Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)

alac.macosforge.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 182 posts

Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)

#71

Post by astrange »

nitrogen wrote: post #64
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think you could hear the difference between 256kbps AAC and Lossless? Even if your hearing is way above average, most audio players and earphones aren't that good. (Also, given the less-than-subtle music you linked to, I doubt that it really matters.)

My guess is that a lot of the psychoacoustic models used by lossy codecs aren't tuned for electronic music. The resonant distortion on the bassline of the linked track, for example, might sound different in the original. I have one song in which I can tell a difference for sure: Who Said by Planet Funk, about 1:30 in, has a rising modulated treble sound that sounds awful in 320kbit MP3 compared to the original.

Psychoacoustic models are very good, but MP3 has unavoidable coding weaknesses. Use a modern audio codec and you won't have this problem nearly as much.

Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)

#73

Post by ootachi »

ethank wrote: post #9

This 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 incorrect. In the past, Apple has tended to prefer patented formats, because they are the holders of many of these patents and so increasing their use benefits them. If Apple had preferred patent-free formats at the time of the iPod, they would have chosen Vorbis, which has an open royalty-free encoder that is superior to QuickTime's rather poor AAC encoder.

Since the Apache license grants a patent license, this development regarding Apple Lossless would seem to be a reversal of their previous stances. I'm glad to see it.

Edit: That said, I agree with Dark Shikari that it would have been better had Apple Lossless never existed and if they had just used FLAC instead.

Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)

#74

Post by ootachi »

joe_the_user wrote: post #72

Open source, sure. But patent free? Comment here indicates no: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166268 If AAC costs $1/device to implement, who exactly cares that the code is "opened"?

Two mistakes here:

(1) Apple Lossless, not AAC. Apple is not open-sourcing their AAC decoder, which is part of QuickTime.

(2) The Apache license grants a royalty-free patent license.

Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)

#75

Post by chrishenn »

BuddhaSource wrote: post #58

A successor to MP3. We know there are better formats than MP3 today but getting mass adoption is difficult. Open source ALAC will give birth to new 3rd party supporting players, not to mention apple products already supports it & we have higher chances of mass adoption.

It doesn't make sense to use ALAC on mobile players. It's lossless so the file size is huge — you can't tell the difference between an ALAC file and whatever is sold in the iTunes store on a mobile device. Especially when the storage space is so little.

Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)

#76

Post by kinetik »

stock_toaster wrote: post #13
necubi wrote: post #10

There'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. 3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only t…

So, the next question is: is the container format (MPEG-4 Part 14) patent encumbered?

Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)

#77

Post by sandGorgon »

does this mean that FLAC will soon be irrelevant ?

Today a lot of high-fidelity audio players support FLAC as the default lossless format. This kinda meant that that iPods and these players lived in different universes as far as lossless is concerned.

If the release of this codec means that h/w manufacturers are able to incorporate this codec into their silicon (I'm not sure if the open source license extends to hardware), then effectively there is no real reason to use or support FLAC anymore (minor differences in quality nonwithstanding).

Anybody know which codec is more power efficient ?

Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)

#78

Post by vetinari »

nitrogen wrote: post #65
metajack wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FLAC has been around longer and is also part of the Xiph.org project along with Vorbis. If Google wanted to add a lossless codec, they certainly could have before now. (Disclaimer: I am associated with Xiph.org.)

It looks like it's been done, as of Honeycomb for tablets and Ice Cream Sandwich for phones: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1461

It may or may not be done. Samsung products tend to support codecs that vanilla Android does not support. As of 2.3.7 (latest published source), it is not in the source tree.

Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)

#79

Post by sjwright »

splicer wrote: post #29
ethank wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I only buy lossless music. I usually end up buying WAV/AIFF/FLAC direct from the artist, from their record label, or from Beatport. Once in a while, if I can't find something, I'll buy it on CD. Earlier today, I actually bought vinyl because I couldn't find a lossless digital version of this track anywhere: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwsUfEvmKwI Lossy formats are useless to me since I can't remix them without it…

> Earlier today, I actually bought vinyl because I couldn't find a lossless digital version of this track anywhere

Two things strike me as astonishing. The first is that anyone remains unconvinced that vinyl has any redeeming technical aspects whatsoever, other than the touchy-feely emotional stuff, and self-deception.

The second is that the music you referenced is so unashamedly digital, that the notion of purchasing it on a vinyl record is like buying a copy of Angry Birds printed on tree bark.

A 256 kbps AAC file (as sold by iTunes) is so very nearly transparent, only a small fraction of 1 percent of people would be able to identify the vanishingly minute differences. The difference is so small, it would be comprehensively outweighed by meaningful factors such as your choice of speakers, the shape of your room, and the presence of any ambient noise.

Whereas vinyl has crackle (unless you're playing a pristine copy in a dust-free environment), clicks, pops, rumble, wow distortion, and intentionally limited dynamic and tonal range. Fidelity progressively reduces as you move to the inner grooves, and high frequencies are literally scratched away as the stylus scrapes past -- every time you play a vinyl, it will sound poorer than the last. You can mitigate some of these problems, but generally at great effort or expense.

Of course, to make that music useful, you'll need to rip it back into your computer. You'd have to be mentally ill to believe that a [Lossless > AAC-256 > Lossless] conversion is more detrimental than [Lossless > equalisation > analogue mastering > lathe cutting > vinyl stamping > stylus scraping > pre-amplification > ADC > Lossless].

Re: Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)

#80

Post by mitjak »

angus77 wrote: post #39

Is there an advantage to this for someone who owns no Apple products and has no iTunes account? EDIT: Looking at http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_compa... it looks like the only clear advantage ALAC has is iTunes/iDevice support. FLAC has faster encoding/decoding speeds, and it's unknown if ALAC has error handling (which FLAC has). FLAC also supports RIFF chunks, has pipe support and is ReplayGa…

And yet the most major popular MP3 player on the market can't play FLAC, which will probably mean it will remain as obscure as it is now (i.e., mostly used among audiophiles).
Post reply on HN