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Topic: BladeEnc officially discontinued (Read 11096 times) previous topic - next topic
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BladeEnc officially discontinued

Tord Jansson (BladeEnc developer) officially announces that he will stop developing his mp3 encoder:

BladeEnc homepage

Among the reasons for his decision:
*Today we have a better alternative in Ogg Vorbis.
*Audio encoding technology has never really been my cup of tea 
*...and felt that other free encoders (most notably LAME) did a much better job for the average mp3 user

Must be said that I believe he surely had a part in the popularity of the mp3 format nowadays. There was a time when Blade was the only easy-to-use free mp3 encoder. I too encoded lots of albums with it in those days, not knowing/hearing what I know/hear now...

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #1 –
better would be to discontinue the website too

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #2 –
<sarcastic voice>

Ooooooh  No more tonal purity

</sarcastic voice>

--
GCP

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #3 –
My favorite BladeEnc pitch (source unknown); "By looking at these spectrographs, you can see that Blade is actually compensating for it's own pre-echo at 320kbps, whereas LAME does not". Not sure that I buy into that one

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #4 –
Quote
Originally posted by Benjamin Lebsanft
better would be to discontinue the website too

At least the "Future Plans" section.
Quote: "I have great plans for this encoder and have thought up a lot of features I would like to implement."

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #5 –
Good riddance...

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #6 –
Let's mail the guy to get the site down or at least get rid of the b*s&t about tonal purity and all other crap about lossy mp3 compression... I already did.

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #7 –
Quote
Originally posted by lucpes
Let's mail the guy to get the site down or at least get rid of the b*s&t about tonal purity and all other crap about lossy mp3 compression... I already did.


Blah. Please let poor Tord alone. He already did a good job stopping working on Blade (and saying why, and pointing out quality is inferior to lame). That's more than I would expect.

Let the dead rest.

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #8 –
I wouldnt be so quick as to flame Blade. Yes, by today's standards its a pretty bad encoder but at the time it was at least interesting and was being used (which can be seen as a good or a bad thing). The only thing is that helped increase the popularity of mp3 and gave the public access to encoding.

Remember that this encoder is ages old!

It was a moderately good effort to improve on dist10 (speed wise) and you cant knock Tord for that.

I only used bladeenc once or twice because originally I used to use WinDAC to rip and xing to encode until I was lucky enough to get a copy of audioactive production studio (erm... wooo... hooo... :| ) - and finally move onto Lame + EAC.

Ruairi
rc55.com - nothing going on

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #9 –
Slashdot has a story about this, too. Some slashdotters state, that they're still using the best mp3encoder Blade...

dev0
"To understand me, you'll have to swallow a world." Or maybe your words.

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #10 –
Quote
Originally posted by dev0
Some slashdotters state, that they're still using the best mp3encoder Blade...


Did you expect something else from them?

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #11 –
Folks,

please don't diss Tord. His work was extremely important for the whole mp3 scene, and it probably wouldn't be the same without BladeEnc. Heck, he came up with the DLL version first, allowing us to use mp3 encoding from various programs!

And I wonder how many would have stood up against threatening mails from FhG like Tord did.

With out him, without BladeEnc, there would be no RazorBlade, and there would be no RazorLame. I wonder what else wouldn't have happened with him being around.

Instead of sending him rude mails asking him to shut down his site completely, send him a mail thanking him for what he did. I will for sure.

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #12 –
I agree with rc55 and Dors. Tord doesn't need some kind of comments now. He did a valuable work some time ago.

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #13 –
Quote
Originally posted by dors
With out him, without BladeEnc, there would be no RazorBlade, and there would be no RazorLame. I wonder what else wouldn't have happened with him being around.
Can't resist..[:diabolic:-mode] What else wouldn't have happened.. well, maybe P2Ps would have less bad quality 320kbps blade "tonal purity" transcodes. Maybe even more people would be using Lame and so many totally wrong myths wouldn't be around. [/:diabolic:-mode]

It's difficult to evaluate exactly, was blade more positive or more negative thing for the people using mp3. I don't think that blade was any groundbreaker. MP3 would have done just fine without blade also. Difficult to say...
Juha Laaksonheimo

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #14 –
Whoops, I sent I kinda "hate mail" to Tord telling him to improve blade & what was wrong with it (from the r3mix forum).

