M4A vs MP3

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ALPHA17 said:
.ogg is an obsolete format, no longer maintained.
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Once a standard is 'set', it doesn't need to changed, except maybe for bugfixes. Ogg & FLAC are de-facto standards that have been 'frozen' for quite some time now. Similarly, MP3 hasn't seen any changes since the format was standarized. Just because a format has been frozen, it doesn't necessarily imply that its useless/obsolete.

ALPHA17 said:
Also most standard sources such as, iPods, iPhones, your generic MP3 and MP4 players and newer breed of phones [Nokia Lumia and Androids] do not support FLAC OR .ogg.
Deplorable set of conditions.
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Agree with you. I wish that there was more support for these formats. Sansa is one (good) exception here; almost all of their players support FLAC.
 
Gryph0n said:
Once a standard is 'set', it doesn't need to changed, except maybe for bugfixes. Ogg & FLAC are de-facto standards that have been 'frozen' for quite some time now.

Sansa is one (good) exception here; almost all of their players support FLAC.
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True, found some interesting stuff pertaining to the same, here.

Right again, I have a Sansa Clip+ [RockBOX] and it is great for me, plays every format conceivable. Although the vanilla firmware does not support .aac ironically, as Sansa has faced off against Apple's DRM based iTunes on this issue. With the release of the Clip Zip .aac support was added as a default.
 
ALPHA17 said:
True, found some interesting stuff pertaining to the same, here.

Right again, I have a Sansa Clip+ [RockBOX] and it is great for me, plays every format conceivable. Although the vanilla firmware does not support .aac ironically, as Sansa has faced off against Apple's DRM based iTunes on this issue. With the release of the Clip Zip .aac support was added as a default.
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I have a Sansa Fuze (It's EOL'ed now in favour of Fuze+) running RockBox. As you've mentioned, RockBox has support for practically every format (Vorbis, FLAC, AAC).

I just had a look the official Fuze manual, and noticed that it doesn't mention FLAC anywhere. But I had installed the last Sansa Firmware on the Fuze, and it plays FLACs fine with the OEM firmware (Haven't tried Vorbis or AAC with OEM).

Vorbis' USP is that it has been created without stepping on popular patents on codecs. So while MP3 and AAC codecs cannot be distributed in binary formats with OSS (Linux, *BSD, etc), Vorbis can be distributed freely.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_vorbis#Licensing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licensing_and_patent_issues

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding#Licensing_and_patents

MP3 hardware & encoders have to make royalty payments on patents to Fraunhoffer Institute, and similarly AAC requires royalty payments to MPEG-LA.

To 'bait' consumers, the distribution of content in these codecs don't have to make any royalty payments, and they allow free/open source decoders to flourish, without suing them for infringement on patents.

All this is moot for us consumers (PirateBay ;)), but these are serious issues for manufacturers.
 
ALPHA17 said:
.ogg is an obsolete format, no longer maintained. If going on that track OP might as well convert his music library into FLAC. The major disadvantage of the latter is that files tend to burgeon with the increase in quality. Also most standard sources such as, iPods, iPhones, your generic MP3 and MP4 players and newer breed of phones [Nokia Lumia and Androids] do not support FLAC OR .ogg.

Deplorable set of conditions.
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ogg might be no longer maintained, but that does not mean its obsolete. what changes has mp3 format undergone over the years? is it being maintained as well? i dont see any newer mp3 versions being released.

if a player does not support a format, does it means its obsolete? Ogg vorbis is being used widely to encode anime series, sound tracks etc. my cowon player plays flac and ogg formats but does not support aac format. does that mean aac is obsolete? Plus those generic players do not play wma audio too. so is wma is obsolete?

You can encode flac files at around 20MB or so if you use max compression without loss in quality.

So does it get less space??
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not actually. i tested converting a file from flac (30MB source) to 256KBps mp3 and 256Kbps ogg. The file size for mp3 was just around 600Kb more than that of ogg.
Ogg at its highest setting of 500Kbps takes around 16.5Mb for the same flac source.
 
