What does it mean that MP3 is free?(idiallo.com)
idiallo.com
What does it mean that MP3 is free?
https://idiallo.com/blog/listen-mp3-is-free
106 comments
> I don't know why this article says "now". It was over 7, almost 8 years ago
“MP3 is now free. It was free seven years ago, but it is now too.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHLAe3RyMDk
“MP3 is now free. It was free seven years ago, but it is now too.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHLAe3RyMDk
A Mitch Hedberg quote isn't as appreciated as it once was, but it still is!
I used to appreciate that mitch hedburg quote
Let's roll forward to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1 and leave this unfortunate detour of history already.
So AV1 is patent free?
Grifters are gonna grift, but that is the expectation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1#Patent_claims
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AV1#Patent_claims
Patent free and royalty free are not the same thing.
The answer to the question "Is X patent-free" can never be yes until all possible patents have expired. I don't think it's really even possible to do much more than what AV1 is doing. Any patent known was avoided or is royalty-free.
> To fulfill the goal of being royalty free, the development process requires that no feature can be adopted before it has been confirmed independently by two separate parties to not infringe on patents of competing companies.
> [...] technology contributors license their AV1-connected patents to anyone, anywhere, anytime based on reciprocity (i.e. as long as the user does not engage in patent litigation). As a defensive condition, anyone engaging in patent litigation loses the right to the patents of all patent holders.
> As an additional protection for the royalty-free status of AV1, the Alliance has a legal defense fund to aid smaller Alliance members or AV1 licensees in the event they are sued for alleged patent infringement.
> To fulfill the goal of being royalty free, the development process requires that no feature can be adopted before it has been confirmed independently by two separate parties to not infringe on patents of competing companies.
> [...] technology contributors license their AV1-connected patents to anyone, anywhere, anytime based on reciprocity (i.e. as long as the user does not engage in patent litigation). As a defensive condition, anyone engaging in patent litigation loses the right to the patents of all patent holders.
> As an additional protection for the royalty-free status of AV1, the Alliance has a legal defense fund to aid smaller Alliance members or AV1 licensees in the event they are sued for alleged patent infringement.
I had not seen h.264 was finally freeing up. That's huge news to me.
Fedora supporting h264 OOTB will be a huge win. The current setup with mesa freeworld, rpmfusion, etc. is comically bad. Year of the linux desktop FTW.
What patent is needed to expire for them to support it?
That H.264 page is almost fantastically useful, except that I find it quite difficult to read the page and understand when the remaining US patents are due to expire. Maybe I am just too impatient!
I am hoping we could break those H.264 limits ( such as block size ) and brute force push compression higher with much higher computational requirement while still being patent free. I think with MPEG-5 EVC baseline which uses mostly expired patents shows that it is possible to reach HEVC level compression.
The situation with H.264 is complicated by the fact that it refers to a whole series of standards released over an extended period. The vast majority of H.264 videos in the wild only use the High profile which was first published in March of 2005, therefor any claim of essential patents covering these videos with an expiration date after March 2025 is dubious.
MPEG-LA tries to create FUD around this by lumping all H.264 patents into one big pool and never clarifying which edition of the standard a patent applies to. The end result is that anyone not already ignoring MPEG-LA's patents is unlikely to start until _all_ of the patents in MPEG-LA's H.264 pool have expired which is still several years out.
MPEG-LA tries to create FUD around this by lumping all H.264 patents into one big pool and never clarifying which edition of the standard a patent applies to. The end result is that anyone not already ignoring MPEG-LA's patents is unlikely to start until _all_ of the patents in MPEG-LA's H.264 pool have expired which is still several years out.
Which just means, they are free to add another bunch of patents for good measure. ^^
Patents are not valid if there is already public prior art.
The reason why no one noticed is that everyone has been trivially circumnavigating the patents for decades (the usual model being a converter that doesn't come with its own lame.dll but asks you to put one into its folder) and Frauenhofer hasn't been caring much when it was private users as opposed to hardware manufacturers. If not for this, something like Ogg Vorbis would have taken its place.
As to files, I'm sure they start mattering to you when your train goes through a tunnel or your wifi is down. The fileless world is the leakiest abstraction of them all.
