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Why do MP3's continue to dominate?

L

littleprince

Golden Member
I definately don't intend this to be flame bait, and I definately ain't an expert.

What I do know is Mp3's dominate music downloading. I also know I can hear the difference between a CD outta the box and an mp3 d/led of the net. Lately a lot of high bit rate mp3's have been popping out with little or no appreciable difference to 128bit encodings. I think a lot of them are ppl who think if you take a 128bit encoding and re-encode at a higher rate you get better quality.

Mp3's were great in the dialup age when it took about 20-25 mins to d/l a song in that format. But many users are on high speed now, storage has increased tremendously, including that of portable players. I for one would trade off a little more space for "CD quality" playback or better.

I for one would probaly pay to d/l music if it weren't in mp3 format. It would practicaly cost nothing to the major players and I think would enhance the idea of d/ling pay music.

What do you all think?

On a side note, any gd places to d/l songs in better quality than mp3's? Including pay sites...
 
probably because it's so widely known and the "masses" don't know any better or care? i'm still fine with mp3, but i rip my own cds so i don't have to rely on someone making a bad rip of a song. i still browse here and there tho before making a cd purchase i'm unsure of. but it's not keeper stuff, it'll get replaced if i buy the cd. i am intrigued by aac encoding tho, seems to be higher quality in less space. guess time will tell.
 
Because the mass majority of people don't care about quality? Why did CD's take over vinyl? The answer is still the same. Easier to use.
 
If you encode at a poor bitrate, then you'll hear the difference. But, if you encode at a high bitrate, I doubt you'd notice the difference between the MP3 and the original CD. (the only way to prove it would be with a blind test where you didn't know which was which, and did it with a variety of songs). Unfortunately, the world is filled with morons (as you may have no doubt noticed by now). Try downloading "Sitting By the Dock of the Bay"... you'll discover that no less than 40 well known artists have remade that wonderful Otis Redding song. Then, listen to the songs and you'll discover that there is a high percentage of idiots out there who can't even get the artist of the song correct (there hasn't been a remake by any major artist as far as I know). What makes you think they can encode correctly and at a high quality with good software if they can't even get the artist correct from the CD right in front of them?!?!

Also, there are apparently idiots who record wav files from other sources (such as radio) and turn those into MP3's as well.
 
The MP3's I have are either variable bitrate <320kbps or 192kbps. Most of the time I can't tell the difference between the CD and the MP3 but occasionally I can. With all the high speed connections out there it would be nice if people would use something like Monkey Audio, FLAC, etc. I wouldn't mind if people just ripped the files off the disc with no compression. The newsgroups carry a few groups dedicated to lossless compression. Maybe it'll catch on.
 
i keep hearing about this lossless compression, but haven't really checked it out yet. what kind of file size do you see for something like FLAC compared to MP3?
 
I download 192k MP3s, and I can't tell the difference between them and the cd, so it doesn't bother me. Plus, so many of my songs are MP3, why would I want to switch to another standard?
 
Originally posted by: DrPizza
Try downloading "Sitting By the Dock of the Bay"... you'll discover that no less than 40 well known artists have remade that wonderful Otis Redding song. Then, listen to the songs and you'll discover that there is a high percentage of idiots out there who can't even get the artist of the song correct (there hasn't been a remake by any major artist as far as I know).
Click to expand...

Apparently Pearl Jam played it at some concert, I have an MP3 of it.
 
I'd venture to guess that hardware support has some to do with it also. There are a plethora of devices out now that support MP3, including flash memory based players, cd players, HD based players, car head units, home stereos, dvd players, etc. It has been standardized. Plus, people have accumulated such large collections already that reripping all their music (or redownloading as the case may be) for a format change would be tedious, and it would be a hassle having your music in two different formats.
 
it has to do with what people know. EVERYONE knows what a mp3 is. hell even my mom and dad know. BUT i can only name about 5 other propple that know what FLAC is or what a .ogg or .ape file is
 
That's why I encode all my songs in mp3... I know what the hell I'm doing and the music doesn't sound like sh!t...

what do you expect when you download music? Some dumb person that has no idea what they're doing and ripped the music at a sucky rate or using sucky extraction methods...

If people knew what the hell they were doing and used a decent bitrate with a good encoder, we wouldn't have mp3 problems.
 
Originally posted by: littleprince
I definately don't intend this to be flame bait, and I definately ain't an expert.

What I do know is Mp3's dominate music downloading. I also know I can hear the difference between a CD outta the box and an mp3 d/led of the net. Lately a lot of high bit rate mp3's have been popping out with little or no appreciable difference to 128bit encodings. I think a lot of them are ppl who think if you take a 128bit encoding and re-encode at a higher rate you get better quality.

Mp3's were great in the dialup age when it took about 20-25 mins to d/l a song in that format. But many users are on high speed now, storage has increased tremendously, including that of portable players. I for one would trade off a little more space for "CD quality" playback or better.

I for one would probaly pay to d/l music if it weren't in mp3 format. It would practicaly cost nothing to the major players and I think would enhance the idea of d/ling pay music.

What do you all think?

On a side note, any gd places to d/l songs in better quality than mp3's? Including pay sites...
Click to expand...


i rip my cds at lossless so i dont loose any quality
 
Why did VHS dominate Beta... just the right technology at the right price at the right time. Doesn't always have to do with what is the best technically. MP3 won't be wiped out until something exponentially better comes along... imo.

 
Originally posted by: Anubis
it has to do with what people know. EVERYONE knows what a mp3 is. hell even my mom and dad know. BUT i can only name about 5 other propple that know what FLAC is or what a .ogg or .ape file is
Click to expand...

AH! I'm dyslexic!

I read that as
BUT i can only name about 5 other propple that know what F**K is or what a .oggle or .r@pe file is

:|
 
edmicman, they're much bigger than MP3 but smaller than uncompressed. For example: a 40MB song uncompressed is 26MB in APE and maybe 4.5MB in MP3.
 
Originally posted by: CorporateRecreation
Because the mass majority of people don't care about quality? Why did CD's take over vinyl? The answer is still the same. Easier to use.
Click to expand...

exactly. luckily with dvd-audio we'll be getting a higher digital resolution to bring it up to par with analog recordings.
 
it's pop culture now. companies and such are gonna need to start pushing and supporting other formats if it they want another format to dethrone mp3.
 
I think the reason MP3 continues to dominate is because the average music downloader cannot tell the difference between a 128bit MP3 encoding and songs straight from a CD. I know I can't unless I listen for it. Otherwise, it's all the same.
 
Originally posted by: WoodchuckCharlie
I think the reason MP3 continues to dominate is because the average music downloader cannot tell the difference between a 128bit MP3 encoding and songs straight from a CD. I know I can't unless I listen for it. Otherwise, it's all the same.
Click to expand...

The "average music downloader" is also usually a cloth-eared teenage pimple farmer living in their parent's basement, cranking up those "mAd l0uD 5000W PMPO speakers" they bought from RatShack for $20 and think they can take on the guy next door with the HT setup.

- M4H
 
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