6pack said:
ogg might be no longer maintained, but that does not mean its obsolete. what changes has mp3 format undergone over the years? is it being maintained as well? i dont see any newer mp3 versions being released.

if a player does not support a format, does it means its obsolete? Ogg vorbis is being used widely to encode anime series, sound tracks etc. my cowon player plays flac and ogg formats but does not support aac format. does that mean aac is obsolete? Plus those generic players do not play wma audio too. so is wma is obsolete?
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Whoa!! Whoa... I am sorry if my spelling out that the .ogg vorbis file format is obsolete. I did not mean that you could not use it individually, infact I remember correctly that The Witcher 1 soundtrack / sound-effects were all in this format. All I meant that no company / organization was backing up the format, that is all.

On the latter MP3 is backed up by Fraunhofer IIS although no new iterations of the same have been released.

A lot of Sansa and Cowon PMP's / MP3 players do not support .aac due to Apple's DRM impositions and assorted vagaries, although upon installing RockBOX firmware they can do the same [atleast that is the case for my Clip+].

Peace :cheers:!!
 
ALPHA17 said:
.ogg is an obsolete format, no longer maintained. If going on that track OP might as well convert his music library into FLAC. The major disadvantage of the latter is that files tend to burgeon with the increase in quality. Also most standard sources such as, iPods, iPhones, your generic MP3 and MP4 players and newer breed of phones [Nokia Lumia and Androids] do not support FLAC OR .ogg.

Deplorable set of conditions.
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Ogg is very well maintained and open source format. who said it is obsolete ! Do not make such vague statements. Just because some proprietary media player doesn't support a particular format doesn't make it dead.

Apple made transition/created to AAC / m4a because of DRM, other formats begin free doesn't have such limitations so its obvious for vendors to ditch them.

ogg , flac , alac,wav are lossless formats so they will have superior sound output and loose storage encryption compared to lossy format.

Loss as in loss in quality / frequency / threshold.
 
Dark Star said:
Ogg is very well maintained and open source format. who said it is obsolete ! Do not make such vague statements. Just because some proprietary media player doesn't support a particular format doesn't make it dead.
ogg , flac , alac,wav are lossless formats so they will have superior sound output and loose storage encryption compared to lossy format.
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That is not what I meant. I have already mentioned my stand in a slightly earlier post, but I will reiterate the same again -- most audiophile / better known PMP's support all lossless open source file formats, e.g. Sansa Clip+ supports .ogg, .flac but lacks .aac format support due to the sticky issue of Apple's endorsement of cumbersome and ineffective DRM on all its iTunes... tunes / songs / media.

I use a Sansa Clip+ for the matter and have installed the RockBOX firmware on the same. It supports most audio formats [including .ogg and .flac] out of the box but neglects .aac because Sansa and Apple are bitter rivals and the former opposed the latter's ruthless implementation of DRM on iTunes content and in conjunction the iPod family of PMP's.

All I meant was that .ogg was community supported, whilst MP3 is endorsed by Fraunhofer IIS. I agree that if you have the right equipment to play audio .flac and .ogg will sound better than lossy formats like .m4a, .mp3, .aac. But for the majority of users it will not constitute a discernible difference.

I am sorry that my vague and ill-worded statement is becoming a flash-point and once again apologies to all. Peace!!
6pack said:
ALPHA17, :D I was just asking, didn't mean to sound angry or something like that.

I think there are organizations showing interest in this format.

Vorbis.com: Music Links

Vorbis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Scroll down to hardware support. There's pioneer, samsung, hp, etc.
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Thanks for the heads up 6pack will definitely look into these.

And no I am not angry OR this was not a knee-jerk reaction, I thank you for the links this will help me expand my knowledge-base. Challenging of ill scripted comments should be increased it is the only was to quash any doubts and kill any inappropriate ideas and school of thought. In this case my ill informed state on .ogg. Cheerio!!
 
I think guys are confused here.
There are three things to media:
1. audio codecs like mp3, AAC-HE/AAC-LE, ogg-vorbis, FLAC, PCM(wav), DTS, ac3(dolby). here, FLAC and PCM are lossless and others are lossy. vorbis and flac are royalty free and patent free.
2. video codecs like theora, h164, mpeg, H-263 which is often known as divx or xvid and vp8/vpx also known as webm. of all the video codecs theora and webm are royalty free and patent free.
3. containers like mkv, m4v, m4a, mp4, avi, ogg, webm and many more.

The main and noticeable advantage of aac over mp3 is that it supports more than 2 channels. i.e., 5.1 or 7.1 channel audio. mp3 cannot hold more than 2 channels so it can only be used to encode songs.

mkv or matroska can be called super-container. that means mkv container can hold almost any audio/video stream.
 
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