MP3 vs MP3PRO vs MP4

[Whistler]

I was wondering if someone could give me a brief synopsis of how these formats compare to one another. Currently, the only thing I know is that MP3PRO produces comparable quality to an MP3 at half the bitrate and size. Any other light one could shed on this and the MP4 format would be appreciated.

[Toe]

Greetings, WIndows XP! ;)

First of all, throw that "MP3PRO produces comparable quality to an MP3 at half the bitrate and size" bit out the window. That's marketing BS. Second, it should be noted that "MP4" is actually not a codec. Rather, MP4 is just a container format for a raw audio stream. (It's pretty much the same as the difference between Ogg and Vorbis, if you're familiar with that.) When people talk about "MP4 audio" what they're most likely refering to is AAC audio (the raw data) inside of a .mp4 container. The container holds a little extra information about audio stream, such as extra data needed for true gapless playback.

Confused yet? :p

Anyway, IMHO MP3pro is pretty useless. As the name implies, it's basicly a tweaked MP3, which was introduced for the MPEG-2 standard. But the worth of these tweaks in terms of sound quality is debatable. To me, it doesn't offer any advantages over a good LAME encoded MP3. A LAME encoded MP3, on the other hand, is a plain ol' MP3 file that doesn't require anything special in terms of playback. Unlike MP3pro, it plays full quality on any MP3 player, be it on your PC, a Mac, Linux, or a portable player. On the other hand, AAC (again, typically in a .mp4 file) DOES offer significant benefits in terms of sound quality. And the .mp4 format brings a few nice things like gapless playback without the need for special gap removers in the player. And AAC/MP4 is starting to see support from portable player manufacturers too.

Still confused? Here's my rundown:

1) Screw MP3pro.
2) Use MP3 (preferably encoded with LAME) for maximum compatibility and ease of sharing with others.
3) Use MP4/AAC for making your own rips if you want better sound quality than MP3. Research which current and future portable players support it, if you're interested.

One more note: if you're interested in making your own MP4 files, use Nero. (http://www.nero.com)

[Hanzo]

Greetings, WIndows XP! ;)

I thought nobody will notice that Whistler was the code name assigned by Microsoft to the XP Operating System.

I've heard that MP3Pro converts to mono frequencies below certain frequency (I think its 60 Hz) to help reduce filesize. Is that true?

[blackspawn]

Forget those three file types use .OGG !!

[Toe]

Somehow I had a feeling some fanboy would come in here and make that comment. :rolleyes:

IMHO AAC > Vorbis (not to be confused with Ogg, which can be Vorbis or Flac or whatever), but not by a huge margin. Ogg isn't a bad codec at all, and being open source doesn't hurt. Heck, Vorbis v1.1 might be better than AAC. If they ever get around to releasing it. :rolleyes:

If you want the best lossy codec for bitrates above 128-160 or so, use MPC. If you want perfect quality, go lossless. I recomend FLAC.

[Roj]

Somehow I had a feeling some fanboy would come in here and make that comment. :rolleyes:

IMHO AAC > Vorbis (not to be confused with Ogg, which can be Vorbis or Flac or whatever), but not by a huge margin. Ogg isn't a bad codec at all, and being open source doesn't hurt. Heck, Vorbis v1.1 might be better than AAC. If they ever get around to releasing it. :rolleyes:

If you want the best lossy codec for bitrates above 128-160 or so, use MPC. If you want perfect quality, go lossless. I recomend FLAC.MPC is dead. The developer has called it quits. It had no future anyway - it used proprietary code (which meant licensing) and the user base was ridiculously small compared to the others.

As to lossless, the de facto standard is pretty much Monkey's Audio with FLAC coming in second (at least on Usenet). There's Shorten as well and even (horrors!) WMA but who uses those...

My personal vote for lossy compression is as follows:

1) MP3 for compatibility

2) OGG for quality, all the MP3 issues fixed (gapless!!!!) and a REAL future (OGG players are now on the market, people!!!)

The rest don't rate - they have no future (other than AAC which the Apple lemmings will lap up).

[Hanzo]

So, can anyone confirm the rumors of MP3Pro ?

[Toe]

Yay format war threads! :D

1) While it's true that there hasn't been any news from the MPC camp in a while, I don't believe there's been an official "calling it quits" announcement. Correct me if I'm wrong. So it's been a while since there was a new release. So what? If the current release already beats out everything else out there, who cares about a new release? Vorbis went what, a year and a half from the release of 1.0 to the release of 1.0.1? And 1.0.1 is virtually identical in sound quality! v1.1 is supposed to have some significant SQ improvements, but given how long it took for a little .0.1 update, I'd be extremely surprised to see v1.1 before 2005. Many MPC users are ripping their own collections to high bitrate MPC and transcoding to MP3 or whatever. Supposedly most of the time it's indistinguishable from the original wav encoded to MP3. Dunno, can't say I use it myself.