As to files, I'm sure they start mattering to you when your train goes through a tunnel or your wifi is down. The fileless world is the leakiest abstraction of them all.
I sometimes wonder if the name "ogg vorbis" hampered its uptake. MP3 is admittedly a pretty jargony name too but isn't otherwise "weird", compared to Ogg Vorbis is just Klingon-esque.
As a long time creative worker in addition to my technical work, I’ve tried in vain to explain to the FOSS crowd that names, UIs, user flows, etc a) really matter if they want anyone outside of the technical world to use their tools, and b) what other software developers think of them isn’t a good measure of those things. What Mastodon would need to have done to be a Twitter replacement for general audiences was my most recent losing battle. Lots of haughty, dismissive “federation is not that complicated” and “I think toots is a cute analog to tweet and the people who don’t like it just need to get over it.” Well, the nearly immediate mass exodus after the incredibly energetic mass adoption says everything we need to know about that.
“Well I don’t think it’s too complicated,” doesn’t really say much from someone whose profession is wrangling that complexity. “Well I don’t think it’s unappealing,” doesn’t say much from someone that has no experience wrangling the different nuanced ways different things can be appealing to different people in different contexts and how that affects the way people approach and interact with stuff.
Interface design, copywriting, branding— these are all communication mediums that deal with the emotional intangibles, instincts, and irrational tendencies we all have even when we don’t see them. It’s not about taste and aesthetic preference, they’re tools to solve communication problems. Developers on a whole have a hard enough time dealing with communication in technical documentation for software they wrote, let alone effective visual communication. I’m seeing some progress in developers realizing how much more impact software can have as a problem solving tool when designers are involved… but a whole lot still think designers just add frivolous fluff and that their quirky interfaces more informed by the API implementation than how users solve problems isn’t the problem — users failing to read their wall-o-text documentation is.
“Well I don’t think it’s too complicated,” doesn’t really say much from someone whose profession is wrangling that complexity. “Well I don’t think it’s unappealing,” doesn’t say much from someone that has no experience wrangling the different nuanced ways different things can be appealing to different people in different contexts and how that affects the way people approach and interact with stuff.
Interface design, copywriting, branding— these are all communication mediums that deal with the emotional intangibles, instincts, and irrational tendencies we all have even when we don’t see them. It’s not about taste and aesthetic preference, they’re tools to solve communication problems. Developers on a whole have a hard enough time dealing with communication in technical documentation for software they wrote, let alone effective visual communication. I’m seeing some progress in developers realizing how much more impact software can have as a problem solving tool when designers are involved… but a whole lot still think designers just add frivolous fluff and that their quirky interfaces more informed by the API implementation than how users solve problems isn’t the problem — users failing to read their wall-o-text documentation is.
I still try, occasionally. I agree that it's very hard to convince the OSS community to think about the user first and foremost. Especially with the fact that choice is not a good thing for the vast majority of the world, and is not valued as much as they think. But suggest that forking or rewriting (in rust!) a project for the Nth time is stupid, and everyone should be focused on making one really good implementation that doesn't have to keep reinventing wheels, and you will be burned at the stake.
I agree it's always amazing that FOSS can be so smart, but so dumb as to not understand basic marketing.
I wouldn’t even expect them to understand basic marketing themselves: there’s a lot more to it than many assume. I would hope they could understand the value of someone that does. There’s this kind of “well if I don’t understand it then it’s probably not worth understanding” cockiness in software that I was definitely guilty of in my twenties at the very least. Someone thinking they can dismiss expert knowledge or even entire fields out-of-hand based on a few a priori thought experiments says a lot more about that person than the fields they denigrate.
The name didn't help, but the biggest issue was when I first encountered the format it was very difficult for me to find software that could play it. It's been a while, but IIRC Windows Media player and Realplayer didn't like it, I can't remember if WinAmp the time supported it either, I think it may have gotten it eventually?
Adoption on Windows was definitely an issue for that time frame. Even as someone that was willing to adopt strange software, or compile it on Windows, it just wasn't worth it for the cross-platform use (mostly for mobile devices at the time, including generic players, and iPods).
I started using RockBox around 2005/2006, but it still wasn't worth converting my entire music collection to Ogg Vorbis from MP3. Right around that time, my vehicle stereo could suddenly support MP3/WMA files, and I could burn multiple albums to a CD for my truck stereo. MP3 had the broadest support across devices, and basically become an industry standard, even with the licensing.
