Developers of the MP3 Have Officially Killed It

[Red Falcon]

I rip my Classical Music in FLAC. In the more dynamical sounding Classical Music, i.e symphonies and chamber music, I can hear the difference but not in most other kinds of music.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by underscore

Mp3 was great 20 years ago when we had space issues on hard disks.

It's still great for portable music players and smart phones today, players and phones which have about as much storage capacity as their 20 year old predecessors.

Most of the perceived problems with MP3 are at low bitrates (or due to badly written encoders which the early ones were). LAME at 190Kbps (-V 2) and up is transparent for most sources. The real benefit to other formats like AAC and OPUS is at low bit rates, 128Kbps and less. So, if your library is MP3 at 190Kbps or higher then you probably won't gain anything from re-ripping the entire library -- unless you're like me and want accurate CUE files and your library's previous incarnation was ALAC converted to FLAC.

On the other hand, the only reason to format shift from MP3 to anything else is if you need to fit a large library on small media and you don't care about generational degradation. And if you do that? Keep the source-ish MP3 files around.

[HarryT]

Wikipedia reckons that MP3 is now patent free:

The basic MP3 decoding and encoding technology is patent-free in the European Union, all patents having expired there by 2012 at the latest. In the United States, the technology became substantially patent-free on 16 April 2017 (see below). The majority of MP3 patents expired in the US between 2007 and 2015. In the past, many organizations have claimed ownership of patents related to MP3 decoding or encoding. These claims led to a number of legal threats and actions from a variety of sources. As a result, uncertainty about which patents must be licensed in order to create MP3 products without committing patent infringement in countries that allow software patents was a common feature of the early stages of adoption of the technology.

The initial near-complete MPEG-1 standard (parts 1, 2 and 3) was publicly available on 6 December 1991 as ISO CD 11172.[68][69] In most countries, patents cannot be filed after prior art has been made public, and patents expire 20 years after the initial filing date, which can be up to 12 months later for filings in other countries. As a result, patents required to implement MP3 expired in most countries by December 2012, 21 years after the publication of ISO CD 11172.

An exception is the United States, where patents in force but filed prior to 8 June 1995 expire after the later of 17 years from the issue date or 20 years from the priority date, a lengthy patent prosecution process may result in a patent issuing much later than normally expected (see submarine patents). The various MP3-related patents expire on dates ranging from 2007 to 2017 in the United States[70] Patents filed for anything disclosed in ISO CD 11172 a year or more after its publication are questionable. If only the known MP3 patents filed by December 1992 are considered, then MP3 decoding has been patent-free in the US since 22 September 2015 when U.S. Patent 5,812,672 expired which had a PCT filing in October 1992.[71][72][73] If the longest-running patent mentioned in the aforementioned references is taken as a measure, then the MP3 technology became patent-free in the United States on 16 April 2017 when U.S. Patent 6,009,399, held by[74] and administered by Technicolor,[75] expired.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Li...nd_legislation

If the last remaining US patent did indeed expire on 16th Apr 2017, this may explain the timing of this: Fraunhofer are no longer issuing licences because they no longer hold any rights to the technology.

[leebase]

Adding my voice to what's already been said. The forum thread name should be changed to: MP3 are now officially free of patents. They aren't dead at all.

If you've been using them, keep using them.

[AnotherCat]

In case anyone is interested in the history of MP3 I found How Music Got Free by Stephen Witt to be a very interesting read.

It covers its various developers, its coding format competitors, the involvement of MPEG, its history in the distribution of illicitly copied music, etc. It is a very easy read, written in an informal style without being burdened with technical detail.

But be warned, even though it is a history without taking a stance, its extensive coverage of the protagonists and the role of MP3 in the distribution of illicit copies of music will likely cause copyright keyboard warriors to suffer an apoplexy

[spindlegirl]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Well, it's a bit of a balance between
a) re-ripping all my CD's to a lossless format that I wont be able to tell the difference of anyway
b) Not bothering
c) creating an island base in a volcano with a giant laser so I can take over the world.

I'll be honest b) looks kinda tempting, I'd go for c) but it's just sooo 70's.

I go with B, I still am enjoying playing the music the way it is, and don't notice anything amiss.

I'm pretty easy to please in that department.

[Rand Brittain]

Hm. Would it be worth keeping my audiobooks in a different format? I have about 50 GB of audiobook mp3s that might be worth converting if they'd sound the same but be smaller in another format.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Rand Brittain

Hm. Would it be worth keeping my audiobooks in a different format? I have about 50 GB of audiobook mp3s that might be worth converting if they'd sound the same but be smaller in another format.

I don't know if any lossless format would be smaller than the mp3, and any lossy format would reduce the quality (at least theoretically.)

[JSWolf]

The thread title is very much incorrect. MP3 has not been killed. It's license has been allowed to lapse because the developers feel there are better lossy audio technologies out there.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

MP3 has not been killed. It's license has been allowed to lapse because the developers feel there are better lossy audio technologies out there.

No, it can no longer be licensed, because the last patent protecting the technology expired last month, as I posted above. Anybody is now free to use an MP3 decoder with no licence needed.

[baalajimaestro]

Originally Posted by Rand Brittain

Hm. Would it be worth keeping my audiobooks in a different format? I have about 50 GB of audiobook mp3s that might be worth converting if they'd sound the same but be smaller in another format.

AAC MUSIC's A BIT SMALLER YOU KNOW?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by baalajimaestro

AAC MUSIC's A BIT SMALLER YOU KNOW?

Ogg Vorbis is smaller and sounds better.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by baalajimaestro

AAC MUSIC's A BIT SMALLER YOU KNOW?

A little. A 128Kbps stream before lossless compression is a 128Kbps stream regardless of the encoding. Different encoding formats use different lossless compression algorithms after they perform their bitwise reductions so there are some differences but those are fairly small. As a practical example, my master FLAC library is 170GB. This library transcoded to Opus at ~250Kbps (max VBR) the replica is about 47GB. The same FLAC library transcoded to MP3 at ~250Kbps (LAME max VBR) is about 49GB.

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Ogg Vorbis is smaller and sounds better.

Sounds better is true only for bit rates below 190Kbps and especially below 128Kbps where MP3 fails miserably. MP3 (LAME encoder) above 190Kbps is transparent for most sources. While Vorbis and Opus may be better than MP3 at 190Kbps and higher bit rates as measured by machines, the differences are beneath human hearing thresholds.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by ratinox

Sounds better is true only for bit rates below 190Kbps and especially below 128Kbps where MP3 fails miserably.

Depends what your usage is, of course. I use 48k MP3 to record spoken voice radio programmes such as drama, cricket commentaries, and it's absolutely fine. But my classical music I record as 320k MP3s.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Depends what your usage is, of course. I use 48k MP3 to record spoken voice radio programmes such as drama, cricket commentaries, and it's absolutely fine. But my classical music I record as 320k MP3s.

True enough. I should have made it clear that I mean that 190+Kbps MP3 is transparent for most music sources.