[Music] So why did MP3 become the most popular format?

[Xuvial]

I know I'm a bit late to the show, but after skimming over all the graphs and articles and what-nots I decided to do a small test of my own (now that I finally own a semi-decent pair of cans and a sound card).

A FLAC file was taken and converted into the highest bit-rates available in other common'ish formats - 320k MP3, 192k WMA, 155k AAC and 1536k WAV. Keep in mind that bit-rates are largely irrelevant after 192kbps onwards, after that it's all up to how the format handles things.
The conversion program used was Total Audio Converter v3.0.88, one of the best as far as home use goes (sorry I don't own a studio powered by Apple computers :P).

Itoshigo Yo by Rurutia isn't exactly a mind-blowing orchestral piece but it represents the average music file for me. I focused on individual things like the crispness of the guitar strumming and depth/dynamics of the Rurutia's voice.

After literally an hour of listening to that song in different formats, I concluded this:

1) FLAC = WMA = AAC = WAV
...
...
...
2) MP3

> There was less than 1-2% difference (if my ears could even pick that out) between the FLAC, WMA, AAC and WAV formats, all sounded extremely alike.
> With 320k MP3 I immediately noticed the horribly painful difference - the crisp details (e.g. strumming) were GONE, the mids sounded muddier.
> Since Itoshigo Yo doesn't really do justice to bass, I used "Kill Everybody" by Skrillex (love him or hate him!) to test the bass loss in MP3 for those bass-heads out there. Holy mother of cows, the bass lost almost all it's depth and cleanliness and turned into what sounded like a fat guy bouncing in a muddy puddle - mind you it was still as "bassy" but nowhere near as clean and detailed as the other formats.

Here's the kicker - the file sizes:


WMA is the clear winner here when it comes to file-compression vs quality, followed closely AAC. Both sound vastly superior to MP3 while being smaller!
So where does that leave MP3? Nowhere. People say "oh it greatly reduces file size while sounding nearly as good!". Well, if you're using a standard MP3 player with a shitty sound chip (e.g. iPod) coupled with standard shitty earphones/headphones, yes the difference becomes far less evident - but it's still there, it's still noticeable.
Mind you that high-quality MP3 players have been around for a while now, stuff like Cowon and Kenwood's better-sounding models paired with some decent IEM's leave your typical mp3 players in the dust (buying a Cowon i9 to replace my iPod Classic!).

WMA and AAC literally beat the SHIT out of MP3 in in every way (compression and quality). All MP3 players can play WMA files, it's been around for a very long time. iTunes converts WMA into AAC and both sound exactly the same i.e. excellent, so don't give me that "cuz ppl wanna listen on portable devices" reason.

So why did MP3 become the most favored format around the world?
My guess is probably the same reason QWERTY became the most popular keyboard layout.

[Deleted]

Hearing the difference now isn’t the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is ‘lossy’. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA – it’s about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don’t want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.

I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange…well don’t get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren’t stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll be glad you did.

<Infracted for Trolling, thanks Drekmen for pointing it out>

[Badpaladin]

QWERTY became the layout because the guy who came up with it was a dick. You can spell 'typewriter' using only the top row for a reason.

Mp3 became the post popular because iPods and other mobile music players are ridiculously popular. People care more about the fact that they can listen to music anywhere, not that their music is of the highest quality.

[Deleted]

Hearing the difference now isn’t the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is ‘lossy’. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA – it’s about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don’t want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.

I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange…well don’t get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren’t stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll be glad you did.

mind = blown!

I did NOT know that mp3 lose quality every year.

Thanks for this info

[Xuvial]

Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll be glad you did.

I thought I had made it clear that AAC and WMA sound 99.9% as good as FLAC while being significantly smaller >_>
Seriously, try converting, blindfold yourself, skip between the two formats and tell me if you notice any difference. With MP3 it's pretty obvious but AAC and WMA...definitely not.

Mp3 became the post popular because iPods and other mobile music players are ridiculously popular. People care more about the fact that they can listen to music anywhere, not that their music is of the highest quality.

But iPods can play WMA and AAC files just fine! Hell I put that 41mb WAV file (1536 kbps bit rate, believe it or not) on my iPod and it played it! I know lots of people use other MP3 players but WMA is a pretty ancient format and should run on any MP3 player :P

[Deleted]

Hearing the difference now isn’t the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is ‘lossy’. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA – it’s about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don’t want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.

I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange…well don’t get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren’t stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll be glad you did.

Source or I call utter BS. Data is ones and zeros, they're not gonna change over time assuming your disks arent borked. If this would be the case ALL our data would be degrading.

[Deleted]

If you actually want to be taken seriously, then

Keep in mind that bit-rates are largely irrelevant after 192kbps onwards

Source needed.

Total Audio Converter v3.0.88, one of the best as far as home use goes

Source needed.

After literally an hour of listening to that song in different formats, I concluded this:

Woah! One whole hour? You really did a thorough research there to draw such a conclusion that the most popular lossful audio codec is somehow inferior.

[Pancho]

Hearing the difference now isn’t the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses lossless compression, while MP3 is ‘lossy’. What this means is that for each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps, assuming you have SATA – it’s about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don’t want to know how much worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.

