Reader Comments

A suggestion, Paul: If you're going to write an opinion piece, label it as "opinion". More and more, your'e like the FOX "News" of the tech world.

Apple today announced that the 100 millionth iPod has been sold. What is Zune Marketplace? Better yet.. What is a Zune?

Paul in Internet Nexus "I was sort of amazed at how many articles about last week's EMI announcement pushed it as an Apple event" Well maybe that was because the CEO of Apple flew over to London to actually join in the announcement. "This week, Microsoft admitted that it, too, would offer music without DRM" Admitted. That's a rather telling word. You might as well add that Microsoft admitted they will HAVE to offer DRM free music.... or just drop out of the game completely.

Paul in Internet Nexus "I was sort of amazed at how many articles about last week's EMI announcement pushed it as an Apple event" Well maybe that was because the CEO of Apple flew over to London to actually join in the announcement. "This week, Microsoft admitted that it, too, would offer music without DRM" Admitted. That's a rather telling word. You might as well add that Microsoft admitted they will HAVE to offer DRM free music.... or just drop out of the game completely.

The format really doesn't matter since there are plenty of good convertors available although sound quality can be another issue. For the present, the most important aspect is that DRM needs to go away and if both Apple and Microsoft dump DRM completely then I commend them. But so far this isn't going to happen because it's simply selling without DRM at a higher price....clearly, something more is going on behind the scenes in another mindless Apple and Microsoft effort to dupe their customers. In the end, it is really quite simple; just buy the physical CD rather than the online offerings and support the artists that matter and those artists that prefer it this way. If you buy music online then you have zero qualifications to complain about what is stated in the contract you have made to purchase in this manner. Buy the physical CD and WOW! you actually own the thing. What a concept.

With EMI involved, you can bet that the Beatles catalog is a major part of the DRM issue. John must be rolling over in his grave. If he was still alive he'd wash his hands of all this junk.

"....they should go with the MP3 format. That would be a great way to ensure that the more expensive and consortium-owned AAC format...." Are you quite sure that MP3 is cheaper than AAC? Your mate David Caulton over at Zunester says that there is a content distribution fee for MP3s. It amounts to 2% of revenues. eg.I million DRM free tracks a day. At say ...$1.29 each.... would amount to $9.4 million a year. Not great when your margins are pretty slim to begin with.

So last week EMI announces DRM-less music and Apple signs up. Everyone praises Apple. This week Microsoft announces they too will be offering EMI's DRM-less music. Where are the Apple people to praise Microsoft for the exact same move?

"What is a Zune?" Nothing, until they make use of the WiFi functionality more. Sandisk's Sansa Connect seems to have done a great job: http://www.forbes.com/businesswire/feeds/businesswire/2007/04/09/businesswire20070409005397r1.html

@Shark Agreed, Wi-Fi will make or break the Zune, it's a great feature but as the generations come and go of new models, it will need improved. Kudos Microsoft for moving to DRM-free music, I don't care what company joins in on this either, it's appluadable all across the board.

Glad to see DRM taking a hit across the board. I disagree, however. Both AAC and WMA are superior codecs. MP3 delivers lower quality at the same bitrate and larger files. Microsoft should choose either AAC, WMA, or FLAC. But it should not drop back down to MP3.

"MP3 delivers lower quality at the same bitrate and larger files." If you use equipment that allows you to notice the degredation/artifacts of MP3, you are going to hear the degredation/artifacts of AAC more often than not. Personally I'd like to see them offering it in a lossless format for archival purposes since DRM is out of the picture. MP3 has more hands in the pot, and less people who can claim 'total control' over it. Choosing MP3 vs WMA or AAC/MP4 is better in terms of showing it is a diplomatic action rather than a marketing tool. "I'm selling music that you can freely use in my competitor's device." Since I've been with Windows for a while now, I've grown more accustomed to WMA (as I'm sure is the case for Apple users and AAC), and tend to like it more. However, if MS decided on MP3 I would agree that it would be the more respectable choice for the community as a whole.

"serious compatibility issues"???? What you are missing is that the Zune and most players already support AAC because they are trying to win over converts from the iPod, and that the iTunes store selling DRM free AACs will drive all the hardware vendors to update their firmware rapidly for those who have not already done so (if a player can play MP3, it can play AAC). Additionally, licensing fees for AAC when taking per unit royalties into account are cheaper, and as the current climate indicates, less legal issue prone (the trial against Microsoft 2 weeks ago was not about AAC, it was about MP3)

MP3 is the JPG of audio compresion--used by everyone and utter crap. It's time for MP3 to die, die, die, along with the monopolist-owned proprietary and spottily-supported Windows Media format.

