Much like GIFs, MP3s will never go away.
Sure there are better alternatives, but widespread adoption over decades now is hard to gloss over.
Not being encumbered by patents is a huge advantage for MP3s going forward, and the reality is that MP3 is good enough for vast majority of situations. The improvements newer formats like AAC bring are not worth the trouble of being chained to a proprietary format.
There’s always Opus.
Sure, but is there any practical benefit using Opus given that MP3 is much more widely implemented?
Much better quality for the same bitrate and it’s supported pretty much everywhere too.
I was a flac snob when I was younger, and I can say with certainty: 320kbps mp3s or even VBR are indistinguishable from opus or even lossless except when listening very very very closely on high end hardware. I’m very into audio still and production etc. That’s not to say opus isn’t better or higher quality, but the difference it makes is decidedly negligible to the vast majority of listeners. I guarantee that almost everyone would fail to do better than a coin flip a/b testing these technologies on the same audio recording.
192kbps opus will allow you to achieve roughly the same quality as 320kbps mp3. If you stream your music from any device or have a larger collection this difference can matter a lot.
192 VBR OPUS and 320 VBR LAME MP3 are equally transparent. The quality depends more on mastering than bitrate, beyond 160k on MP3.
I guess my collection’s just not big enough for this to have become an issue.
As a music producer, you notice 192k MP3. The next jumps you probably don’t notice. I’m still a flac snob because I have to work a lot with original quality files, but for the average users there’s probably not even a difference between MP3 192k+ and flac or wav or opus or whatever.
AAC-LC is patent free too nowadays (not HE-AAC, but that’s mainly useful for low-bitrate stuff).
good to know
Same with H264. I still have trouble getting H265 videos to play on all devices, so it’s easier to stay with 264.
Pretty much everything plays AAC though (unless it’s some cheap mp3 player)
So long as people use high bitrates, I’m fine with that.
What is considered a high bitrate? There isn’t much reason to go higher than 320 kb/s on an mp3.
Anything over 190 is just fine for me.
I’m not sure you can go more than 320kb/s on mp3. I have my music collection on my home server in FLAC but I transcode to 320kbps constant bitrate mp3 for my car and phone. I chose 320 because it’s the highest that I’ve seen mp3 converters able to go.
Good point. I guess there is a reason that is the highest setting.
Basically it goes a little like this… I bounce out a song as a WAV, and then convert it to a 320 MP3 using iTunes. iTunes compresses very well (imo), and so if you compare that WAV with that 320, they will sound practically identical. I then take that 320 and Convert it to 128 in iTunes. The sound is STILL practically identical. (Because it is a good 128.) There may be a little rolloff around 8-10k (super high end) but it’s more of a “sound change” than a “degradation”. This conception that 128’s are drastically inferior to 320’s mostly comes from 1. people reading bullshit on the internet, & 2. people downloading BAD 128’s!!! Seriously. Not every WAV is equal, not every 320 is equal. I could take something at 92 KBPS and rebounce it as a WAV. does that make it a lossless audio file? Fuck no. Who knows how many times it’ been downconverted/upconverted etc. Just because you downloaded a rip on /xtrill and its a 128 and it sounds bad doesn’t mean 128’s sound bad. Just because the apple I bought was rotten doesn’t mean all apples taste awful. Basically if I listen to a song and it sounds good, I will play it. People knock me for playing 128’s and I’m just like… If I can’t tell the difference, then neither can you. And the bit about playing it on big systems and it sounding like shit is also a load of crap. TL;DR: If it sounds good on good headphones, play it. (That said, anything below 128 and you will notice audio quality deteriorate VERY quickly.)
Sorry, are you converting it, lossily, twice? That’s like twice the lossiness! Just convert it once.
128kbps mp3?
my ears are bleeding
As someone who grew up with mp3 and is currently replacing it with opus, o7
(IK theres flac, but bruh…storage is expensive and my equipment isn’t like state of the art)
I did the same. Faced a problem where mp3 and opus replaygain tags follow different spec (replaygain calculators for some reason use R128_ tags for opus files for some reason) and some players don’t support it yet. Apart from that there haven’t been issues.
And MP3s are perfectly adequate for most applications.
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The duration of software patents is completely absurd and in a just society would immediately be halved. That said, at any possible point I have totally ditched this ancient technology in favor of the vastly superior Opus.
Edit: just noticed this was published in 2017, which makes much more sense with my understanding of when mp3 was developed.
“Halved?” No. There should not be software patents. They are good for nothing.
You can theoretically extend that logic to any patent. However this only works in a world that’s not profit-centric.
I would totally switch to OPUS as soon as it supports embedding album art.
What’s the use case for that? Would mkv solve your need?What you ask for already exists.
https://opus-codec.org/docs/opus-tools/opusenc.htmlWell damn! That’s great!
Iirc that’s an issue with ffmpeg. Opus itself can do that. I also stumbled upon that once.
Maybe apps will finally feel free to bundle LAME instead of forcing you to download it externally!
I downloaded Audacity on a friends Windows PC yesterday, and it allowed me to export MP3 without asking for any other steps!
From Audacity’s website:
FAQ:Installing the LAME MP3 Encoder
The software patent on LAME encoding library has expired, so now the LAME library for MP3 export is built-in with Audacity for Windows and Mac. Linux users will still need to download and install the free and recommended LAME third-party encoder to export MP3 files from Audacity.
Linux users should use the following instructions to download and install the free and recommended LAME third-party encoder to export MP3 files with Audacity.
Windows: LAME is now built-in with Audacity for Windows.
Mac: LAME is now built-in with Audacity for Mac.
Linux/Unix: See the LAME installation section on Installing and updating Audacity on Linux.
Oh man, I remember my early struggles with EAC as a teen.
flac is my standard go to anyway. If I need to move music to a more limited storage medium, flac->mp3 is where it’s at.
This is mostly how I operate, too. Keep it in FLAC so I always have something to go back to.
But if I ever need a USB stick to play in the car, I’m just going MP3 and not thinking twice about it. I know every car that plays from USB is going to play MP3 just fine.
MP3 is my go-to when traveling. Especially if I don’t have mobile data or Wi-Fi
Remember, 320 kbps is the only mp3 format you are allowed to use. 256kbps if you really really have too, but dont go below that or I will personally hunt you and lecture you on audio quality until you can only listen to uncompressed audio. Dont make me do it.
I use M4A but I’m not sure if it matters much.
