MAC

[Dr Unne]

Have any of you had any experience using MAC (monkey's audio compression)? http://www.monkeysaudio.com/ It's a lossless audio compression scheme, i.e. smaller than raw sound data, but not at all distorted like MP3s are; you can compress music and decompress it'll still be perfect quality. I don't understand why we all haven't switched over to lossless audio compression. MAC makes files that are much bigger than an MP3 would be, but it still gets about 50% compression, and disk space is less and less of an issue what with 200 GB hard drives and cheap CDRs and whatnot. Or is there some other advantage to lossy compression that I'm forgetting? I know there is hardware that specifically reads MP3s, but aside from that.

[Flying Mullet]

I suppose no company has figured out a way to make money off of it. And considering that the general public is slow to pick up on new technology, they would probably have a hard time getting people to understand this new technology. DVD audio is also superior to CD audio, but it has yet to catch on and it's been around for a few years now.

[Citizen Bleys]

For the most part, I download songs, I don't compress them. I have a bunch of oggs somewhere, but most of the songs out there that are available are in mp3 format.

It's got so much momentum now that I'm pretty sure it's here to stay.

Besides, will mp3-cd players recognize MAC? What about portable MP3 players? Those $700 Creative Nomads? Will popular media players like WinAmp use MAC?

Too many people have invested too much in mp3 to just switch over to a new format at this point in time.

[crono_logical]

Sounds rather similar to the APE format, also a lossless audio compression thing that cut's the file to about 50%. Still a bit too large for me though, I don't really want a 100 GB audio collection. Also would take longer to distribute over file sharing due to it's larger size, and I see no reason to convert all my MP3s/OGGs that were downloaded to APE/MAC, since it's not going to improve the quality, so I leave them is they are :p I guess lossless might be better if it was for profession purposes, but the average user doesn't have 200 GB HDs yet :p

[Bulldog]

MAC isn't lossless. A CD rip will never reach the same quality as the original no matter what compression you intend to use. I do like the idea of switching to APE though. Monkey worked hard for this, and I intend to support him. Heh.

[Dr Unne]

MAC compression produces .ape files, I think it's two names for the same thing. Definitely not worth converting / downloading them, but if you're ripping your own CDs for example I think it could come in handy. It does produce pretty large files though, from my brief experiments with it. I don't think my ears are sensitive enough to tell the difference between an MP3 and a real CD anyways. Ah well.

<i>A CD rip will never reach the same quality as the original no matter what compression you intend to use. </i> --Bulldog

Why can't it be lossless? It's not that hard to do lossless compression on something, and anything that's losslessly compressed can be decompressed back to the original. I'm assuming it's decompressed on the fly as you listen to it, so to the computer it's a 100% perfect copy of what it could read off the CD.

[crono_logical]

Yeah, I think he was referring to lossy compression schemes will never be the same quality - obviously since it's throwing away information, although usually what you're ears (or eyes in the case of JPG or videos) are least sensitive to, so the majority of people won't notice the difference.

Lossless compression is always the same quality as the original, except it has the overhead to converting back as well, which should be fine/not noticable for audio or other uses that have only require a low bandwidth to seem to play back seamlessly and on a fast enough computer.

[Big Ogre Umaro]

I can't tell the difference between a 320 kbps MP3 and my original CD (I ripped the new Radiohead album because I like all my music in one place).

[Dr Unne]

True enough, neither can I.

[crono_logical]

You can between 160 and 320 kbps though :p

Anyway, the serious DJ probably wouldn't go for MP3s but for a lossless format, especially if they want to run the tracks through filters such as vocal removers etc. - the results turn out pretty different than if you used the original because of the stuff that's thrown away although isn't what the human ear is sensitive to, such tools are and can amplify those differences.