MP3's Loss, Open Source's Gain 331
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."
is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it always Ogg Vorbis? What about FLAC? [sourceforge.net]
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Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
Ogg is Xiph.org foundation's streaming container format. Vorbis is Xiph.org foundation's lossy audio codec. FLAC is Xiph.org foundation's lossless audio codec. Everyone's clear now
Even more anal retentive (Score:5, Informative)
- Ogg is a container like Matroshka (MSK) or AVI (but better than that one. Almost anything is better than AVI)
- Vorbis is a sound codec, just like AAC.
FLAC is a format that considers both the compression codec AND the container (something like MPEG : you have both codecs, like MPEG-2 MPEG-4, MPEG Audio Layer III, and containers like MPEG Programm (MPG files)).
You can have a stand alone FLAC file (with one given container format) or by using another switch on the command line, you can have FLAC compressed audio inside an OGG container.
The first is called "Native FLAC", the second "Ogg FLAC". See here [sourceforge.net]
Re:Even more anal retentive (Score:5, Informative)
Gah!
First of all, it's Matroska and the extension is MKV.
Second, whether AVI is better or worse than Ogg is debatable. Any who has ever written an Ogg (de)muxer curses it's name frequently. It's extremely codec-specific, and the format is rather loosely defined, with no consistent standard way to do much of anything....
AVI has it's limitations, but they are few. Most of the problems people experience with AVI is due entirely to limited software which doesn't properly handle AVIs. The rest of the problems tend to be a result of lack of standards... For instance, Vorbis can fit into AVI just fine, but unfortunately, Xiph didn't define HOW exactly, so everyone has started doing it in their own, mutually incompatible way. Ditto for subtitles, and other meta-data.
So, the biggest problem with AVI is lack of any single official standards authority. Ogg has the same problem, but worse, since Xiph have ignored all efforts to extend Ogg to handle other formats, and now nothing is compatible.
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:4, Funny)
Stupid stupid name!
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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I used to prefer ogg on principle, but frankly I'm too lazy. I have a swim-proof mp3 player and anything can play mp3s. I got tired of fighting $5 mp3 players, mp3
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Yep. And the date that the patent expires isn't that far away now.
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:4, Informative)
I admire the Ogg Vorbis project for creating a free codec that may not be patent-encumbered, but my cars and my iPod don't play ogg files. Considering that I think of my cars as my personal listening studio, well, they're first on the importance list when it comes to compatibility. MP3 for me, and it will be for the foreseeable future.
All formats may be in danger (Score:3, Informative)
http://crunchgear.com/2007/02/24/patent-monkey-de
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Better than a simple double-blind test: a (double-blind, of course) triangle test. In a triangle test, each subject is given three samples of two substances and is asked which two are the same, and which he prefers. Answers to the second question are only counted if the first question is correct.
This is used a lot of in beer tastings, in order to help eliminate a little bit of untrustworthiness from the res
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
http://rockbox.org
OGG is spreading. (Score:3, Informative)
Several older asian player, that were mostly pure software player, with a general purpose processor and decompression implemented as a interger/fixed-point software in the firmware, can be flashed to add support for additional formats (ie.: using official plugins from the constructor, no need to completly replace the firmware with R
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I suppose if you're happy, that's all that matters, but your personal opinion doesn't really hold up against a double blind test [rjamorim.com]. The summary:
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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 with
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I want my... I want my Mp3...
Now look at them Lucents
That's the way you do it
You play your music on your Mp3
That ain't workin'!
That's the way you do it
Get your money for patents
and your suits for free
Now that ain't workin'
That's the way you do it
Lemme tell you these guys ain't dumb
Maybe get a lawsuit for your little codec
Maybe get a lawsuit for your Zune
We gotta install class action lawyers
Custom codec circuitery
We gotta move these patent infringements
We gotta move these Alcatel
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Someone tried! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Portable turntable (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Portable turntable (Score:5, Funny)
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
All the double-blind tests by audiophiles at Hydrogenaudio and other sites that due true ABX testing disagree with you. For most people, most of the time, with most types of music, pretty much every modern codec is transparent well below 256kbps.
Yes, people can train themselves to listen for the specific artifacts of different codecs, but if you're not an audio engineer, why would you want to?
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:5)
You don't have to take their word for it -- take the tests yourself. Or make your own, install ABX software and see if you can tell to any statistically significant consistency when you're listening to the original CD rip vs a 320kbps MP3. You'll be in a pretty small group if you can.
