MP3: Kick it to the curb?
On another b5media site (and my previous home), High Def Delight, Christopher Swenson wrote an article essentially saying that it is time to ditch MP3. MP3 is quite the ancient file format (approved in 1991) yet it is the prominent file format in the digital music market as almost all digital music players are referred to as MP3 players because, well, they all play MP3 players. While I agree with the post that we should start to transfer to other codecs like AAC, I believe MP3 is here to stay for quite some time.
MP3 files are dominant, as I mentioned, and if you asked people what AAC files and Ogg Vorbis files are, your average Joe will most likely not know what the difference then. AAC files are definitely more “efficient” with the sound quality to file size ratio, but if you convert your MP3 files to AAC, you lose more data because all you are doing is just re-encoding that file again and losing the data.
I won’t say too much else as his article is definitely worth a read, but I don’t really think MP3 is going anywhere anytime soon. MP3 is a format that has stood the test of time and has a firm footprint in the ground.
Read [High Def Delight]
Image Source: Zach Flauaus
5 Comments
I couldn’t agree more. People are too confused by formats. Us musicians know that of course, WAV/AIFF is far superior, but ask anybody else, and they are clueless. I do prefer AAC though since its smaller, but you’re right about converting from mp3 to AAC. I convert from wav to aac.
Does windows media player convert a ripped cd to ACC like iTunes does? I’ve never tried because I honestly never thought about. Mp3 seemed to be the format I’ve always used when ripping cd’s so there has never really been any alternative in my mind. If it does it can save me some time because I like to rip with WMP so that it stays in my library and I can burn to cd later. But if I can save time and rip once without having to convert to ACC when I load it to my iTunes that would be great.
@Gavroche: That is definitely the way to go if you have the storage space. Encode it in lossless and then go from there.
@Scott: I don’t have a Windows machine at the ready, so I can’t be 100% sure, but I don’t think they can rip to AAC. I believe it’s just WMA, MP3, and WAV. If you’re ripping songs in MP3 format, you don’t really have to worry and you shouldn’t convert it into AAC in iTunes because you’re compressing the file, thus losing some data along the way. MP3 is great for most people.
Perhaps I’m confused because I thought iPods only use ACC. That’s the only reason I convert to ACC is so they can sync to my iPod. I’m on my work computer, which runs windows 2000. I’ll check WMP when I get home, but I think you’re right. I don;t think I have ever seen the option on WMP to convert to ACC Thanks.
Not at all. The iPod can play a variety of formats. Here’s the list from Apple:
“Audio formats supported: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV”
You can change the settings in iTunes to reflect what format you want to encode the song into. I’ll do a future post on it.