Microsoft Edge is the first web browser to support Dolby Digital Plus

[RH00D]

It's ok. It's the problem that people have with Windows, since the dawn of time.

Even if Microsoft takes exactly the same Windows, and changes the default background, you'll still have people whining.

They eventually upgrade, and once they get used to it. "OMG... BEST... WINDOWS.... EVVVAARARRR", then a new version of Windows comes out, and the whole process repeat itself.

I have been on forums for very long time.

 

I agree. I remember when many people said Windows 7 was horrible. They cried about things like no "Up one folder" button in Explorer, that the Taskbar was copying OS X dock, and that you still couldn't use Windows 2000 style classic Start Menu/grey theme. Which by the way Up one folder button returned in Windows 8.x. But now everybody tries to act like Windows 7 is the best OS MS ever made. Similar sentiments happened with Windows XP.

[LAwLz]

The advantage is that Hollywood uses it. MS can support all the obscure formats it wants, it doesn't help when Interstellar has DD and DTS streams that your browser can't decode if Netflix supports such audio streams. So if anything, go take your "complaints" to Hollywood and ask them to adopt new codecs. But they won't, because proprietary works better for them and keeping their property their own. 

Opus and Vorbis are far from "obscure". They are very widely used for music streaming (Spotify for example), VoIP (Skype, Mumble, TeamSpeak) and video streaming (YouTube).

NetFlix already transcodes the audio and video so it doesn't matter what Hollywood gives them because they convert it anyway.

 

 

Not to mention that DTS and DD work alongside THX and the industry to refine their offerings for their specific use cases. So why would the industry as a whole just up and leave them for "open" standards? Open ≠ better. People need to get that through their heads. 

Why did you put open in quotation marks? They are open standards, not "open" standards. Yes, open is better if everything else is equal. I am pretty sure Microsoft would gladly kept those 124 million dollars they paid DD in 2011 to themselves. But if you reread my post you will see that I listed lots of other benefits as well, not just "it's better because it's open". They are better because they are better, and open.

[Victorious Secret]

Opus and Vorbis are far from "obscure". They are very widely used for music streaming (Spotify for example), VoIP (Skype, Mumble, TeamSpeak) and video streaming (YouTube).

NetFlix already transcodes the audio and video so it doesn't matter what Hollywood gives them because they convert it anyway.

 

 

Why did you put open in quotation marks? They are open standards, not "open" standards. Yes, open is better if everything else is equal. I am pretty sure Microsoft would gladly kept those 124 million dollars they paid DD in 2011 to themselves. But if you reread my post you will see that I listed lots of other benefits as well, not just "it's better because it's open". They are better because they are better, and open.

 

Do you really think Netflix wouldn't prefer to NOT transcode that much? It would be far easier for them to give the native stream especially when it comes to audio. Have you ever listened to a proper 7.1 DTS stream? It is glorious. You don't just up and replace a properly mastered audio stream and expect the quality to remain. Some movies are mixed specifically for either DD or DTS (say, Gravity or Interstellar where the sound is just as big a factor as the visuals)

Better because they are better is not an answer. If they were better, wouldn't every audio engineer tell their production company to switch over? DD and DTS are already there, they flow into the system already, why replace what clearly has worked for decades? You said that it offers over 500 channels. Okay. Thats nice? DD Atmos is 128 channels and thats after how many years where its FINALLY being rolled out to theatres. Clearly no one cared enough before. 

You're acting as if those open formats can just supplant what the standards are in Hollywood and you're expecting MS to do something about that? MS? MS is the company that couldn't even work with a studio to make their own movie and effectively got stonewalled, and you expect them to speak out against what standards that Hollywood still uses? 

 

Like I said, open ≠ better. 

[mr moose]

I tried to find pricing but DD keeps it a very well guarded secret. All I found was that in order to use DD (encode or decode) you have to apply for a license and then Dolby will contact you and you have to sign a contract. It does mention a licensing fee but it doesn't specify if a licensing fee apples to both encoders and decoders.

