Cringley predicts Microsoft Audio will triumph 252
Chris Siegler writes "Cringley's latest pulpit predicts that Microsoft Audio will prevail over Real/IBM in the fight for distribution of music on the web. MS Audio 4.0 encoding results in smaller files than MP3 by half, with the same quality.
Read the full
article over here. " What do you folks think? Yea? RA's installed base is pretty darn huge-but only MS can compete with that.
MPEG Confusion (Score:1)
He calls MP3 "MPEG Level 3" when in fact it is MPEG 1, Layer 3.
He then says that MPEG Level 4 is coming, but that too is misleading. MPEG-2 audio AAC is already much better than MP3 in sound quality/compression.
And MPEG-4 Structured Audio won't actually improve sound quality compared to MPEG-2 AAC (it in fact incorporates it in the standard). MP4 adds audio objects, more or less like MIDI tracks along with as many MP-2 AAC audio tracks as you wish.
Clear?
AL
killing mp3? not likely... (Score:1)
That didn't slow down Microsoft at all.
Cringley misses the revolution (Score:1)
A record industry with little need for giant music companies. Of course, PR, touring, etc. will still need large institutions to run, but all of the A&R people and fat cat executives will be rendered worthless in the coming years. The recording industry will NOT SURVIVE the Internet in its current form. RIAA and the corporations understand this. This is why they're battling against MP3 so hard.
A given band may not reach quite the popularity that they otherwise might in today's wretched system under the new rules, but they'll probably make more money since they'll be able to keep the lion's share of their album profits, which currently go elsewhere. More bands making a living == more diverse music and more of it.
Remember - the current music industry is extremely anomalous compared with the rest of human history. Before the 20's or so, there were no real means of recording music (player pianos aside). This is all uncharted territory, but a revolution that puts the artists in control of their material and in closer contact with their fans is ultimately a positive thing.
Anon. coward who should get around to creating an account.
Copyright History (Score:1)
Does anyone remember what the cable TV industry did about their copyright violation problems?
As R.X.C. pointed out, a copyright allows the "owner" to protect their property. But that does not come with out major expense. The cable industry would have had to track down each violator, gather evidence sufficient to bring a court case agents the violator. Then, if the case was won, the only amount that could be garnered was the amount of money provably lost. i.e. if they can prove that someone stole cable for 4 months, then that person would have to pay for 4 months of cable and court cost, but they could not charge for their out of pocket expenses of tracking down the violator. This would have to be done on a case by case basis. Positively too expensive to actually implement, and totally a money losing proposition for the cable industry.
So, the cable industry lobbied congress. And congress made a single exception in the copyright law. They made it a federal offense to steal cable. Now, your tax dollars are used to track violators, gather evidence, bring them to court. And the penalties are much greater, including possible jail time.
This is not fair because it applies to only one type of copyright -- cable. Not to books, not to software (more on this in a sec.), not to anything else. Just cable.
Later, this precedence was extended by the video industry. It became a federal offense to copy a rental movie.
Further, Bill Gates also lobbied congress and using these two precedences, and got it to be a federal offense to copy software. (This is only one of the reasons I'm very involved with Linux and the FSF.)
MP3s won't go away, just like cable piracy didn't go away just because it was copyrighted. So, I predict that the recording industry will do the same. They will make it a federal offense to put those MP3s on the net and the FBI will hunt you down!
Summary (Score:1)
The version given in the encoder is: 4.0.0.3688.
Summary (Score:5)
No it doesn't. I've encoded samples in both. M$ comes out almost 100K fatter than MP3 when encoded on the same bitrate settings. The smaller file size you're seeing in M$ propaganda is referring to their FM Audio codec, which, while not the quality of MP3, still gets some pretty impressive numbers. For them to try to transparently compare their FM Audio codec to "CD" Quality MP3 is sneaky, and very Microsoftian of them.
Here we have a sample 7 minute 27 second song. If you encode using 128kbps on both encoders, MP3 pans out at 7,164,784 while M$ pans out at 7,258,922.
M$'s "32kbps, 44 kHz, stereo" codec (tagged as "FM Audio") smashes the size down to 1.76 MB. The sound is still pretty impressive for that size (remember, this is a 7 minute 27 second song), though it does sound like a low-quality cassette tape recording.