"MP3 is the JPG of audio compresion--used by everyone and utter crap. It's time for MP3 to die, die, die, along with the monopolist-owned proprietary and spottily-supported Windows Media format." ...Along with the AAC format, since it fits with your description of WMA. Everyone should just use FLAC or Ogg Vorbis. Actually, I personally prefer the WMA format. It produces smaller files with the same audio quality as the original, etc.

"MP3 delivers lower quality at the same bitrate and larger files. Microsoft should choose either AAC, WMA, or FLAC. But it should not drop back down to MP3." not always. MP3 with VBR is still more efficient and will have higher quality at a comparable bitrate to the aforementioned codecs with CBR (i'd bet money that a 256Kbps-average quality-based VBR MP3 would sound better than a 256Kbps CBR AAC). why aren't more music stores utilizing it?!! who cares anymore about "predictable" file sizes anyway? i like using quality-based VBR codecs where i can choose the amount of loss that will result from encoding. average bitrates can still be calculated over the length of the song, so it's not that difficult to predict the filesize of songs. average bitrates across multiple songs can also help to fairly accurately predict total storage requirements. too bad that the geniuses that figured out how to market online music sales couldn't work out the math for averages. >:j Musicmatch Jukebox used to have an option for ramping up the response frequency to as high as 22KHz from the standard 16KHz that MP3 uses too. i haven't used it in years though, so i couldn't say if the option is still there. "What you are missing is that the Zune and most players already support AAC because they are trying to win over converts from the iPod" the problem with AAC is that there is no "reference-design" for it, the way that we have Fraunhofer's MP3 codec upon which all variants derive from. it's up to each codec manufacturer to follow the specifications "their own way", and as such, Apple's version of AAC has some really odd tag-compatibility issues with many players. you should've been reading the comments from a couple weeks ago. "die, die, die" losta, lol....back to his violent tendencies again.... "monopolist-owned proprietary and spottily-supported iTunes AAC format" that's better! XP

Waethorn: I'm still out on VBR. I think it depends heavily on the type of music you're encoding. If it's a piece that varies a lot, VBR will give you an advantage. If the song is pretty much constant in intensity throughout, CBR is better. Still, mp3 is an old form. I understand your point about tags in AAC - and that needs to be fixed. But either way, the industry needs to move past MP3.

VBR is racist. Rap music with extended bass tones don't compress as well as flippy pop music under it. Don't support the racist compression scheme!

"If it's a piece that varies a lot, VBR will give you an advantage. If the song is pretty much constant in intensity throughout, CBR is better." actually, it's when it fluctuates a lot that VBR DOESN'T do so well. remember that the bitrate changes throughout the song on a regular basis (and must maintain an average regardless of whether or not it's quality-based or bitrate-based ie. 2-pass). for drastically changing audio where changes come up in the middle of a compression block, it throws the average off, so you can sometimes end up with jarring quality ramps up or down in the audio, depending on the shift in complexity. think of it like lower-bitrate MPEG video that doesn't change a lot and you'll understand this - motion throws off the bitrate average so you end up with periods of sharper I-frames with very blocky P & B frames. even still, most MP3 encoders can get average VBR rates at a much higher precision, whereas CBR is locked at particular steps ie. 112kbps, 160, 192, 224, 256 etc. also, when was the last time you heard a song that's always the same thruout? "Rap music with extended bass tones don't compress as well as flippy pop music under it." i have several of both types and both sound superior with quality-based VBR. i would say you're using a pretty poor encoder or are using low bitrates. anything @ 160kbps or less isn't worth doing IMO regardless of the codec. you are right that bass is heavily compressed though because a) it's not a "directional" sound, so you instantly lose stereo separation at low bitrates and b) MP3 favours midrange frequencies over extreme high or low ones. LAME is not all it's cracked up to be either IMO. i found that Musicmatch Jukebox's [6/7, etc.] MP3 encoder is still one of the best for VBR with the previously-mentioned quality settings turned up (it increases ripping time tho). i do use VBR WMA now because of it's yet even more superior efficiency. 24-bit upsampling is da bomb dawg!! ;) XP