I started using RockBox around 2005/2006, but it still wasn't worth converting my entire music collection to Ogg Vorbis from MP3. Right around that time, my vehicle stereo could suddenly support MP3/WMA files, and I could burn multiple albums to a CD for my truck stereo. MP3 had the broadest support across devices, and basically become an industry standard, even with the licensing.
Another thing to consider, and especially on a mobile device with a limited battery is hardware decoding.
MP3 was popular enough that most mobile devices were able to decode them via hardware, while OGG and FLAC where playable though software decoding but at the cost of using more battery.
MP3 was popular enough that most mobile devices were able to decode them via hardware, while OGG and FLAC where playable though software decoding but at the cost of using more battery.
Winamp supported it by around 2004.
Installing a codec pack was one of my first tasks when setting up a new Windows installation in that era. K-Lite was a popular choice.
Then WMP would play ogg, though you'd probably have switched to MPC and Winamp.
Then WMP would play ogg, though you'd probably have switched to MPC and Winamp.
>Klingon-esque
The "Og" in Ogg was a reference to "Orion ship G" in the game Netrek (https://www.netrek.org/) so definitely not Klingon :)
(Nettrek was a star trek themed online space combat game featuring Federation, Klingon, Romulan and Orion as the playable factions)
The "Og" in Ogg was a reference to "Orion ship G" in the game Netrek (https://www.netrek.org/) so definitely not Klingon :)
(Nettrek was a star trek themed online space combat game featuring Federation, Klingon, Romulan and Orion as the playable factions)
IIRC "ogging" in NetTrek was carrier killing suicide run.
Uh? Isn't that a reference to Nanny Ogg of Terry Pratchett's Discworld fame? Just like Vorbis is a head inquisitor (Exquisitor actually, of the Quisition IIRC) in Terry Pratchett's Small Gods (Also part of Discworld) ?
Colloquially they were always just referred to as Oggs, which wasn't too weird to my ears.
To my recollection what hampered uptake was simply that most software and especially most hardware did not support Oggs. So no-one encoding for distribution (i.e., P2P filesharing) used it. And once commercial streaming services came into being, they all used proprietary DRM-backed formats (WMA, and whatever iTunes used at the time, AAC?).
By the time digital music services gave up on DRM, MP3 patents were coming up on expiry, and MP3 encoder technology had advanced closing most of the gap between it and Ogg, especially when run at higher bitrates which cheaper storage and bandwidth made acceptable to use.
But now with many streaming services using Opus, all is right in the world again.
To my recollection what hampered uptake was simply that most software and especially most hardware did not support Oggs. So no-one encoding for distribution (i.e., P2P filesharing) used it. And once commercial streaming services came into being, they all used proprietary DRM-backed formats (WMA, and whatever iTunes used at the time, AAC?).
By the time digital music services gave up on DRM, MP3 patents were coming up on expiry, and MP3 encoder technology had advanced closing most of the gap between it and Ogg, especially when run at higher bitrates which cheaper storage and bandwidth made acceptable to use.
But now with many streaming services using Opus, all is right in the world again.
Never heard "Oggs" so ymmv.
Fully agreed on the hw support though. I had an mp3 player discman knock off, later cheap mp3 players and none of them played Ogg Vorbis, I want to say one of my Nokia dumbphones in the mid 00s could do mp3 but not Ogg Vorbis as well.
Fully agreed on the hw support though. I had an mp3 player discman knock off, later cheap mp3 players and none of them played Ogg Vorbis, I want to say one of my Nokia dumbphones in the mid 00s could do mp3 but not Ogg Vorbis as well.
A lot of the widely popular s1mp3s could play Ogg, FLAC, APE, WMA, and a few other obscure formats (as well as plain uncompressed WAV) but I think the real reason was a lack of availability - except for the anti-patent/FOSS purists, and some MS fans using WMA, everyone else was using MP3.
mp3 doesn't exactly fly off the tongue either. But maybe you've found the reason why bz2 never took off..
