Opensource Apple Lossless Decoder Released 294
Cody Brocious writes "David Hammerton has released version 1.0 of an ALAC decoder. This allows users of operating systems not supported by iTunes/QuickTime to listen to their Apple Lossless files, a proprietary competitor to FLAC. This is a large leap forward in audio codec interoperability, and paves the way for an ALAC encoder." The site also asks for additional help on the project.
Pardon me for asking... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:3, Informative)
The Rev 1-3 iPods have a smaller CPU cache than the Rio Karma, or the iPod Rev 4 and the iPod Mini. The preformance hit for accessing memory while decoding is too great, so you must fit the decoder in the cache.
ALAC was designed for the simple reason that it has a smaller decoder on the iPod than FLAC.
Same reason why OGG can't be used on iPod Rev 1-3. (and for consistancy, not on the o
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2, Interesting)
Why bother with reverse engineering ALAC? So far, I have seen / read mention of only one major useful thing that has been learned: ALAC uses adaptive compression algorithms.
You state on your site that you don't like being locked into restrictive DRM formats. So, don't allow yourself to get locked into it. Don't support it.
Given the information you have gathered about the format, it seems to me that it would be far more productive to join the FLA
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2)
In what way is FLAC's compression not adaptive?
AirTunes. (Score:3, Interesting)
One possible reason would be in order to stream to an AirPort Express with AirTunes. AirTunes uses a standard streaming protocol (RTSP), but streams the data in Apple Lossless format. Because of this, you currently require either a Mac OS X or Windows XP machine running iTunes to steam audio to the AirPort Express.
Being able to st
Re:AirTunes. (Score:3, Informative)
It's OS X only at this point, unfortunately for users of other OSes.
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, this is pure speculation, but I think one of the reasons why large companies avoid open source codecs like FLAC or Xvid is that they are afraid of getting sued. In today's everything-is-patented world, many open source codecs out ther
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:5, Informative)
ALAC has absolutely nothing to do with the MPEG-4 lossless encoding. (I should know, as I worked on the decoder as well. See the authors list on the site)
This is a common misconception that having an opensource decoder (and encoder soon... I have a prototype already) will hopefully fix.
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:5, Informative)
http://members.home.nl/w.speek/comparison.htm [members.home.nl]
http://flac.sourceforge.net/comparison.html [sourceforge.net]
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:3, Insightful)
For example, Google for "AlphaSort". Basically, they made a mutli-phase sort where the initial stage fit
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:5, Informative)
I wouldn't say that quite so authoritatively. At the moment, the reason Vorbis can't be played on the ipod is because no one's put much effort into optimizing the decoder. It may be that it's impossible, but I've heard several Vorbis and iPodLinux developers say they think the iPod has the potential to play Vorbis, albeit maybe with reduced battery life.
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, I don't know if the cores are symmetric, and I think the iPod Linux stuff only supports the primary core, so in its current state, no, it probably isn't possible....
At least conceptually, to get decent performance you want to do something like the following:
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2)
The PP5002C/5003 is based around a dual-core ARM7 CPU, and with the multimedia extensions and I/O logic added by Portal Player, the 5002C/5003 are more than capable of encoding or decoding video and audio content simultaneously.
I think your assumption that Apple used "just enough" power to get the .mp3 decoding job done is seriously flawed.
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2)
That doesn't make any sense. (Score:2)
ALAC probably exists because of an algorithmic or patent-related reason.
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:4, Insightful)
now it's their format - possibly with a compression scheme they got a patent going for, so they own it.
why did sony keep insisting on atrac so long? because it was their format, their control. if it had made it big then they could have cashed on it.
true, itunes supports mp3's and ipods do as well - but they have to, nobody would have used them otherwise.
