Earlier quoted context omitted.
If only OGG support was more common :(
OGG Vorbis audio is supported by all Android devices, which is the vast majority of mobile devices in the world.
Is it a vast majority of podcast listeners?
Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
31–40 of 90 posts
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
The solution is AAC, regarding which a number of prominent podcasters introduced FUD several years ago and now the podcasting industry is reluctant to give up MP3 -- unlike pretty much every other audio-related industry in the world. Seriously, MP3 was on its way out the year the Backstreet Boys released that song, and it surprises me that people still stick to it despite the VBR thing being a shitty problem in softw…
The problem with AAC is in the container format, as Marco explains in his podcast: While some important metadata like chapter marks which a podcast player might want to display are within the first KB in an MP3 file, this same information is interleaved somewhere in the stream in AAC. Which means that you can't have all features when streaming an AAC file, in a time when streaming podcasts is getting more popular eve…
Weren't they talking about .mov files at the time?
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
The ATP theme song by Johnathan Mann is unexpectedly awesome, and I never ever skip it. And as Marco pointed out in the ATP episode, this also affects any musical interludes or short musical samples within any podcast.
Yeah, I'm sure lots of people listen to it all the way through. I did for a while myself. But it's not worth inconveniencing so many of your listeners just to make your theme song (or very occasional clips) sound a tiny bit better — especially considering the fact that most people listen to podcasts in their car or even through the iPhone speaker, as Marco himself discovered from his analytics. Others have already no…
What nonsense? He explicitly said in the episode that he studied some options and they were all bad ideas. He made a few million from the sale of Tumblr to Yahoo, has FU money in the bank and he is just scratching an itch and exploring his hobby. I don't see anything wrong with that.
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#34That's not the only reason. We have been podcasting for over 10 years, and early on we tried to use VBR MP3s because we are teach people who know about that sort of thing. As it turns out, not everyone is listening using a modern device. When we tried VBR a significant number of people could not listen because their MP3 playing hardware/software of choice did not support VBR files properly. They didn't realize this w…
I had an old MP3 player that would play VBR files with variable speed. I suppose the speed changed depending on the bitrate of the part of the file, but I wouldn't know how to check it in such details.
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
VBR have been the red-headed step-child of MP3 since the beginning. I have no idea why, maybe it was difficult to write good encoders and decoders for it for back in the day. The few times I used them, I found trivial space savings compared to a CBR and to be honest I thought I could hear a difference (maybe its not humanly possible if the implementation of the encoder/decoder is good but what if the implementation i…
iPhone storage and cellular bandwidth are still extremely expensive. Over $100 for a measly 16gb of storage or 4gb of LTE.
$100 gets you 48GB of storage these days, and at my overage rates it would buy about 7GB of transmission. Not that this really changes your point.
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#36I assume this is the same problem I see in my car (VW) when streaming Spotify via Bluetooth? The progress bar in the car seems to go at double speed and runs out about halfway through each track.
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#37So is this why I have weird problems fast-forwarding through some NPR podcasts? I'll find myself at the end of the podcast (as indicated by the time bar), but the podcast itself is still playing. Man, Apple really is neglecting podcasts. Reminds of an article I read recently - "Podcasts Surge, but Producers Fear Apple Isn’t Listening" http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/business/media/podcasts-su...
That article is a little misleading- it's actually about podcasters who want them to embrace/extend podcasting itself so that they (the podcasters, not the company) could better monetize podcasts. I can't imagine that the ways in which this might be done (DRM/subscriptions/user tracking/etc.) would appeal to HN readers, even if it would help the most popular podcasters make more money. IMO, benign neglect is the best possible situation for podcasting as a medium right now.
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I'm sure lots of people listen to it all the way through. I did for a while myself. But it's not worth inconveniencing so many of your listeners just to make your theme song (or very occasional clips) sound a tiny bit better — especially considering the fact that most people listen to podcasts in their car or even through the iPhone speaker, as Marco himself discovered from his analytics. Others have already no…
What nonsense? He explicitly said in the episode that he studied some options and they were all bad ideas. He made a few million from the sale of Tumblr to Yahoo, has FU money in the bank and he is just scratching an itch and exploring his hobby. I don't see anything wrong with that.
The nonsense is that this is a solution looking for a problem. It's scratching an itch by trying to move a mountain. I am certain that nobody in the history of the podcast has ever complained about the sound quality of the theme song or audio clips, especially after they switched over to 96kbps. Whereas there is no doubt that any technical solution — especially any of the ones proposed, including switching to VBR — would inconvenience a whole lot of people.
(By all means, Marco should continue working in this direction if it interests him. If Apple ends up adding those ID3 tags to their MP3 decoder, it will have a net positive impact on the world. I just think it's a rather foolish endeavor.)
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with AAC is in the container format, as Marco explains in his podcast: While some important metadata like chapter marks which a podcast player might want to display are within the first KB in an MP3 file, this same information is interleaved somewhere in the stream in AAC. Which means that you can't have all features when streaming an AAC file, in a time when streaming podcasts is getting more popular eve…
Weren't they talking about .mov files at the time?
The MP4 container was based on the Quicktime file format (.mov).
Re: Why don’t podcasts use VBR MP3s? Because iOS and macOS don’t accurately seek them
#40Oh, that explains why when I pause music on my iPhone and resume, it doesn't continue playing from the same place.
Damnit, Apple.