It's not like this is all being done in a dark room by a cabal somewhere. Put your ego where your mouth is -- lots of people "know" that they have to have the best possible quality, and then find out the hard way that they can't tell a 128kbps AAC from a DAT master when asked to prove it in a double-blind ABX test.
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:4, Informative)
It is all a question of frequency you can hear (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:5, Funny)
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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 reasonabl
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:4, Funny)
It can represent up to the sampling rate, instead of half the sample rate.
Using complex elements in the transformation matrix one can get 2X, but that causes many terms in the transform to not cancel out until the end, and thus uses too much RAM (O(N^2)) for embedded applications. I've even got it up to 8X the sample rate using quaternions, but the exponentially increased complexity makes it impractical even for the desktop (slower than real-time on a 3 GHz PC).
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:is storage that big of an issue anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
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I have a friend who can see the difference between 60fps and 72fps in online games and 60fps bugs the crap out of him.
I can hear the difference if i put on a CD and listen to it side by side- but not otherwise. MP3's - regardless of how good sound a little "muddy" compared to a CD.
However you are probably right that 256kbps vs 512kbps are basically the same (both will have some muddiness compared to a pure cd but be similar to each other).
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It's already been established you meant kbps.
But, yes, you can. Instead of your iPod headphones or car stereo, listen to the difference in an actual studio or club with a properly tuned sound system. And I don't mean self-powered Mackies or Yorkvilles running off of a Pioneer 600. Try something with a Rane or Allen & Heath with Turbo Sound, then we'll talk!
The difference between 256 and 320 an
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Why not? Beacause at some point you reach the point of diminishing returns.
If you start with CD quality audio (or any given uncompressed digital format), lossless is the absolute best you can do quality-wise while saving some space. There's nothing subjective about lossless formats, they don't try to second guess anything about human hearing or your audio gear. I like them for this concept, they're like unix in the sense that they do the job with no fuss.
There's no 'point' of diminishing returns about lossy formats, there's just a vast grey area that depends on lots of subj
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CD players would all have to become DVD players to make up for the difference.
Hard drive space may be cheap, but recordable media hasn't grown in size (well, there is Blu-Ray but the cost is prohibitive to the point of not being worth discussing). So yes, file size is still a big deal unless you don't listen to music on recorde
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Why not download FLAC files, and burn them to DVD... It won't cost you more or take more time than it did when you were downloading MP3s over a modem a few years ago and burning them to CD.
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I'm sure the math of off but you get the point.
Ya, it is (Score:5, Informative)
So the music is 44.1khz, 16-bit, 2-tracks, the voice you cut down a bit and do 22khz, 16-bit 1 track. That's about 2.6GB uncompressed. FLAC tends to get around 50% compression, so 1.3GB or so. Ouch. That requires over 2 CDs to do. If I'm on a DVD it's still a good amount of space. If we want to stick to a SL DVD, that means only 3.4GB for all other assets.
Now what if we go OGG? Well for speech we can easily go 64k. We can probably even push it to less if we want but 64k should give great speech quality. For music we could go pretty low since it is in game (UT 2004 is only 96-128k) but heck, we'll be generous and say 256k which is "CD Quality" on everything but the very best gear. That totals about 500MB. Much better, under a single CD now and nearly a 3x savings over FLAC. We can easily halve that again by going 32k and 128k respectively and still probably sound great to the vast majority of users.
For a music collection, sure use FLAC. It's your drive, you determine how much space you want to buy. For games, however, you need to be economical about it. You don't want your assets taking up more space then they have to, that can artificially limit your market.
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Re:if (!playsonipod){format.languishInTheMargins() (Score:3, Informative)
The title of the post makes no sense whatsoever... (Score:5, Informative)
Yet the title of the article says it's "Open Source's Gain"?
Re: The title of the post makes no sense whatso... (Score:5, Interesting)
- They turn around 180 degrees and include a Vorbis decoder with every version of Windows.
- They advertise WMA even more than before.
Emphasizing, again, that this is Microsoft, which do you think seems more likely?the problem with format patents (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
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I was under the impression that the people who made Vorbis specifically designed it to avoid infringing on any patents.
