Freed At Last From Patents, Does Anyone Still Care About MP3?
Freed At Last From Patents, Does Anyone Still Care About MP3?

Freed At Last From Patents, Does Anyone Still Care About MP3?

Freed At Last From Patents, Does Anyone Still Care About MP3?
Freed At Last From Patents, Does Anyone Still Care About MP3?
It's useful because it's ubiquitous. Everything that can take in music files supports it.
Is MP3-encoded audio of the best possible quality? No, of course not. But for most people it's Good Enough, especially if you do most of your listening in a noisy environment. MP3s are to lossless formats what CD was to vinyl for so many years.
A lot of people cant tell the difference between MP3 @320Kbps and a fully lossless FLAC.
All people. 320kbps mp3 is completely audibly transparent under all normal listening conditions. It's a low-tier audiophile meme to claim otherwise but they will never pass a double-blind test.
A lot of people cant tell the difference between MP3 @320Kbps and a fully lossless FLAC.
MP3 has some disadvantages over more modern formats, regardless the used bitrate. It's been a long while since I was very interested in audio formats, so I may not be up to date on some newer developments but unless anything major changed, MP3 can't do truly gapless playback between tracks (used in live albums), for example.
I'd argue you've got that backwards; CD is to vinyl what lossless is to .mp3. That said, I know what you mean.
From what I understand, vinyl and CDs can both output in a range greater than human ears can detect, so the medium isn't as important as the mastering and the gear being used to listen to the recording.
Vinyl is lossy in that any dust or scratches on the record can be heard in the output, so this is only true if you've got an absolutely pristine vinyl.
The original idea behind the superiority of vinyl was that the ambient audio was being recorded directly to the media. Of course, this wasn't even true when it was first made, as they were using magnetic tape by then to record in analog. However, there is still some merit to the idea that an infinitesimal amount of quality is lost when translating sound waves to digital data.
Most of the actual differences between cd and vinyl, though, can be chalked up to the loudness wars ruining the mixes on cd.
CDs can, by a very narrow margin, reproduce sounds beyond which the human ear can detect. There's a theorem that states you can perfectly reproduce a waveform by sampling if the bitrate is double the maximum frequency or something like that, and CDs use a bitrate such that it can produce just above the human hearing range. You can't record an ultrasonic dog whistle on a CD, it won't work.
It's functionally impossible to improve on "red book" CD Digital Audio quality because it can perfectly replicate any waveform that has been band-passed filtered to 20,000 Hz or thereabouts. Maybe you can talk about dynamic range or multi-channel (CDs are exactly stereo. No mono, no 5.1 surround...Stereo.) It's why there really hasn't been a new disc format; no one needs one. It was as good as the human ear can do in the early 80's and still is.
This is what we were all told for years and years- that it was impossible that anyone could hear anything in vinyl that was supposed to be there but that couldn't be reproduced with digital at cd quality. Then DVD came out And people could genuinely hear the difference from CD quality audio even in stereo. It turns out that dynamic range is limited by the audio sampling rate and the human ear can easily detect a far greater range CD audio supports.
I still prefer mp3 because it's small and doesn't sound any different to me than uncompressed formats, so why waste the disk space? 🤷🏻♂️
I thought it didn’t sound any different to me too. That is until me and a friend were riding around listening to Icky Thump by The White Stripes for a few weeks when it first came out.
Higher bitrate, ripped directly from the CD, pretty decent car radio.
We had been listening to my copy, he didn’t own it yet.
We stopped at a record store one day when we were out and he picked up his copy. He wanted to play the CD for whatever reason, and when he stuck the disc in, “berderwiddledod dahta dah BOOM BOOM BOOM”.
I couldn’t believe it. It was like the record just sucked the power out of us both and used it to burst through the speakers.
The mp3, by comparison, sounded shrunk down from the source and splashed with water.
It didn’t change my listening habits because of convenience, but damn. It was an eye opener.