Doesn't really compare (Score:3, Insightful)
But ALAC isn't even intended or positioned for distribution. There's no power in it. ALACs are c
Re:Doesn't really compare (Score:2)
Re:Doesn't really compare (Score:2)
Inaccurate [cdfreaks.com]
Re:Doesn't really compare (Score:2)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:3, Interesting)
Dude (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2)
Anyway, how does ALAC lock in customers? iTunes can convert files encoded with it to AAC, MP3 or AIFF.
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2)
No, sorry, who forced Apple to support MPEG-4? They were on board right from the start. The MPEG-4 file format is based on QuickTime's file format. This is even more true of FireWire and ZeroConf. Who forced Apple to base their new directory system on LDAP? Who forced Apple to open their kernel? Who forces Apple to contribute to various open source projects? Who forces Apple to use Open Firmware for their hardware? Who forces Apple
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2)
There are some differences. WMA is a problem because if you encode something in WMA, then transcode it to MP3, for example, you lose quality. If you convert Apple Lossless to MP3, you don't lose any quality compared to encoding it directly to MP3 without the ALAC step. Apple lossless doesn't lock-in because it can be a reasonable intermediary step. Every iTunes with an Apple Lossless
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:5, Informative)
The important stats:
FLAC at 8 took 55:02 to encode, 7:07 to decode, at a ratio of 1:0.5437.
ALAC took 19:53 to encode, and 10:01 to decode, at a ratio of 1:0.5496.
So, yes, FLAC at the tightest takes much longer than ALAC. (Alghought it's only 3/4th the CPU to play!)
However FLAC at 5 took 12:54 to encode and 7:08 to decode, at a ration of 1:0.5459. Much faster than ALAC, barely smaller, and decodes much easier than ALAC.
So, yes, if you ramp FLAC all the way up it takes much longer to encode, and slightly longer to decode, and you don't gain anything. So obviously doing that is a bit silly unless you're talking about long term storage.
If you leave it at the default, though, it beats ALAC in every single way, unless there's some differences in CPU architechure that changes the relative decoding difficulties between an iPod and a PC. Which isn't that impossible. But I have to point out that a lot of people use iTunes sans iPod, on a PC.
1) No lossless compression is significantly smaller than anything else. All the serious contenders are between 1:0.56 and 1:0.48 or so.
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:2)
Re:Pardon me for asking... (Score:3, Informative)
Yes but... (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, considering that "Apple never released any documents on the format", its incredible that this guy wrote a decoder. Some people are truly amazing sometimes...
Honest answer (Score:5, Informative)
There are only a handful of ways a proprietary format can remain proprietary:
Re:Honest answer (Score:2)
Also, I don't really understand what you mean by saying that once something is decodeable it is an open standard. If this were the case, no one would've been sued over the DeCSS stuff.
Re:Honest answer (Score:2)
"Proprietary format" just means "the real world doesn't know how to decode it yet".
Then I (unclearly) was trying to point out that patented and trade-secreted stuff does get sued over when someone reverse-engineers things (example: the DVD encryption scheme)
Small correction (Score:5, Informative)
though, is it patent encumbered? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:though, is it patent encumbered? (Score:3)
Stream Ripping? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Stream Ripping? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm the author of the decoder in quesiton.
I originally started doing the decoder so I could have my own little Airport Express emulator.
However, Apple have (for once) secured their system pretty well, and I have been unable to break their encryption so far. I know exactly what I need to do, and I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to do it... But first I actually need to get one of these devices. [craz.net]
So yeah, It's certinately on the table. Shouldn't be too far off.
Re:Stream Ripping? (Score:5, Informative)
David
Re:Stream Ripping? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have all my music stored in iTunes, and I'd like to be able to play them on a 'remote speaker'. The remote speaker in question is my media server, connected to my stereo.
All the computers in my house I have access to, and none of them are DRM-protected music (ie, iTMS purchased music). So there is no reason for me to want to use Airport Express data for any sort of piracy.
Re:Stream Ripping? (Score:3, Insightful)
Will we ban knives because they are a tool for killing people, and killing people is illegal?