Conclusion: M$ will make new breakthroughs on streaming over low-speed dialup type connections (watch out, RealAudio), but for high quality audio, MP3 is safe for the time being.
A Free Format is Needed - Microsoft? (Score:1)
If the MS format is as good as they claim (which I doubt) and we can find out the format and algorithm and there are no patents on it, then the MS format might actually be a good choice. So long as we can get a free implementation of it.
We need a compressed audio version of gzip. It starts the migration towards a free format, but has decoder support for existing MP3's and thus is backward compatible.
Ways to circumvent copy protection (Score:1)
A Free Format is Needed - Microsoft? (Score:1)
A Free Format is Needed - Microsoft? (Score:1)
Problem with this is, 'audio compression' is not really compression per se. It's done by throwing out parts of the audio that the ear is less sensitive to. So what happens is that these companies do research into what they can throw out or what they can keep, then patent doing that. Now this reeks of patenting a discovery, which AFAIK isn't legal, but it's how things work.
The only way around this that I can see is taking advantage of the fact that the basic concept has been understood for decades. Using 'old knowledge' and implementing it with standard filtering techniques should keep clear of patents and get you file size reduction, but I'm not at all sure that the quality/size ratio would be good enough to make people want to use it.
The other thing to keep in mind (as other people have noted) is that this is not a trivial exercise at the research level. Coding it all up might not take long at all, but figuring out what to code could easily take years.
A Free Format is Needed - Microsoft? (Score:1)
Ok, gotcha. I don't know if it's possible though. Thing is, gzip implements an already free format. When Phil Katz came up with it, he expressly put it in the public domain. Therefore, any program can use it.
The problem with audio 'compression' is that the means of doing it have been patented out the wazoo, which causes problems with other implementations. In as far as compatibility, if it were to happen, you would probably have to have programs that used the free algorithm and also contained an mp3 decoder.
As time goes on, I'm getting more and more intrigued by the idea of (someone) trying this. It would require a lot of disparate skills, and I don't believe the same filesize/quality ratio as in commercial implementations is possible, but perhaps there is a 'good enough'.
There would be a lot of obstacles, not the least of which is that it would probably be better to develop in hardware then move it over, but I'm starting to wonder if it isn't at least worth trying. Would be fun, anyway. ;)
Quicktime has an audio codec too (Score:1)
Free, hell (Score:1)
I think you get the idea. Sorry, no fscking way, homie don't play that game: I'm with the guys saying 'resist!'. It _amazes_ me how many people are ready and willing to put their heads in a noose for short-term gain. Just say no to selling your future out for a temporary prettyshinything.
How Do *You* Listen To Music? (Score:1)
killing mp3? not likely... (Score:1)
Winamp v2.11, due to be released in a few days (some people already have it since it was accidentally placed on the FTP server prematurely three days ago), has support for MSAudio 4.0 files, so people with winamp can play them.
RealAudio -- good riddance (Score:1)
Actually, I think Cringely is right... (Score:1)
My idea of the future is:
Artists release MP3's for free, they get very popular, they tour to make money.
i'm sure you do (Score:1)
Cross-platform? (Score:1)
Their commitment, then, to being cross-platform's a lot weaker than I'd like it to be.
how about an open standard of MS's quality? (Score:1)
Has anyone made an open standard that offers this kind of compression quality?
Why should I care?? (Score:1)
You know what you're missing?
Cheap bandwidth. right now.
Well maybe not you have it, but certainly joe sixpack doesn't have it. Disk is cheap, but you've got to get it there. Yes, cable modems, ADSL, etc are coming, but even Gartner, Zona, etc say it'll be 2002 before it really penetrates.
Joe sixpack isn't going to wait 20-30 minutes to suck a song through his 28.8 AOL connection - regardless of whether he paid for it or not.
50% smaller is a lot to joe sixpack.
It's the hardware that matters, not format. (Score:1)
I don't understand, how could the consumers accept another format? Mp3's popular because of the bootlegs. Why would any other copyrighted format suvive?
Nobody (besides geeks) in their right minds want to listen to their state of art music files in the PC. People want portable --which is the only weakness in CD. CD's too big and too short (one hour) The perfect machine to me is that a MD player size box that plays, records, receive AM/FM and has good ui to program the huge song list. The mp3 player of next generation is GOING TO do that, why would anyone else want to try a new format?