There are also some forum posts which indicates that it costs to encode but they didn't seem trustworthy.

 

From what I can tell, the wide use of it is DD's "strength", but that just leads to circular thinking. "We need to support it because it's widely used -> it's widely used because everyone supports it -> ...".

Only a big company like Microsoft has enough power to break the bad circular reasoning but they don't seen interested in doing so, despite it costing them hundreds of millions each yeah (an estimated 124 million dollars in 2011). I don't understand what they have against open and free standards.

 

Absolutely, and I would say probably the main reason I called it a standard even though isn't officially one.  You could make the same arguments about many techs that have a similar market base. 

 

Maybe you should pen a letter to MS and ask them why they insist on paying royalties for MP3, DD, Etc,  Be sure to ask for specifics and not a baby answer.  I am pretty sure the math works out,  Most (if not all) big business don't pay what they don't have to.  If there is a way around paying royalties without harming product revenue, they will take it. Yet like all tools of the trade,  you get what you pay for and this is why many companies spend what seems like exorbitant prices for tools (be it software, drills or ovens) when cheaper options are available.

[LAwLz]

Do you really think Netflix wouldn't prefer to NOT transcode that much? It would be far easier for them to give the native stream especially when it comes to audio. Have you ever listened to a proper 7.1 DTS stream? It is glorious. You don't just up and replace a properly mastered audio stream and expect the quality to remain. Some movies are mixed specifically for either DD or DTS (say, Gravity or Interstellar where the sound is just as big a factor as the visuals)

Yes I have. It sounds very good, but that's irrelevant to this conversation since the other formats I have mentioned will sound as good. Not sure what you mean by "mixed specifically for either DD or DTS". Do you mean they paid very close attention to the different channels when they mastered it? If that's what you mean then that does not have anything to do with the codec used.

 

 

Better because they are better is not an answer. If they were better, wouldn't every audio engineer tell their production company to switch over? DD and DTS are already there, they flow into the system already, why replace what clearly has worked for decades? You said that it offers over 500 channels. Okay. Thats nice? DD Atmos is 128 channels and thats after how many years where its FINALLY being rolled out to theatres. Clearly no one cared enough before.

Well the more detailed answer to why they are better is here if you want more than "they are better because they are better, and open".

"Why replace what has worked for decades" is just argumentum ad antiquitatem. It's because of bullshit like that we still use MP3, JPEG and GIF despite all of them being really shitty and should have been replaced ages ago. It's because of arguments like that electric cars are still not widely used. We should use the superior solution, not just use what we have have traditionally used.

 

 

You're acting as if those open formats can just supplant what the standards are in Hollywood and you're expecting MS to do something about that? MS? MS is the company that couldn't even work with a studio to make their own movie and effectively got stonewalled, and you expect them to speak out against what standards that Hollywood still uses? 

 

Like I said, open ≠ better. 

Reread my posts. My main gripe with this is that Microsoft doesn't support a lot of very widely used open formats, but they pour their resources into supporting this. IE/Edge can't play lots of files from YouTube and Wikipedia, but it supports multichannel audio on NetFlix. Does the browser version of NetFlix even allow for it? Last time I checked you needed the NetFlix app to use all the highest quality settings but maybe that has changed.

 

Can you please stop repeating "open ≠ better" because that is just strawmanning. I have given lots of reasons why the other formats are better which aren't just "it's open so it's better".

 

 

 

 

Absolutely, and I would say probably the main reason I called it a standard even though isn't officially one.  You could make the same arguments about many techs that have a similar market base. 

 

Maybe you should pen a letter to MS and ask them why they insist on paying royalties for MP3, DD, Etc,  Be sure to ask for specifics and not a baby answer.  I am pretty sure the math works out,  Most (if not all) big business don't pay what they don't have to. If there is a way around paying royalties without harming product revenue, they will take it. Yet like all tools of the trade,  you get what you pay for and this is why many companies spend what seems like exorbitant prices for tools (be it software, drills or ovens) when cheaper options are available.