There is a fine line. If a tool has significant legal (and moral) uses, I see no problem with it.
Re:Stream Ripping? (Score:2)
No, I stand by my remark: there is zero legitimate reason to try to break the AirPort Express encryption scheme. It will only help the pirates, and deter companies like Apple from innovating in the future.
Re:Stream Ripping? (Score:2)
Curiousity?
Re:Stream Ripping? (Score:2)
Re:Stream Ripping? (Score:3, Insightful)
First off, just because it's the "law" doesn't ensure that it's the right or "ethical" thing to do. For i
Re:Stream Ripping? (Score:2)
(^*%$ spellchequer
Re:Stream Ripping? (Score:2)
That was as far as I got. I couldn't stomach any more.
Re:Stream Ripping? (Score:2)
Well, I won't use it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well, I won't use it (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Well, I won't use it (Score:2, Troll)
Nice sp
ALAC on linux, finally (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:ALAC on linux, finally (Score:2)
There is a FLAC plug-in for QuickTime, but I think it only does decoding so far.
Gstreamer + iTMS (Score:3, Interesting)
From TFSite (Score:2)
* 0.1.0 - March 5, 2005: Initial release. Download Now!
MD5: f554fc11ee41a30bc5baf15a0fd07256
Confusing 1.0 with 0.1.0 - way to go, editors! Would like to write more, but gone compiling new 6.11 Linux kernel.
Re:From TFSite (Score:2)
Nice. (Score:3, Interesting)
Desire warping reality? Nah, if my desires warped reality I wouldn't be quite as single.
Regardless, my compliments on a superb piece of hacking. As near as I can tell the thing works perfectly, and only a few months after Apple released the format.
I assume that somebody will whip up an XMMS plugin based on the library and/or get it into Mplayer's CVS over the next week or so, but even being able to do "alac file | aplay" is a great improvement in functionality for me.
How long before... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How long before... (Score:3, Funny)
Why they use their own format. (Score:3, Insightful)
While FLAC is great, Apple has no controll over what direction FLAC takes.
KAAAAAHHHNNN! (Score:5, Funny)
Now, with iTunes on my main PC and my wife's laptop, i thought 'Wouldn't it be great if we could use a daap server and stream all our music?' So, I thought I would use iTunes to rip the rest of my cd's, and maybe convert my current flac files to ALAC. Then I could convert to ogg, and SURELY i could stream those.
That's when the drums of doom started playing.
First, I found that iTunes couldn't handle streaming off files. The Quicktime ogg plugin works okay for playing off the local hard drive, but no nice streaming from my daap server.
No problem, I'll convert to AAC and stream those.
(The drums started playing louder)
Then, I found there is no way to really get iTunes to play or convert FLAC files. There's a plugin, but I can't for the life of me get it to work. And , I found there was no ALAC -> anything, so I ran the risk of being locked into a format that was non portable.
No problem, I'll just find an opensource ripper to convert to FLAC, the to AAC.
(The drums started playing MUCH louder)
I started using 'abcde', a rather nifty shell script that rips and converts cd's to any of a number of formats, including FLAC. It even uses Freecddb for the track information.
But... On OSX, the only real way to easily rip CD tracks is to copy the AIFF files that OSX presents to you when it mounts the audio CD.
And FLAC does NOT like the particilar AIFF files OSX presents.
(The drums are deafening)
24 hours, a bunch of research and hacking on FLAC, I make a custom flac binaries that can handle the AIFF files. And there's the opensource 'faac' program that can convert the flac files to AAC.
Except.... the AAC files faac creates can't be streamed or played by iTunes. Something about the MP4 headers faac generates aren't compatable.
(THE DRUMS ARE IN MY HEAD!)
