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

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

#81

Post by tomjen3 »

mitjak wrote: post #80
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).

Not really. Flac is lossles, and based on what the grandparent said a better format.

So, store your music in flac and convert as needed.

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

#82

Post by sjwright »

splicer wrote: post #40
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.)

No, I can't; and I wasn't claiming that I can. However, as I stated, if I use an MP3 or AAC in a remix, then compress my remix using a lossy codec like AAC or MP3, the result will sound like crap. It's similar to working with JPEGs in Photoshop (rather than RAW), then trying to re-compress to JPEG: you usually get artifacts. I've been playing classic violin since the age of 3, and I'm very sensitive to details. Just…

> if I use an MP3 or AAC in a remix, then compress my remix using a lossy codec like AAC or MP3, the result will sound like crap

Or far more likely, it won't sound like crap.

> trying to re-compress to JPEG: you usually get artifacts.

This argument is akin to suggesting that a very very very minimally JPEG compressed screenshot of a website is inferior to plonking a film camera in front of your LCD and exposing a frame. After all, big analogue artefacts don't matter nearly as much.

The reality is, AAC at 256kbps is such a light touch that it could probably survive four or five rounds of offset re-encoding before the artefacts would compound meaningfully.

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

#83

Post by altrego99 »

sandGorgon wrote: post #77

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 hard…

Irrelevant is a strong word, and I very much doubt it. The only reason for making this open source was for devices to be able to support this more. However FLAC has been open source for quite a while - consequently most device makers willing to make the effort to support loss-less audio codec already did so with FLAC. Support for ALAC will mostly come for these devices. Conversely, I see no reason for any device to support ALAC and not FLAC.

According to Wikipedia, FLAC is more efficient in encoding/decoding speeds - with same compression ratio. This translates to it being more power efficient.

Lastly this news will matter to only a few audiophiles who are also Apple geeks.

Making something open source is a welcome gesture, but I hope Apple will do this for other items which will have better reaching consequences.

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

#84

Post by nitrogen »

vetinari wrote: post #78
nitrogen wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The link I posted is for a Google issue that was marked as Released. Hopefully we'll see it in there when the ICS source code is released.

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

#85

Post by altrego99 »

ugh wrote: post #16
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.

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…

> Why should they?

Because others already have FLAC?

Isn't it similar to the kid offering to share his bicycle, to his neighbor, with the hope of friendship, knowing fully well that it will do no real benefit since his neighbor already has an equally good machine?

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

#86

Post by sjwright »

AndyKelley wrote: post #41
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.)

I can... easily. And it matters to me. My hearing is average, and I have HD280Pro Seinheisers which are pretty standard headphones. Maybe it has something to do with the music genre that I like - techno, trance, dubstep, elecronic, etc. This stuff is delicately mastered in the studio and I can tell when the sound isn't reconstructed well upon playback. I'd love to do a blind hearing test if you can set one up - but y…

> This stuff is delicately mastered in the studio

And football is the sport of delicately manoeuvring your opponent onto the grass.

And heroin is a drug that delicately shifts your brain chemistry.

And a chainsaw delicately tickles tree trunks.

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

#87

Post by cageface »

tomjen3 wrote: post #81
mitjak wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Not really. Flac is lossles, and based on what the grandparent said a better format. So, store your music in flac and convert as needed.

That's what I do. The point of lossless is to have a stable archive that can be converted into the convenient format and bitrate of the day. It's great that Apple is finally open-sourcing their codec but it would have been far better if they'd just thrown their weight behind FLAC in the first place and avoided this completely gratuitous and consumer-unfriendly fragmentation.

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

#88

Post by lloeki »

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…

I read a comparison months (if not years) ago where one voluntarily flicked random bits and erased portions of files in FLAC and ALAC files, and the result was that ALAC was way, way more resilient than FLAC.

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

#89

Post by djeikyb »

ethank wrote: post #15
DarkShikari wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Nitpick: AAC (right now) has no patent fee for streaming or distribution. What's to stop them from levying such a fee in the future?

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

#90

Post by hexley »

ootachi wrote: post #73
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, t…

QuickTime has a poor AAC encoder? I don't think you'll find anyone credible who seriously believes that.
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