Yes I know I can make the same arguments, and I very frequently do. I always discourage people from making MP3 files for example because that format should have died out decades ago (AAC which is far superior was released in 1997).

 

I have submitted a ton of feedback about Windows 10 to Microsoft and a lot of it is regarding their very lacking format support, but they do not seem to care. Which makes sense I guess. When I look at the top downloaded releases on torrent sites they are always really shitty quality and people still rate them 10/10 on audio and video quality. Makes me wonder if people are both blind and deaf or if they simply don't know what good video and audio are like.

 

I strongly disagree with "you get what you pay for" though, because there is a lot of really crappy things still being used just because people don't bother changing things. Amazon doesn't sell songs in MP3 formats because "they get what they pay for", since the cheaper/free alternatives are objectively better. The reason they sell it (and possibly pay a fee to encode to MP3) is because the average Joe thinks MP3 is a synonym with "digital song" and wouldn't understand what an .ogg file was or why it wouldn't play in Windows without third party software.

 

What's weird is that Opus was partially developed by Skype, which Microsoft now owns. So Microsoft doesn't even support the formats they own.

[Dabombinable]

-snip-

Yes I know I can make the same arguments, and I very frequently do. I always discourage people from making MP3 files for example because that format should have died out decades ago (AAC which is far superior was released in 1997).

 

I have submitted a ton of feedback about Windows 10 to Microsoft and a lot of it is regarding their very lacking format support, but they do not seem to care. Which makes sense I guess. When I look at the top downloaded releases on torrent sites they are always really shitty quality and people still rate them 10/10 on audio and video quality. Makes me wonder if people are both blind and deaf or if they simply don't know what good video and audio are like.

 

I strongly disagree with "you get what you pay for" though, because there is a lot of really crappy things still being used just because people don't bother changing things. Amazon doesn't sell songs in MP3 formats because "they get what they pay for", since the cheaper/free alternatives are objectively better. The reason they sell it (and possibly pay a fee to encode to MP3) is because the average Joe thinks MP3 is a synonym with "digital song" and wouldn't understand what an .ogg file was or why it wouldn't play in Windows without third party software.

 

What's weird is that Opus was partially developed by Skype, which Microsoft now owns. So Microsoft doesn't even support the formats they own.

Is AAC actually worth using over MP3's? Because although all of my devices right back to my Celeron 300A rig can play any audio file and the most common video codecs (mainly mpeg 2 and h264), I don't know if there is any actual benefit in sound quality or a reason to convert my entire library.

Edit: and BTW, Windows 7 seems to be the best version of Windows for multimedia-although I never managed to find a copy of XP media center so I could test it.

[SansVarnic]

Man this Edge really looks awesome, kinda hate the name though

People will still call it Spartan anyhow.

[Victorious Secret]

Well the more detailed answer to why they are better is here if you want more than "they are better because they are better, and open".

"Why replace what has worked for decades" is just argumentum ad antiquitatem. It's because of bullshit like that we still use MP3, JPEG and GIF despite all of them being really shitty and should have been replaced ages ago. It's because of arguments like that electric cars are still not widely used. We should use the superior solution, not just use what we have have traditionally used.

 

Stop using latin fallacies to bolster your arguments if you're going to start making comparisons that are entirely invalid and irrelevant. 

For the record, who said we don't use electric cars? Electric cars are in the forefront now because Toyota made a huge push with the Prius and Tesla made a stronger push in the luxury market. Now almost EVERY SINGLE BRAND on Earth has at least one dedicated electric version in their lineup, some have several electric versions in their lineup. 

 

Hell, Mercedes built an all electric SLS. An electric SUPERCAR. Who said electric cars aren't widely used? it isn't because of "argumentum ad whatever". 