Let me get this straight, you prefer paying 3 dollars to download an audio4.0 Hanson new release in half of the download time of the same mp3 song, rather than getting the song free? Unless you just want to buy one single, nobody will choose download over CD, at lease you can give/lend your CD to your friend. Right?
Mp3 Low quality is bullshit, get a 256kps mp3 file. Audio4.0/realplayer pay format is exactly like DVIX, now only high end disk player can play both DVIX and DVD, low end disk players only play DVD(mp3).
CY
A good thing? (Score:1)
On another note, how can anyone think this new format is a good thing for preventing music piracy? One can always convert MP3s to MS Audio (Winamp already does this), and hey, it's even easier to distribute, hence the smaller file sizes! If you convert whatever format to this audio4.0, it will insert a secret ID in it, which can only play on your PC (granded it can play on your registered M$audioMen as well.) Do you really want it? Do you want to register again whenever you drop your MSaudioMen? CY
Why should I care?? (Score:1)
Disk is cheap. right now.
Yes, disk is cheap, but bandwidth isn't. Don't underestimate the appeal of a format that can compress twice as good as MP3, and therefore cuts download time in half.
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You have to pay for it, dude.
Why should I care?? (Score:1)
Unfortunately, until everyone gets cable modems or DSL or whatever companies are promising to bring, mp3's will still take quite a bit of time to download.
And even if everyone had cable modems, think of problems associated with cutting into the Internet bandwidth. Man, it'll still be slow.
If everyone has cable modem, people will start to attach low quality "Seifeld" on email, I honest believe it.
CY
They think.... (Score:1)
They think i will start paying for songs i download for the net just because i will download this microsoft format which is smaller and of similar quality...
they must be idiots...
MPEG Confusion (Score:1)
I alreadly prefer the MS Media player over Real. Not becuase it's free, but because I get better sound quality at 56k (mostly 44k) dial up. I got suckered by Real into buying the "Plus" version thinking I was going to get better quality (twice I've done this). Stupid me. Never again.
Are you serious?!? Real Player is free, the plus has the additional feature of recording. Now tell me, can win media player record? Being a sucker doesn't make Real worst than Window.
CY
We're too used to MP3-quality to trade down to MS (Score:1)
And I'm glad to say that after three years of listening to high-bitrate MP3/AAC tracks, I'm in no hurry to make the quality trade-off. And I'm sure that I'm not the only one.
RealAudio, on the other hand, is in trouble.
We're too used to MP3-quality to trade down to MS (Score:1)
RealAudio, on the other hand, is in trouble.
Baloney! (Score:1)
The future lies in better-than-CD (24 bit, 96 kHz, for example) audio, not some deft simulation of "CD-quality". RealAudio, MSAudio, and MP3 are good promotional tools for now, that's all. And as long as the only flavors of downloads tend to be Vanilla, French Vanilla, Super Vanilla, and Vanilla 2000, the revolution will not be streamed or downloaded. I wouldn't pay a dime for a scoop of this.
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it matters a little (Score:1)
Many of your choices are limited to what people put on their server. In the radio realm, a Toronto station just switched from RA5.0 to WMP (still serving an RA stream, I think, but un-Linux-able now); I wrote them two or three days ago, and this little irony was mentioned. They haven't replied, nor do I think they will. Yes, I was extremely polite.
For just ripping-and-archiving your CDs, the file format is up to you, but if sites (large and small) end up signing on to MS-only (and maybe Mac as well) solutions, I'm locked out when it comes to listening to other peoples' music (or talk shows, or news broadcasts, or football matches, etc). What about the openness and platform-agnosticism of the Net?
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It's not that simple (Score:1)
Only 0.01% of artists can make more than chump change this way.
The only revenue stream that is affected is records sales, of which 90% of profit goes to record company anyway.
Not all record companies are crooks; not all companies are parts of giant conglomerates. What about the thousands of indies out there? Either way, that revenue stream is shared with the artist, some times quite fairly as well. If artists and companies feel they have to take steps to defend that revenue stream, I respect that, even if I don't always agree.
Furthermore, for lesser-know bands, CD sales are increased, not decreased, by widely available "try it for free" music from those artists. The only thing MP3 kills is the monopoly the big record companies and radio media conglomerates have enjoyed in deciding who will and will not be successful.
