MP3 codec retired, licensing program ends

[HEXUS]

Fraunhofer IIS suggests a move to higher quality at lower bitrate modern alternatives like AAC.

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[chj]

Makes sense to use other, more efficient codecs. Saying that 99% of my music and what I download from bandcamp is mp3 320. Is ACC as universal and as well supported on devices?

[shaithis]

Wowzers, quite surprised by this.

[bledd]

Wowzers, quite surprised by this.

Same here, I'm quite fond of VBR V0. Plays on ANYTHING.

[ik9000]

Makes sense to use other, more efficient codecs. Saying that 99% of my music and what I download from bandcamp is mp3 320. Is ACC as universal and as well supported on devices?

not on windows media player that's for sure!

[ET3D]

With the death of MP3 patents it's finally free to use it for encoding (previously it was only free for decoding). It's nice to have a completely free format. I looked at some of the patents, and they seem to imply that it's possible to store many channels in an MP3 (although that many not be compatible with players, I haven't researched it further). Far as quality is concerned, given the amount of storage space and bandwidth available these days, I don't think that using a less efficient audio codec is a big issue.

I'm quite fond of VBR V0. Plays on ANYTHING.

My car audio system plays VBR but won't keep the right place in it (when turning off and on), so I convert audiobooks to CBR.

[LSG501]

MP3 - plays on EVERYTHING I have...
AAC is not supported by everything I have, pretty sure I install a codec to get full support with windows 10 too.

[Kanoe]

I too didn't think AAC was as universally supported yet.

I remember back in the early 2000's I had my entire digital music collection as Ogg Vorbis because it was completely free to Encode as well as Decode but despite this (and offering better quality / compression than MP3) it wasn't widely supported and I gave up after a few years and re-ripped all my media to MP3.

[Queelis]

I hope it still stays around for a long time - re-encoding a music library which is mostly MP3s would be a huge headache, not to mention the (claimed) loss in fidelity.

[azrael-]

One of the main advantages of AAC is built-in DRM, so of course it's a "must have". Can't get rid of that nasty MP3 fast enough!

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I avoided MP3 for years - its been surpassed by many other different formats for a while. I have used FLAC/ALAC/AAC for years now(I tend to buy CDs),and streaming covers most casual usage.

[AGTDenton]

Through laziness I started on WMA lossless about 12 years ago, but now onto FLAC as Windows 10 finally supports it out of the box.
Its still costly on the likes of Beatport to go lossless so still aquiring CD's where possible as a result.
I've tried to avoid MP3's as much as possible.
I get the feeling this will take as long as Flash to die off.

[TooNice]

I am curious as to whether the computational requirements for decoding more efficient format is inconsequential or not. While MP3 wouldn't give any two decades old PC any trouble, portable devices can benefit of any help for the sake of battery life.

[peterb]

All that has happened is that the patents have expired so encoding becomes licence free. This isn't going to kill mp3 at all, and I'd suggest for portable devices it is fine - few people would notice the difference between an mp3 and an uncompressed format listening on a pair of earbuds on a noisy train.

I have encoded CD tracks in both hi data rate mp3 and FLAC and while I can convince myself that I can hear a difference in a quiet room, that may be confirmation bias!

[daddacool]

My first portable music player was a Diamond Rio, using MP3. Sounded lousy as it only had 32MB of internal storage and you could only add another 16MB via Smartcard

[Dashers]

I had a Diamond Rio PMP300, fantastic bit of kit, but yeah, only one CD at a time folks

I later switched to a Creative Nomad II MG (I still think it was probably one of the best looking bits of personal kit I've ever owned, magnesium baby). It had 64MB but most excitingly a Smart Media slot. I can remember a kid on the bus being amazed as I changed smart cards round. Everybody else was either lugging skipping portable CD players or tape. Revolutionary.

Then of course, Apple came along and made it mainstream and trendy. And everybody started telling me about how amazing ipods are.

MP3 really has had a massive impact on personal music consumption. My first encounter was before portable players when I stumbled upon a Codec in Windows called MPEG-1 Layer 3, by some firm called Fraunhofer. I could save sound clips from films (Blues Brothers comes to mind) with absolutely no loss in quality and save them onto a floppy disk! By no loss of quality, that was 56kbps 22KHz - but hey, I had naff PC speakers in those days!

I still have a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra kicking about somewhere. 60GB internal hard-disk - I could carry round my entire library!

As for new "better" formats. That's subjective. MP3 is such a universally supported format, everything else can be a little troublesome. Sure you get better compression, but disk space is cheap and the bulk of my music is already in MP3. Extra channels and fancy features, sure, that's nice for film, but for music, stereo is plenty.

I can't see myself changing to AAC for day-to-day music for a while yet. FLAC is my go-to for high-quality archive, but there is little I need in that as I still have a box full of CDs.