 

Electric cars are victims of their own technology. Battery tech has been woefully stagnant, even with all the RD that has been put into it. Electric cars by design don't work in every environment the same way a ICE can. Electric cars have a LONG way to go before they can truly supplant ICE. But its happening. Its happen on a daily basis. Don't you dare say electric cars aren't more widely used. We're at that point where the initial investments no longer require paying exceptionally more, were some manufacturers are offering electric/hybrid versions of their cars at the same price (or less) than ICE versions. 

 

If anything, Electric cars aren't widely used simply because they don't make sense for a large chunk of the population yet. There are genuine roadblocks that need to be addressed before Joe Blow can go buy a Electric Honda Civic and never have to worry about range anxiety or the cost of battery packs or the longevity of the packs themselves. 

[SansVarnic]

Edit: and BTW, Windows 7 seems to be the best version of Windows for multimedia-although I never managed to find a copy of XP media center so I could test it.

XP did have the better photo viewer/editor than Win7.

The Mutimedia center was not to bad, I would say it was fairly the same, Win7 did not improve it much.

[Dabombinable]

XP did have the better photo viewer/editor than Win7.

The Mutimedia center was not to bad, I would say it was fairly the same, Win7 did not improve it much.

So it would have been useful for my old rigs.

Is AAC actually worth using over MP3's? Because although all of my devices right back to my Celeron 300A rig can play any audio file and the most common video codecs (mainly mpeg 2 and h264), I don't know if there is any actual benefit in sound quality or a reason to convert my entire library.

^This is a serious question, and I'm still waiting for an answer.

[SansVarnic]

 

Electric cars are victims of their own technology. Battery tech has been woefully stagnant, even with all the RD that has been put into it. Electric cars by design don't work in every environment the same way a ICE can. Electric cars have a LONG way to go before they can truly supplant ICE. But its happening. Its happen on a daily basis. Don't you dare say electric cars aren't more widely used. We're at that point where the initial investments no longer require paying exceptionally more, were some manufacturers are offering electric/hybrid versions of their cars at the same price (or less) than ICE versions. 

 

If anything, Electric cars aren't widely used simply because they don't make sense for a large chunk of the population yet. There are genuine roadblocks that need to be addressed before Joe Blow can go buy a Electric Honda Civic and never have to worry about range anxiety or the cost of battery packs or the longevity of the packs themselves. 

This is true. 

Electric or Gasoline, it doesn't matter what the fuel is as long as the power is there and ease of availability gets better. I so bad want a Tesla (not a hybrid POS) but the price point is way to high for the common consumer use at this time and there are no widely available charging points in Midwest USA (which sucks). Once electric cars become more widely accepted i.e. the technology becomes cheaper and more robust there will be more around. Hybrids are a bridging technology and by which the cars available with this tech are BUTT UGLY, small and all around useless. 

[SansVarnic]

So it would have been useful for my old rigs.

 

Dabobminable, on 28 May 2015 - 7:46 PM, said:

Is AAC actually worth using over MP3's? Because although all of my devices right back to my Celeron 300A rig can play any audio file and the most common video codecs (mainly mpeg 2 and h264), I don't know if there is any actual benefit in sound quality or a reason to convert my entire library.

^This is a serious question, and I'm still waiting for an answer.

Honestly I could not tell you the difference. I wouldn't waste your time unless your doing video/sound editing and need AAC for something specific.

[Dabombinable]

Honestly I could not tell you the difference. I wouldn't waste your time unless your doing video/sound editing and need AAC for something specific.

Thanks, and I'd more than likely use it on my iPod if the size reduction is significant.

[SansVarnic]

Thanks, and I'd more than likely use it on my iPod if the size reduction is significant.

Your welcome. I did some looking and I found this site:

http://ipod.about.com/od/introductiontoitunes/a/aac_mp3_choice.htm

It might be helpful to your question. I personally don't use apple anything so aac doesn't apply to anything I do. Glad I was able to help.

[SansVarnic]

So, you're just literally going to stay on 7 forever? Also, I think you have to jump through hoops to clean install Windows 10, since the way it works is through Windows Update (which might also mean that you can't reinstall after that first year).