In an ideal world, this would be true; the infrastructure isn't quite there yet. The corporations still rule, for the most part. It may work for some early-adopters now, but I've yet to see some huge Net-only success story; of course, I haven't been looking all that hard.
Remember, these are the same people that gave us the Spice Girls!
And traditionally, the giant profits that a Spice Girls recording generates will embolden a corporation to use some of the money to subsidize recordings that are orders of magnitude more cool and daring than the Spices. If you own a major-label CD by some cool band that hasn't sold eleventy-jillion (or even 50,000) CDs, chances are that their portion of the catalog has been subsidized (in part) by the profits derived from selling chart-topping crap.
Excuse me, but what kind of moron buys something they already own? If I own the CD, I can legally make recordings in any audio format I damn well please, why the hell would I PAY for somebody else to compress the audio, when I can do it myself for free?
A legitmate technical shift will get listeners to buy what they already own. People have replaced old vinyl recordings with the same music (often with bonus tracks) on CD; people will, in the future, do the same when a better-than-CD medium comes along. But the MiniDisc, MP3, and all the other current file formats are not the killer-app sort of technical shift that will induce us to buy something we already own. Sony, Real, and MS are -- to some extent -- Fighting The Last War here; I'm not sure whether or not this is all a bit overhyped. Just a turf war, nothing to see here...
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Doubtful (Score:1)
FWIW... (Score:1)
Is it just me? (Score:1)
Yeah, just ActiveX was supposed to crush Java! (Score:1)
yet Java is still going strong.
PNG is supposedly better than GIF and JPG, yet
still the web is dominated by GIF images.
Even if M$ throws all it's R&D into a proven
better format, Real and MP3 have too strong a
foothold to push aside.
No, PNG is not a Microsoft format (Score:1)
regardless of where they came from.
My point about ActiveX is Microsoft can't shove
another technology aside just by flooding the market with hype about it's own competing
technology.
Not really. (Score:1)
Streaming audio:
mpg123 http://www.server.com:7000/
Summary - false reasoning (Score:1)
Your fallacy is in concluding that two algorithms using the same bitrate sound the same. You can record a plain wav file at 128 kbps. It'll just be mono 8-bit, 16 Hz, and will sound crummy. You just can't use numbers to compare audio quality at the same bitrate. You have to do double-blind testing.
There is a possibility that the MS 128 kbps codec sounds better than MP3. Than it is a better algorithm. I agree that the "half-size" claim is almost surely false, but that does not mean that they don't have a better scheme.
Summary (Score:1)
I wonder where Microsoft stole this technology...
Microsoft.... (Score:1)
Maybe you'll see it in your winamp plug-ins.
Easy choice (Score:1)
All is not lost, however, since all of MS's audio codecs are really derivatives of mp3.
Re: decoding cpu requirements. (Score:1)
This was on a K-6 233MHz, 128MB of RAM, Windows NT 4.0SP4.
Who cares... mp3 will stick (Score:1)
music online. As long as I have an encoder (and so does every other non-Win32 user) It won't matter because anyone can encode. With Microsoft you lose that ability.
Finally, it's not like they can outlaw MP3 encoders, I doubt the commercial MP3 companies would stand for that.
They couldn't outlaw CD-R, and floppy disks, after all
Why not? (Score:1)
In this case(transportable digital audio), the best stuff is defined by smallest file size at a given audio quality level. There are other factors that *might* affect the quality rating such as memory or processor needs of the decoder, but these days, almost anyone has enough cpu and ram to handle just about any 2 channel audio imaginable.
Half the size? (Score:1)
We should be keeping our ears open for truly high fidelity formats, like DVD-Audio, not tuning them to "enjoy" sub CD-quality music. DVD-RAM audio-- no that would be something.
Why should I care?? (Score:1)
> artists/rights owners get kick backs based on
> the amount of airplay their songs get. (Once or > twice a year, radio stations send playlists
> back to a few writers groups to get money for
> how much their artists are played.)
Already in practice where I come from.
In my homecountry of Iceland there is an organization formed by artists themselves and record companies. It collaborates with the radio board. Every month or so all radio stations send a list of songs played to this org. The org. then does some math and calculates how much each artist should be paid. The radio stations then pay the org. which then pays the artists for their airtime.
