Is Mp3 still the best choice out there?

[balbrain]

Hi guys! I am (osrt of ) a newbie. That is to say i understand all formats and technology but I am unfamiliar wth the pros and cons of them. I wuz wondering if mp3 is still the best (and most widely used) technology out there. And if so why? I mean, there are undoubtedly newer and better compression technologies otu there but they don't seem to have made even a fraction of the impact mp3 made. Yeah Ogg took off quite well, and there's a lot of talk about AAC but in general mp3 still seems to be ruling??

Any Inputs?

--balbrain

[MaTTeR]

Ogg is a container. The audio codec is known as Vorbis. Now that's out of the way, have you tried any of the latest Vorbis builds. If so you will come to about the same conclusion as most of us. For our 2ch ripping needs, I think clearly Vorbis is the best way to go.

I cant take AAC seriously in the ripping arena until we have some better working AAC tools such as a DSF.

If your talking about music encoding then things add up a little differently. Either MPC or AAC is hard to beat for high bitrates. Why do people still use MP3? Well IMO most don't know any better and just do what there peers do:) Also, don't forget about the marketing machine involved too. Some of the worst products are marketed very heavily and people still use them for that reason. If you see the same product all the time and it's constantly getting shoved down your throat then you might just assume it's the best. History shows this time and time again. /rambling:)

[balbrain]

Yup. I have a tendency to call Vorbis as Ogg. But that will change as soon as they get the video stuff up n' working ;)

Thanx for the input tho. I wuz just spending time reading about different technologies and wondering about the future.

--balbrain

[twistee]

I use MP3 for songs (not rips)...and i know the quality isnt that good. But its the most widely used, and i share my mp3s with all my friends (who arent really technology abled), if i have them as anything else they wouldnt know what is going on. ALSO, i use NERO to make my audio cds, and it nicely handles mp3s and puts them on an audio cd straight away.