Are patents in general even useful in tech anymore? I remember older mentors almost keeping score with how many patents they authored, now I almost never hear the word patent mentioned unless it's a patent troll going after up and coming startups with vague yet somehow legally enforceable bs that costs millions to defend
When it comes to negotiating a new job, they are absolutely not something you want to underplay. Bring it up and talk about it, and the challenges you faced creating it. I feel like being able to talk about why you created something, and the challenges you faced, along with what you learned is a huge plus. Maybe I'm more old-school with this thinking, but when it comes to someone that is more senior and can provide useful knowledge to your team, I'd want this person over someone that was talking about the latest tech, but didn't have real experience to discuss in depth. To any recruiters, am I out of touch with this thinking?
I am at the beginning stages of looking elsewhere, because of some very poor choices made that disregarded my advice. I have extreme impostor syndrome because I have only helped juniors, but have never worked in a professional capacity with anyone that had more knowledge than myself. That isn't a flex, I wish I had mentors in a professional environment, but I never did. I have learned a ton on my own, and have worked with others that moved on to better careers. I was around at the beginning stages of the company, and have gained a lot of freedom like taking time off to watch my son when he's sick, or if I need to see a doctor. I have built on top of CMS software (Umbraco/.NET) and have figured out how to keep resources below what is recommended, and love what I do, but am being given the "opportunity" and direction from the President to leave the company because my salary can't be covered any longer. Not meant to tell a sob story, just genuinely looking for advice on finding something that will strike my interest and I can contribute to. I have been with this company for almost 18 years, and built it from nothing with a weird technology, into something that a lot of medical, insurance, banking, and law firms depend on.
Any advice is truly appreciated, as I was taken by surprise, but also know that I can achieve far more than what I currently practice. I spend late nights learning for fun, even at 45 years old.
I am at the beginning stages of looking elsewhere, because of some very poor choices made that disregarded my advice. I have extreme impostor syndrome because I have only helped juniors, but have never worked in a professional capacity with anyone that had more knowledge than myself. That isn't a flex, I wish I had mentors in a professional environment, but I never did. I have learned a ton on my own, and have worked with others that moved on to better careers. I was around at the beginning stages of the company, and have gained a lot of freedom like taking time off to watch my son when he's sick, or if I need to see a doctor. I have built on top of CMS software (Umbraco/.NET) and have figured out how to keep resources below what is recommended, and love what I do, but am being given the "opportunity" and direction from the President to leave the company because my salary can't be covered any longer. Not meant to tell a sob story, just genuinely looking for advice on finding something that will strike my interest and I can contribute to. I have been with this company for almost 18 years, and built it from nothing with a weird technology, into something that a lot of medical, insurance, banking, and law firms depend on.
Any advice is truly appreciated, as I was taken by surprise, but also know that I can achieve far more than what I currently practice. I spend late nights learning for fun, even at 45 years old.
I missed this earlier, not sure if you’ll even see it, but just know that your story hit home for me. I got a job out of college at #BigTech and gained a lot of momentum quickly, they were gonna promote me and threw money at me, but I realized what I was starting to specialize in was utterly useless outside this particular company. With the advice of a mentor I left money on the table and jumped ship to work at a start up, in part because I wanted to learn skills I could use at any company. I’m lucky I got this advice, but no question you’ll find another opportunity if need be
Design patents are absolutely useful.[1]
For large companies (Google, Apple, ...), other patents are useful defensively and as part of a war chest/patent portfolio.
For startups and inventors, they're probably OK but unlikely to prevent someone with deep pockets from eating your lunch and/or suing you to oblivion. The important defensive strategy is to be aware of related patents, though some are absurdly broad.
Execution usually matters more than ideas.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
For large companies (Google, Apple, ...), other patents are useful defensively and as part of a war chest/patent portfolio.
For startups and inventors, they're probably OK but unlikely to prevent someone with deep pockets from eating your lunch and/or suing you to oblivion. The important defensive strategy is to be aware of related patents, though some are absurdly broad.
Execution usually matters more than ideas.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
IBM does a lot of things, but "holding patents" is one of the big ones.
They are something to mention on your resume, or to impress investors that don't subscribe to "move fast and break things"
I still rip every audio CD (including audiobooks) into MP3 and I have about 8 GB of MP3 audio files in my library (a lot of children's audio books in there for the kids).