IF the radiostations don't pay their dues they will be shut down or prohibited from playing music as a result.
Check out QDesign for a *real* MP3 competitor (Score:1)
On the downside, besides the lack of a Linux version, there's no provision for live encoding (as RealAudio offers for realtime encoding of radio stations, etc.) and apparently the encoder is extremely CPU intensive. Also, there aren't any feature-rich players for the format (with playlists, EQ, skins, etc.) as there are for MP3.
Even with these limitations, if you want to see the real state of the art, not MS second-rate garbage, check out QDesign.
Bandwidth is the key factor (Score:1)
Yes, but bandwidth isn't, and that's the real issue here. If it takes half the time to download, them MP3, RealAudio etc. don't stand a chance, cross-platform or not. Sure, you or I will still be able to encode and play back CDs, but we probably won't be able to download music from the net, and there may well come a time when music is only available in downloadable form. CDs may well not exist in the not too distant future.
Bandwidth is the key factor (Score:1)
That's a big if. I can't see M$ doing anything other than releasing a zero-cost client. Yes, they'll charge vast amounts for the streaming server, and probably the basic encoder too, but if the public have a free client, they'll start demanding that people supply audio in that format, given it's apparent (in their eyes) superiority. It worked for RealAudio, I have no doubt it'll work just as well for M$ (at the expense of the rest of us).
Ways to circumvent copy protection (Score:1)
All it will take is an open sourced format... (Score:1)
Microsoft will have limited impact. (Score:1)
Summary (Score:1)
The line "smaller files than MP3 by half, with the same quality" means that you could encode using MS Audio at 64kbps and get the same quality as an mp3 at 128kbps.
PNG NOT *Microsoft*, and he didn't say it was. (Score:1)
PNG support is spotty. According to the spec it is superior, but no one has implemented the spec entirely that I know of. The GIF decoder isn't the issue, but the LZW compression encoder is.
GPLed Compression Anyone? (Score:1)
I think the Melissa virus proves that you could get slammed for using a Microsoft proprietary system.
The Melissa virus proves that security holes can exist in pieces of software. It's just a newer version of the Internet Worm, and I don't remember any MS ware being involved in that.
I think ultimately the real solution will be for some enterprising young matematicians to work out a GPLed equation for compressing audio and video. I think when that happens not only will the market be totally broke, but free software might win a huge battle.
Yes, it'd be nice. It's also very unlikely to happen, considering that most new codecs that appear are incredibly complex things, requiring masses of brainpower and development time and money. I keep seeing Slashdot comments about proprietary codecs that say "Well, let's just do a better one and GPL it," like it's a matter of getting 3 or 4 good coders on a mailing list and hashing it out in a month or so, in the style of most open-source projects. It's just not going to happen that way. The best chances of a world-beating free codec come from academia, but with all the commercial funding and brain-draining that goes on I wouldn't be surprised if we never see one.
Music should be free! (Score:1)
What if music really was free? There would still be radio, IP or RF based, and therefore there would still be popular bands. And *live shows*.
That's the ticket: live shows. Live shows could still get 60,000 people to pay $20 a head for nice $12 million per event, even if noone payed a dime for the album. Not bad.
Imagine a world where thousands of bands distributed their tunes *freely*. There would be countless numbers of bands with web sites that distribute their music. There would probably be paid employees of "popular music" web sites (and radio stations) that would scour the web for new music, as well as handle new releases for known popluar bands. I see mp3.com heading full-a-stern in this direction.
And of course, just like now, the best of the best would still make millions from their live shows and drive around in Maseratis (at 185) and eat green M&Ms.
Unfortunately, I don't see this world coming soon. Perhaps the continued work of the MP3 pirates can help bring this world to fruition. I *don't* see how MS Audio can help.
There are still intellectual property rights to be worked out, even if music is free. For example, if I cover a song that was written by another band, I should probably pay them a royalty. Perhaps this could be treated like patents: after 17 years, all music would be royalty free.
Indeed (Score:1)
Why should I care?? (Score:2)
I have mp3. Right now.
I have aac. right now.
They work. right now.
Disk is cheap. right now.