Another 24 hours of researching, and I come up with the MPEG4IP project at Cisco, which has a nifty little program called 'mp4creator', which is designed to create or modify mp4 files. It has an '--optimize' function which modifies the headers of an existing
I threw everything into a script, and now I can rip files on my Mac mini, store them as FLAC, and then convert and play them as AAC/M4a files via iTunes.
But Apple could have made things MUCH easier by making iTunes more open to other codecs or providing more information for others to creat iTunes codecs.
And now I find someone has written an ALAC converter, so I could have used the ALAC format to being with.
well THANK YOU. THANK YOU SO BLOODY MUCH!
Re:KAAAAAHHHNNN! (Score:2)
I've always been able to 'stream' my iTunes library from my desktop to my laptop; is it that your wife's computer doesn't have iTunes?
FLAC quicktime plugin (Score:3, Informative)
Go to MacUpdate [macupdate.com] to download the plugin if you don't have it.
Re:Little use to me.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Little use to me.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I actually thought about writing one myself by hooking into Quicktime, but I never got around to learning the API.
Re:Little use to me.... (Score:2)
I think it was selling insurance.
Re:Little use to me.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Little use to me.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Great, except that the song at home was encoded as Apple Lossless.
I could have actually used this tool yesterday.
Re:Let us rejoice! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Let us rejoice! (Score:4, Informative)
QuickTime is not a codec. It's a media architecture. The MOV file format can theoretically embed arbitrary numbers of tracks (of audio, video, 3D, animated sprites, vector graphics) in any format, and QuickTime supports several dozen formats of various sorts out of the box. ALAC, like every other codec Apple implements on OS X, is just a QuickTime plugin.
Not much of the QuickTime content you find around the web uses it, though, so I don't see how this is going to help QuickTime movie playback on Linux much. But Apple is really pushing MPEG-4 these days, so if Linux has a good MPEG-4 implementation, compatibility problems should go away eventually.
Re:Let us rejoice! (Score:2, Interesting)
On the Mac, it's an entirely different story, with elegant integration and very clean use (small size, not much overhead, etc.).
I've been using Quicktime Pro to encode video on my own website, and, without sound, am able to pick between numerous codecs I've insta
Re:Let us rejoice! (Score:2)
Well, they use an OS where almost every cheesy app does that. And certainly every "media-player". So why do they expect QT to behave any way but so?
Overloading "QuickTime codecs" (Score:2)
QuickTime is not a codec. It's a media architecture.
However, the standard QuickTime Pro distribution ships with codecs. I can see how a reasonable person would overload [webopedia.com] the term "QuickTime codec" to refer to the default codecs chosen by a popular video encoding app for the QuickTime architecture. In QuickTime 3 through 5, this was Sorenson video and QDesign audio; as of QuickTime 6, it is MPEG-4 advanced simple video and AAC audio.
Re:Let us rejoice! (Score:2)
As a point of information, the new version of QT due to be released with Tiger will support H.264, which [from everything I've seen] blows away MPEG-4. H.264 is also the codec that the vast majority of videoconferencing over IP systems use, so hopefully we'll see crossover products that allow live streaming videoconferences via QT at high quality.
Re:Let us rejoice! (Score:3, Insightful)
H.264 is also one of the required codecs (and will probably be the preferred codec) for both rival high-def DVD standards. It's an amazing codec; it really does deliver amazing quality all the way from cell phone streams up through broadcast quality video (at bit rates that residential broadband con
Re:Illegal codecs (Score:2)
The windows binary codecs were put up by their authors to download for free. If they let me have it for free, their's no copyright violated, and there's nothing stopping me from subsequently running it in the OS of my choice. But just in case someone starts trying to wield the POS DMCA, mplayer is conveniently based in Hungary.
P.S. Real is natively supported by Linux, and needs no windows binary decoder. On
If you think they've been doing that "lately", (Score:5, Informative)
But as far as this project goes, if they performed their reverse engineering in a proper manner they shouldn't have anything to worry about.