The format plays on nearly every device that plays any kind of music ever made, files are tiny, and they sound amazing still.
It's so much different than like 480i videos from old VHS and DV tape imports from the MP3 era.
The format plays on nearly every device that plays any kind of music ever made, files are tiny, and they sound amazing still.
It's so much different than like 480i videos from old VHS and DV tape imports from the MP3 era.
I understand for Audiobooks, but why use anything outside of FLAC for music CDs in 2025? Honest question, not trying to stop you from doing what you're doing.
I also still rip audio CDs, but I don't compress with anything that isn't lossless. Hard drive space is super cheap nowadays, and FLAC is even supported natively in my browser.
I also still rip audio CDs, but I don't compress with anything that isn't lossless. Hard drive space is super cheap nowadays, and FLAC is even supported natively in my browser.
I couldn't hear a problem with properly-encoded high-bitrate MP3 when my ears were much, much younger, and I still cannot do so today.
I can play an MP3 anywhere that music files are played. I still can't do that with FLAC.
I know that FLAC is perfect, and that MP3 is lossy, and that such lossy formats have generational loss in re-encodes.
But I can either manage multiple overlapping collections of digital music and a conversion system, or I can manage a single collection and skip a lot of that inconvenience.
I chose simplicity.
I can play an MP3 anywhere that music files are played. I still can't do that with FLAC.
I know that FLAC is perfect, and that MP3 is lossy, and that such lossy formats have generational loss in re-encodes.
But I can either manage multiple overlapping collections of digital music and a conversion system, or I can manage a single collection and skip a lot of that inconvenience.
I chose simplicity.
Speaking as someone who has filled up his phone pushing music onto it via SyncThing - 320 kbps MP3 gets me a lot further than FLAC!
Fair enough; makes me wish that MicroSD card slots were still standard on phones. If you had a 512GB card, then you'd be able to get an awful lot of lossless music on there.
I've heard Opus is a better bang-for-buck for the size to quality ratio, but I haven't tried it yet.
I've heard Opus is a better bang-for-buck for the size to quality ratio, but I haven't tried it yet.
Try opus, it sounds dramatically better and has smaller file sizes
I rip and convert to FLAC primarily for the reasons you stated, but I also have to convert to MP3 when I want to play music from an SD card on my car's head unit.
Compatibility.
There are so many devices that support mp3. My 15 year old car plays CDs with hundreds of mp3s with zero issues. I still have somewhere a mobile CD mp3 player that will work with both new files and those I harvested 20 years ago.
There is surprisingly still some mp3 releases online, including content for kids which for me was mp3 only so far.
I have a lot of FLACs but with years it makes more and more sense to me to keep it unified.
There are so many devices that support mp3. My 15 year old car plays CDs with hundreds of mp3s with zero issues. I still have somewhere a mobile CD mp3 player that will work with both new files and those I harvested 20 years ago.
There is surprisingly still some mp3 releases online, including content for kids which for me was mp3 only so far.
I have a lot of FLACs but with years it makes more and more sense to me to keep it unified.
I rip to flac and then use fileflows to convert to opus personally then syncthing to get the 50 gb of opus files to my phone. As flac my cd collection is around half a terrabyte so it only recently became possible to out the whole thing on my phone for just excessive money (grapheneos doesnt run on a phone that supports sd cards so that cheaper compromise was out for me)
Same here, except I decided to stay with stock Android and have an SD card.
That's cool. To me grapheneos is kind of the minimum reasonable level of security I think is ok (and I'm also worried about data leaking to google itself). To each their own acceptable security profile.
Not him, but I use lossy because phones have small capacities and I can't be bothered to have lossless on pc + lossy on phone.
I mean AAC-LC is much better option than MP3, also patent free, compressed much better, and also plays on nearly every device that plays any kind of music ever made since early 2000.
I noticed. The MP3 patents expired in 2017.
https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/ff/amm/consumer-electronics...
https://www.iis.fraunhofer.de/en/ff/amm/consumer-electronics...
MP3 is still the standard lossy audio format. Plays on everything, patent-free. OK sound quality (some stuff falls apart even at 320 if you have golden ears).