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #15 –
...this kind of considerations sounds stupid to me.

MP3 sucks (both in quality & licensing) and i think he taked the right decision.
>>> There's no valid reason to waste develop time for it. <<<

I hope he'll join Vorbis (has he said) instead.


Note: a Tord's reply is appreciated.

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #16 –
Quote
Originally posted by JohnV
It's difficult to evaluate exactly, was blade more positive or more negative thing for the people using mp3. I don't think that blade was any groundbreaker. MP3 would have done just fine without blade also. Difficult to say...


Yes, it is difficult to say. However, if i recall correctly, when I started looking for a free encoder over four years ago, only two where available for the Windows platform. At least, I only found two: BladeEnc, and some other which I have already forgotten the name of....

What I'm trying to say: I believe that BladeEnc was ground breaking, at least when it came to Freeware Windows encoders. It was Blade, semi-legally, or Xing, illegally. For me, the choice was simple.

But again, it's diffcult to say. Perhaps we should mail Paramount to make a time travel Enterprise episode on that topic...

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #17 –
Quote
Originally posted by dors
and some other which I have already forgotten the name of.... 


Probably 8hz-MP3
Or SoloH...

Quote
Perhaps we should mail Paramount to make a time travel Enterprise episode on that topic...


Eeek! A Trekker! 

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #18 –
Well I for one am going to keep the Blade Codec available for download, you might all laugh at it but there are occasions when people have a choice of no mp3s (Lame does not work for their computer / hardware mp3 player), in which case Blade steps in and they go away happy.

Thanks Tord Jansson for all your hard work, and 'up yours'  to all the people are moaning about the warez mp3s they download and find are encoded at 128kbps with inferior encoders - go out and buy the CD and quit moaning.

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #19 –
Quote
Originally posted by rjamorim


Probably 8hz-MP3
Or SoloH...


Or plugger...

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #20 –
8HZ,Cannamp,Mpeg Suite,Plugger,SoloH,Xing-toMPG,Blade,First Lame...=Beginning interesting audio compressions=I Learn hearing and compare sound quality.

Thanks for it.... Freeware Develop-Heroes

PS: Blade is good for over 224kbps...
 

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #21 –
Quote
Originally posted by spoon
Well I for one am going to keep the Blade Codec available for download, you might all laugh at it but there are occasions when people have a choice of no mp3s (Lame does not work for their computer / hardware mp3 player), in which case Blade steps in and they go away happy.


LAME should work on any computer that Blade should.  I can't think of a single case where it wouldn't.  If it doesn't, LAME isn't the problem, it's a stability issue with their computer.  Also, it should be possible to make LAME work with any hardware player that Blade for some reason might but LAME by default wouldn't.  There's lots of switches which might help, like --nores or --strictly-enforce-ISO (I think it's something like that), or by setting an upper limit in bitrate.

Really, I don't think this type of situation which is highly theoretically, extremely unlikely, and really a non-issue (LAME should work where Blade works, always).

Quote
Thanks Tord Jansson for all your hard work, and 'up yours'  to all the people are moaning about the warez mp3s they download and find are encoded at 128kbps with inferior encoders - go out and buy the CD and quit moaning.


Where the hell do you people get these ideas?

Yeah... HA isn't really about trying to improve the quality on all fronts of audio compression, or to provide useful information and to work against anything which stands in the way of all of this.  You guys have figured it out.  What it's really about is how we all just want people to rip their damn albums at higher quality so we can pirate them..  Yeah.  Let me tell you... if only I could get the latest mtv band off winmx, or kazaa, or dc, or whatever the hell the latest l33t p2p network is, in aps instead of r3mix, or LAME instead of Blade... damn, I'd be sooooo happy.

