I notice in the discussion about the freeware Nero AAC encoder that's going on at Hydrogenaudio that the Nero guys are proposing to offer device/brand-specific settings for subsequent versions. That's directed more at musicphones than iPods and the like. And it's a major move to supplant iTunes as the Windows desktop music conversion software. Nero is offering their software in Linux, also, but not Mac OS.
We already knew that Apple had deliberately weakened the encoding algorithms for MP3 in iTunes, since they are so tied into the Low-Complexity Advanced Audio Coding format (LC-AAC). Since the Nero coder clearly surpasses the Apple codecs in LC-AAC (iPods play that and MP3, only) and doesn't even try to encode to High-Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC), Nero has a very good chance of dominating how we feed the coming generation of musicphones. It's a bit difficult to see Microsoft in this picture since their WMA format simply cannot compete at these low rates -- say, 30% of an iTunes store-bought song and at almost comparable quality.
We now await response from the Winamp/AOL/Coding Technologies alliance. Since AOL already collaborates with XM Satellite, another Coding Technolgies-type HE-AAC licensee, that is the obvious group to bet on. Honestly, it's a helluva lot of work doing one's own music file conversion and tagging (yikes!), so I really think pre-programmed channels like XM's (or even on-demand delivery to musicphones) will utterly alter the way people get their mobile music.
This really is disruptive technology at work! First Apple steals Microsoft's expected busines, then Coding Technologies and, maybe, Nero, muscle aside both Apple and Microsoft.Nero,
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Nerotunes for musicphones
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment