ENCODER FACE-OFF PART 1 |
by Gnomie Matt Gruett
There are many MP3 encoders available today that you can use to encode your MP3s. Fraunhofer, LAME, BladeENC, ISO and Xing are just a few of the names of encoders you might recognize. Just to clarify, they all follow the MP3 codec standard. To use an analogy, codec refers to the final destination and encoder refers to the road you take to get there. The destination could be RealAudio (.ra), Windows Media Format (.wmf) or MPEG Layer 3 (.mp3). Different MP3 encoders simply provide different driving instructions to the same destination, MP3. The path you choose can greatly affect the encoding speed and quality of your MP3s.
ISO refers to the standard that was created for MP3s. You may have heard of ISO before because it's a format option available in many CD-Recording software programs (ISO-9660). The ISO standard (ISO is an international organization for setting and maintaining standards) was developed by Fraunhofer and then submitted to ISO for approval. Fraunhofer is a separate institute in Germany that did the legwork of developing the MP3 spec. The final ISO spec for MP3 (technically MPEG Layer-3) contains instructions for decoding MP3s, but only two examples of how to encode MP3s. The ISO standard is still patented by Fraunhofer, who begin exercising their rights to the patent aggressively in 1998.
An ISO-based encoder program simply means that it's encoding algorithm uses one of the two examples for encoding in the ISO standard. Still others are based on the ISO standard and further enhanced (BladeENC is an example of this). LAME is another encoder that was developed as open source and at first used ISO as part of its code. Since Fraunhofer could technically claim ownership to anything that is ISO based, LAME has now been updated and is 100% ISO-free, meaning that none of the original ISO example code is included anymore. This way, Fraunhofer can't hold LAME accountable for licensing fees. Xing is another encoder that was developed by Xing Technologies. Xing was bought out by Real Networks a couple of years ago; consequently the RealPlayer line of software uses the Xing encoder. Xing is not limited to just RealNetworks, however, as the Xing encoder is still available for licensing to other companies. While Fraunhofer developed the ISO encoder examples, Fraunhofer also retained control of the higher quality encoders and makes those available for licensing as well.
Now you have an idea about the history of the various encoders available. Next time we'll try and figure out which encoder is the best for you.
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