When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

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glennny
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When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by glennny »

The internet is faster, storage is cheaper everywhere. When can we upgrade to WAV files, or some other superior to MP3 sounding format. When can we stop compressing these things?
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by Lunkhead »

Maybe after 5G LTE? I think increasing the file sizes 10x right now would still be pretty unpleasant for most mobile users.
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by Lunkhead »

Also Internet Explorer doesn't support WAV via HTML5 audio in any version before Microsoft Edge (so any version up to and including v9).
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by fluffy »

Also consider storage space on most mobile devices, where a lot of people want to listen to fights. Plus, mp3 still has by far the best metadata support for like 99.9% of users. And FLAC is too fiddly and obscure for most people (submitters and listeners alike). Finally, a high-quality mp3 encode is indistinguishable from the wav source by human ears, and it's not like we're doing pro-level audiophile-quality mastering here in the first place.

I'm pretty sure mp3 is here to stay for a while at least.
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by josh »

Have you ever tried to do ABX testing to see if you can tell the difference? There have been studies that showed that people can't tell the difference between uncompressed audio and MP3's with a high enough bitrate (320kbps for example) (although I did also read that with enough training for exactly what to listen for, it's possible). I went through a phase of only using FLAC for my music collection, but I did a bunch of intense listening between high bitrate mp3 and FLAC and couldn't tell the difference. Then again, I don't exactly have golden ears for that sort of stuff.
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by glennny »

I'd like to know the particulars of the test.
I'm sure if you played me something 320 vs WAV I probably would be able to tell the difference if it's the same moment in the same piece of music. If you played me something and said "what is this?" I doubt I could get that right.
However when I mix something as an AIFF (uncompressed Apple), I can tell you which is the AIFF file and which is the 320 mp3. I hear it in the cymbals more than anywhere else.
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by josh »

I'm talking about ABX testing, which is like a blind taste test of sorts. There's a lot of different software out there that does it. You put in two files and then it plays one. You have to guess which of the two it is. You can listen to the originals. If the software is any good (foobar2000 has a good one) you can listen to the same passage easily and flip back and forth. Personally, I couldn't tell the difference, but I don't doubt you can. Nevertheless, if you haven't tried that sort of test before, I'd be interested to hear your results.
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by fluffy »

And, which encoder and which settings? Encode with lame set to -q 0 and see if you can still tell the difference.

Also see if you can tell the difference when you're listening for pleasure instead of listening for subtle nuance that nobody actually cares about. :)
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by glennny »

I've had the experience a couple times where I got an album as 320 mp3. Listened to it memorized it on several players, then one day I get the album on CD and am blown away with everything I was missing up to that point.
These albums were: Tegan and Sara - The Con, and Passion Pit- Manners.
I'm excited to hear The Con on Vinyl one of these days. the Con remains a favorite album, Manners I burned out on.
I also think those first six Van Halen albums only sound right on Vinyl.
I'm excited to take that test.
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by Tyler Zahnke »

I personally don't mind MP3, and only in certain types of music is anything noticeable when comparing MP3 to a format like wav or AIF. But then again, everything I've ever listened to on digital equipment (or almost everything) was MP3, and all the recordings I've ever made were wav, but my first recordings were made with such a cheap mic that it's the worst wav you can imagine, even at 44,100hz. But I think there was a two-minute wav song that took seven minutes to download, and when I heard it it was impressive quality, but if I converted it to MP3 I wouldn't mind. It would have to be something really interesting for me to really want a wav file.
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by king_arthur »

Jumping in on this thread a year late, but as long as we're submitting songs via email, that may also be a problem with .wav filesizes, tho' I know that's something that could be changed to a submit form.

Also, maybe this is something that could be automated, or maybe it's already done and I just haven't found it, but would it be possible to create a .zip file of all the songs each fight and have a link to download the whole fight with one click? Would make it easier to load the whole fight to an MP3 player or even spin one of those round silver thingies...

And at some point, I suppose everything will have to change to HTML5, does that break the ability to download the files? I like being able to download them, but I am old and I don't want anything more to change, ever :-)
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by Lunkhead »

HTML5 doesn't break the ability to download the files. The Jukebox lets you play the songs in the browser using HTML5, and you can also download the mp3s still too. (Each song has a little download icon.)

I thought at one point there was some kind of download like what you're talking about. I don't see anything like that now though. There's a Firefox extension

http://www.downthemall.net/

There are various similar extensions for Chrome:

http://superuser.com/questions/110157/a ... for-chrome

There probably would be attachment size issues emailing WAVs. Honestly, using MP3s is one of the least out-of-date things about how the site works. ;) For anybody who's antsy about the quality of the audio of their submissions, maybe work more on the quality of your songs and stuff first and just settle for 320kbps MP3? :P
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by fluffy »

Many browsers even let you bring up the 'page inspector' and see all of the loaded resources and their URLs. HTML5 just provides a standardized way for pages to play embedded content without plugins or extensions. It isn't a new format, it's just a way of telling browsers how to use the formats that we already have. These additions to HTML were actually put in place to help get rid of the scourge of Flash, which sucks all around for both audio in general and the ability to download specifically.

(Also note that extensions like downthemall etc. can work easily on <audio> tags, but for various reasons that aren't worth getting into they'd have a lot more difficulty dealing with Javascript Audio elements. But any page that embeds a Javascript-based player is also likely to have direct <a href> links to them which downthemall is totally fine with.)
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by king_arthur »

Thanks, guys. I'm using firefox, so I'll see what I can work out.
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by fluffy »

If you're commandline-savvy you can always use wget. I think the appropriate command to download all the songs on the front page of songfight would be:

Code: Select all

wget -A mp3 http://songfight.org/ -r -l 1
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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

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Re: When will we be done with MP3s (if ever)?

Post by Lunkhead »

jast wrote:http://jk.gs/songfight-download/

Just saying.
That's awesome!! Thanks Jan! We should get that linked from songfight.org somewhere.
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