Ardour Digital Audio Workstation Finally Adds Native MP3 Importing Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ardour Digital Audio Workstation Finally Adds Native MP3 Importing Support

While lossy compression audio formats like MP3 are not recommended for use within professional audio tasks, for those using the open-source Ardour digital audio workstation (DAW) software as of today there is finally native MP3 import support...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ardour-Adds-MP3

[microcode]

Gotta say, I think it's kinda silly that they didn't get same-day support, when the patents expired. These expiry days should be on all of our calendars. H.264 is close, I don't know how many of the surviving patents are even involved in current encoders and decoders.

[ssokolow]

Gotta say, I think it's kinda silly that they didn't get same-day support, when the patents expired. These expiry days should be on all of our calendars. H.264 is close, I don't know how many of the surviving patents are even involved in current encoders and decoders.

I bet some of them were waiting to see if there were any lurking trolls ready to try to prove that their patents weren't as unrelated as the rest of the world thought. Even if you're right, going to court is expensive.

[microcode]

I bet some of them were waiting to see if there were any lurking trolls ready to try to prove that their patents weren't as unrelated as the rest of the world thought. Even if you're right, going to court is expensive.

If there were patents used in MP3 published or granted after MP3 was published, they would be dismissed out of hand, and if they DID exist, somebody would have sued all of the people who made money on MP3 products BEFORE they expired, not the people who make no money on them well after MP3 became obsolete.

[caligula]

I bet some of them were waiting to see if there were any lurking trolls ready to try to prove that their patents weren't as unrelated as the rest of the world thought. Even if you're right, going to court is expensive.

Well, Mp3 is over 25 years old now. Patents are valid for 20 years. So..

[microcode]

Well, Mp3 is over 25 years old now. Patents are valid for 20 years. So..

There are technically ways patents can be delayed, H.264 was released in 2003 (ish), and the High profile was standardized in 2005, but there are patents involved which expire later than 2023/2025. For example, 7826532 (involved in H.264) expires in 2027 despite being filed in 2003. About 95 of the 268 MPEG-claimed patents I'm aware of are expired already, and next year another 20 will expire (ten of those will expire around valentine's day :- ). MPEG-LA publishes a much larger list, though it's hard to tell which component they are talking about, since they have published new extensions to AVC as recently as June of this year.

[coder]

So... when do AAC's patents expire? Not that I really care, as all my audio files are either MP3 or FLAC.

I do wonder how well FLAC works on 24-bit, though.

[caligula]

So... when do AAC's patents expire? Not that I really care, as all my audio files are either MP3 or FLAC.

I do wonder how well FLAC works on 24-bit, though.

Are you 100% sure FLAC is patent free? It might also depend on some patented, but not widely known proprietary algorithm.

[coder]

Are you 100% sure FLAC is patent free? It might also depend on some patented, but not widely known proprietary algorithm.

Pfft. Who knows if anything is 100% patent-free, but it was created as an open source project, 19 years ago.

https://xiph.org/flac/news.html

For most of this time, it has been incorporated as part of the Xiph.org project, which has always been about libre media codecs. So, I'm not too worried, at this point.

I use it for CD rips, and the main gripe I have is its lack of pre-emphasis support. Not that I have many discs with pre-emphasis.

Speaking of patents and CDs, I guess the HDCD patents should be expired, for a while now!

[ssokolow]

So... when do AAC's patents expire? Not that I really care, as all my audio files are either MP3 or FLAC.

I do wonder how well FLAC works on 24-bit, though.

I would go on about how 24-bit is only beneficial for mastering, but you've actually got me curious about whether FLAC, being lossless, would be viable way to store DAW project data in compressed form for more efficient mothballing of projects.