I know others whom think this as well. -Don't want to upgrade to Win10-

 

Re-installing Win10 should not be hard. I would think if Microsoft is going to sell the OS they may skip the disk entirely (doubtful) and do online purchase thru Windows store to keep track of and deter pirating (not that it wont still be a problem) You pretty much purchase the license and just re-install at will just delete your system from your install list (similar to what Adobe does). No biggie.

[Techhog]

I know others whom think this as well. -Don't want to upgrade to Win10-

 

Re-installing Win10 should not be hard. I would think if Microsoft is going to sell the OS they may skip the disk entirely (doubtful) and do online purchase thru Windows store to keep track of and deter pirating (not that it wont still be a problem) You pretty much purchase the license and just re-install at will just delete your system from your install list (similar to what Adobe does). No biggie.

I'm talking about the free upgrade. That's done through Windows Update.

[SansVarnic]

I'm talking about the free upgrade. That's done through Windows Update.

I figured that's what you were referring to. Same thing, there shouldn't be an issue. As long as you have the License they issue to you, re-installing the upgrade should still be valid and free, once received its valid. I doubt MS will not honor the license they give you. Of course installing the Full OS would be a different story. Just like Win7 upgrade vs Win7 full OS its apples to oranges they aren't the same.

[mr moose]

snip

 

Having worked professional careers* in three different industries and now the education system, I can assure you you get what you pay for.  You by a cheap drill, you get a cheap drill, you buy a cheap financial software package and you get glitch's and issues, you buy cheap, and the productivity suffers.  To the end user this is hidden and sometimes irreverent, however to the companies who are are reliant on their product meeting predetermined quality controls they pay close attention to every aspect of production.  If MS think DD is a better option than any of the open source formats there is probably a very good reason why.  I may not know what it is, we may never find out, but you can bet your arse the bean counters know and the manager in charge has probably already asked the 100+ professionals under him to find a cheaper option.

 

 

*Pro Audio (live and venue installs), Construction (heritage plaster restoration and consultation) and Manufacturing (RV production line supervisor/quality control/training).

[Techhog]

I figured that's what you were referring to. Same thing, there shouldn't be an issue. As long as you have the License they issue to you, re-installing the upgrade should still be valid and free, once received its valid. I doubt MS will not honor the license they give you. Of course installing the Full OS would be a different story. Just like Win7 upgrade vs Win7 full OS its apples to oranges they aren't the same.

You're not being given a license key. That's the issue. You install it using Windows Update.

[RH00D]

You're not being given a license key. That's the issue. You install it using Windows Update.

 

Installing it via Windows Update doesn't mean you won't get a key, or that there won't be ways to reinstall Windows 10.

[LAwLz]

Is AAC actually worth using over MP3's? Because although all of my devices right back to my Celeron 300A rig can play any audio file and the most common video codecs (mainly mpeg 2 and h264), I don't know if there is any actual benefit in sound quality or a reason to convert my entire library.

Edit: and BTW, Windows 7 seems to be the best version of Windows for multimedia-although I never managed to find a copy of XP media center so I could test it.

You should not convert MP3 to AAC since that will end up being worse quality and possibly bigger files as well. If your music archive is in a lossless format and you want to transcode the music to a lossy format and put it on for example your phone, then you should always go with AAC (or Vorbis, or Opus). It's generally said that a 256Kbps AAC file will sound as good as a 320Kbps MP3 file, so you save about 20% of space with no quality loss.

(Please note that those are not hard numbers so sometimes the AAC file can be even smaller for the same quality, or sometimes it is less small, but it should always be smaller than the MP3 for the same quality).

 

 

Your welcome. I did some looking and I found this site:

http://ipod.about.com/od/introductiontoitunes/a/aac_mp3_choice.htm

It might be helpful to your question. I personally don't use apple anything so aac doesn't apply to anything I do. Glad I was able to help.

