What about MP3pro!? Options

[pixolex]

There are quality in MP3pro?!
Yes i now it's not free...but...it will replace MP3 in a near future?

[Atlantis]

It will replace MP3 in a near future?

I don't think so.
mp3pro is decent on low bitrates, but oggvorbis imo is better.
At medium bitrates acc, lame mp3 & vorbis are still better.
At high bitrates, mpc is the king.

The only way i would use mp3pro is on a portable player when going to work (listening to music and don't caring for quality)

bye

[kotrtim]

but...it will replace MP3 in a near future?

No never with it's max. bitrate at 160 kbit/s, and it's bad at high bitrate!
Maybe it will replace MP3 in term of streaming

[jesseg]

mabey something else will replace mp3 as the standard for streaming....

in fact, i can hardly sleep sometimes if i'm thinking about Shoutcast3 right before i goto bed. I sooooooooo wish I could tell you all about it, but Tom said I cant tell anyone yet.

oh well... I can soon - sometime this spring. I cant wait!!

[hans-jürgen]

There are quality in MP3pro?!
Yes i now it's not free...but...it will replace MP3 in a near future?

Well, for me it already has replaced LAME for my homepage sound files... It's only useful for bitrates up to ~96-112 kbps, because above that the SBR technology makes things worse again than using plain MP3. By the way, Coding Technology is aware of that and does not promote any such rumours as "beats LAME -aps at 128 kbps or even lower" and so on. They express the estimated sound quality improvements very clearly and unmistakenly on their website and even in the help file that comes with the free player/encoder from Thomson ("64 kbps sounds a little bit better than an standard MP3 file at 96 kbps"). They also do not suggest to push mp3PRO's bitrate up to 128 kbps and more with the variable bitrate settings in order to compete with standard formats at that bitrate, but they limit the usable bitrates to 96 kbps CBR in MusicMatch JukeBox instead, as far as I know.

So mp3PRO can easily replace low bitrate MP3 encodings because of its much higher quality, if you don't have to rely on an available portable player right now. But probably there will be some in the near future, because RCA is already late on its time schedule for a flash update of their Lyra players (last Christmas).

Another question is the long-term future of this format, because it will probably be replaced with aacPlus from the same company as soon as they (and the MPEG working group) are ready to release the codec. As mp3PRO is not part of any MPEG standard (and will never be), its basis for a further industry development is much smaller than for aacPlus that will be a core part of the worldwide MPEG-4 standard.

But until this happens, you can of course use mp3PRO for low bitrate encodings happily like me. By the way, there will at last be an input plugin for Winamp 3.x in February, says Coding Technologies, so these problems will also be a past-time story then.

This post has been edited by hans-jürgen: Jan 16 2003, 08:45

[Ivan Dimkovic]

AAC+ will be standardized in May - it is already in FPDAM stage with finished specifications.

All MPEG-4 natural audio member companies and M4IF will do their best to promote this format which proven to be the best in terms of perceived quality in the EBU listening tests revisited.

SBR in AAC is much more flexible than in MP3Pro, and of course, allows natural VBR (25-40 kbps for "lower" and 40-60 kbps for "higher" quality - all 44.1 kHz stereo) - And, the best of all, it is not so complex regarding CPU usage in the decoder Since it is a standard, it could be implemented by anyone (more decoders and maybe encoders :-)

[hans-jürgen]

AAC+ will be standardized in May -  it is already in FPDAM stage with finished specifications.

Yeah, I know...

All MPEG-4 natural audio member companies and M4IF will do their best to promote this format which proven to be the best in terms of perceived quality in the EBU listening tests revisited.

By the way, did you already see the full and complete EBU report from the 2002 listening tests somewhere? I only know the excerpts by Martin Dietz (only dealing with the results from the IRT in Munich) and the business newsletter from Yahoo from Dec 6, 2002, where someone claims mp3PRO to be the winner at 64 kbps and not aacPlus which won at 48 kbps (see Audiocoding.com's industry news for the link). I don't know where Yahoo has got these informations from, because I didn't bother to phone them for their "full report".

SBR in AAC is much more flexible than in MP3Pro, and of course, allows natural VBR (25-40 kbps for "lower" and 40-60 kbps for "higher" quality - all 44.1 kHz stereo)

That's interesting, why is it more flexible, because of the higher efficiency of AAC at low bitrates compared to MP3 or for some other reasons? And these kbps limits will be the default ones that get implemented into the MPEG-4 standard, or will the user be able to decide which bitrates should use SBR and which not?

And, the best of all,  it is not so complex regarding CPU usage in the decoder

You mean, even on my PC? "If it can make it here, it'll make it anywhere..." [Frankie]

Since it is a standard, it could be implemented by anyone (more decoders and maybe encoders

Yes, Nero AAC+ looks even better than Nero AAC... B)