Re:the problem with format patents (Score:5, Funny)
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You mean patents like these [mp3licensing.com]..? :(
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Re:the problem with format patents (Score:5, Informative)
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Wikipedia article has a link and says "Although Xiph.Org states it has conducted a patent search that supports its claims, outside parties (notably engineers working on rival formats) have expressed doubt that Vorbis is free of patented technology."
Given that the USPTO seems to like giving patents for, you know, anything as long as it says "software", "internet", or "paradigm shift", I have no doubt at all that someone has a patent on something stupid, like "creation of music using digital file input" which
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Most interesting tidbit from the article (Score:3, Informative)
Re:the problem with format patents (Score:4, Informative)
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The chilling effect is the fact Microsoft did pay for the MP3 format. Even though they had a fully paid up license, another party claimed otherwise and won. It would be just like having a fully licensed copy of Windows Vista and Apple winning a lawsuit against you for the 3D desktop effects and winning.
It calls questions the liability of propery licensed software of any kind and expecialy software codecs. Having a l
Everyone's thinking this ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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MP3 is the *standard* because of users ... (Score:2)
MP3 will not get phased out, every digital device supports it, vast personal libraries are primarily MP3. To introduce a player on the market that does not play MP3 is suicidal. All that someone could do is not rip to MP3, but that will largely just push customers to use 3rd party apps. Both MS and Apple have failed to convince a large segment of their respective users to stop using MP3, even though they both have alternative DRM-free formats. Why use DRM-free AAC when storage s
Re:Everyone's thinking this ... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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the big problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Trust me, i would rather FLAK was the standard, but at least for the moment, it seems to have missed the boat.
I may of course be entirely wrong.
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i'm not a fan of microsoft but... (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't be true (Score:3, Informative)
I'm not sure what you're saying is accurate.
Hardware prices are the real issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Created Issue (Score:4, Informative)
M$ forbade ogg to users of their "plays for sure" DRM. This blatantly anti-competitive action was slapped down in the EU [theregister.co.uk], and lamely explained as a "mistake", but is a reason every cheap "mp3 player" does not also play ogg vorbis like my Trekstore or my Zaurus does. The hardware issue is spurious and there are low resource vorbis codecs.
Software patents suck and I'm happy I have mostly avoided mp3. It was a pain to get in the first place and it's still a pain. Too lame will give you "mp3" for your cheap player without patent problems, but vorbis is technically superior. Most of my music is ogg and I don't have any real problems enjoying it.
Re:Hardware prices are the real issue (Score:4, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
There's a worry here (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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Re:There's a worry here (Score:5, Funny)
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You should not worry as this software-patent madness is only about the US, Japan, Australia and few other countries. Europe, India and South Africa (where Ubuntu is from) are still free.
And, anyway, you can simply write a script to convert all your mp3s into wav and t
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BZZZZZZZZZZT! No way! At least not for anyone who enjoys listening to music, as distinct from people you enjoy carefully discerning something vaguely musical from a bunch of garbled noise. MP3 and vorbis are both lossy codecs, so the mp3 you start with is already missing information, you convert that to wav, you're still missing that information, you convert that to vorbis, you throw out more information and degrade the au
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convert (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
AAC is the most likely winner (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people just rip their CDs using the defaults, and thanks to the iPod, iTunes is surely the most popular digital audio program out there. I haven't heard with any patent threats to AAC, so I would suspect that more companies and people will move in that direction.
Bonus: AAC sounds better than MP3 at the same bit rate.
Re:AAC is the most likely winner (Score:4, Insightful)
As for the story that MP3 infringes on some patents, well it has no impact on how I will use my music. I also seriously doubt AAC will be patent free (or any other audio compression format for that matter), it's just that MP3 is popular right now and it's a nice big target.
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Or just WMA (Score:3, Interesting)
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)
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MP3 will stick around just like jpg.
How to play Vorbis on an Ipod? (Score:2)
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Howtos are on the site.
You flash the bootloader (using a tool they provide), then extract the daily-built rar file to your iPod (which you have to have formatted and enabled for Windows USB Mass-Storage compatibility).
Then, just start copying your music to your iPod/harddrive in whatever format/directory structure you want.
AAC, MP3, FLAC, OGG, etc, all supported
Why sue Microsoft? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Why only Vorbis (link im article) (Score:2)
Arguably it's better quality and smaller than Vorbis too, which for all intents and purposes could well be patented somehow somewhere, just hasn't been tested yet. At least you know where you stand with AAC.
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Re:Sorry, MP3 is here to stay... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.