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

alac.macosforge.org

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

#91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

oh now I get it, you're just a troll...

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

#92
post #80
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).

It's not that obscure. You can buy Metallica and Beatles tracks in FLAC.

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

#93
post #90
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it used to be just okay, now I believe it's one of the best.

http://listening-tests.hydrogenaudio.org/igorc/aac-96-a/resu...

Maybe he was getting confused with Quicktime's rubbish H.264 encoder (or the low quality of the open source AAC encoder)?

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

#95
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

It depends on how well you know the album, what the music is.

Try Paper Tiger by Beck off of Sea Change... strings and bass at the same time is challenging to lossy compression.

Try Page One by Charlatans off of Between 10th and 11th... same problem.

I don't use an iPod for that reason. I have an external sound card and use Fidelia on my Mac for that reason. I own good headphones for that reason.

When you listen to music you think you know and your heart skips a beat as you hear something new and it moves you... why compromise ever again?

Isn't this the superlative experience that Apple used to deliver? The ability to make you experience something that moves you. Music really can, but when you compress you deaden it, you kill the sound stage, some of the noise is lost.

Listen to a compressed Double Dutch by Malcolm McLaren the skips sound like a synth, listen to the lossless on a capable system and you can hear the distinctiveness of every rotation and hit of the rope on the floor. The latter puts you there, you picture it more.

Sound is even more important than vision. We are all rushing to 1080p and hopefully better, but sound is what fires the imagination more. Film directors have long known this, music producers have long known this... sound is the thing to get right, and when it's right, you fall in love every time you hear the music.

If you're buying any music equipment, find a good retailer and do a blind test of the equipment. I would be very surprised if most consumers would pick compressed audio and poor equipment... more likely they will settle for the point at which they no longer perceive a noticeable difference, but that point is after you've discovered lossless.

The main reason compression is accepted is that on crappy computer speakers, when listening on headphones whilst you have high background noise (commuting)... you could not hear the difference. Everywhere else, the difference is almost black and white, chalk and cheese.

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

#96
post #80
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).

Predicting the future based on current popularity is utterly useless. Just think of the Internet Explorer.

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

#97
post #7

For those unfamiliar with the site, MacOSForge is an official Apple site which hosts repositories for code included in OS X (see http://www.opensource.apple.com/ and the sidebar) The announcement with timestamp for today is on the homepage: http://www.macosforge.org/

I don't know why Apple has gotten THAT much flak for allegedly being totally closed and locking you down worse than Microsoft did back in the dark ages etc. Yes, they have certain core products which are their own and they don't open them up and the locking down of their iPhones, well, it could be a blessing and a curse. I will only say that from the perspective of a regular customer, the quality control done on apps is probably not such a bad thing but yes, for app developers it probably just sucks. And the music you buy online on iTunes now comes pretty much without any DRM in high quality AAC.

But they are not ONLY "evil" because at the same time, Apple did contribute to open standards and there is a lot of Open Source available. It is, however, still a business so for me, it seems they are playing it smart and do "open" where it also benefits them and their customers and do "closed/locked down" where it is critical for their own success or in accordance with their product philosophy or the reality distortion field.

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

#98

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 s…

Conversely, I see no reason for any device to support ALAC and not FLAC.

Isnt this implemented in silicon (or atleast implemented as some DSP-specific library) ? AFAIK that costs money.

Today, if you wanted a lossless player, that player had to have FLAC - which was taken from a commercial vendor like Tensilica [1]. But now that ALAC is an alternative, why would I even try to spend more money and also add FLAC ?

Plus, it is reasonably trivial to convert all FLAC to ALAC [2]

[1] http://www.tensilica.com/products/audio/audio-codecs/flac.ht... or http://www.tensilica.com/products/audio/audio-codecs.htm (no ALAC)

[2] http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

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

#99
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 purchasin…

one thing lossy formats do really bad at: speeding it up and down. (because they remove 'unhearable' sound artifacts -- that become hearable at different speeds)

big slowdowns also sound 'ugly' with lossless formats (a 44kHz sampled track at half the speed is only 22kHz).

but who plays a track at halfspeed..? :)

i dont want to make a case for vinyl -- sjwright has given a nice overview of arguments against it, that i can all underline.

but there is one thing that a physical soundwave, pressed in a disc of vinyl, never needs to do: anti-aliassing. but since the tracks usually get delivered digitally to the vinyl-press; it is the vinyl press that does the anti-aliassing for you :)

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