MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain

nadamsieee refers us to a piece up at Wired on the fallout from Microsoft's recent courtroom loss to Alcatel-Lucent over MP3 patents. From the article: "Alcatel-Lucent isn't the only winner in a federal jury's $1.52 billion patent infringement award against Microsoft this week. Other beneficiaries are the many rivals to the MP3 audio-compression format... Now, with a cloud over the de facto industry standard, companies that rely on MP3 may finally have sufficient motivation to move on. And that raises some tantalizing possibilities, including a real long shot: Open-source, royalty-free formats win."

the problem with format patents

[timster]

We shouldn't pretend that a patent cloud over MP3 means that everyone will move to Vorbis. The trouble is that the numerous patents for audio compression aren't limited to any specific format; they are patents on ideas and mathematical functions, like all software patents. So it's hard to say that Vorbis doesn't infringe just because it's open. Remember with patents, you are still liable even if you come up with the same idea independently.

So does anybody really know if there are any patent issues with Vorbis? Has an audit been done somewhere that I haven't heard about?

Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore?

[mumblestheclown]

Why not? Beacause at some point you reach the point of diminishing returns. There is always the next great format that is n% better. But at some point people just don't care any more. Do you look at the file size of your mp3s any more? can you REALLY tell the difference between 256khz and 512khz (hint: if you say 'yes', you are lying). At some point you have to stop fighting over that last n% and start working towards what is achievable. To put it another way, you have to stop playing theory (the art of the theoretically possible), and start playing politics (the art of achieving the practically doable.)

Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore?

[garcia]

can you REALLY tell the difference between 256khz and 512khz (hint: if you say 'yes', you are lying).

If you can't then your hardware for listening sucks. Put on a set of great headphones and tell me you can't hear the noise in a 256k lossy music file created from a CD. Make a FLAC of that same file and tell me if you hear that noise.

FLAC is far superior to any lossy formats but it creates absolutely huge files and yes I do pay attention to the size of my music collection because it's all in FLAC or SHN.

There's a worry here

[heretic108]

Would I be right to worry that when I upgrade to the next Ubuntu release, or update within the release I'm running, that I might find several programs and libraries quietly dropping their MP3 support, leaving me with gigs of unplayable files?

Are linux distros about to get hit with a torrent of C&D letters?

OGG won't be able to take over completely from MP3 until most/all home stereos are able to play ogg CDs in the same way they can now play MP3 CDs, and until most/all personal music players can work with ogg files.

convert

[Cytlid]

time sox song.mp3 song.ogg
22.845u 0.336s 0:23.19 99.9% 0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w

Not bad, cpu is only 2.4ghz. This was a 3.5mb mp3 and it ended up as a 2.9mb ogg.

Or just WMA

[phorm]

And that raises some tantalizing possibilities, including a real long shot: Open-source, royalty-free formats win.

What about WMA, since it's an MS format I'm assuming that they don't have to deal with the same issues as mp3, and many other companies already support it on their products (car stereo, portable players, dvd players, etc). I'm not sure what the licensing terms are, but even if mp3 disappears it doesn't mean that an open format will automatically be the one to take the stage (not that I would mind in the least if ogg/flac support did increase)

Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore?

[PopeRatzo]

This leads me to a question I've wanted to ask the Slashdot community:

When music files are available on a website, which format makes you happiest?

I've considered all the usual suspects, mp3, ogg, flac, even wma. If you were visiting a website of a favorite musician, in which format would you prefer to see the music offered? DRM is absolutely not an issue, but I might attach a small digital "tag" or signature (audible or inaudible at the end of the file), not to prevent copying, but rather to identify the piece's author.

If you have time I'm even interested in knowing which bitrate you'd prefer and whether 5.1 surround vs regular stereo is important to you.

Thanks.

No, you just don't know

[Anonymous Coward]

> Low quality,

Huh? WMA at 64kbps sounds almost exactly like MP3@128kpbs. For the vast majority of people this is good enough - it's a lossy codec, for sakes.

> large file size,

OK now, WTF??

> DRM,

Well, um... if you enable a checkbox. I guess. Anyone can add DRM to any format, up to and including OGG. Are you expressing your dislike for the company or are you just ignorant about what DRM is?

> mixed content executable,

Excuse me?

> what's to love?

Well, your post here - that's for sure. FUD much?

Re:Everyone's thinking this ...

[steelfood]

Yes and yes!!! Bingo!

A bit of strategic nudging from the RIAA here and there with their lawyers, and we might just see many of the large commercial audio tools (rippers and players) entirely drop non-drm format support in an upcoming version. iTMS for example, might entirely drop their mp3 encoding support.

Of course, in reality, mp3's won't be going anywhere, patent violation or not; it's far too established. We'll see wma's more often, but private music collections will still be mp3.

