I agree with you, I’m just noting that this argument doesn’t hold because pirates (who listen, they don’t do mastering) basically only care about flac or mp3s. And mp3s are limited to 48k.
Arguably most MP3s are limited lower than 48k, depending on the implementation.
Like LAME uses a low pass filter unless you explicitly disable it, even on the "insane" preset it cuts off about 20khz.
But I can still understand why mp3 is still used, if only because of compatibility and intertia of keeping a collection in a consistent format. I see the worries about file size becoming less important over time, so many people I don't don't really see an advantage to a more modern codec like Opus.
And piracy has always been more about "branding" that people seem to like to admit - many video rips were labelled DivX for years after they had already moved to other mp4 encoders. And over the years the "brand power" of various pirate groups was surprisingly large.
And I suspect that mp3 and flac were the last "big" changes that made a significant difference to many end users, so newer formats just don't have quite the same improvement to promote their own branding.
kimixa|2 months ago
Like LAME uses a low pass filter unless you explicitly disable it, even on the "insane" preset it cuts off about 20khz.
But I can still understand why mp3 is still used, if only because of compatibility and intertia of keeping a collection in a consistent format. I see the worries about file size becoming less important over time, so many people I don't don't really see an advantage to a more modern codec like Opus.
And piracy has always been more about "branding" that people seem to like to admit - many video rips were labelled DivX for years after they had already moved to other mp4 encoders. And over the years the "brand power" of various pirate groups was surprisingly large.
And I suspect that mp3 and flac were the last "big" changes that made a significant difference to many end users, so newer formats just don't have quite the same improvement to promote their own branding.