MP3 patent terminates AAC "up" Can the latter take up the responsibility?

The MP3 format that has dominated the music market for more than 20 years officially ended, and the inventor agency formally announced the termination of the relevant patents on May 13. Thanks to its small size, portability, and low cost, MP3 beats CDs and gains consumers' favor, driving sales of MP3 players and other products, but just like all product areas, MP3s At the end of his life, this time, he received the Advanced Audio Coding AAC (AAC) format.

MP3 patent termination

German research institute Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits (hereinafter referred to as "Fraunhofer Institute") announced that it had terminated certain MP3 related patents and officially withdrew it from the stage of history. The MP3 here is not an MP3 player used by people, but an audio format. The above institute is the mechanism for inventing the MP3 format. The termination of related patents means that related industries will no longer produce audio in MP3 format, including music player software, and users will no longer be able to download MP3 audio in the future.

For the reason why MP3 exits the historical stage, Wu Chunyong, CEO of FusionNet, believes that with the development of mobile Internet, pure audio can no longer meet the needs of consumers, and the video economy market is the development trend now and in the future. MP3 is an audio format. The audience will be further reduced.

From a technical point of view, the maturity of memory chip technology, large-capacity flash memory has become a reality, network technology leap to make large-capacity files to download faster, plus people's pursuit of sound quality has gradually increased, with a small size advantage of MP3 has Can not meet consumer demand. "MP3 compression rate lags behind Ogg, WMA, VQF and other formats, the sound quality is also not ideal (especially at low code rates), there are only two channels." Wu Chunyong said.

The MP3 audio format was born in the 1980s. It is a file format that encodes and compresses digital audio sampled at a frequency of 44.1 kHz in stereo. The compression ratio can be as high as 1:10 to 1:12, which corresponds to bits of 128 kbps to 112 kbps. Meta rate delivers stereo signals. At the end of 1996, the Fraunhofer Institute obtained MP3 patents in the United States and announced in 1998 that it would charge MP3 royalties.

Due to the small storage capacity of MP3, consumers have increased the feasibility of downloading music through a network where the user end is generally insufficient, and the emergence of MP3 players has greatly increased the portability of music files. Since the beginning of 1999, the MP3 format has become widely popular. In particular, there have been many music websites that provide MP3s for free. Various factors have made MP3 an extremely mainstream audio format. Although there were challengers such as VQF and WMA afterwards, the firm foundation of MP3 made it firmly sit in the position of the boss.

However, the popularity of the MP3 format has also brought many problems. In the late 1990s, with the advent of the Internet, MP3 files spread rapidly on the Internet and led to the digital piracy of the gold rush. According to a survey released by the Recording Industry Association of America in March 1999, the popularity of MP3 has become an important reason for 15-24-year-old consumer groups to reduce the purchase of music CDs. The world's five major record companies have consistently resisted the piracy problem caused by the MP3 epidemic.

Player fades

The popularity of the MP3 audio format has led to the development of the MP3 music player market. According to analysis, after the MP3 audio format has exited the stage of history, the MP3 music player will also be ready to go. Industrial watcher Hong Shibin believes that the relationship between the two is a causal relationship between the two, and the MP3 player market has long since declined, which is one of the reasons for the demise of the MP3 audio format.

The MP3 music player once became a popular and fashionable young man in the early 20th century. However, due to the slightly expensive price, only a small number of students can own it. The MP3 music player used to be “after 80” and “after 90”. The time of the stroke was low, and from 2005 to 2010, the market had entered a period of maturity.

Now that the era of MP3 has come to an end, buying a tens of yuan has become commonplace. Patriots, IResearch, Taipower, Innovation, and the Blue Devils have all been the mainstream brands of MP3 music players, but now most of these manufacturers have already made a transition. Tablets, mobile power and other devices, Meizu will focus on the smart phone body.

Wu Chunyong pointed out that the MP3's demise is only a few short years, and the direct reason is the massive popularity of music mobile phones. Especially after the emergence of smart phones, the mobile phone's playback function gradually replaced the MP3 player. Mobile phones are an indispensable tool for people's daily communications. Users do not need to spend money on MP3s and other music players. In addition, compared with tablet computers and mobile phones, MP3s have relatively single functions and can only store and listen to music at a small capacity. Later, as the prices of tablets and mobile phones become lower and lower, consumers are more willing to purchase tablets or mobile phones, taking into account the cost-effective factors. "MP3 manufacturers have long-term obedience, there is no better product launch, so MP3 is also dying. The decline of the MP3 player market, making support for MP3 audio format hardware products reduced significantly, also to some extent, accelerated the MP3 The demise of the audio format."

In addition, in Hong Shibin's view, the official demise of the MP3 audio format is now the best reason for the MP3 music player to completely withdraw from the market. Although the MP3 player supports more than one audio format of the MP3, the product does not necessarily have to continue to exist. .

Beijing Business Daily reporter logged in the e-commerce website of JD.com and Taobao and found that MP3 players of various brands are still on sale. Compared with previous years, the prices of products have dropped a lot, and they only need tens of yuan or more than 100 yuan. Can buy a brand name product.

AAC "Up"

After MP3 exits, it is replaced by AAC. The director of the Fraunhofer Institute stated that there are already many better music storage formats and playback methods. The Advanced Audio Coding Format (AAC) is more efficient and more powerful than the MP3. It is already the de facto standard for downloading multimedia content from mobile phones.

AAC is the audio format of the "21st century data compression method" developed jointly by Fraunhofer Institute and AT&T, Sony, Dolby, Nokia and other companies to replace the MP3 position. The AAC algorithm was completed in 1997 and was known as MPEG-2 AAC.

Compared with the MP3 audio format, AAC uses a new algorithm for encoding, more efficient, with a higher cost performance, using AAC format, can make people feel no significant reduction in sound quality, and the file is smaller; can provide up to 48 full Range channel; The highest support 96KHz sampling frequency, that is, can provide a higher resolution; In addition, it also improves the decoding efficiency, decoding and playing less resources.

Currently, Apple iPods, Nokia phones, and Sony Walkman all support AAC format audio files.

Wu Chunyong stated that the MP3 format was withdrawn and replaced by AAC. In terms of the current product market, Apple is the most profitable company. Although the MP3 player is outdated, there is still a part of fruit powder that is keen on Apple's iPod, compared with similar players. Apple's product recognition is significantly higher. It is understood that Apple originally provided users with AAC content, and Apple's iTunes launched later to dominate the digital music market.

However, despite being better than the MP3 format, AAC is still lossy compression, and there is an “essential” gap in the sound quality compared to the lossless formats such as APE and FLAC. In addition, the USB3.0 and 16G or higher MP3s with faster transmission speeds are accelerating, and the “small” aura of AAC heads is no longer there.

"From a development perspective, just as 'ultra-clear' is being accepted by more and more people, 'lossless' must be the absolute mainstream of the future music format. The prospect of AAC's 'lossy' format is not optimistic." Hong Shibin added. In his opinion, the era of MP3 is about to end. If Apple's iPod can not introduce better products, it may also decline. In addition to a lot of loyal fruit powder will be sought after, Apple should consider designing several more humane iPod versions for different people and needs, including the player's size, playback effect and appearance, which will directly affect the product's Sales and recognition, MP3 player size should not be too large, the smaller the easier to carry, you can also increase the language control features, do not press the button, the language can be achieved Song.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Sun Yuxiang Shi Feiyue / Wen Lijun / Cartography

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