I've been a big mp3 fan for years and although I've bought an iPod and tried m4a I've returned to mp3 (lame) for my choice of music storage.

Do you people think AAC will kill MP3 off?

The end is not even close. Now go, enjoy your MP3s, and stop worrying about the future.


BTW: No, AAC won't kill MP3. At least not while there is only one big company pushing the format adoption.

I'd say the margin by which any current codec outperforms MP3 is not enough to warrant a full switch. MP3 will probably be around forever.

MP3 is supported by thousands of programs and players, and very popular among people too.

Compare that to any other format, which only has a few thousand users around the world, and at most a few dozen hardware and software implementations... and you'll understand that MP3 is not going anywhere soon. Not for the next couple of years at least.

I too had recently made an abortive attempt to switch to aac, but have switched back to mp3 'cos the new lame 3.97 alpha is absolutely teriffic. I don't see myself chasing any other lossy codec in the near future. Although, admittedly I have a weak point for Ogg....
Thank you Gabriel !
Mp3 has been given a new lease of life.

MP3 survived to so many murderers... VQF, MP3Pro, WMA, MPC, Vorbis, AAC, ATRAC3, etc... I see people claiming MP3 imminent death five years ago. I probably claimed it myself four or three years ago. But in 2005, I can play MP3 on several devices whereas other formats are still supported by only few but often expensive ones. On the other side, encoders are still progressing, and user can choose between various recent implementations (HQ one, fast or even ultra-fast one).

Despite its old age, a lot of people are discovering MP3 everyday. I'm working in a school, and MP3 is considered as an innovation by many young people. Many people are also calling "MP3 players" every small DAP, even when they don't support MP3 (like several MiniDisc units).

Far all these reasons, I believe that MP3 will survive for a long time to many competitors supposed to replace him.

Are you telling me that there are only a few thousand WMA users in the world!? I wish it were true, but so many people use it cos they use WMP for their music for example... and that's everyone who doesn't really know or want to know or can be asked to find out what is better.


I too love the new 3.97 alphas (esp 10 & 11). I may go with Ogg Vorbis once the Rockbox team release a stable version of their iRiver H1XX firmware port, cos I can get more files onto my DAP at the same quality (my own perceived quality). Still depends on battery life though.

There are a *LOT* of WMA users, but generally they only stay WMA users until they find out what a PITA using WMA makes everything. Then they switch to MP3, generally.

AAC has seen widespread growth thanks to iTunes having it as the default, although it's more of the people ripping their own CD's to AAC. Most online filesharing remains MP3. AAC is also getting a lot of people complaining about it, which seems like a sign that it is being used a lot, IMO. Most of the complaints are poorly founded, of course.

I dunno. I now use AAC exclusively for new rips, but it's not enough of a quality/size jump for me to go back and rencode my older encodes. And most everybody not using an iPod is probably using MP3 for their music. So it's a bit of a tossup. MP3 is going to be around a long, long time, but eventually AAC will have a wider following and may surpass MP3.

"If these trends continue.... hey!" - Disco Stu

lame 4 should make mp3 even better should it not? With improvements in lots of areas especially the encoding speed.

Only if some more of a big companies will push it forth. Or else it's following will stay as ‘wide’ as WMA's.
Some of them need to get ready and make a dangerous jump from “MP3 player” to “AAC player”, or else the result will be no more than “MP3 player that can play AAC, too”. That is the point, I think.

Not to mention Thompson Multimedia and Fraunhofer Gesellschaft...

Mark

Yes, that's what I meant with "only one big company pushing the format adoption."

Sure, Apple can make a hell of a noise and iPods are everywhere. But that surely won't be enough to make AAC surpass MP3 or even WMA in popularity.

Other big DAP makers - iRiver, Philips, Sony, Rio, Samsung... - show no interest towards AAC. Matter of factly, some of these are more interested in Vorbis.

And then you gotta consider other devices, like DVD players (MP3 reigns, AAC is almost nonexistant), stereos (the few that support compressed audio are usually limited to MP3), and so on.

MP3 got a huge momentum since it was launched. AAC and Vorbis came to the arena too late. Even WMA, that arrived at the competition much earlier, is not being able to compete.





whatever...

iTMS has had over 150 million downloads and has something like 70 percent market share in the online music sales market. iPod's make up, what, 80% of portable music devices? Market penetration of portable music devices is estimated at 15 million or so as of the end of 2004, and Apple shipped 5.3 million iPods in 1Q 2005. Annual growth rate of portable music devices is estimated at 8 percent through 2010, with the installed base being 68 million by the end of 2010.

