I want my MP3

I want my I want my I want my MP3.....

I think the quality of MP3 over .wav goes without saying. Anyone know why they went with the wav dinosaur in SL? Seems redundant compaired to what appears to be cutting edge in all other areas of SL.

Any WHO I would rather the format of MP3 was our option here and the clips played quicker and they were more like 20 sec. but thats just fantasy

I want my...I want my.... I want my MP3


Cat C

Hrm I don't think you mean 'quality', I think you mean usefulness or such. WAV is lossless, MP3 is a lossy compression, so WAV quality is much higher in all respects.

Anyhow, SL does all it's own compression for streaming to the clients, so i'd imagine should they choose to do a good audio system in game, the compression from server->client will be their own, and the uploaded format will be irrelevant.

I think it would be ultra-cool if they'd include a more manageable audio format. I know that MP3 isn't lossless but I can never tell the difference personally.

Mainly, it would be nice to be able to upload larger audio files. I realize there are some nasty IP issues involved with this (watch out for the RIAA) but I'm gonna lay out my crazy plan anyway:

Allow uploading of MP3 (or pick your own compressed format, anything that doesn't mean a song is several hundred MB).

Charge for the upload in direct relation to file size -- this is a luxury after all. This lets people downsample their music if they don't mind in exchange for less of a charge and less of a burden on the Lindens' servers.

Again, the big issue behind all this is probably that people WILL upload copyrighted music and anyone near them can then hear it for free without buying the album.

Then again, this is happening anyway with crude 10 second chunks, so why not remove the time restriction but police the upload content more. Yes, the solution is for the Lindens to do more work

Aaaanyway, with the talents some SL residents have already shown I'm sure there would be some nifty original compositions livening up our world

There already is a bit of info on why .wavs are used instead of mp3s. I forget where, do a search.

fen-

probably make metallica mad, they contridict their problems all the time and try blaming others. I think the reason they chose wav is because then everyone would upload their sounds and want to play them all the time. If MP3 is much smaller file size all people would do is upload their fave MP3 files and constantly play them, then there would be issues over certain people being offended by certain mp3's and it would just be a chaotic mess. Wave is a bit harder to format, not everyone knows what programs format waves the best and with waves being bigger they take longer to upload. More people stay away from waves for this purpose. That's why I think waves are used instead of mp3's.

First just to confirm that si is correct - wav is much higher quality than MP3.

Anyone heard of ogg? ogg vorbis?

ogg vorbis is also higher quality than MP3, but is still compressed like MP3.

All sounds before they are uploaded (as in still on your machine) are converted to ogg. Then they are uploaded and stored as ogg. And when a sound plays you are downloading an ogg file that is played as an ogg file (I think).

If only they were stored on my Hard Drive as ogg files instead of a bunch of 800k 10 second wav's.

Howdy!



WAV files are just standard sound files with no compression, as has been stated. Raw WAV files tend to be of very high quality because they are generally straight digital recordings.

If you create a WAV file from a song on a CD, it will be practically an exact digital copy.

Because there is no compression, these files tend to be very large and unmanageable if the song or other sound you've recorded is longer than a few seconds.

MP3s are digital as well, but unlike raw digital recordings, a compression technique is used to squeeze the file down to a manageable size. This is called "encoding." In doing this, some of the original raw data is lost, and how much is lost depends on the compression factor chosen before the recording is made. A lot of people like to make MP3s as high quality as they can - which explains why some MP3s sound better than others. In higher quality MP3 recordings, the ear can barely (if at all) detect a degradation in sound quality compared to the CD or other high-quality medium.

MP3 is one of the first compression specs developed - it revolutionized the way music data (and helped paved the way for video and other formats) can be distributed. It made sharing of music (in the contemporary sense) possible. Sure, you can share WAV files, but a WAV recording of a song is generally too large to be practical, especially when we're talking about sharing on the Internet. Since MP3 technology came into being, other folks have developed compression techniques that not only rival it, but surpass it. However, they haven't caught on as readily. As we know, the best technologies don't always win the popularity game. MP3 is what is has always been most common, and until there is a far-reaching need to use some other format (like the awesome Ogg Vorbis and the admittedly decent Microsoft WMA formats), it is likely to remain the standard.

MP3 technology would allow decent quality full-length music tracks to be played in SL, but I think because of the nature of the huge streaming database SL uses for downloading graphics data, it would still be impractical.

It would indeed be useful, though, for dialogue and other shorter sound bites because it would make the files much smaller than the WAVs we're using now. Anything that is smaller flows through the wires quicker. SL would benefit greatly from this.

Other programs, like Active Worlds, do actually handle MP3s and other formats successfully already.

I think it's an excellent feature request for SL.

-J

Looking into the cache-db SL is using will show you that they are already using Ogg Vorbis files there. I haven't had the time to extract more than a few yet. The first few in that cache were userinterface sounds, which were also available as single <key>.wav files in the cache directory. So I'm not sure whats the point of those WAVs, they might be just temporary files (decoded Ogg Vorbis files, to avoid the repeated decoding) or maybe the implementation isn't finished yet.

Also note there is a quality slider in the preferences panel for sound upload bitrates, which also hints at the possibility that the sound is transferred with Vorbis/MP3 like compression instead of raw PCM.

well things ya never knew. Thanks everyone for the very detailed information. I am not into creating my own cd's and audio files and such.

My only experience has been the following;

1 wav files using the microfsoft recorder program omg it sucks so bad on the playback i usualy dont bother messing with it.

2 i have an mp3 player and the sound quailty is much better on playback is outstanding.

so as you can see its the sound that matters the most to me.

Most wav files played threw my speakers sound scratchy and realy bad. BUT mp3 sounds great to me.

anywho didnt realize all the new info so thanks

Cat C