The format will be nonexistant in two(Max) years. All of those expensive in dash players with MP3 compatibility will be a waste. All of the portable players will be scrap.

Thoughts?

Nah, mp3s will be around for a long time. I do think mp3 players are a waste of money tho.

Duo

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quote:Originally posted by BoogyMan:
The format will be nonexistant in two(Max) years. All of those expensive in dash players with MP3 compatibility will be a waste. All of the portable players will be scrap.

Thoughts?

_____________________________________________

More than two years but feasable. There really isn't any point to having a dual system, supporting music material. The only problem is that until the market swings either way, it's diffucult to say. MP3's provide the novelty of your own seleced CD, but right now, they seem intrusive and unnescessary to a techno purist who wants one simplified format. The absolute difference maker here is finding a blended product. Well, because MP3's are diff than reg CD's, we have to base the market on "music players" not MP3 players. it's a matter of MP3 format gaining the recognition as a pliable medium until the technology is considered one full system. Once that's done, "players" will just be assumed to run on both formats, thus the name becoming singular rather than plural. When we stop seeing the MP3 tag, we can just assume that, it supports all format's whereby the individual could easily relate it as a product similar to say a "graphing calculator that plays games" (????work with me on that one it's the only analogy I've got right now) In conclusion I would say that the MP3's will disappear in the same way formats like beta disappeared and became VHS. It's about what we call the product here. Sort of.

Well, anyways, that's that.

quote:Originally posted by BoogyMan:
The format will be nonexistant in two(Max) years. All of those expensive in dash players with MP3 compatibility will be a waste. All of the portable players will be scrap.

Thoughts?

Hmm very bleak outlook since I own one I'm sure there will be some converters available to convert the popular future formats to MP3.. (hope)

quote:Originally posted by BoogyMan:
The format will be nonexistant in two(Max) years. All of those expensive in dash players with MP3 compatibility will be a waste. All of the portable players will be scrap.

Thoughts?

MP3s will be around, until another format that is open and can be easily copied is available. Until then nothing will replace MP3s. The VHS/Beta war was more based on support/manufactures. I remember when people would say that VHS would die out like 4 years ago, but go to a video rental store and you will see that they stock more of VHS tapes then DVDs. DVD is finally starting to take over now and this is part only because the recorders are coming out now and you don't have to take out a second morgage to buy one. If a format doesn't let people copy it easily, even if it is better quality(DVD) it won't be widely accepted. One contributing factor is because the makers of the content for it can charge $$$ for their songs/movies. Why do think music CDs are now cheaper then they where 4-5 years ago? When everyone was charging $14.99+ for them. It, is because the record companies know that they have to sell CDs now at a more acceptable price point or people will just say, "Screw them I am not paying $15+ for a CD when I can burn my own for <$1". I remember when Best Buy was catching hell a couple years back for selling CDs so cheap $11.99. Other retailers where up in arms over it like the music sellers that are in malls.

BC
Oh, and you can get MP3 car decks for under $260. Which I don't consider expensive. With one MP3 CD you can get over 10hours of music. Specially, since I spent $400+ for a Kenwood tape deck with CD-changer controls back in 1989 and another $270 for a 10-disc changer.

I don't really see MP3's getting outdated that soon Boogs. I mean even if the recording industry comes out with spetacular music on DVD or a new format with tons of new channels and everything. They'll take up so much space they won't get transfered on the net, until where top notch DSL and cable are being used like 56k now-a-days. So until then even with a suppieror format mp3 will still be traded a ton.
MP3 players will be used in many places, portable for walk/running and trips, and in the car. The only place it would surely stop would be if you had a home theater. Where you can definately use a ton of channels for improved surround sound.

Unless they come out with MP5 where its just and extension of being compress beyond what mp3 can do, they'll be around for a few years. I still remember the first time I was playing MP3s. I had to try them cause I heard about playing songs on your computer that were a meg/min.

New songs at the time were Will Smith: Men in Black & Smash Mouth: Walking on the Sun. What was that back in '94 or '95?

Beside Cd's are already a supperior format to MP3, but CD's aren't winning.

Oh and standalone MP3 players are POS in my oppinion. Now if a player can play all formats on a CD wav, MP3, CD-R, CD-RW, those are nice, your prepared for anything then, until they move music to DVD's.

quote:Originally posted by BoogyMan:
The format will be nonexistant in two(Max) years. All of those expensive in dash players with MP3 compatibility will be a waste. All of the portable players will be scrap.

