Freed At Last From Patents, Does Anyone Still Care About MP3?
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192kbps variable mp3 on my 64MB mp3 player...
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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.
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It's still my preferred format. Everything can play it. At 256kbit or better it sounds fine for usual listening.
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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_dashYouTube 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...
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Workarounds in a specific player don't negate the fact that the format has limitations.
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The man with the action packed expense account.
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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.)
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That’s a great idea, especially since I’m also trying to purge old stuff
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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.
Dynamic range isn't limited by the sampling rate. It is limited by the resolution, which is 16 bits for the audio CD. With that resolution you get a dynamic range of 96 dB when not using any dithering and even more than that when using dithering. Even with "only" 96 dB that dynamic range is so vast, that there is no practical use of a higher resolution when it comes to playback. I know that the human ear is supposed to be able to handle 130 dB or even more of dynamic range. The thing is, you can only experience such a dynamic range once, afterwards you are deaf. So not much point in such a dynamic range there.
There are good reasons to use a higher resolution when recording and mixing audio, but for playback and storage of the finished audio 16 bits of resolution is just fine.
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It is my admittedly limited understanding that we really can't do better at digitally recording an audio signal than how red book audio does it, such that the microphones, amplifiers, ADCs etc on the recording end and the DAC, amp and speakers on the playback end are going to be much more significant factors in audio quality.
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You're absolutely right a out data formatting being an issue and something that really does cause vendor lockin.
I would just think content creators would still want archive/backup of the final products (the video itself). For example could you imagine if a movie just disappeared because Adobe or someone shutdown.
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As I said, some of the music is just the audio of a video, but they also get a lot of releases directly from the publishers. They are both on YT Music and the difference in quality in between them is noticeable.
I have my audio quality set to high in that options menu btw.
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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.
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Biggest free download site is probably https://www.oldradioworld.com/
There's also the Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/oldtimeradio
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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.
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Even at 160kbps, maybe 1/1.000.000 people can recognice a FLAC vs MP3 trying 10 times (continuous) using expensive headphones and players, 320kbps is overkill, I prefer a FLAC and just encode to Opus.
Right now Opus is better and can be played in web browsers, smartphones, YouTube and Netflix are using that for awhile.
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You might not have heard of the formats but you've definitely listened to them. For example, Youtube has only served audio in aac and opus for years now. Most instant messaging apps also use opus during calls to reduce bandwidth usage. And those are just some big examples. Basically almost any online service has dumped mp3 in favor of aac and opus since they're better in every way (in the sense that they have better quality at the same bitrate as mp3)
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You can easily hear the difference if you have good headphones or speakers
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No doubt there are many superior codecs. Opus is amazing, we use it for voice and video over IP. But I doubt anything will ever be as universally playable as MP3.
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I'm not arguing in the slightest that FLAC shows an audible difference in most cases for most tracks. However, it just makes sense as an archival format given it's lossless which means you can transcode to any other format without generational loss.
This means if there is a massive breakthrough in lossy compression in the future, I can use it for mobile purposes. If you store as lossy, you're stuck with whatever losses have been incurred.