Is it definitely the MP3 format at fault here? Was your MP3 from an official source or could it have been from a faulty source or improperly transcoded?
Could it be the sound system? Most people seem to prefer the convenience of Bluetooth, ubiquitous small speakers, and maybe that’s usually the limiting factor.
I stopped trying to keep up with a good sound system when my little ones decided to stuff matchbox cars into the port on my subwoofer. However I do a little set up from Bluetooth with AirTunes/Sonos, so I don’t know if the difference would be apparent. My car is by far my best sound system
I thought so too, but once I got IEMs. The drums felt more organic and I heard parts of guitars that I didn't on mp3.
I am very slightly annoyed that people haven't moved onto Opus which gives you better compression and quality than MP3. MP3s are still useful for any older devices that have hardware decoding like radio sets, handheld players, etc. Otherwise, every modern device should support Opus out of box.
Hilariously, x264 has the same problem where there are direct upgrades with H.265 and AV1, but the usage is still low due to lack of hardware accelerated encoding (especially AV1), but like everyone uses FLAC for the audio which is lossless lol.
I just use ogg vorbis and vp9 in webm container, also webp for images. No proprietary nonsense in this house. AV1 sucks on my hardware, but yes eventually.
I use it to (re)compress audiobooks, podcasts and such, they still sound very good at 32 kbps.
Fun fact, Opus has been supported by a hobby OS like MorphOS for years, my ancient hardware doesn't break a sweat playing it.
Podcasts are almost exclusively mp3. There is no need for lossless fidelity on those. And when you are subscribed to 200 podcasts like I am a small file size matters. And when listening at 2.5x speed lossless is a complete waste.
All my podcasts appear to use the AAC spoken audio profile? It’s much smaller and cleaner than MPEG layer 3 audio.
Apple broke metadata compatibility with a recent update. The podcast producer I know with an explicit AAC feed decided to just redirect to the MP3 feed. Unrelated to that, they also increased the MP3 bitrate for better audio quality. The increased file size doesn't really matter that much compared to 15 years ago and people without unlimited data can just set their automated syncs to WiFi only.
Sounds fine at good bitrates, universally supported, small, efficient, everywhere.
Yeah, MP3 is just fine. Found zero reason to use any other format. And of course, while the rest of the world streams everything I'll be happily using my massive MP3 library I can fit on a tiny little storage device and take everywhere I go without the need for the interbutts and big brother keeping tabs of what I listen to.
I used to think this but the convenience won out. Now over holiday break, my teen discovered my crate of CDs that he doesn’t remember seeing in his lifetime!
And now I need to decide whether to buy a CD or DVD player to transfer to a more usable format - the last one I had was an old Xbox that is no longer with us
I don't use any one format. No idea what audio formats I have but probably a lot. Never cared, VLC takes them all.
Apart from my home hifi (which is built around flac) everything i liaten to ia mp3. Podcasts - mp3. Car audio system? Max 192kbps mp3. My phone? Full of mp3. And I'm sure I'm not alone. To say mp3 is not relevant anymore is just misguided.
Opus is better than MP3 in every way. File size is either better or the same, and audio is better even at lower bitrates. But realistically, most streaming services don't provide HD audio, so it really doesn't even matter.
249 webm audio only 2 │ 1.58MiB 49k https │ audio only opus 49k 48k low, webm_dash 250 webm audio only 2 │ 2.09MiB 65k https │ audio only opus 65k 48k low, webm_dash 251 webm audio only 2 │ 4.14MiB 128k https │ audio only opus 128k 48k medium, webm_dash 233 mp4 audio only │ m3u8 │ audio only unknown Default 234 mp4 audio only │ m3u8 │ audio only unknown Default 140 m4a audio only 2 │ 4.20MiB 130k https │ audio only mp4a.40.2 130k 44k medium, m4a_dash
This is YouTube music, which generally serves the split audio from a YouTube video as a song. Most of them I checked either don't have audio above 130Kbps or don't even provide MP3/Opus anyways.