Do you see a theme here? :-) My point is that I don't really care what the music industry and microsoft do, and I don't think that many other average digital music consumers will either. The MS format is a little smaller. Whoopee. Small price to pay for a lot more freedom. Like I said, disk is cheap.
/dev
Microsoft.... (Score:1)
Won't there be a watermark?
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I can see it now... (Score:1)
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Listen for yourself HERE: (Score:1)
I listened to the samples (all at the same bitrate) as well as the original
Listening to the MS Audio 64k rate (which is indeed 1/2 the size of a MP3 at 128k) is literally painful.
Privacy is still the Achilles heel (Score:1)
First, watermarking only works if the listener's ID is added every time a track is purchased. CD's don't offer this functionality. It will always be possible to walk into a CD store, pay cash, and get a recording with no traceability whatsoever.
Secondly, people just don't like being registered and tracked. The PIII controversy was just the beginning. Can you imagine giving the RIAA your name and address every time you buy an album? Do you want your kid harassed if his friends "borrow" some tracks and put them on the net?
Next Generation (Score:1)
The fruits of mp3/net-based broadcast and distribution breakthroughs will not be realized (as I think you suggest) by today's pop stars. If anything, they will 'suffer' to some degree, perhaps, as their parent Industry flips and flops on the skillet trying desparately to save itself at the expense of anything and anyone within clawing distance.
I think your idea of a Nirvana like band breakthrough is right on, and in time, the same Regular Joe's who have grown familiar with buying books direct via Amazon et al, will be buying their cd's direct from artists through low-cost mp3.com type distributors. More power, money and credit will go to the musicians and engineers who actually MAKE the product.
Change is always painful for someone. That's life!
i'm sure you do (Score:1)
Summary (Score:1)
Or are you talking about earlier versions of the codec?
Not as good as Mp3 (Score:1)
As bandwith and storage prices fall, I would guess that sound quality will be more important than file size. Hence, M$ will have yet another failure on their hands. (The next one is called Windows2000)
Modern audio codecs are very complex (Score:1)
Modern music audio codecs are VERY complex. They begin with frequency transformations, then use perceptual modeling to figure out which frequencies of the audio signal are "masked" by other louder frequencies. Then you quantize the frequency coefficients using Huffman or arithmetic coding. The way you quantize is very important and takes a lot of tweaking. Then comes linear prediction. It's tough stuff! Not that it couldn't be done by a CS grad student though.
Bamba no longer in development (Score:1)
Forgone conclusion? (Score:1)
Because the quality is generally so bad, I usually only use RA to listen to "radio" stations.
A more important problem for Linux users is that many sites are converting to the G2 format meaning that the VERY OLD (they can't even be bothered to provide a fix for the 2.2 and glibc2 issues) RealAudio player is rapidly making RA a non-entity.
If MS were to release a Linux-based player in short order, I'm guessing many people would use it.
This is another area where IBM really screwed the pooch by dropping Bamba. Had they made a concerted effort, they could have flooded the market with encoders and clients.
"Why should [they] care [about freedom]??" (Score:1)
People don't generally value freedom (for its own sake) that much anymore.
*knock knock knock*
Lemming: "Hello?"
Idealist: "Have you heard about products X, N or B?"
Lemming: "Yeah. Everyone's talking about those. But I already use product Y from vendor Z. You're not selling one of them, are you?"
Idealist: "No. I'm just concerned for the long-term welfare of humanity. Maybe you shouldn't use product Y."
Lemming: "Why not? I like it better. Products X, N and B aren't as good."
Idealist: "Have you used products X, N or B?"
Lemming: "No."
Idealist: "Then why do you say that?"
Lemming: "Because I like product Y and it's what I alrady use. Why switch?"
Idealist: "Well, among other things, using product Y serves to prevent you from using products not from vendor Z..."
Lemming: "So? All I ever use is vendor Z's products anyway."
Idealist: "There are less expensive alternatives to vendor Z's products that work better for most of the things I know you do."
Lemming: "But those don't work as good with vendor Z's products."
Idealist: "Look, using products from vendor Z is denying you the freedom to use better and less expensive products when they're availible? Doesn't that bother you?"
Lemming: "So?
Idealist: "Don't you care about having the freedom to try and use something better (and cheaper)?"
Lemming: "Well, I guess. But I don't really have a choice, because everyone else uses product Y too..."