Thoughts?

Not gonna happen at least not for a long while, I have noticed no new technology that is anywhere close to taking it's place, and with the incorporation on MP3pro you can get smaller file sizes and better audio, and it is still backward compatible with the current mp3 format...

The format has already come widespread that the ONLY way to usurp the whole technology is to develope something so earth shattering that you can get higher quality music under 1MB a minute, and I highly doubt it'll be that easy to get develope a much better format...

I see mp3 being around forever almost, it may not be in the limelight forever, but it'll be around, Heck .mid is still around and thats been around for billions of years, and even had its heyday many years ago... mp3 is just hitting its heyday and will continue to be in the spotlight for many years to come...

You can't put a date on computers, never have I seen any dates be correct, NEVER

I don't see MP3s dying out anytime soon. They may become a little less popular than they are now once it becomes harder for the average Joe computer user to rip CDs(thank you CD protection...), but they probably won't go away. I don't think people will pay money to download them the way Napster is hoping, but we'll just have to wait and see how gullible the Joe is to find out for sure.

Gentleman, I laugh at some of your comments because obviously you have not taken a certain factor into account. I noticed a few comments saying nothing will come out and replace mp3's for a long time, or mp3 players, or WHATEVER way you want to put it.

Has anyone considered that it will ALL just eventually go back to the basic .WAV file it started as? The raw uncompressed file? I mean look how quickly hard drives have grown, in another few years we will ALL likely be running on terabyte size drives. Then who cares about mp3's? I will be listening to my flawless uncompressed audio files. I mean it may be a bit off, but I have a feeling the term compression may be obsolete the same time mp3's are

Just my opinion, anyone else agree, Cheers!

The assumption there is that price/performance will greatly outpace the software bloat that is so commonplace today. I don't know about any of you, but I've never had ample hard drive space for very long.

quote:Originally posted by Jeff20Sk:
Gentleman, I laugh at some of your comments because obviously you have not taken a certain factor into account. I noticed a few comments saying nothing will come out and replace mp3's for a long time, or mp3 players, or WHATEVER way you want to put it.

Has anyone considered that it will ALL just eventually go back to the basic .WAV file it started as? The raw uncompressed file? I mean look how quickly hard drives have grown, in another few years we will ALL likely be running on terabyte size drives. Then who cares about mp3's? I will be listening to my flawless uncompressed audio files. I mean it may be a bit off, but I have a feeling the term compression may be obsolete the same time mp3's are

Just my opinion, anyone else agree, Cheers!

I agree with you in one sense, but I also disagree in another. True, it may be that HDD's will get SO big that everyone will just go back to WAV's, but I think a few other things would also have to happen in order to have this happen.

1. Internet connections will have to go up quite a bit in speed because people will still want to file share and even if a HDD has no problem storing the file it will take a lot longer to transfer a WAV and people are impatient.

2. DVD-RAM drives will have to really come on strong in the market (And they already are starting too) and they will have to be able to write information a very high speeds. I don't know about you, but I sure wouldn't want to wait to copy 18GB of info onto a DVD at the speed that current average CD-RW's copy.

Right now it takes me only about 5min to copy about 180MP3's onto a CD. If I were to copy that many WAV files onto (many) CD's it might take about an hour and a half (just estimating here).

The other thing is that DVD-R's would have to come down in price too.

Actually I hope that your prediction is right and I hope that all the things I said above actually happen. I guess I just don't see average internet connection speed going up enough in the next two years to make it worth waiting for WAV's to transfer over the internet. Plus I wouldn't want to only be able to store about 15 or so WAV's on a CD. It would be more worth it if I had a DVD that I could put 100's of songs on.

Anyway, just my $0.02

quote:Originally posted by Jeff20Sk:
Gentleman, I laugh at some of your comments because obviously you have not taken a certain factor into account. I noticed a few comments saying nothing will come out and replace mp3's for a long time, or mp3 players, or WHATEVER way you want to put it.

Has anyone considered that it will ALL just eventually go back to the basic .WAV file it started as? The raw uncompressed file? I mean look how quickly hard drives have grown, in another few years we will ALL likely be running on terabyte size drives. Then who cares about mp3's? I will be listening to my flawless uncompressed audio files. I mean it may be a bit off, but I have a feeling the term compression may be obsolete the same time mp3's are

Just my opinion, anyone else agree, Cheers!

