Someone came up with a reverse engineered decoder 6+ years ago:
http://craz.net/programs/itunes/alac.html
Nice to have an encoder now too.
Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)
11–20 of 182 posts
Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)
#12This is fantastic. Apple uses AAC partly because of the patent royalty ( http://mp3licensing.com/ ) which they have to pay on every iPad/pod/etc sold, as well as because it is just a better format. MP3 is a total racket held by Thompson Technicolor, on top of being a pretty crap format. Hopefully this is a portends Apple offering lossless through ITMS on top of the 1080p rights they are hunting down right now.
MP3 may be a crap format, but it's the VHS of the digital world.
Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)
#13There's no mention of a patent grant. Does anybody know the state of ALAC with regards to patents?
I believe the apache 2.0 license [1] includes a grant.
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Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)
#14This is fantastic. Apple uses AAC partly because of the patent royalty ( http://mp3licensing.com/ ) which they have to pay on every iPad/pod/etc sold, as well as because it is just a better format. MP3 is a total racket held by Thompson Technicolor, on top of being a pretty crap format. Hopefully this is a portends Apple offering lossless through ITMS on top of the 1080p rights they are hunting down right now.
This is fantastic. Apple did AAC because of the patent royalty (http://mp3licensing.com/) which they have to pay on every iPad/pod/etc sold
Since when did Apple "do AAC"? AAC is a standardized format that makes up part of MPEG-4, contributed to by dozens of companies and organizations. The patent licensing is handled by Via Licensing, not Apple. AAC has patent licensing fees too; over a dollar per device (albeit with a very low cap, IIRC).
, as well as because it is just a better format.
MPEG-4 AAC was the successor to MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3), by the same organization, so this is no surprise.
ALAC was -- for many years -- a proprietary FLAC-alike. There was no real reason to use it except for compatibility with Apple devices, as the two use nearly identical compression methods and the incompatibility is purely gratuitous.
Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)
#15This is fantastic. Apple uses AAC partly because of the patent royalty ( http://mp3licensing.com/ ) which they have to pay on every iPad/pod/etc sold, as well as because it is just a better format. MP3 is a total racket held by Thompson Technicolor, on top of being a pretty crap format. Hopefully this is a portends Apple offering lossless through ITMS on top of the 1080p rights they are hunting down right now.
This is fantastic. Apple did AAC because of the patent royalty ( http://mp3licensing.com/ ) which they have to pay on every iPad/pod/etc sold Since when did Apple "do AAC"? AAC is a standardized format that makes up part of MPEG-4, contributed to by dozens of companies and organizations. The patent licensing is handled by Via Licensing, not Apple. AAC has patent licensing fees too; over a dollar per device (albeit wi…
Sorry: USE aac.
AAC has no patent for streaming or distribution. When we did direct-to-consumer digital sales this is why I used this rather than Mp3, and ALAC for lossless over FLAC because of the support issue.
AAC does have a patent fee for codec usage (i.e., devices).
Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)
#16This is fantastic. Apple uses AAC partly because of the patent royalty ( http://mp3licensing.com/ ) which they have to pay on every iPad/pod/etc sold, as well as because it is just a better format. MP3 is a total racket held by Thompson Technicolor, on top of being a pretty crap format. Hopefully this is a portends Apple offering lossless through ITMS on top of the 1080p rights they are hunting down right now.
MP3 was great for its time. It’s not a crap format, there are merely better formats available today. They weren’t when MP3 came to the market. (Specifically AAC was developed as a successor to MP3.)
I’m also not sure whether this tells you anything. Apple started selling AAC encoded music at a time when no† music player could play it. Many mistakenly thought that AAC was some sort of proprietary Apple codec and it might as well have been.
Today more people than ever have an iOS device or an iPod. There is no need at all for Apple to play nice and make sure that others can also use the ALAC. Why should they?
Also: What’s the incentive for offering lossless music? No one† can tell the difference. Do you really think Apple will start catering to audiophiles? Because of the switch to flash memory space is limited, Apple’s current devices are not a good match for lossless music.
—
† Don’t be pedantic.
Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)
#17This is amazing. Since running Mugasha for the past few years, encoding in AAC has been a huge hassle. Lib faac has terrible encoding quality compared to good ones like Nero and Apple.
Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)
#18What's the point of this over flac?
Dedicated playback hardware on iOS devices.
Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)
#19This is fantastic. Apple uses AAC partly because of the patent royalty ( http://mp3licensing.com/ ) which they have to pay on every iPad/pod/etc sold, as well as because it is just a better format. MP3 is a total racket held by Thompson Technicolor, on top of being a pretty crap format. Hopefully this is a portends Apple offering lossless through ITMS on top of the 1080p rights they are hunting down right now.
MP3 was great for its time. It’s not a crap format, there are merely better formats available today. They weren’t when MP3 came to the market. (Specifically AAC was developed as a successor to MP3.) I’m also not sure whether this tells you anything. Apple started selling AAC encoded music at a time when no† music player could play it. Many mistakenly thought that AAC was some sort of proprietary Apple codec and it mi…
Lossless music - there is an audience for it, and it creates the ability to stratify prices, which the labels/rights-holders/distributors like. See the vinyl boom, hdtracks.com, http://www.becausesoundmatters.com/, etc.
So will Apple cater to audiophiles? No. Will they cater to margins? For damned sure they will if it serves them and those they entice to sign over content. Why would they switch to 1080P otherwise?
Also: given device sizes it would be nice to have raw uncompressed/lossless and I could downsample at will to suit specific devices/systems.
Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
MP3 was great for its time. It’s not a crap format, there are merely better formats available today. They weren’t when MP3 came to the market. (Specifically AAC was developed as a successor to MP3.) I’m also not sure whether this tells you anything. Apple started selling AAC encoded music at a time when no† music player could play it. Many mistakenly thought that AAC was some sort of proprietary Apple codec and it mi…
Lossless music - there is an audience for it, and it creates the ability to stratify prices, which the labels/rights-holders/distributors like. See the vinyl boom, hdtracks.com, http://www.becausesoundmatters.com/ , etc. So will Apple cater to audiophiles? No. Will they cater to margins? For damned sure they will if it serves them and those they entice to sign over content. Why would they switch to 1080P otherwise? A…
Sure it might happen, but it would also confuse consumers. That’s a huge negative point to me. I also don’t see the connection to this.