Feh.

I find it highly ironic that you people would continue to make such flawed connections here.  If anything, instead of reflecting on the HA community, it reflects on your own selfish-mindedness for even contemplating such possibilities in the first place.  The fact that other people here have valid concerns and honestly care about the community and the quality of tools available, or the general state of knowledge, and that you guys would continue to try and tarnish those honest concerns and good intentions with such slanderous accusations is really pretty disgusting.

Makes me wonder why it's worth bothering with sometimes.  You guys take so much of what you have for granted.  If it wasn't for people that actually did care (because it's obvious that you don't.. if it's good enough for you, it's gotta be good enough for everyone, right?), you wouldn't have the quality tools available that you do now.  Certainly with the attitude I'm seeing prevailing in the last couple threads on here lately, progress would never have been had.  There would be no need for anything better because everything would always be "good enough" and the mere suggestions that something better should replace the non-optimal would be considered a fatal insult (seems it's almost to that point now).  Gee, then we could all just sit there and stagnate.

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #22 –
I'm still conviced than Tord and Roel did something to help the community.

To slap in their face their errors wouldn't be fair, as they did fair good on other hand.

Besides, no one has the right to impose who is right and who is wrong, so the claims to shut down the r3mix and bladeenc webs is not fair.

There isn't even an agree of what human rights should be and what shouldn't...

...IMHO...

PS: I dare suggest, honestly, that this thread and the r3mix one be closed as they are scalating into flamewar

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #23 –
Quote
Originally posted by spoon
Thanks Tord Jansson for all your hard work, and 'up yours'  to all the people are moaning about the warez mp3s they download and find are encoded at 128kbps with inferior encoders - go out and buy the CD and quit moaning.
Heh. It's just that I don't feel like I owe any gratitude to Tord/Blade. I have never used Blade beyond testing, I see lots of misunderstandings and weird opinions in the net which have started from his "tonal purity", over-emphasizing the importance of ultra high frequency response and the unimportance of pre-echo-handling etc "information". These statements were never corrected, although I know Tord was contacted and informed about these many times.

Blade was never developed further although its flaws were pointed out many times, and many of the flaws would have been fixable, at least considering the time which it has been available:

Some of Blade's key-deficiencies which were pointed out long ago, but nothing ever happened:
-No lowpassing
-wrong transcient detection
-too late short block switching
-bad reservoir handling
-no joint stereo
-non optimal huffman compression
-lot of bugs everywhere
-wrong ath
-bad best quantization selection
-no scalefactor use
-no scfsi
-etc..

Blade competes with Xing-old and Qdesign MVP from the worst sounding MP3 encoder "prize" at lower bitrates, at high bitrates it's not near Lame. IMO it seems that Blade is still pretty close to ISO dist10 with some speed optimizations and some bug fixes here and there. I'd actually question whether it was so "hard work" eventually after all.

Tord is also the only developer I have ever seen who actually recommends a totally flawed testing method of psychoacoustic based encoders like he does at the bottom of his quality-page saying that:"Airwindows' Encoder Analysis and Visualisation is the most impressive technical test of encoder's I've ever seen. It even helped me understand a few things about BladeEnc that I only had a hint about and couldn't really explain in rational terms."
Frankly, makes me wonder did he ever really know what he was doing, or was he just speed-optimizing ISO dist10 source...

Somebody could say: better not to do it at all than do it badly... Or at least - tell truthfully how things really are...it's not that there wouldn't have been lots of proper info available for him.
Juha Laaksonheimo

BladeEnc officially discontinued

Reply #24 –
Dibrom you shouldn't have taken what I said as an attack on yourself, or HA.

Put it this way - there is not one widely distrobuted audio program that comes with Blade as its default mp3 encoder, so why people have to hunt it off the net is beyond me.