Idealist: "But you DO have a choice! There are people using other, better, products that all work together. You're choosing to limit your own freedom by choosing product Y. The more people that use product Y, the less free everyone (including you) becomes."
Lemming: "Yeah, but most people are already using product Y with vendor Z's stuff. Could you leave me alone please?"
Idealist: "AUGH&*#@^$*(#@&^$&*#@^"
Lemming: "I'm calling the police..."
totally wrong (Score:1)
Summary (Score:1)
I don't know what the MS codecs sound like, but Mpeg2 Layer 3 sounds quite nice at low bitrates (~24Kbps).
MP3 Dead? Long Live MP3! (Score:1)
Won't go away.
Nuff said.
RA used to be the shit (Score:1)
What I've noticed since then is that every single site that has Real Audio content only has it in 16kbps mono, which is, to be frank, shit. I occasionally try to look long and hard for the 128kbps streams I listened to back in school, but of course they've been replaced with 16kbps items.
I guess too many people complained about not being able to listen to them over their 28.8 modems.
RealAudio -- good riddance (Score:1)
Network audio is a good idea. If we can bring the sound quality up to some reasonable standard, it will be even better.
Hopefully Microsoft won't sit on their standards.
How Do *You* Listen To Music? (Score:1)
I have checked out the free mp3 selection on mp3.com, and like you, found very little high-quality music worth my time. There were both good and bad, but the bad tended to outnumber the good... at least in my humble opinion.
If I find an artist I like, I tend to go out and buy the CD. It's not THAT huge of an investment, really. As a bonus, you get professionally printed cover art, and much improved sound quality.
DVD audio should be cool if it's a solid standard. Plus, the DVD audio machines will no doubt be able to play CD's.. So current music investment is pretty safe.
Forgot about MP4 - also, MPx will NOT die! (Score:1)
EOM
MP3/4 won't die. (Score:1)
read about the LARGE group of MP3 enthusiasts like my friends and I. We rip
each other's CD's and cram CDR's with as many as will fit and play them on our
workstations at work. I have a Linux development box next to my workstation
playing MP3's that I ripped from CD's I own. Screw M$ and their proprietary
format. Hopefully MP4 will improve the compression. If MP3/4 goes mostly
underground I'll be fine with it. I have no fear that certain companies will
keep producing mp3/4 hardware players. The cat's out of the bag and I
seriously doubt that M$ or anyone else can put it back in.
BTW, I had to post this from that Linux box since the Winblows media Player co-opted the ".pl" extension on my NT box and when I hit "submit" it tried to play the Perl file. I HATE M$. more every day.
EOM@
MP3 is not the Neutron Bomb (Score:2)
MP3 won't kill off anybody anymore than the VCR or the tape deck did. The record companies need to stop dreaming of 78s and start capitalizing on the new technology, whether through value-add or new distribution techniques. I would say that the VCR and audio tape deck did more for their respective industries in terms of increasing sales, rather than decreasing sales, since their introduction. Like Microsoft, the record companies want to control the playing field, even if that means stifling or co-opting (e.g., encoded MP3 files) the playing field.
--Philip
Bamba (Score:1)
Guess It's No "Net Music" For Me, Then! (Score:1)
Resist! It is not futile.
Locutus
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain (Score:1)
Smoke and mirrors. It amazes me people believe even half of what spews from Bill Gates' mouth and any of what comes from MS PR.
Locutus
Bamba (Score:1)
IMHO
Locutus
Why should I care?? (Score:1)
Locutus
Doubtful (Score:1)
How Do *You* Listen To Music? (Score:1)
Not to burst your bubble, but PE and IceT are has-beens. So is Prince.
Sigue Sigue Sptunik? Hahah.
How Do *You* Listen To Music? (Score:2)
I would say that this might provide the IBM/Sony system with an advantage, as Sony is a leading vendor or portable and console equipment, but I think they are still more interested in DVD Audio.
On the other hand, MP3 is also dead in the long run. sorry folks, but the selection of artists using MP3 is simply far too weak. Please, no arguments about "the music biz telling me what to like" - that argument is ridiculous. The leading users of MP3 are garage bands who couldn't score a gig playing a bum's funeral.
In other words, its still up for grabs. Whether DVD Audio will win out is the bigger issue.