-That's 150 million AAC's (even with the DRM) files that Apple has put out there.
-That also means 70 percent of all online music sales are AAC files.
-That also means that if Apple just keeps that 80 percent of portable music devices (instead of increasing it as they appear to be doing from the 1Q results), there will be 55 million portable music devices on the market capable of playing AAC in 5 years.

I dunno. I think that some other companies making music boxes might want a piece of that action.

I don't think that apple will ever license their DRM scheme to other companies. And since iPods also play MP3, there is currently no need to switch to AAC.

Exactly. iPod is still an MP3 player. To kill MP3 it must become an AAC player. See the difference? If iPod alone will suddenly refuse to play mp3's anymore, it will be dumb. But if several other big DAP producing companies will ditch MP3 in favour of AAC and will take a great marketing campaign which will say something like “With MP3 you can't win. AAC is future. Resistance is futile” and stuff, great masses of people will actually believe in all that bluff that MP3 is that bad, and AAC is that good. See?

(Damn it, I hate expressing something in a foreign language!)

P.S.: Anyway, that is not going to happen, I think. And I don't really want that much, really.

I think you missed the point. What I'm saying is that with that many AACs out in the wild and being sold and such, it might be worth it for other music devices to start supporting AAC as well, so as to be able to play those songs.

Admittedly, Apple has no reason to license the Fairplay to those device makers, but they could always encorporate jHymn or something similar into their software to support Apple's files.

And for the other end of the stick, Real is already selling AACs that it can put on an iPod using their Harmony software. Apple broke it once, Real released an update.

But the AACs out in the wild are precisely DRMd ones. If Apple doesn't license FairPlay, these players won't play them, no matter if they support AAC or not.



...and get sued to death by Apple, the RIAA, the IFPI...



That is hardly a sactisfactory solution, IMO. Whenever Apple releases an update, all your already bought songs will become unplayable. Maybe you can download them again with an updated DRM layer from Real, but that's a damn nuisance.

I think one of the biggest problems with AAC is precisely that it is too associated with Apple, and consequently to the iPod and iTunes. I suspect several hardware players won't support it precisely because it would be raising awareness to their biggest competitor's product line.

Mo0zOoH's point is very pertinent too. The iPod is still an MP3 player - you don't see people calling it an "AAC player". Most people that buy songs from iTMS and rip CDs in iTunes have no clue what format they are using - it could be MP3, for all that they care. Such situation is not helping raise user awareness about the benefits of using AAC.

Actually it's 500 million downloads. http://www.apple.com/itunes/500million/

My business is import customs clearance into the EU, namely Germany. Even my "valued" colleagues are not aware of what an iPod exactly is - my boss (little does she know ^^) tried to tell me, that it was some MP3 thing, the latest and most expensive one . Oh well, who am I to dare to correct her?

You should however be careful with importing MP3 enabled stuff, since someone registered "MP3" as a trademark and your goods might be confiscated by customs.

Do not tell them, that your gadget is able to decode MP3.

I agree. Even at mid/low bitrate, where MP3 is supposed to fail against AAC, high quality MP3 encoders are not that worse and -most important- that far from the highest quality AAC encoder (and imagine the results when compared to a less competitive AAC encoder like faac, real or Nero 'high' mode: MP3 is simply better).
As example, the 96 kbps listening test I'm trying to finish. I've just complete the evaluation of 150 classical samples, and results are really surprising:

http://guruboolez.blogspot.com/2005/07/com...4053184963.html


It's only classical, and I don't know yet how will react LAME@96 kbps and iTunes@96 with other kind of music. Nevertheless, the current results are here to prove that MP3 is still a competitive format, even on mid-low bitrate. Compare these results with WMA, supposed to offer with 64 kbps the same quality than MP3 at 128: Microsoft format can't even compete with a good MP3 encoder when both are set to 96 kbps at least with classical, with the 150 tested samples, and for my subjectivity, hardaware setting, etc... etc...

Ask them what other lossy codecs they know of

WMA is better than CD quality at 64kbps.

