一個時代的結束 MP3格式正式宣告終結!

Now, 22 years later, the MP3 truly is dead, according to the people who invented it.

22年後的今天，MP3格式的發明者宣佈了它的正式終結。

The Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits, a division of the state-funded German research institution that bankrolled the MP3's development in the late '80s, recently announced that its "licensing program for certain MP3 related patents and software of Technicolor and Fraunhofer IIS has been terminated."

MP3誕生於上世紀80年代末，由德國國立研究機構夫琅和費集成電路研究所資助研發。近日，該研究所宣佈“特藝集團和夫琅和費集成電路研究所已經終止了某些MP3相關專利的授權”。

Bernhard Grill, director of that Fraunhofer division and one of the principals in the development of the MP3, told NPR over email that another audio format, AAC — or "Advanced Audio Coding," which his organization also helped create — is now the "de facto standard for music download and videos on mobile phones." He said AAC is "more efficient than MP3 and offers a lot more functionality."

夫琅和費集成電路研究所主任伯恩哈德·格里爾和MP3的一位研發負責人，在一封寄給NPR的郵件中表示，研究所發明的另一種音頻格式高級音頻編碼（ACC）已經成爲了手機下載音樂和視頻等內容的標準，ACC格式擁有更高的效率和更強大的功能。

As Stephen Witt illustrates throughout his excellent opening chapters in Witt's How Music Got Free, the MP3, before upending the musical world as we knew it, almost died in the research lab.

史蒂芬·維特在《音樂是怎麼變得免費的》開篇中寫道，早在MP3顛覆整個音樂產業之前，它就已經死在了實驗室裏。

The team of engineers that invented the format was attempting to make it possible to send audio over telephone lines, which could only transmit small amounts of data. Fraunhofer — in competing for the legitimacy it needed to persuade tech companies to actually use MP3s, and so actually make money.

研發MP3格式的工程師團隊最初試圖要讓音頻格式通過電話線傳輸--我們知道它的傳輸速率非常慢--爭取到合法性後再將其賣給技術公司，以獲得收益。

It was repeatedly beleaguered by clever corporate sabotage and later by piracy.

可惜這些努力總是被盜版等諸多問題所阻撓。

Other failures hinged on the need for the world to catch up with the technology's possibilities: Along the way, one computer engineer on the team had a patent for a music streaming service denied by the German government because it was technologically absurd at the time.

另外，MP3格式的開發團隊在把握技術態勢上也顯得無所適從。實驗室的一位工程師在當時就提出了音樂流媒體服務的構想，卻遭到了德國有關部門的駁回，因爲這在當時看來就是天方夜譚。

In early 1995, the format was on life support, with one licensing deal being the use of the technology by hockey arenas across the U.S. (That spring meeting in which the MP3 was declared dead came months later, after another failed pitch that denied it being standardized and widely adopted.)

早在1995年，MP3格式開始了自己的生命週期，它首先被應用在美國的冰球球場上。然而它的生命週期其實只有一年，因爲各種各樣的錯誤，研究者們始終未能使MP3格式標準化和廣泛接受。

A little later, Fraunhofer began giving away the software that consumers needed to turn compact discs into MP3s at home. The rest is recent history.

之後，研究所決定向消費者免費贈送軟件，鼓勵用戶將壓縮磁盤上的歌曲轉存到家用電腦MP3文件中，從此這一格式便得以廣泛傳播。

And it's not just that more efficient and complete ways of storing music have been developed. There was a deeper problem.

儘管MP3比其他存儲音樂的方式更加高效，但還有一個嚴重的問題。

The engineers who developed the MP3 were working with incomplete information about how our brains process sonic information, and so the MP3 itself was working on false assumptions about how holistically we hear.

MP3的開發者們在進行研發的時候，並沒有完全把握了大腦處理聲音信息的知識。因此，MP3錯誤地拋棄了許多必要的信息量。

As psychoacoustic research has evolved, so has the technology that we use to listen. New audio formats and products, with richer information, are arriving.

隨着心理聲學研究的進步，相關技術也不斷完備，新的音頻格式和產品層出不窮，它們承載着更豐富的信息量。

So is it the end of an era? We may still use MP3s, but AAC is indeed much better — it's the default setting for iTunes now — and other formats are even better than it, though they also take up mountains of space on our hard drives.

那麼，MP3時代是否結束了？實際上，我們仍然可以使用MP3。然而，作爲iTunes默認格式的ACC確實更好一些。雖然其他的一些格式可能比ACC格式更好，但是卻可能佔用我們大量的硬盤空間。