Company Set to Launch MP3 Successor

[Honis]

Kevin, I like the subtle dig on Apple user intelligence:

the songs will still play on any MP3 player, including Apple's iPhone and iPod products.

The picture choice was a nice touch too.

 

[idisarmu]

Do people on tom's really think that mp3s @ 320kbps sound bad?

I think they sound just fine. flac files simply aren't worth the space they take up imo. 10mb/minute of music? That's about 3 times as much as I would like...

 

[evolve60]

MusicDNA is based on the MP3 format

This just tells me they're just adding a feature to the current MPtrash format and giveing it a new name, there are loads of better music formats then MP3 such as .OGG .FLAC MPC and so on, but aslong as people are using crappy media players such as an Ipod that can't support any of these formats, MP3 is still going to be the standard music format until people smarten up and get media players that can use .OGG or .FLAC files in it.

 

[Milleman]

Space is of noconcern since disks and flashes are constantly growing bigger.

 

[techguy911]

I find digital music as a whole sounds flat no matter what sampling rate is used the mid range, high end and low end suffer too much loss, when i was a kid it was about fidelity now its volume.

Vacuum tube amps and records sound so much better than mp3's i find even flac suffers from too much frequency loss need a better format without so much loss.

 

[ravewulf]

I'll stick with non-DRM AAC audio, thanks

 

[JonathanDeane]

The problem with replacing MP3 is that there is no need... It's good enough (not perfect but with a high bit rate its damn good) Everything works with it so why mess with something else?

I think this will go the way of Atrac and seemingly a dozen other formats that have come out since MP3.

 

[eddieroolz]

MP3 and FLAC are good enough for me. We don't need another format.

 

[razor512]

completely useless. It seems as just a way to add DRM and gain more control over the music.

things like news updates with the music is crap, because when music services have "news updates" it usually means advertisement in the form of a news update

lyrics are useless also, many players will automatically get them and most people don't like reading them anyway.

this will only add more to the file size while offering no additional quality. it will also be a problem for users with limited bandwidth, imagine a collection of like 15000 songs trying to update them self every little while, it will be a waste of system resources and also a waste of bandwidth.

while there are better formats out there, unless you have a $500-1000 pair of headphones you generally cant tell the difference.

when going from a 320k mp3 to flac, generally all you get is a slight improvement in the treble and it is hard to notice in many cases.

if they want to reduce piracy, adding advertisements and DRM wont help, what they need to do is offer better service. allow people to sample like half of a song minimum or the entire thing (eg with pandora radio, I bought a lot of music because I was able to hear the whole song and since I liked the whole song, a simple click of the buy button is enough for me to get a legit copy of a song in good quality)

they also need to reduce music prices, especially when it is digital, sending someone 10MB of data is insanely cheap generally about 1/1000 of a penny

if music was priced like 5-20 cents per song, more people will buy the music because it will be safer and cost effective, and they can still make a good profit from it

when music is sole online, it is pretty much 100% profit

with digital, other than the initial production, all other sales ate basically 100% profit.

 

[g00ey]

[citation][nom]Razor512[/nom]... when going from a 320k mp3 to flac, generally all you get is a slight improvement in the treble and it is hard to notice in many cases...[/citation]

Lossy compression formats have what is known as artifacts that are audible even at 320k. These artifacts are clearly audible on average equipment, especially when using an equalizer, but only on some songs.

But Ogg and Musepack already are valid successors to MP3 so I don't really see the point with the MusicDNA format. I would like to see some really thorough tests with different "trouble songs" too see how this format is dealing with artifacts.

But then again, if I want to make sure the compressed songs are free from artifacts, flac and ape are viable options which gives fair compression ratios. And the DRM scheme is not exactly encouraging, even Apple can testify to that.

I only wish there were a portable media player which supports Musepack MPC/MPP, Ogg Vorbis, flac and ape. Cowon does but their players don't have much memory. So my hope is that a media player such as VLC, Amarok or Songbird gets ported to Android and to later see an Android based media player with SDXC support.