Realistically, what modern device won't play OPUS files? According to xiph.Org[0] it's transparent at 120
It’s actually still a bit tedious on the Apple ecosystem. On the web (Safari) you have to wrap it in a WEBM or CAF container, and on iOS it’s similar. That’s a lossless process, but it’s still not the OPUS container
The next update to my player is going to support Opus. It would be nice if it was better supported by the OS though.
https://www.plastaq.com/minimoon
https://www.plastaq.com/minimoon
true, but the complexity is greatly reduced between a caf container and (since Safari 17.5) a webm encumbered opus: the provider can offer 1 webm file to all platforms.
Especially in podcasts where it's just voice the savings in storage and traffic are significant. My own listening preference is 32kbits opus at ~1/4th size of the original 128kbits mp3.
Especially in podcasts where it's just voice the savings in storage and traffic are significant. My own listening preference is 32kbits opus at ~1/4th size of the original 128kbits mp3.
To me it seems OPUS is transparent at much lower than 120.
32 is more than enough for books/podcasts, 96 is more than enough for music. I doubt above-96 makes much sense for OPUS - I'd use FLAC if I needed better quality.
32 is more than enough for books/podcasts, 96 is more than enough for music. I doubt above-96 makes much sense for OPUS - I'd use FLAC if I needed better quality.
I was astounded by how iffy my ability to even ABX tracks at 96 kbps in Opus was. I can't imagine needing anything else for music listening, although obviously I keep FLAC copies around as backups.
I enjoy being able to use vintage computers and vintage portables too.
MP3 is still far from niche as this article tries to hammer in repeatedly.
Large hard drives and fast internet do not render obsolete the principle of frequency domain compression. MP3 and JPG will probably remain in service for a very long time.
But of course, if people weren't habituated to this bogus conception of obsolescence, how on earth would Microsoft manage to sell them a word processor for $179.00?
But of course, if people weren't habituated to this bogus conception of obsolescence, how on earth would Microsoft manage to sell them a word processor for $179.00?
They don't. You now subscribe to Copilot 365 or whatever the hell Office is called today for the low, low price of $12.99 per month for the rest of your life.
I'm sure that's also an option but I'm looking at their website right now and it says I can own this warmed-over text editor outright for 179$. What a bargain.
I bet the average person hasn't downloaded an MP3 (or AAC for that mater) in probably a decade. Everyone streams music now.
> Fast forward to today, and internet speeds have grown exponentially. A song in a more modern format like AAC or FLAC might be double or triple the size of an MP3, but who notices? You can stream a full album in lossless quality without buffering.
You'd think so, but somehow this doesn't stop Jellyfin from choking whenever it starts streaming a FLAC.
With no actual knowledge, I speculate that they don't bother starting to decode the upcoming track until the current track has already finished.
You'd think so, but somehow this doesn't stop Jellyfin from choking whenever it starts streaming a FLAC.
With no actual knowledge, I speculate that they don't bother starting to decode the upcoming track until the current track has already finished.
FLAC allows embedding a seektable but encoders rarely emit one in practice.
Since FLAC boils down to a mix of verbatim subframes and linear predictive coding (specifically, polynomials with warmup samples or Rice coding), non-verbatim subframes are variable-length, and the samples for a given interval of time may even span between two blocks. It's a tricky problem, but doable, and FLAC implementations IME (libflac, libavcodec, etc.) have varying levels of accuracy when seeking without a seektable.
I assume the choking described depends largely on the medium of transport (e.g. HTTP servers without support for Range headers makes streaming practically impossible), followed by some delay to "guess" the correct block to jump to then figure out which frames contain samples closest to the requested timestamp.
Since FLAC boils down to a mix of verbatim subframes and linear predictive coding (specifically, polynomials with warmup samples or Rice coding), non-verbatim subframes are variable-length, and the samples for a given interval of time may even span between two blocks. It's a tricky problem, but doable, and FLAC implementations IME (libflac, libavcodec, etc.) have varying levels of accuracy when seeking without a seektable.
I assume the choking described depends largely on the medium of transport (e.g. HTTP servers without support for Range headers makes streaming practically impossible), followed by some delay to "guess" the correct block to jump to then figure out which frames contain samples closest to the requested timestamp.
