AAC and MP3 audio quality
AAC and MP3 licenses and patents
Stream or distribute content in AAC format without a license or payment. Compared to MP3, this makes AAC a more attractive format for distributing content, especially for streaming content such as Internet radio. However, all manufacturers or developers of AAC codecs require a patent license. Therefore, FOSS implementations such as FAAC and FAAD are distributed only in source code to avoid patent infringement.
On the other hand, Thomson, Fraunhofer IIS, Sisvel (and its American subsidiary Audio MPEG), Texas MP3 Technologies, and Alcatel-Lucent claim legal control over the relevant MP3 patents related to the decoder. Therefore, the legal status of MP3 remains unclear in those countries where the patent is valid. But while these patent and licensing issues plagued the company, consumers generally didn’t care, and the MP3 format’s popularity did not wane.
They have been predicting for years that the mp3 is dead and that the mp3 will no longer be popular and the truth is that it does not happen nor does it seem that it will happen.
The reasons are quite simple, in the first place for the common listener the mp3 has a good enough sound, despite the fact that much is published to the contrary. The truth is that for the devices we currently have, the mp3 can sound good enough if it is treated with software like Mp4Gain.