I started collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrange…well don’t get me started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps. FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren’t stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll be glad you did.

lol what?

'lossy' conversion just means that u lose some information during the conversion process (usually low and/or high frequencies that the majority of people cant hear/distinguish in regular sound patterns), a mp3 is just a collection of bytes it will not lose any bytes over the time unless your hd/cd/etc is broken...


To the OP:
check this: http://www.bobulous.org.uk/misc/audioFormats.html

[DeltrusDisc]

Glad to hear you've had a successful little experiment and are now enjoying your music so well!

Also, it's weird seeing a post by you with 0 ponicorns.

[z0phi3l]

If you actually want to be taken seriously, then



Source needed.



Source needed.



Woah! One whole hour? You really did a thorough research there to draw such a conclusion that the most popular lossful audio codec is somehow inferior.

You must have hearing issues, an hour is more than enough time to notice the differences, it will take me less than a minute listening to a piece of music to be able to tell how it was encoded, and MP3s always sound the worse

[Badpaladin]

But iPods can play WMA and AAC files just fine! Hell I put that 41mb WAV file (1536 kbps bit rate, believe it or not) on my iPod and it played it! I know lots of people use other MP3 players but WMA is a pretty ancient format and should run on any MP3 player :P

People like their playlists. When it first started out, music had pretty abysmal storage. A few WAVs mean you couldn't fit very much on there. Mp3's were different. I guess it's never really changed, mp3 became the most recognizable term and it's stuck. Hell, the pieces of hardware are even called mp3 players, like it's to infer that they were designed for mp3's only.

[Xuvial]

If you actually want to be taken seriously, then

Source needed.

Source needed.

Woah! One whole hour? You really did a thorough research there to draw such a conclusion that the most popular lossful audio codec is somehow inferior.

Hello there,

These are my own findings. I noticed no audible difference between 192k WMA and 1536k WAV. Aiming for raw bit-rates is a one of the false notions that MP3 as a format has spread amongst people. "I got 320kbps VBR, my MP3's are better than yours!".

Total Audio Converter is a decent program with countless others like it. If you known of one which does the job "better" please recommend it to me.

Thanks

[DeltrusDisc]

Woah! One whole hour? You really did a thorough research there to draw such a conclusion that the most popular lossful audio codec is somehow inferior.

Hey, buddy with the attitude, calm it! It's pretty well known in the audiophile and generally *musician* community that mp3, while POPULAR, is like so many other things that are popular, not the best.

Examples of popular things that aren't the best, popular things are often chosen because of at least one of the following: they are a. easier to acquire, b. cheaper, c. more mainstream.

1) McDonald's and other fast food.
2) Prebuilt computers, Apple or Windows, idc.
3) A car that runs on gas.

Just to name a few!

[Deleted]

Source or I call utter BS. Data is ones and zeros, they're not gonna change over time assuming your disks arent borked. If this would be the case ALL our data would be degrading.

He copy-pasted a troll post from head-fi forum:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/451369/why-flac-is-better

Just read the thread.

[Sensei_Sin]

I was under the impression that MP3 ruled supreme also due to the fact that the alternative codecs at the time just weren't up to par when it came to distribution and applications that could encode it. I think that WMA lost that battle because it's technically proprietary and can have DRM in it, something that people did not want when P2P was all the rage, and the fact that a program must own a license to encode into WMA, unlike MP3.

[NineSpine]

If the testing wasn't double blind, then it is invalid. I've never been able to have anyone in a double blind tell the difference between a well encoded, high bitrate mp3, and an original file.

[Sinner563]

this reminds me of video format, where we're still using .avi's over the MUCH better .mp4 or the godly .mkv

The most likely reason? Well if memory serves, the two competing audio filetypes in the early 90's were .mp3 and .wav. Why did .mp3 win out? Well you try moving a .wav over the internet back then.

Give it time and we'll most likely completely move to .aac for sharing and .flac for quality. It just takes time for the entire community to get onboard.

[Adorada]

Keep in mind that bit-rates are largely irrelevant after 192kbps onwards, after that it's all up to how the format handles things.

This is not a fact at all. There is a major difference in quality the higher the bit rate you go. If you can't hear the difference, grab some higher quality headphones. Of course they sound the same if you are using the same white headphones that came with your iPod.

Anyone could tell you why MP3 is the most famous file format, quantity. You will always be able to find a MP3 of any song out there. It is literally everywhere. Plus, most people don't feel like converting to another format from MP3 (or don't know that they can convert their AAC in iTunes).

FLAC or ALAC or go home.

[Waylander]

What MP3 codec does your program use? LAME?

[Adorada]

Keep in mind that bit-rates are largely irrelevant after 192kbps onwards, after that it's all up to how the format handles things.

This is not a fact at all. There is a major difference in quality the higher the bit rate you go. If you can't hear the difference, grab some higher quality headphones. Of course they sound the same if you are using the same white headphones that came with your iPod.

Anyone could tell you why MP3 is the most famous file format, quantity. You will always be able to find a MP3 of any song out there. It is literally everywhere. Plus, most people don't feel like converting to another format from MP3 (or don't know that they can convert their AAC in iTunes).

FLAC or ALAC or go home.