[Bjornbro]

I think most people who listen to music from their computer, hear it coded in .mp3. What does the future hold for digital audio where computers are concerned? Will .mp3 be the standard for six months or six years? In a previous thread Nick warned some high end speakers "will rip .mp3s apart" because the sound ability is that good. I ask, if one wanted to condense their massive collection of CDs, would it be prudent to wait until there is a better compressed audio format, one which will not degrade audio quality as much?

 

[hayesk]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Bjornbro:
I ask, if one wanted to condense their massive collection of CDs, would it be prudent to wait until there is a better compressed audio format, one which will not degrade audio quality as much?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yes. I can hear the difference between a CD and MP3 for a lot of albums (not necessarily all, but a lot). I'd use a lossless method if I wanted to archive my CDs now, otherwise wait for something better.

It also depends on what you listen to. If you like electronic music with relatively few instruments, and electronic ones at that, MP3 won't degrade us much, because the depth and harmonics aren't there to begin with. If you like classical or music with a lot of real, natural sounding instruments, then MP3 really degrades the quality.

 

[PosterBoy]

I find that MP3 quality is higly variable. If you encode an MP3 with a high bit rate you can get some very high quality audio. Of course, the higher the bit rate, the higher the file size, the more you defeat the purpose of the MP3 being a small yet relatively high quality file.

MP4 AAC Audio is quite high quality with really small file sizes, but even though QT6 suports it fully, iTunes can't rip to it (except with some third party haxies)

You know what is scary? Windows Media Audio is actually very high quality. When encoded at the same bit rate as an MP3, their are many people in this world that will tell you the WMA is better quality. Of course WMA can be copy protected, and that keeps it out of the mainstream, not to mention that you can only encode them on Windows Media Player, only on Windows.

In other words, I don't know what will be the next big thing. Undoubtedly someone will come up with some new standard in the next couple years, and you can look for QT to support it within 6 months or so of it getting hyped up.

--PB

 

[Nick]

Hello

The way I see it is that compression will never or can never be as good as CD. Even CD's are being phased out for better quality, such as SACD or DVD-Audio. But those two new formats still can only be as good as the recording. I have CD's now (mass market) that are still not recorded that great.

You may of noticed that in my computer stats that I have 120GB worth of internal storage, well about 30GB of that is AIFF. I use AIFF because there is NO compression and I can appriciate the quality differnce. I also use AIFF on my iPod.

I am not saying that I do not use MP3's I still use them for songs that I rarely listen too. If I listen to a piece of music lots then I store it without compression.

*Also Something funny to note*

Ironically the MP3 was creatrd by a German recording company. They thought that it would never catch in the mass market due to the lack of sound quality. It was invented so people could SAMPLE music.

Please Don't Steal Music.

I am not saying don't download MP3's. But what I am saying is that if you like the music then go buy the CD, don't freeload. If you don't like the music, then delete the MP3 with no money lost. That is what the MP3 was created to do.

As of Jan 1 2003, there will be a 50% tax on blank CD's to go to the recording artist, due to the amount of music being stolen. So you may want to stock up on CDR's before then.

Later