Youtube Music doesn't just serve the audio from a video. They do serve the audio from a video if nothing else is available, but they also get releases directly from the publishers/distributors.
The difference in sound quality is definetly noticeable.
Youtube Music doesn’t just serve the audio from a video.
Yes it does. You don't even need to take my word for it. Look up any song by any artist and find their official video for that song. Take this one as an example: https://youtu.be/kPa7bsKwL-c
Analyze it with yt-dlp or something similar;
249 webm audio only 2 │ 1.51MiB 50k https │ audio only opus 50k 48k low, webm_dash 250 webm audio only 2 │ 2.00MiB 67k https │ audio only opus 67k 48k low, webm_dash 251 webm audio only 2 │ 3.92MiB 130k https │ audio only opus 130k 48k medium, webm_dash 233 mp4 audio only │ m3u8 │ audio only unknown Default 234 mp4 audio only │ m3u8 │ audio only unknown Default 140 m4a audio only 2 │ 3.90MiB 129k https │ audio only mp4a.40.2 129k 44k medium, m4a_dash
YouTube already has access to the audio for that song without any additional effort because of how YouTube works. I'm sure publishers can provide higher quality audio, up to 256Kbps but that option isn't even enabled for users by default. By default you're listening to "normal" audio or 130Kbps: https://i.xno.dev/Ow2eC.png
The reason why YouTube Music works is because they already have access to a huge library of music through music videos and the like. They save a ton of time and money by doing things this way and it makes perfect sense that they do...
It's less supported, and for me mp3 is largely enough. Can fit a lot of them on my 20€ 128GB usb key...
I mean, I'm sure that it is less supported, but in all the years I've been using it I haven't found one. 🤷♂️
I got back into using soulseek and have mp3s on my phone and on my pc. I find it rewarding for privacy and offline reliability purposes. Not to mention it’s free.
Well, most of my music collection lies as mp3. I care about metadata and all of them have tags. I would love to convert my collection to opus but first I need FLACs and an easy way to move over metadata, since vorbis is different than ID3tag. Do you know a streamlined way for this?
For FLAC you have torrents, no legal way to have that. For tags I use https://beets.io/ but it's not moving tags, it's detection and looking up on a database on the internet.
I 100% do. I think mp3 is a good compromise of sound and space. It's also the format I'm used to. Just like how people swear by physical record. If I'm at a get together and hear mp3 quality, I'm at home.
That being said, I have my absolute favorites in flac for my iPod 5th gen video I rebuilt. The 5th gen's dac, Wolfson, is a solid little dac for the day and age. Got Rockbox loaded up and I'm ace, but I've hard saved all the Apple firmware for every model in case the time came to sell them. Old iPods could be an investment someday and I own every gen in multiples.
Sure, it's like JPG.
It may not be the newest or best compression ratio, but it works, and even the shittiest old hardware supports it. And I know it won't whine about licences being missing or some shit.
My music folder is 40GB of MP3s. To this day I use an online YouTube converter to collect music.
I have boatloads of MP3s and at least they can pretty much be played by all imaginable software and hardware imaginable, and since the patents have expired, there's no reason not to support the format.
MP3s are good enough for its particular use case. Of course, newer formats are better overall and may be better suited for some applications. (Me, I've been an Ogg Vorbis fan for ages now. Haven't ripped a CD in a while but should probably check out this newfangled Opus thing when I do.)
I remember reading articles at the time of the last patents running out. Some were so misguided it was hilarious.
They called it the death of MP3! As if patents were good or necessary, instead of restrictive and troublesome for interoperability.
About a year ago I was saying how I wanted Winamp to come back. Then they tried coming back, but making their old player open source. But they totally didn't grasp the concept of open source. The whole thing blew up when people took the source code and......get this......forked it! gasp!
