Technology

Sure, it's like JPG.

It may not be the newest or best compression ratio, but it works, and even the shittiest old hardware supports it. And I know it won't whine about licences being missing or some shit.

I remember reading articles at the time of the last patents running out. Some were so misguided it was hilarious.

They called it the death of MP3! As if patents were good or necessary, instead of restrictive and troublesome for interoperability.

I have boatloads of MP3s and at least they can pretty much be played by all imaginable software and hardware imaginable, and since the patents have expired, there's no reason not to support the format.

MP3s are good enough for its particular use case. Of course, newer formats are better overall and may be better suited for some applications. (Me, I've been an Ogg Vorbis fan for ages now. Haven't ripped a CD in a while but should probably check out this newfangled Opus thing when I do.)

It's still my preferred format. Everything can play it. At 256kbit or better it sounds fine for usual listening.

I 100% do. I think mp3 is a good compromise of sound and space. It's also the format I'm used to. Just like how people swear by physical record. If I'm at a get together and hear mp3 quality, I'm at home.

That being said, I have my absolute favorites in flac for my iPod 5th gen video I rebuilt. The 5th gen's dac, Wolfson, is a solid little dac for the day and age. Got Rockbox loaded up and I'm ace, but I've hard saved all the Apple firmware for every model in case the time came to sell them. Old iPods could be an investment someday and I own every gen in multiples.

Still care about MP3- it's the bog standard, the thing EVERYthing supports. Like the shitty SBC codec on Bluetooth. I've still got tons of MP3s and they aren't going away anytime soon.

Everything I get new though is high-res FLAC.

Ogg at lower bitrates sounded better than mp3 at the same rate. Consumers dont care, but for a lot of game developers the zero patent risk and higher quality shipping with smaller files made Ogg a great choice at the time.

For me? FLACs are the only way.... which reminds me, I wonder I can still convert all the SHN (shorten) lossless files I still have. I should get on that before a converter doesn't exist.

… I’m out of the loop. Why don’t people care about mp3s?

I have thousands of mp3s so I'd say they still matter. As far as audio quality goes I doubt my ears, at least at my age, can tell the difference between them and a lossless format.

I listen to mp3 all the time. Back in the Napster days I collected a ton of music, but moreover I'm a fan of Old Time Radio from the 30s and 40s, so I accumulated around 10,000 of those shows. More than I'll ever have time to listen to. Audiophiles may deride the quality level, but I don't believe in letting perfection be the enemy of good. And even if "computers" - whatever that even means anymore lol - drop support for mp3, there will always be software that plays it as long as there are people with big collections of files they don't want to take the trouble to convert to something else.

It's useful because it's ubiquitous. Everything that can take in music files supports it.

Is MP3-encoded audio of the best possible quality? No, of course not. But for most people it's Good Enough, especially if you do most of your listening in a noisy environment. MP3s are to lossless formats what CD was to vinyl for so many years.

There might be things that are better these days in the technical sense. But there is always value in having something "good enough" that is freely available and compatible with nearly everything that has speakers to use to keep those technically better yet more expensive options in check.

Yeah it works. What's the deal? You've got mp3s and then you got flac if you're audiophile.

Sounds fine at good bitrates, universally supported, small, efficient, everywhere.

Yeah, MP3 is just fine. Found zero reason to use any other format. And of course, while the rest of the world streams everything I'll be happily using my massive MP3 library I can fit on a tiny little storage device and take everywhere I go without the need for the interbutts and big brother keeping tabs of what I listen to.