Edit: Seems WMA is only CD quality at 64kbps, 96kbps is better than CD quality. Such modesty.

how does one get better than CD quality if the source is CD??? let alone better with any lossy codec and any bitrate

Oh, go ask Microsoft. I'm sure they can do even more than that.

(Though it can even better be applied to Creative Labs as well…)

MP3 is going nowhere fast. I'm actually quite surprised no one has utilized a DRM protection scheme and sold MP3 as a format in a legal store as opposed to AAC or WMA. Perhaps Fraunhofer's fees are simply too high. Its "THE" name for digital audio. Much like facial tissue = "kleenex" and copy = "xerox".

Every player plays it. Remember, even iTunes started with ONLY MP3 support.

Another item in MP3s favor is that memory prices are falling fast. MP3 is very good at bit rates of 192 and above (and even better when leveraging LAME presets). 192 kbps and higher used to be an issue in the days of 64 MB and 128 MB flash players. Who wanted to load a player with only 10 to 20 songs? We were forced to use 128 by necessity. Now, even most flash players start at 512 MB, 1 GB is common, and 2 GB is around the corner. 192 and above is not an issue at all on any hard drive player. 75+ songs fit on a CD and hundeds on a DVD. And memory will only continue to get larger and less expensive.

Not to mention broadband is becoming prevalent which makes larger download no problem either.

No - MP3 is here to stay - for at least 5 years.

I'd like to address this point.

There is no doubt of the validity of what you say, IMO. But I think perhaps the perspective is a bit off.

AAC is popular. People who buy music online probably buy it from ITMS, and so it is is AAC. It sounds good, and so these people will probably continue to buy tracks from ITMS. There's a catch: it is music that the consumer likely doesn't have already. And it is exactly this state of affairs that limits AAC.

People will not repurchase their collection of music to put on their iPods. They will rip it from their original CDs. And what format will they rip it too? Most likely, to MP3. Why? Because MP3 is embedded in the average joe's mind as THE digital music format. After all, the iPod is an MP3 player, no? This is the key, IMO.

Some of you may argue that it is these people who will play their music on their PC with iTunes. iTunes can rip to AAC. This is true, and is probably a small factor in favor of AAC. Before the advent of iTunes on the PC, however, many people had already established their preferred music playing software and will stubbornly refuse to switch. If these same people use that same program to rip their CDs, it will probably be to MP3.

Too, if the user does not know that iTunes/whatever software can also rip their CDs, they will likely search for a ripping utility on the internet. And what will they find? Odds are it is a tool that by default will rip to MP3.

These are but a few of my thoughts. Obviously it is not a simple thing, but it is fun to discuss!

3/4 years ago I also thought that MP3 was going to die given its limitations and the emergence of new lossy formats such as Vorbis, Musepack and AAC, more technically advanced and causing buzz/hype between audio coding enthusiasts at the time. But MP3 still managed to evolve a bit since then, got general mainstream adoption and support by every company in the area, whether they wanted it or not. It became ubiquitous.

Nowadays I don't care so much about formats but more about settings and practical issues. All the rips I do are lossless since more or less 2/3 years ago. I may end transcoding those to a lossy format which is chosen according to its destination, on a case-by-case basis.

Having this said, and taking into account that many people still prefer having an MP3 file, even if they already have a better copy in another known and (relatively) supported format, I don't think MP3 is gonna "die" soon. And, nowadays, I would prefer seeing some of the other formats dying..ooO(WMA)


Worldwide, it's more like 30%, according to market research firm In-Stat.

Booming Digital Audio Player Market Tops $4.5 Billion, SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., June 21, 2005

I wouldn't say I'm worried,.. just wondering.
I agree with the guy who said MP3 has about 5 years left. MP3 has the name advantage that has stuck in the mind of Mr avarage Joe public which will keep MP3 going well past it's sell by date!

I think mp3 will stay around for very long but AAC will increase its popularity in the coming years as mpeg4 begins to take off as the media standard. Almost all HD media is/will be H.264/AAC whether its broadcast or on the next-gen DVD formats. Cell phones with built in media players is also an area of growth and the improved quality on low bitrates is noticeable even for the joe average. Nokia, SonyEricsson and Motorola all have AAC support and they even seem to license Apple's iTMS DRM (at least this is the case for Motorola).



Perhaps, but Sony has shown more and more interest, now with the firmware update to the PSP. As for the others, well they don't really sell that many units Cell phones and the iPods are really where it's at in the coming years imho.

