tell a bit more than half the time, I am certainly not going to pretend that I can hear it (especially with average equipment in an average room.
 
And by the by, one interesting result of the McGill paper was that CD was preferred over MP3 much more for "Electric: Pop, Metal rock" significantly more than for "Acoustic: Vibraphone, Orchestra, Opera" - which would be contrary to Flint's musings about what types of recordings would most show the differences. Intuitively I agree with Flint, but the data does not support this.

Jeff
 
I think there is a lot of placebo effect in this hobby. It exists on the video side as well. I am willing to bet that the majority of home theater enthusiasts can not discern the video quality difference between an original Blu-Ray and a high quality 12-15Mbps rip of one in a double-blind test. I would also bet that the same is true of lossless codecs (i.e. Dolby True-HD) and lossy codecs (DD 7.1) on MOST source material.
 
Haywood said:
Also keep in mind that the trained listeners were all recording engineers and that the study was conducted in an acoustically tuned room with equipment beyond the wildest dreams of most members of this forum (due to cost). If those guys cannot tell the difference and even the "experts" in the study could only tell a bit more than half the time, I am certainly not going to pretend that I can hear it (especially with average equipment in an average room.
Click to expand...
Me neither.
 
In the old forum days, I posted some comparison files where I subtracted the original uncompressed audio from the lossy audio. The result was shocking in showing exactly what was removed from the original uncompressed audio file. It also showed some other artifacts which show the workings of the lossy codec.
 
rammisframmis said:
In the old forum days, I posted some comparison files where I subtracted the original uncompressed audio from the lossy audio. The result was shocking in showing exactly what was removed from the original uncompressed audio file. It also showed some other artifacts which show the workings of the lossy codec.
Click to expand...

At what bitrate?
 
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