Deconstruction of a Microsoft Press Release (Score:1)
Interesting to notice how little industry support Microsoft has on this one. Also, how strong Real is.
Also, WMT does MP3, too.
Why should I care?? (Score:1)
Open Standards (Score:1)
IBM et al. have shown recently that they're truly interested in developing new technologies, both to increase their profits and the gee-whiz value. Microsoft is just doing this as yet another attempt to keep the world strangled in the jaws of Windows.
I'm really starting to miss the old world, where we as customers could decide what products we preferred, instead of having them rammed down our throats before there's even a chance for competition on the marketplace...
Not the same bitrates! (Score:1)
I don't know whether it's true, I haven't heard it, but that's what they're claiming. So encode an MP3 at 128kbps and a M$ format file at 64kbps and see what you get.
Why should I care?? (Score:1)
Kris.
Win a Rio [cjb.net] (or join the SETI Club via same link)
How Do *You* Listen To Music? (Score:1)
Either I; Listen to a national, public, "youth" radio station called "TripleJ" and occasionaly get inspired to buy a CD from an up-and-coming band - often on an independant label, but not always. Then I copy the CD to the MP3 library on my hard drive.
Or I; Check out the new uploads at MP3.com in either the electronica section, or in my local region (Perth, Australia). I download these files into the MP3 library on my hard drive.
Then every few days I regenerate a randomly ordered playlist of all the MP3s in that library and play them on and off during the day using K-jofol. And every day I randomly select 48MB (using RioPump - cool) to load onto my Rio for that day's "wandering and waiting"
Whenever I feel that one of the (new-ish) songs I'm listening to is particularly cool, I specifically try to source some more from that artist.
I have an older PC connected to my Hi-fi with about 250MB for MP3s - it also has a CD drive, for both audio and data/MP3 discs.
I'll be burning my first two volumes of MP3s to free up some space on the hard drive soon - then I'll be adding a random MP3 CD into the random mix described above.
Notice how I quite legally (or at least morally) create my own MP3s from CD. If M$ releases a proprietory system were I have to pay for the compressor, I'm not going to be interested. Anyway, I've bought a Rio, so I've said that MP3 is plenty good enough for me.
Kris.
Win a Rio [cjb.net] (or join the SETI Club via same link)
Yeah, just ActiveX was supposed to crush Java! (Score:1)
This is useful, but not the last word in active content.
Kris.
Win a Rio [cjb.net] (or join the SETI Club via same link)
Why "just one" format? (Score:1)
What Cringley misses completely here is the difference between physical packaging and digital formats. In digital form, it is not only possible, but advantageous to have different standards -- after all, WinAMP can play WAVs and MP3s equally well. All that is needed for the Rio to play the next-generation audio format is a firmware upgrade.
Besides, given that quality is not likely to exceed CDs, people will encode their existing CD collection to whatever the digital format of choice happens to be at that time. No sales there.
The RIAA is just to have to get used to the fact that there's only so much money you can squeeze out of a single product.
- Richie
Wow--two sets of sleaze in the same room! (Score:1)
Maybe they can all go to Hell together! They'll certainly be as far from Janice and the Jim's as they can...
You know when I'll realize all this is over? When I can turn on the radio and hear some real *art* for a change.
I especially like the part about buying the same music all over again--has a real ring to it, you know?
Oh--and they most *ceartainly* will be as far from W.A. Mozart as possible. Now *there's* an example of how pigs are so good at throwing flowers in the mud...
Parallels (Score:2)
They'll win in the same way, too. Windows 2000 will include IE, Media Player, and native support for all things Microsoft Audio. What average user will bother downloading anything else?
Only the court case could change anything. But does anyone seriously believe that it will?
MPEG Committee website (Score:2)
GPLed Compression Anyone? (Score:3)
In the long run, it will be who can steal the most music which will determine who wins, and not who has the best compression. Lets face it, if you're running an MP3 warzes site now, I doubt that you're going to jump on the MS bandwagon and land yourself in jail really soon...
I think the Melissa virus proves that you could get slammed for using a Microsoft proprietary system.
I think ultimately the real solution will be for some enterprising young matematicians to work out a GPLed equation for compressing audio and video. I think when that happens not only will the market be totally broke, but free software might win a huge battle.
but that's just my little opinion.