 

[g00ey]

...until someone finds a way to strip away all the DRM...

But why would anyone even bother when there already are other formats out there? I'm willing to bet that this format is born to fail, just like the MP3+ and other obscure formats.

The only viable way of distributing digital music is by using a DRM free lossless format, preferrably ape (Monkey's Audio) because it is currently the best compressor out there and/or flac which is a popular open-source format, and letting the end-user transcode to whatever lossy format he or she wants.

The ID3v2 tag already supports all of what is mentioned in the article (such as lyrics, album art thumbs etc). If there ever will be a feature not supported in the current ID3v2 tag there should be no problem developing an ID3v2.5 or ID3v3 that can be incorporated with existing mp3, Musepack, Ogg, flac, ape, etc formats and yet be backwards compatible with ID3v1, ID3v1.1, and ID3v2. There is actually room for that.

 

[kikireeki]

Then it is an MP3 update and not a successor!

 

[TunaSoda]

We need to stop kidding ourselves and use WAV files

 

[santeana]

"What we are bringing back to the end user is the entire emotional experience of music," Chief Executive Stefan Kohlmeyer told Reuters. "We think it got lost in the transition to the digital era. We think a beautiful piece of audio has been reduced to a number code. We want to enrich it again."

So 1st you say that your new format is basically an MP3 with more useless crap added to it. Then you condemn MP3's by saying that they caused music to be reduced to a number code and lack emotion. ... Yeah, good luck selling this one.

 

[techguy911]

[citation][nom]back_by_demand[/nom]I will give this format about 2 weeks until someone finds a way to strip away all the DRM and torrented versions are available everywhere...2 weeks? Am I being too generous?[/citation]

All of archos mp3 players and internet tablets support:

MP3, WMA (non protected files), WAV, OGG, FLAC.

The tablets have:Stereo MP3 decoding @ 30-320 Kbits/s CBR & VBR, WMA, Protected WMA, WMA pro 5.1, WAV (PCM/ADPCM).
AC3 stereo audio and 5.1 sound files (via SPDIF output of DVR Station)
Flac and OGG Vorbis audio files.

 

[troger5troger5]

Wow, it seems like everything is shock and reaction articles anymore. Heck I could probably cut and paste the reactions from one artical at it would go with another. Everything seems to be about taking rights away from the people and putting more control into someone elses hands. No one wants that but it keeps right on happening. Any good news out there?????????????????

 

[amdchuck]

The only reason MP3 is so prevalent is because it was the de facto standard for many years. The result of it being, from what I recollect, the only thing in the world that would allow you to compress a huge .wav file into a manageable size. That was the draw of MP3 originally, the compression....MP3's became synonymous with PC's at that point and have maintained a firm hold ever since.

With 500MB hard drives and 10MB flash memory cards a thing of the past, even MP3 itself, if trying to launch today, would fail.

 

[d_kuhn]

I'm doubt I'm going much out on a limb to say that (given that the new "format" doesn't actually improve the music quality... just adds extras) this has somewhere close to zero chance of gaining traction.

 

[mitch074]

Wow... I mean, wow.

The MPEG1 layer 3 (MP3) file format and compression algorithm allows the inclusion in-stream and at the end of the stream of miscellaneous data - such as text, for lyrics, or checksums, whatever. In essence, any MP3 player can read those new files, since it is still strictly in accordance with the 20 years old file format.

This solution is, thus, very good compatibility-wise.

However, the MP3 format in itself is flawed - and this new 'killer feature' is pretty much an attempt to sell something new on top of something everybody already has.

If you'll excuse me, I'll keep using Ogg Vorbis: those files can contain 255 different streams: audio, text, video, whatever, and yet even older Vorbis players can still read back those. And the audio is better.

 

[Mulder19]

I don't use MP3 anyway. 75% of my music is on vinyl and the rest in lossless WMA.