An Overview Of Present, Future of Music Technology

prostoalex writes "IEEE Spectrum magazine is running a feature article on the state of music and current digital formats. They point to an interesting phenomenon in the digital music world that Steve Jobs emphasized as well: for the first time in music history, the next big format was not about better quality (SACD and such) but about better portability (MP3). 'It was only five years ago that the music industry was facing a civil war over the next-generation disc-based music format -- the successor to the wildly successful CD. At that time, hardly anybody doubted that the music would be encoded optically on a round plastic disc the size of a CD.'"

SACD vs MP3

[valisk]

Whilst working for a UK Hi-Fi outlet in their engineering department, I have come across a number of players, particularly Sony, which are capable of playing SACD, but I have not noticed any growth in the number of SACD discs available to purchase, it is to all intents and purposes a dead format. MP3 on the other hand is big and getting bigger, in the past four months the number of MP3 players we see passing through our hands has quadroupled. As the article points out, the demand for wifi connections to these devices is also increasing. I fully expect to see the most flexible devices take the lions share of the market, but no doubt the crippled Sony player will have its share of adherents too.

Re:MP3, but improve the quality

[Anonymous Coward]

You're thinking in terms of Mp3. 128 bit AAC is equivilent to 192 bit MP3.

MPEG AAC != Dolby AC-2

[Anonymous Coward]

As a technical matter, I just wanted to clarify the error in the article, when the author states: "When people say "AAC" they usually really mean AC-2. Based primarily on adaptive delta modulation technology as refined by Dolby Laboratories, AC-2 was developed for professional audio transmission..." AAC and AC-2 are completely different algorithms. Dolby did develop AC-2 on it's own. Dolby later worked jointly with AT&T/Sony/FhG on developing AAC, which shares some similarities to MP3, but uses improved filterbanks and entropy codes (among other improvements).

DRM for Everyone! (or am I paranoid?)

[Spellunk]

While the IEEE tries to be impartial on DRM issues, I have seen an increase in DRM on every new storage medium in the last year. I am a member of IEEE and I was so displeased with the DRM of my last MP3 player (the RCA one in the article, actually) that I built one that has no DRM and a better user interface (I'll post it soon)

Anyways, look out for many of the DRM features lying around to be activated in the near future. The biggest concern will be in memory cards, as most of them have built in features to erase the file after a certain number of plays.

Also in the near future: DVD players having their playing rights revoked (a code on the disc only allows keys stored on approved players to access the content. Both of these are not "coming-up" technologies, they exist at this very moment in hardware, it is just a matter of time before manufacturers activate them.

Re:What about cassettes?

[LeaInShadow]

actually a good LP has more dynamic range then a CD. If you take care of it well, and use a good needle, it will help take care of some of the audio blemishes that you hear. Yes there is noise, but it doesn't have to be as bad as the stereotype. anyhoo....

Re:MPEG AAC != Dolby AC-2

[NothingToSeeHere]

Argh. Yeah, and they keep repeating that mistake, too - really bothersome in an otherwise well-written article.

Apple never mentioned AC-2 anywhere. In fact, they usually expand AAC to Advanced Audio Coding in their explanations. I wonder where the author got that wrong idea.

Let's see how long it takes for this myth to spread across the internet...

Re:What about cassettes?

[madfgurtbn]

From: http://georgegraham.com/compress.html

In 1982-83 when compact discs were introduced, it was like an epiphany for us audio folks. For the first time, consumers could purchase a recording in a medium whose dynamic range exceeded that of $20,000 professional tape machines. Now I know that there are vinyl-philes who still swear that LPs sound better than CDs. But right now I'm talking about signal-to-noise ratio and dynamic range. Putting aside the arguments about the analogue digital conversion process, I don't think anyone can make a convincing case that an LP (or a cassette for that matter) has a dynamic range that comes within 20 db of that available on a CD.

Re:MP3 vs the rest: Is file size really an issue?

[damiam]

I don't mean to be the smelly hairy audiophile (anyway, I'm not) but the 192Kb MP3s that you refer to suck as soon as you're not listening to them on those shitty iPod headphones.

Maybe to you. I have some decent headphones (Sennheiser HD 497) and I can't tell the difference between CDs and lame --alt-preset-standard (VBR, about 192kbps). I'd say most people are in the same boat.

WAV? Compression format?

[Alwin Henseler]

From the article: "WAV has one of the lowest compression ratios and is virtually lossless, but it is not streamable"

WAV isn't compressed format at all (check filesize against audio data rate), IS fully (not virtually) lossless, and although the format wasn't designed for it, being raw audio data, ofcourse you could stream it.

Re:What about cassettes?

[Anonymous Coward]

But CDs are lossless compared to vinyl *as your ears can hear it*. They are sampled at 44100 Hz, which is more than twice the top frequency of the ears of all but a few adults. And it is proven that as long as the sample frequency is at least twice the actual frequency, *you cannot hear the difference*. They might not be lossless in some abstract length, but as far as being listened to by humans is concerned, cds are lossless.

Re:Cheers

[valisk]

When you first plug the unit it it is unresponsive and if the units are not charged for a full 14 hrs on installation, the units either lock up displaying a ! symbol or they simply refuse to power on.

Quite a problem if the owner does not know that they have to charge the unit before use.

This problem is so bad that Philips opened a unit specifically to put new batteries into the units before sending them back out.

The unit though it can be used as a removable HDD will not play mp3s that you simply drag and drop onto the drive.
It requires going through Philips (Java based) DRM software, and it takes a long time to load up the device, around 50 seconds to transfer a 3 minute 128kbps mp3 via USB.

Not a product I could in all good conscience recommend.

Hope that helps :)

Re:What about cassettes?

[noodler]

"Technically every format is lossy compared to the original source "

hmm., that's not true for any music that does not involve recording an analogue source.,

i'm an electronic music composer and all my sources are already digital.,

i can savely say that the production process from my studio to a CD is pretty much totaly lossless.

there is of course some processing involved along the way but this is both intentional and enhancing so i would not consider that lossy.,