I appreciate this look into FLAC! I think MP3 is just such an industry standard at this point, which means nobody is really putting work into making streaming music better. There isn't enough of an audience to push for ever higher quality, especially since most people have moved away from stereos to computer speakers, and mostly listening through their awful cell phone speaker!
Not that long ago I got in a lovely HN argument over Why bother with the complexity of FLAC for 2X compression at best vs. the absolute stupid triviality of RIFF containing PCM? The only swaying feature was standardized metadata :P
> A song in a more modern format like AAC or FLAC might be double or triple the size of an MP3
That's a bizarre statement regardless. Most streaming services that use AAC are 256 kbps, same as most MP3 downloads. Spotify's paid tier is supposedly 320 kbps MP3. Tidal free-with-ads is only 160 kbps AAC.
That's a bizarre statement regardless. Most streaming services that use AAC are 256 kbps, same as most MP3 downloads. Spotify's paid tier is supposedly 320 kbps MP3. Tidal free-with-ads is only 160 kbps AAC.
I'm actually curious; I use Jellyfin to stream FLAC all the time and it doesn't seem to have any issues for me. I'm not sure what you're doing differently.
I do have pretty fast internet (2 gigabits up and down), so maybe that's it?
I do have pretty fast internet (2 gigabits up and down), so maybe that's it?
Well, I tried to demonstrate the effect I remembered, which was basically a pause every time one track ended and another was supposed to begin.
I didn't succeed. This might be for any of a few reasons:
- I've updated Jellyfin between then and now.
- I'm using a LAN connection instead of a transoceanic connection.
- I might be doing something subtly different than what I was doing before. This is pure speculation.
I didn't succeed. This might be for any of a few reasons:
- I've updated Jellyfin between then and now.
- I'm using a LAN connection instead of a transoceanic connection.
- I might be doing something subtly different than what I was doing before. This is pure speculation.
Not sure I'd call FLAC "more modern." There are college graduates younger than FLAC. I mean, sure, it's a decade younger than MP3, so you're technically correct, but it's not exactly the latest hot format.
I will never forget bow one of the pains of using Ubuntu was figuring out his to get my MP3s to play. It delayed my full adoption of Linux by years and led me to using Kubuntu instead, which I continue to use today.
IIRC, and I might not because it's been many years now, all one had to do was install gstreamer-plugins-ugly.
Sure it wasn't obvious, but a quick search should have revealed that?
Sure it wasn't obvious, but a quick search should have revealed that?
Definitely not obvious, and at that time I wasn't even aware of many of the resources, it even how to search well. Coming from a Windows world, all I knew at the time was that something which I'd taken for granted just didn't work. The ideal was nice, but it wasn't practical.
MP3 is still more widely supported in most devices. Taking existing MP3's, which is going to be most people that deal with MP3, and converting them to FLAC is not going to have a benefit (along with taking time, and needing to deal with tagging, of which I may be wrong but believe MP3 has better support and more tags - on top of being able to create your own key:value tags).
> MP3 is still more widely supported in most devices.
AAC (including HE-AAC variants) support is also a universal option, having been included in devices since ~2010.
As I understand it, all AAC-LC and HE-AACv1 patents have expired.
AAC (including HE-AAC variants) support is also a universal option, having been included in devices since ~2010.
As I understand it, all AAC-LC and HE-AACv1 patents have expired.
>having been included in devices since ~2010.
AAC-LC goes much further back. iPod was introduced in 2001. Practically all devices in 2003 already supports AAC-LC when the format was introduced in 1997.
AAC-LC goes much further back. iPod was introduced in 2001. Practically all devices in 2003 already supports AAC-LC when the format was introduced in 1997.
>For software developers and audio enthusiasts, this might seem like a big deal. But, surprisingly, almost no one noticed.
Because MP3 software encoder or decoder has always been free for personal use.
> because the MP3 format was proprietary.
MP3 is not proprietary. But I guess the word proprietary has different meaning in the modern day communication. Just like patents free.
AAC-LC, baseline version of AAC, has been declared patent free by Redhat in 2017.
Other than not having a true open source top quality AAC-LC encoder, ( most people just use the best one from iTunes but not open source ). There are very little reason to use MP3 today. AAC-LC was introduced in 1997, iPod was introduced in 2001, Nearly all hardware since 2003 has had AAC-LC support.