Edit: Ok, at the time I hadn't read this thread. (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?showtopic=15384)

Still, hard drives keep getting bigger and bigger, and if you're truly a quality freak, I see no reason to use anything but lossless compression.

2) AAC has about the same level of portable support as Vorbis, ie not much at all. Still, both do have a few players for their respective niches. Portable AAC players have been on the market for quite a few years now, and I'm not talking about iPods. As for a future, I'd say AAC has at least as much of a chance of becoming mainstream as Vorbis. To be perfectly honest, at one point I'd written off AAC as a no future codec. Mainly after we'd got stuck with fucking AC-3 compression for our DVDs. Still AAC does seem to be gaining momentum, like the aformentioned portables, Apple's infatuation with it, and Nero's built-in AAC/MP4 encoding support.

all the MP3 issues fixed (gapless!!!!)
Lame has had support for creating gapless MP3s for quite sometime now.

2) OGG for quality, all the MP3 issues fixed (gapless!!!!) and a REAL future (OGG players are now on the market, people!!!)
You'd think the Vorbis lemmings would at least know not to call their codec "ogg".... :rolleyes:

[MrZebra]

Did you know that Micro$oft use Ogg Vorbis for the sound in their games?

I downloaded and listened to the speech that Monty (Ogg Creator) gave at some Linux Convention in LA last week-end and he mentionned that Ogg Vorbis is pretty dominent in games due to the gapless thing...

So if Bill Gates thinks that WMA is not good enough for himself, why should we use it?

[Roj]

Still, hard drives keep getting bigger and bigger, and if you're truly a quality freak, I see no reason to use anything but lossless compression.

2) AAC has about the same level of portable support as Vorbis, ie not much at all. Still, both do have a few players for their respective niches. Portable AAC players have been on the market for quite a few years now, and I'm not talking about iPods. As for a future, I'd say AAC has at least as much of a chance of becoming mainstream as Vorbis. To be perfectly honest, at one point I'd written off AAC as a no future codec. Mainly after we'd got stuck with fucking AC-3 compression for our DVDs. Still AAC does seem to be gaining momentum, like the aformentioned portables, Apple's infatuation with it, and Nero's built-in AAC/MP4 encoding support.


Lame has had support for creating gapless MP3s for quite sometime now.


You'd think the Vorbis lemmings would at least know not to call their codec "ogg".... :rolleyes:LAME gapless support is laughable - the format itself doesn't support it. It's a design limitation.

While I grant you that AAC players do exist and will get a shot in the arm from Apple's rip-off iTunes "service" (and I use the term extremely loosely), AAC (like MPC) again contains licensed technology while OGG is free and open. A manufacturer has to pay someone if they use AAC - they don't if they use OGG. That alone gives OGG a leg up on the competition because neither format has the large user base to amortize a licensing cost over in the way that MP3 did.

It's my view that consumers (I mean *intelligent* consumers and not Apple lemmings who will buy anything with an Apple sticker on it) will, if they give it some thought, realize exactly what a ripoff iTunes is ($1 a song for lossy compressed music? When a CD costing the same is lossless? With limited re-usability? Come on!) and consequently any advantage AAC gains from such dubious association will evaporate.

Finally, OGG is the commonly recognized format name in the same way that MP3 is - so, a rose by any other name... no prissiness, please. :rolleyes:

So, no format wars, mon - just simple logic.

Also, for the record, huge drives aren't that cost effective yet if you want *a lot* of music available online, especially in a lossless format. I should know - my home network is overflowing with it. :)

[blackspawn]

It has been more than proven that ogg quality suppasses that of mp3, and has Roj said it's open source meaning it FREE to use and "abuse" eh eh :)
If I can have and use for free an ogg encoder and have all my music with very good quality and resonably small file size (comparing to other formats) I ask Why not?

As for being a fan boy... it's resonable to think that when a format is superior to another for ppl to support it right? And I'm saying "superior" because I've seen tests (there are a lot of them out there on the net) confirming just that. iRiver is going to start supporting ogg (due to customer requests) I'm certain that Creative will follow.

Even with big hard drive if you used losseless codecs to encode thousands of songs IMO that would be a huge waste of space. I mean most ppl don't recognize the diference between 192Kbps mp3 from the real thing. Even so those audiophiles that can't hear anything without it being lossless mostly use Monkey's Audio or FLAC.