Re:standard vs chaos

[Dan Ost]

Out of curiosity, when does this patent expire?

Re:There's a worry here

[Trogre]

While not prevalent in the industry yet, but this chip is a start [www.vlsi.fi].

Re:Hardware prices are the real issue

[John Whitley]

Portable Music Players will play whatever it's cheapest to get hardware for.

Which is exactly why iPods all use software decoders on general purpose embedded cores. Having a codec-specific chunk of silicon fails to be a solution the instant you want to do anything other than decode (or encode) one specific format. As soon as you need to handle a number of different encoded formats or do both decode and encode, that codec-specific hardware doesn't look so spiffy anymore.

Re:Hardware prices are the real issue

[Bertie]

I believe it's also more processor-intensive, so you need faster hardware to do the decoding. It's certainly harder on the batteries in any device that can handle it. On the upside, it's more space-efficient and sounds massively better bit-for-bit, even compared to LAME's best efforts.

Anyway, moral of the story is: go buy a Samsung Z5. Near enough the same size as an iPod Nano, more solidly built, and just as nice UI-wise, but with more functionality, and about twice the battery life. Sounds great, too. Oh, and it's a fair bit cheaper. Yes, it does Ogg.

Re: The title of the post makes no sense whatso...

[Dolda2000]

Not only that, but I suspect that it is in fact far from what the title appears to want. The fact that it is Microsoft which has lost the lawsuit makes me think that it's just going to get worse for everyone instead. I mean, think about it for just a millisecond: Microsoft loses the right to distribute MP3 decoders with Windows -- What do you think will happen:

1. They turn around 180 degrees and include a Vorbis decoder with every version of Windows.
2. They advertise WMA even more than before.

Emphasizing, again, that this is Microsoft, which do you think seems more likely?

Re:Sorry, MP3 is here to stay...

[Teancum]

The only comparison that I could possibly give here is with the GIF image standard that also had nearly identically widespread use by nearly every website, dial-up BBS, and computer lab. It was The Image Standard that all other image file formats were compared to, and several graphic image manipulators only dealt with the GIF format at all.

And then came Unisys, who instituted insane royalty policies that effectively killed the format for anybody who wanted to create software that used the format or even post GIF images on their websites. I know this first hand, because I tried to obtain a license for a software package that I wrote that would display GIF images on stadium scoreboards. Unisys was insisting on a 5% royalty for the entire system, meaning the entire scoreboard. Needless to say that other than as a demonstration to prove the software could be written (it was anyway, but not sold until the patent expired), we didn't sell the GIF codec with the stadium software. BTW, that was 5% of $20 million, which was considered insane by my supervisors for just a few stupid images that could easily be converted to other formats instead.

If you look around today on the web, the GIF format, even now that the patent has expired, is largely a minor file format and its use is largely fading still. Jpeg files largely took over the slack, although file formats like PNG and others did come up to help take up the slack from GIF as well.

In this situation, it is up to those stakeholders of the MP3 file format to see just how far they will try to milk their patents and attempt to extort those companies who have published MP3 players. If the royalties are modest and they use their head (like not going after FLOSS developers), you may be right that the MP3 file format is so entrenched that there will not be any other file format. But if they get a case of greed and stupidity, it will mean the death of the file format.

Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore?

[bzipitidoo]

Yes, and I'll add that vorbis has superior sound quality. mp3 degrades rapidly when you go below 128kpbs while vorbis is still very good at 96kbps. To get transparent sound out of the mp3 format, some people feel they have to push the bitrate all the way up to 320kbps. With that high a bitrate, might as well just use FLAC. For most music, vorbis achieves transparency at 192kpbs.

I keep an eye on http://wiki.xiph.org/VorbisHardware [xiph.org] . Next time I get a car radio, I'd like one with an input jack but without a CD player. Take some of the complexity and expense out of the car radio and let the portable music player handle the decoding and reading of media be that from a CD, or flash memory or a mini HD. I'd like the car radio to be like a home stereo amp and tuner and nothing more. So far, I haven't seen anything that fits.

Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore?

[Cadallin]

No, you buy better hardware so that when you listen to high quality classical or other acoustic recordings, you have the dynamic range and frequency response to actually hear both the loud and the quiet parts of the music. The sounds of violin, cello, cymbals, or piano (as in a real concert grand) get damaged by lossy encoding.

When listening to hyper-compressed pop or electronica, yes, there's no point. I do indeed doubt its possible to tell the difference between such music encoded lossily at reasonable bitrates and lossless encodings. Enjoy. Those of us who enjoy classical need better equipment, of course our equipment also tends to be brutally revealing of the poor mastering practices used for pop music.