AAC is not an Apple thing. It's an ISO standard and is supported on pretty much any device that can play music made in the last 10 years.

If you have the choice between AAC and MP3 are similar bit rates then you should pick AAC 99.9999% of the time. It doesn't really make any sense to pick MP3 over AAC these days, unless you want to play the song on your 1996 LaserDisc player.

[LAwLz]

Stop using latin fallacies to bolster your arguments if you're going to start making comparisons that are entirely invalid and irrelevant.

What? I was just pointing out that you are using a logical fallacy, that "why replace something that works" is not a real argument.

 

For the record, who said we don't use electric cars?

<red herring about electric cars>

I am not here to argue for or against electric cars.

 

 

 

Having worked professional careers* in three different industries and now the education system, I can assure you you get what you pay for.  You by a cheap drill, you get a cheap drill, you buy a cheap financial software package and you get glitch's and issues, you buy cheap, and the productivity suffers.  To the end user this is hidden and sometimes irreverent, however to the companies who are are reliant on their product meeting predetermined quality controls they pay close attention to every aspect of production.  If MS think DD is a better option than any of the open source formats there is probably a very good reason why.  I may not know what it is, we may never find out, but you can bet your arse the bean counters know and the manager in charge has probably already asked the 100+ professionals under him to find a cheaper option.

 

 

*Pro Audio (live and venue installs), Construction (heritage plaster restoration and consultation) and Manufacturing (RV production line supervisor/quality control/training).

I don't see how that applies to formats though, and paid is not always better. Hell in networking it's pretty much the exact opposite (90%* of all the industry standards in networking are open source projects).

*Not the real number but you get the point

 

I don't really get your argument either. Microsoft doesn't have to choose between supporting DD+ or some other format, they can very easily support both but for some reason Microsoft only chooses to support the proprietary ones.

 

This is not a case of "please support my obscure format because that's what I use" either. Windows doesn't even natively support the formats Microsoft use in their own applications (like Opus in Skype). They could just take the Opus encoder/decoder from Skype, put it in Windows and all of a sudden all applications could hook into it.

What would be even better would be if Microsoft just baked in FFmpeg into Windows. Pretty much all compatibility issues would be solved if they just did that.

[linuxfan66]

FFmpeg into Windows. Pretty much all compatibility issues would be solved if they just did that.

You realise ffmpeg is a patent/legal mess right...as it contains unlicensed tech..

[LAwLz]

You realise ffmpeg is a patent/legal mess right...as it contains unlicensed tech..

Yeah there are some legal gray zones and some uncertainty but since Google uses it without issues I don't think Microsoft would get in trouble either. They could also just take parts of FFmpeg and put in (since Windows already supports a lot of the formats).

[Dabombinable]

You should not convert MP3 to AAC since that will end up being worse quality and possibly bigger files as well. If your music archive is in a lossless format and you want to transcode the music to a lossy format and put it on for example your phone, then you should always go with AAC (or Vorbis, or Opus). It's generally said that a 256Kbps AAC file will sound as good as a 320Kbps MP3 file, so you save about 20% of space with no quality loss.

(Please note that those are not hard numbers so sometimes the AAC file can be even smaller for the same quality, or sometimes it is less small, but it should always be smaller than the MP3 for the same quality).

 

 

AAC is not an Apple thing. It's an ISO standard and is supported on pretty much any device that can play music made in the last 10 years.

If you have the choice between AAC and MP3 are similar bit rates then you should pick AAC 99.9999% of the time. It doesn't really make any sense to pick MP3 over AAC these days, unless you want to play the song on your 1996 LaserDisc player.

Oh, well I do actually rip my CD's to flac, then convert to mp3's. And I'll do a comparison between 256kbps AAC at some point to see if it does sound the same as 320kpbs on my ipod (7th gen nano-a massive upgrade from my 4th gen nano which is only good for docks now due to its battery). Using less space with each file will be good as my ipod is at 100% most of the time with less than half of my library.