Unfortunately, it seems that next-gen optical storage won't make AAC mandatory, but only an optional codec. Mandatory codecs would be (reportedly) next generation AC3, next generation DTS, LPCM and probably MLP.



That update was mainly to support H264, and not AAC per se...



Only because Apple is way bigger than everyone else. But think Creative, iRiver, Rio... all of these don't seem to give a fig about AAC.

What do you mean? AAC support is listed as one of the major new music features:

I meant that if they weren't adding H264 support, they probably wouldn't bother adding AAC. After all, who needs AAC when you can get CD quality using ATRAC3plus at 48kbps?

IMHO, nothing will replace mp3 as the most popular lossy coding in the near future unless:

- another codec which is widely *supported* does offer *significant* advantages. With significant i mean things like 40% lower filesize at the same quality. People dont care about "minor" advantages. It has to be really obvious - a milestone in lossy-compression.
- a new format is pushed down on peoples throat i a really large scale. For this to work, the majority of players and rippers would need to discourage MP3-encoding. Again, the new format would already need to have existing wide-scale support in software and hardware.

I doubt anything of the above will happen. So my asumption is that MP3 will stay as the only massively popular lossy codec, until lossy codecs are completely replaced by lossless codecs someday in the future. Alternatives to MP3 will only have a significant marketshare in narrowband-applications like webradio, DRM-happy music-stores, and in the OSS-world.

- Lyx

What will signal the "death" of MP3?

No further encoder development (particularly by LAME) ?
An insignificant amount of interest by end users? (like, less than 5% or ?)
No support by hardware players?
No sales of the format by music services?
All of the above?

I can imagine that, within the next 5 years, ceased encoder development would likely be the first nail in the coffin. Will support and interest really drop so sharply soon after?

Tough you was speaking about Musepack

Soren

You don't have to download them again. What Real's Harmony solution actually does is to decrypt the AAC then re-encrypt it using a faked up lookalike to Apple's DRM. Updating their software was all they had to do, the files remained the same.


I disagree. It seems to me that people ripping their CD's who also use iTunes for purchasing music will likely rip them using iTunes. I mean, they want these CD's on their iPod and they want their music in iTunes to do that. So most likely, they'll rip using iTunes and the default for ripping/encoding with iTunes is AAC. Unless they go and specifically change it to MP3, it'll be ripping into AAC format. And they'll not know, since it plays on the PC and on the iPod just fine. The only reason they'd rip to MP3 is if they had something other than an iPod or if they used something other than iTunes. I think you're overemphasing the importance of "MP3" in the term "MP3 player". Most people think "MP3" means "music on the computer". Formats mean little or nothing to them until incompatibility bites them and they have to learn about the differences. Look at the number of people with huge collections of WMA files. The reason they have these is simple: They ripped their CD's into Windows Media Player and never changed the defaults.

Yes, people with existing collections won't be switching anytime soon, but there's an extraordinary number of people just getting into the whole "music on the computer" thing, and a significant number of them are people who just purchased iPods and are using iTunes.

This is just my opinion, of course. Nobody can predict the future. However, I think there is still a case to be made that AAC is gaining ground rapidly. The introduction of AAC support into new devices is slowly building, primarily because of the new video codecs starting to gain wide support, I grant you, but once you have the ability to decode AAC in there via whatever method, it's a very short step to reading M4A files and playing music.

exactly! I mean it's not like people even care about advancements in digital audio compression, engineering, nor perceptual coding in general . It's going to be around for a while due to the fact that marketing shoved it down people's throats and made it a "buzzword" to begin with, their will always be alternatives though for people who are seeking the lastest advancements and specific features in general , now that three pages have been wasted on a useless topic amongst many

ROTFL. Hey, if a multi million $$$ company says "96kbps wma = better than cd quality" then this must be true. OK???!!!? Don't believe those poor HA communists!!1!!!

So convert your stuff to wma@96, this will improve quality and make your CD sound better!!!³1!!

'Not sure what that means - but these folks' hold on certain patents is the single issue that keeps Redhat from shipping either Redhat Linux or Fedora with any MP3 players or (of course) encoders. Objections to their patents are behind much of the reasoning for shifting to ogg or other Free ™ formats.

While they've not exercised this right and have "played nicely" so far, they could pull the rug out from under many of the FOSS MP3 players if, say, they decide there's money to be made somehow by doing so.