i'd say i'd take any codec with 100% quality VBR using a psychoacoustic model like MP3 or any perceptual "variant" (term used loosely) over lossless, just for the savings in storage requirements. bitrate-based VBR just doesn't do enough to predict the quality loss of audio. you're basically just "squeezing as much audio information as possible into x-number of bits". compare that to quality-based encoding where the audio is analyzed and quantized down by percentage with no regard for storage requirements - that's where you have more control of audio quality. bitrate-based VBR (ie. 2-pass) is just a way of producing more efficient CBR to predict storage requirements while improving on encoder efficiency using the codec's perceptual algorithms instead of wasting bits. if i had a small flash-based digital audio player, i'd want to use 2-pass bitrate VBR, but on a hard drive player, it's quality VBR all the way! CBR just isn't worthwhile anymore at all. that said, lossless just isn't acceptable when you're only compressing down to about 1/6th to 1/8th of the original storage space - that's why utilizing a good quality encoder at it's full potential and perceptual audio fidelity with 100% quality VBR is the ideal method for encoding IMO. XP

forgot to add: using any codec at 100% Quality VBR (when supported) is the ultimate test to judge it's perceptual audio quantization matrix. 100% Quality VBR is the maximum quality that the codec's perceptual algorithms can reproduce, and any percentage under that is obviously going to be a [further] loss in quality. want to test how accurate a particular codec's perceptual algorithms are? compare any codec's 100% Quality VBR output to an uncompressed WAV file of the original source of the same audio and you'll instantly have your answer. for easy results, just invert one output, and mix with the other. compare the resulting "noise" to other comparison outputs and you'll see why i like WMA - there is less of a differential, therefore more of the original audio is preserved by it's quantization. ;) XP

So what you are advocating is WMA over MP3... I understand you believe it to be better than AAC, but given your arguments they are extremely similar, and what you are advocating is VBR AAC. Apple continually ads to the tags and wraps their AAC in a QuickTime wrapper - sorry to tell you, but at this point they have kind of won, so people should adapt to their wrapper. To claim that somehow MP3 tags are "standard" is silly. They are so crappy that every app implements it a little different. And in terms of a reference design? AAC has much more of a reference design than MP3. Anyone, the point o this article is what format MSFT should use. They will obviously use WMA - it is MSFT after all, and that is what they want out there - hell, they've been fighting that battle for 10 years. HOWEVER - if the EU sued Apple for "lock in", and the iPod does not support AAC - the question is, will they force Apple to support WMA, or will they force MSFT to port the DRM layer of WMA to the Mac/iPod? Or, will they force MSFT to use something they do NOT own and is in a large licensing body, like AAC? I hope the latter.... The differences between WMA and AAC for quality are minimal, and they are pretty much equal. The question is who owns each one, and who the public believes is truly the "open" standard. I would argue the public will not see DRM free WMA files as open, but they will see AAC DRM free files as open (if only because 80% of the players out there now play AAC and NOT WMA). Microsoft has a tough one ahead of them. I wonder what will happen.

Damn my english was bad there... adDs to the tags... Anyhow, not anyone the iPod does not support WMA, not AAC I eed to go to sleep...

Paul writes: "Apple will sell DRM-free music in the AAC format, which has serious compatibility issues with non-Apple hardware." I call bullsh1t on that, Paul. You know better. Any player (including your precious xBox and the ill-fated Zune) that supports AAC will play back a DRM-free AAC file encoded in iTunes, and you know it. If you're talking about dropping a couple tags being a "serious compatibility issue", then you're just riding high on your manure spreader. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding#Products_that_support_AAC

Hey Paul - You got your wish! This article talks about EMI releasing the first DRM-free 320 kbps MP3 album. http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/emi-offers-first-premium-drm-free-album-in-mp3/9761 Also, I seem to recall that the Bare Naked Ladies have been selling DRM-free versions of their songs in MP3 format directly from their site for a while. BTW, great blog and Podcast! Tak

"If you're talking about dropping a couple tags being a "serious compatibility issue", then you're just riding high on your manure spreader." you must be the one driving then! there are MANY MANY players that i've seen first hand that don't play iTunes/Quicktime-encoded AAC files (among other AAC encoders). read my post a couple articles back. XP

"Also, I seem to recall that the Bare Naked Ladies have been selling DRM-free versions of their songs in MP3 format directly from their site for a while." that's because they're on Nettwerk's label. Nettwerk offers DRM-free songs for most of their artists and has been doing so for several years now. Nettwerk and the RIAA don't get along very well. XP

www.werkshop.com lots of good stuff ;) too bad they use real audio for previews tho XP