Still to this day, I don't see how Winamp didn't see that coming. Well it turns out, their source code had dependancies that THEY didn't even have authorization to use. So they tried asking everyone to not fork their source code, but also, here it is, please be good boys!
Now some people swear that Winamp are just idiots. Other people swear that they HAD to know that would happen. Like it was deliberate.
Whereas I believe that the most simple explanation more often than not is the right explanation. So if they WERE that dumb, let's take a look at the implications of that. That would mean that there were executives up top who got word that people would like an open source product. These executives would have to have had ZERO understanding of what that meant. At all. And I like to think if they had somebody on their payroll who relayed the message that open source was being requested, that the messenger at the very least, could have informed them of what that means. This implies that NOT AS SINGLE PERSON ON STAFF STOOD UP AND SAID "HEY, WHOA! WHAT ARE WE DOING???"
So that doesn't seem too simple. That seems like a stretch.
Well then the other option is that it WAS deliberate, and that they knew exactly what they were doing. One problem is, I don't know what they were doing. If this was deliberate, what's the end goal here? You get people to fork a source code and find dependencies that you don't have the rights to distribute. Which then in turn opens YOU up to a legal vulnerability if Microsoft decides they want to be assholes. Then, on top of this, you start threatening legal suits against ANYONE who forked your code. I'm not getting the intention here. No matter how this plays out, it already feels like a stretch to say this was intentional.
So, if it wasn't them being blundering idiots, and it wasn't them deliberately doing this.......what the fuck DID happen?
My only takeaway is that I no longer want anything to do with winamp. It really just seems like the Chernobyl of audio players at this point.
Always remember that in some places executive just means the dumbest person in the room and most developers won't lift a finger if it means they get to see the owners embarrassing themselves in public.
So, if it wasn't them being blundering idiots, and it wasn't them deliberately doing this.......what the fuck DID happen?
An error in the simulation, probably.
Apple basically killed any chance ogg had by not supporting it on ipods. Which was unfortunate.
Since it appears this happened 8 years ago, and uh, I can't say that I've seen a single MP3 file since then, perhaps nobody still cares.
If you're building a music library, and you're NOT using some sort of lossless format, I'd love to know why. I know a lot of people with massive libraries, medium libraries, and just shit they like one song at a time and not a one of them isn't using FLAC files for it.
They might transcode into something occasionally, but it's always something like AAC or OPUS, not MP3.
Because I don't want it to take up too much space? My phone has a ton of storage but I would still rather not spend tons of it at a time...
Store the original library as FLAC, then transcode on-the-fly (or once if you don't want to use something like Navidrome or Jellyfin).
Plex. I've had my whole personal collection available to stream for a long time now.
I only waste space with downloaded tracks if I know my drive is going to take me offline.
If you’re building a music library, and you’re NOT using some sort of lossless format, I’d love to know why.
Because MP3 is the only thing my car stereo, my wife’s car stereo and my daughter’s book shelf system will reliably read. Sometimes they’ll work with an m4a, but it’s hit or miss.
Now I always rip to FLAC & MP3, but other than local listening, it tends to be all MP3’s that get used.
but you could just throw away your car and build an open source car from source! isn't that better than using... MP3!?!?!
/j
Yeah, i have a huge archive of music in .mp3 format and it keeps growing. There is no appreciable loss in quality between uncompressed and 320kb/s, with the potential to go reasonably lower depending on the source quality.
I'm like this with my movies too, with some exceptions all 2000 of them are around 1-2Gb in size, which is considered small in the torrenting community. For those ones i can actually notice the low image quality, but it kinda doesn't bother me.
I have good headphones and a good TV, i just stopped believing in high fidelity. People adore the imperfections of vinyl and VHS media, and i kind of feel the same way towards digital artifacts, movies feel weird when the image is too sharp. For music, again, i don't even notice.
In this context, if a format can cut my library size in half and i can't tell the audio difference, AND it's patent-free, i see this as an absolute win.