Mark

Once upon a time there were three main file compression formats namely ARJ, LZH and ZIP. With each new release each became faster and better until one day they just couldn't squeeze anymore out of a file. Now at the time ARJ had better compression and more features but more people used ZIP and it was faster (even if spanning disks didn't work too well for a while). Surely we'd all be using ARJ once computers sped up?.....

Later still new formats came to the fore like RAR which were around 20% better than ZIP and offered even more features so surely this would be the end of ZIP....... Guess not!. We could all learn a little bit from history as although MP3 isn't the best format (in theory) it's too widespread and too well supported to be going anywhere soon.

Just my 2 cents

I don't know where you guys came from with that magic 5 year number... 5 years left for MP3 is a bold assumption that will not become true IMO...

MP3 will never be overcome, not even if it becomes obsolete because:

1. it has widely deployed hardware/software support
2. it is good enough for most people
3. it is an widely accepted standard

Except if another "competitor" manages to have the pros mentioned above. I don't see any at present. Maybe in the future (a rather distant future I may add... )

Of course I may be wrong and all of you are welcome to flame me 15 years (or more) from now.

Yea, 15 years is much closer to the truth as far as I can tell.


It's actually here now courtesy of Cowon amongst others...

Ohhh, come on. Spare me of the moronic FSF arguments.

Thomson has NEVER EVER enforced licensing agreements of free decoders. heck, they're not even going after free encoders these days. They are a little smart (a little smarter than your average Linux zealot, at least) and know that they must be flexible and tolerant to make their format become even more popular.

The issue with Red Hat and all those Linux wan*ers is that they blew a minor issue way out of proportion. Months after a piece of text waiving off fees for free applications was deleted from mp3icensing.com, one of the highly smart people that frequent Slashdot posted a bombastic news piece claiming Thomson might start charging fees as soon as tomorrow morning. From there all hell broke lose, the Xiph.org CEO wrote a braindead "open letter" to Thomson, and whiny Linux users raised an outcry demanding for the highly offending and promiscuous code to be removed from the enshrined sanctity of their CVSs.

These guys make me sick.

Edit: since the Linux guys are so concerned about evil patents, what they plan to do about the countless patents permeating its code?



Actually ARJ lost because it lost the GUI bandwagon. WinZip was a very easy and featureful archiving program for windows. Have you ever used WinARJ?

rjamorim,

But this zealotry, if I remember correctly, conceived Ogg Vorbis, which is in my view was a good thing after all.

OT: In a way your antri-zealotry stance is a bit of a zealotry itself. You seemed to side with AAC and Wavepack and have outlashes on FLAC and Ogg Vorbis and Linux in general. Your emotive languague further emphasizes this.

Triza

And now I think I have to run for cover :-)

Conceiving Ogg Vorbis was very good indeed. But that doesn't justify deleting MP3 decoders. These things are unrelated.



I indeed used to be an AAC zealot. But I stopped years ago. More precisely, when I started conducing listening tests.

I indeed, had outlashes on Vorbis, but as of late, I have cultivated a neutral stance.

You see, what annoys me are the clueless zealots. Morons that jump into threads and shout "STOP USING ACC ITS PATENED AND SUCZ LOL. USE VORBIZ".

I was an AAC zealot, but I was a zealot with technical arguments. My arguments weren't based on ideology, specially because there was never an ideology associated with AAC. Unlike Vorbis of course.

About FLAC: I don't remember lashing at it. At most, I commented on programmer friends' opinions about the inusability of libflac.

I don't remember lashing at Linux either. I'm actually a big fan of Debian (even though I have the usual frustrations about dependency hell and the like). Care to help me remember pointing me to links?


Also, you gotta remember I sometimes lash against a format, but other times I lash against format authors. Specially considering I have issues with more than half of this forum regular user base.




Try to understand irony. I was ironizing on the highly emotive language you see when you read places like Slashdot. You don't see me using such language on everyday posts around here.

Isn't WavPack as open-source as flac?

I am sorry but the average Slashdot user did not designed Vorbis, neither improved/tuned the reference encoder.

That was it. I remember that you had some exchanges with Josh, but indeed it was about some interface issues. Callback functions or something like that.



OK. I stand corrected.

Triza

And they probably never tested any vorbis encoder, but are able to tell to everybody that Vorbis outperforms everything. That's probably the kind of zealotry that Roberto (and I) can't bear.