Sorry, dude but that isn't going to happen for a very long time...if ever. MP3 compression is about a 10:1 ratio and for you to compare raw .wav files to it you would need a drive that is 10 times bigger, among other things. Also, working with files that big is cumbersome. Here is a fact for you only about 7% of people in the US alone have broadband connections. So, for people to be willing to want to download files that are 50mb+ even the broadband pipe would need to be made bigger. Since, many have d/ls around 30-50kb a sec. some higher some lower for average speed.

BC
"digital music? How since all speakers are analog!"

quote:Originally posted by Jeff20Sk:
Gentleman, I laugh at some of your comments because obviously you have not taken a certain factor into account. I noticed a few comments saying nothing will come out and replace mp3's for a long time, or mp3 players, or WHATEVER way you want to put it.

Has anyone considered that it will ALL just eventually go back to the basic .WAV file it started as? The raw uncompressed file? I mean look how quickly hard drives have grown, in another few years we will ALL likely be running on terabyte size drives. Then who cares about mp3's? I will be listening to my flawless uncompressed audio files. I mean it may be a bit off, but I have a feeling the term compression may be obsolete the same time mp3's are

Just my opinion, anyone else agree, Cheers!

I agree with the many that posted against you sure storage gets bigger, but in 5 years 56k will still be around, and even broadband would take forever to download 30-40MB songs off the net... Not to mention the wav format may be uncompressed, but it's still bloated and you can get the same audio quality in smaller package (though it'd be bigger than Mp3), I see WAV as slowly (very slowly) dying off, and the only thing to replace it in the future would be a high quality, but relatively small file that would have cd quality audio in packages smaller than the current WAV files...

I don't think WAV will comeback as a "consumer format." You can get good quality MP3s (192kbps and higher) and most people won't be able to tell it's not CD quality. I think WAV will stay with us as a professional format. Kinda like Beta and VHS. VHS won the consumer market, Beta won the professional market.

Lethal

All good arguments guys, and it is a debate that will only be "solved" by time. Lots of you speak of internet conneciton rates, and storage, but just think of the infancy of the internet. Think how much processors have come in 5 years, same with storage.
I still stand by my point, but I also think that it may take longer than I first thought of. Sure things will speed up, but it also takes time for standards to speed up. It will be a long time before the market of Cd's will be phased out, and it will take long before Huge hard drives will be common in every household. Even longer before everybody can transfer files on the net at 1+ mb/s. Huge infrastructural stuff needs to change for much of this, and that all takes years when u consider everything.
The verdict, yah mp3's will be around for a while, maybe they will lose popularity amongst the masses, but they serve their purpose well, and until there is something better, i'll keep using em.

Cheers, any other comments?

In my opinion MP3's are far from dead. They can allow you to get that song you heard on the radio this morning without leaving the house. While we may turn to other ways of digital compression, i can't see that happening for a while, the MP3 market boomed upwards with Napster, and now that Napster gave MP3's such high publicity many people use them, and will continue to use them. Currently i am listening to my 7:32:18 playlist, that's only a week after my format, MP3's are very accesible and due to their size are still easy to download on a 56k.

MP3 players can also allow you to have a cd length of 8 hours or so, this means that instead of packing many albums in a rack, you can put 1 disc in your player and have more music than you realisticly need.

The format could die in a few years if a better way of storing them at high quality is found, but i don't see that happening in 2 years....

Who knows?

VQFs are smaller and sound better for similar rates than mp3s. They do have some issues with scanning forward and backward in the songs, it takes much longer.

One thing you have to wonder is, why dont more people distribute VQFs

how is WMA compared to MP3??? u have some WMA music files and they are about 60% smaller than my mp3 files

quote:Originally posted by Adisharr:
I'm sure there will be some converters available to convert the popular future formats to MP3.. (hope)

Or more likely; the other way around. There would be converters that converted MP3 to whatever format. This might of course lead to some poor quality, as whatever new technology there is will most likely superceed the quality of todays MP3 files.

quote:Originally posted by kpxgq:
how is WMA compared to MP3??? u have some WMA music files and they are about 60% smaller than my mp3 files

WMA = Windows Media Audio (?) I think...

Knowing M$ and their ways, this theory will probably hold true in the not so distant future...