i read an article a while ago which said that there would be a new mp3 compression coming around soon, which would pack the same information into files half the size - bitrates would be adjusted accordingly, so a 64 kbps file would have the quality of an old 128 kbps mp3.
recently i've been downloading common songs, and once i download and listen to them, occasionally i find that the bitrate is a surprising 56 kbps. the audio quality doesn't seem to be different, and i like to think i could tell the difference between 56 and 128 kbps formats
anyone know if this new compression is in circulation yet, so maybe that's what i'm seeing?
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"I've never been sigged." - PsychoticIckyThing
"Maybe *this* is what 'cooties', the disease that every grade schooler is terrified of, yet knows not the symptoms of which, is!" - KNSinatra at 3:34 AM
The new format is called "mp3 pro". It is backwards compat with older mp3 players, but they will only play 1 of the two audio streams. A new mp3 pro player is needed to get the exceptional quality. http://www.mp3pro.com/mp3pro_links.asp
--|BRiT|
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"That which does not kill you, makes you wish it did."
"We the willing, lead by the ungrateful, are doing the impossible. We have done so much, with so little for so long, that we are now qualified to do anything with nothing."
Yeah, I would say that if you're using a regular mp3 player, such as WinAMP, you're only hearing one audio stream, and should notice a SIGNIFICANT loss in audio quality over a typical 128kbps mp3 file.
I honestly don't think that mp3pro is going to catch on because there are some outrageous licensing fees associated with it that makes it costly for developers to make encoders and players using the new codec. The backwards compatibility is a nice touch, but if you can only hear half of what you're supposed to, then it's not really backwards compatible, is it?
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well then in that case i'm not sure what's happening
it's the most popular version of the song from audiogalaxy, and i can hear that it's stereo, and the audio quality is nothing less than normal - i was absolutely shocked to discover that it was 56 kbps and that the file size for a 5 minute song was 2 megs. so i'm stumped.
<edit> i looked at the "file info" that winamp provides for songs, and where it normally says MPEG 1.0 layer 3, for this song and others like it it says MPEG 2.0 layer 3 </edit>
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"I've never been sigged." - PsychoticIckyThing
"Maybe *this* is what 'cooties', the disease that every grade schooler is terrified of, yet knows not the symptoms of which, is!" - KNSinatra at 3:34 AM
<FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE="1" FACE="Verdana, Arial">[This message has been edited by monsieurjohn on July 30, 2001 at 01:31 AM]</font>