Not that most people would care anyway, in the age of streaming people don't have libraries anymore
understandable if you mainly have moved to streaming apps, but if you dj as a hobby or pro you have a healthy collection of mp3s, wavs and maybe flacs. there is a lot of hobby and pro djs around the world for sure !
I built my MP3 collection from 1998 to now and I have been steadily replacing old, low quality MP3s with FLACs.
Yeah there isn't a good reason for MP3s anymore. Maybe if suddenly storage space is an issue again in the future.
Soulseek is a goldmine of high quality FLACs.
My top headset is worth like $280 AUD, which isn't much for Bluetooth, soossless is kinda worthless. I don't have top end equipment for me to notice literally any kind of difference.
Also something that effects me but probably not most people, I have like 400 songs downloaded, to do that in MP3 is hours, lossless has to be way way more than that.
There might be things that are better these days in the technical sense. But there is always value in having something "good enough" that is freely available and compatible with nearly everything that has speakers to use to keep those technically better yet more expensive options in check.
Mp3 has been dead to me for nearly a decade. Flac is superior in every way.
Except file size. 😁 I convert everything from flac to mp3 before I put it on my phone. I'm lucky in that I can't tell the difference in quality at all.
It's just one of those things where once you hear the difference you can't go back. It's sort of the difference between a 360p vs 1440p youtube video. The compression artifacts make the music sound so artifical to me. I don't really know how to describe it. But yes, there is a considerable increase in file size. For me it's a non issue because I have my music collection on an 8tb hdd. Though I wish phones still had micro sd slots so I could take them with me. My music collection is at 1.2 tb I think. I'm not trying to be an elitist asshole here. I'm just sharing my experience.
@daggermoon Ogg is actually my preference, but so much stuff still doesn’t support it these days.
Yeah only the most popular formats are guaranteed support sadly. Support seems to be relegated to formats that are 20+ years old.
Edit: Just realized vorbis is 24 years old. Nevermind lol.
Most people are archiving in FLAC but the reality is that almost nobody can hear the difference between 320 (or even V0) and FLAC. So in cases where the disk space makes a difference mp3 still makes sense.
You can easily hear the difference if you have good headphones or speakers
I care, because I’ve been using streaming media for quite a few years years and not kept up with any changes
I use m4a format simply because my downloader uses that format. But I think m4a sound quality is better than mp3.
m4a
That's mp4, which is 33% better than mp3 /j
yt-dlp uses m4a but sometimes I like my library to be mo3 just for nostalgia :(
I haven’t looked into this so deeply in a while. Thanks for the post! I use VLC, precisely because it plays most anything I throw at it. Cell coverage is spotty, so it’s common to play from files rather than stream. We have a bike ride, doubtless like many cities, social ride meets on the regular. Since Bluetooth, and everyone has a speaker. When I’m riding solo it lets people know I’m coming. Safer that way. I’ve heard people complain they don’t care to hear that cyclists taste in music, which tells me you heard them and weren’t harmed. You’ll hear that music, for a moment, and safely continue on your way. On the group ride everyone plays their own music, call it The Cacophony, if you will. Sometimes the music to the left, to the right match up in interesting ways.
You've never heard about bicycle bells, have you?
Perhaps you have heard of people stepping out from behind a bush, unaware that there was an approaching cyclist because that cyclist didn’t realize that there was a need to ring the bell? Have you ever noticed when you phrase a question with a negative assumption it tends to affect how the person responds to that question? Communication takes practice, and with practice can improve over time. I believe in you, and think you have the ability to improve.
Funnily enough the guy who invented MP3 earned enough from royalties to barely afford a regular house in Germany. Meanwhile Apple made billions and rose like a phoenix from the ashes thanks to Apple Music and the iPod that rely on this format.
Doesn't the iPod use AAC?
iPhones use m4a these days for their native music app.
do you think would influence developers to make their projects open source, with more leaning towards copy left licenses? they won't make much money off the code alone anyways, so might as well try to make others not profit either