Of course people may prefer to use Opus. But unless you want low bitrate, I would argue the small bitrate saving at 160Kbps+ is not worth the backward compatibility offered by AAC-LC. Or simply go lossless.
Because MP3 software encoder or decoder has always been free for personal use.
> because the MP3 format was proprietary.
MP3 is not proprietary. But I guess the word proprietary has different meaning in the modern day communication. Just like patents free.
AAC-LC, baseline version of AAC, has been declared patent free by Redhat in 2017.
Other than not having a true open source top quality AAC-LC encoder, ( most people just use the best one from iTunes but not open source ). There are very little reason to use MP3 today. AAC-LC was introduced in 1997, iPod was introduced in 2001, Nearly all hardware since 2003 has had AAC-LC support.
Of course people may prefer to use Opus. But unless you want low bitrate, I would argue the small bitrate saving at 160Kbps+ is not worth the backward compatibility offered by AAC-LC. Or simply go lossless.
Amazingly you are still not free to use them on iPhone's Music app.
I plugged my S23 into a computer to copy files from it and my iPhone-using co-worker looked at me like I was a wizard. There is such a major culture gap on how the different device families work, and so hard to understand the other family.
Yeah you can plug iPhone into computer, which I haven't done for years now. Only reason was to load it up with mp3s.
Last weekend I've tried to do the same without a computer and basically you can only use players like VLC which only allowed me to load single file (playlists are there, but again you have to connect to computer).
Edit: Just tried one more time and you can place files into VLC folder (using Files is a bit tedious tho) and they appear in VLC player. Yay.
Last weekend I've tried to do the same without a computer and basically you can only use players like VLC which only allowed me to load single file (playlists are there, but again you have to connect to computer).
Edit: Just tried one more time and you can place files into VLC folder (using Files is a bit tedious tho) and they appear in VLC player. Yay.
It's annoying as hell though--with Android devices you can see Downloads or Pictures or whatever and move things to and fro as you please.
With ios you need a Mac and you are stuck with the 'Photos' app and or otherwise it's some ugly abstraction with weird year_month_day directories all over the place.
With ios you need a Mac and you are stuck with the 'Photos' app and or otherwise it's some ugly abstraction with weird year_month_day directories all over the place.
MP3’s have been supported by Apple’s devices since the first iPod came out in 2001. The headache is that there is no way to transfer files to add to your Music library locally except from your computer like it was still 2001.
Yes, I’m aware of the work around using GarageBand for iOS.
Yes, I’m aware of the work around using GarageBand for iOS.
Okay I've just tried VLC once again and it's almost useable - I can easily select all mp3's from local files and play them. It doesn't allow to copy them into VLCs library tho - so no playlists.
Edit: Just tried one more time and you can place files into VLC folder (using Files is a bit tedious tho) and they appear in VLC player. Yay.
Edit: Just tried one more time and you can place files into VLC folder (using Files is a bit tedious tho) and they appear in VLC player. Yay.
I’m talking about the native music player and using your computer to copy them into your library.
Yes that's a nightmare. It's been years since I've plugged my phone.
> Kids download gigabyte-sized games in minutes.
This is like, the understatement of the week, a single Xbox one game can now be 140GB
This is like, the understatement of the week, a single Xbox one game can now be 140GB
A 30 minute download seemed to torture my oldest the other day. We have a 1 gig fibre connection.
I told him that when I was his age it would have taken until next Thursday (it was a Wednesday) and there was a really long pause while it seemed like he was processing the idea of waiting for something.
I told him that when I was his age it would have taken until next Thursday (it was a Wednesday) and there was a really long pause while it seemed like he was processing the idea of waiting for something.
Fraunhofer must've taken a quite a hit to their budget, or so I thought, but it turns out that revenue from MP3 licensing was only about ~100 million EUR annually.
Seems the license came quite cheap anyways.
Seems the license came quite cheap anyways.
> Let me tell you what you do or do not know.
Imagine when H264 patents expire.
Depending on where you are, that's "already" or "soon".
What do you think will happen?
Who ever cared it was not?
Businesses making sound files. I think there were always free (legal) players for end users, but if you were going to distribute mp3s commercially without a licence you could well get sued.
[deleted]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14240645
More notable is that many H.264 patents are expiring this year:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_M...