* At least since Spindler left. But even before that Apple Legal wasn't nice
Re:If you think they've been doing that "lately", (Score:3, Informative)
Re:If you think they've been doing that "lately", (Score:2, Offtopic)
Apple ... like rabid dogs on a barbeque-sauce-covered Pre-K student.
The symptoms for rabies includes a lot of things, but barbeque sauce and pre-K students aren't included. Most often a dog will be appear extremely tired, have a fever and exhibit a complete loss of appetite, not to mention fear of water.
Re:If you think they've been doing that "lately", (Score:4, Insightful)
The law should either apply to small and large media sources alike, or apply to none of them.
Re:If you think they've been doing that "lately", (Score:2)
Re:But is it better? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But is it better? (Score:2)
Re:But is it better? (Score:2)
There's undoubtedly a perfectly valid reason why Apple doesn't support FLAC, but this isn'
Re:But is it better? (Score:2, Informative)
Not quite according to this post [slashdot.org]. Do you have any references that say otherwise? I've never used ALAC myself so I can not comment.
Re:Now we're just waiting for: (Score:3)
Re:questions (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Great applications with high quality audio (Score:4, Interesting)
Sounds to me like a justification to make and distribute a free software FLAC QuickTime plugin so our friends burdened with the proprietary QuickTime implementation Apple distributes can play streaming FLAC data or play FLAC files.
I see no technical justification of Apple's Lossless format that convinces me it is superior to FLAC (of course, since Apple's Lossless format is only available in proprietary software, it will always lose for those that care about software freedom). Yet I'm sure people will use it and encourage others to use it because it is distributed with their proprietary software. In this way, it reminds me of the odd stance some people take with Ogg Vorbis versus MP3--they know that the Vorbis codec has performed at least as well as MP3 in many listening tests, they acknowledge that Ogg is a better encapsulation format (allowing for more expressive tags, for instance), and they insist on using "the best tool for the job". But they cave in to popular pressure to conform to using a lesser "tool" and endorse the continued use of MP3, sometimes even exclusively (which is really silly).
I hope nobody interprets what I'm writing as though this takes away from this new BSD-licensed Apple Lossless decoder. I'm grateful for what has been done here--it was needed and it is a great contribution to the free software community. I think there's a great future for it at archive.org in case anyone submits audio encoded with Apple's Lossless codec. This could allow archive.org to decode that and re-encode it with something else (many archive.org recordings are encoded many ways). However, when I distribute losslessly encoded copies of audio, I'll continue to dismiss Apple's Lossless codec out of hand and prefer FLAC. I help manage the website for a locally-produced talk radio show called "News from Neptune [newsfromneptune.com]" and there you can find copies of the show encoded in FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, and Speex. FLAC serves our needs excellently.
Re:Great applications with high quality audio (Score:2)
vinyl>wav>depop>wav>ogg
there arent many files using ALAC, but there are some, at least this should be supported by mplayer soon
Re:ALAC = .m4a (Score:2)
Re:Apple Lossless a competitor to FLAC? (Score:5, Insightful)
The people who use lossless encoding and understand what it is and what its benefits are are a much more technical crowd.
So while the Mac fanatics will of course use Apple Lossless because it's produced by Apple, many other people already have most of their CD collection encoded in FLAC and are probably happy with FLAC's less (not?) patent-encumbered, open source nature.
You know, open formats and all that.
I personally wouldn't even consider Apple Lossless. FLAC is an open, documented format with encoders and decoders that work on every platform imagineable. Not only that, but FLAC is a very competitive format, being as good or better on average than essentially any other lossless format out there for most samples.
Simply put, FLAC is a well known and trusted brand among people that know about lossless audio compression, why it's good, and why they should use it. Apple lossless is some other proprietary format that might (due to patents, for example) eventually require a license to be able to legally decode.
And I think I speak for most people that have already encoded hundreds of CDs losslessly for convenience and storage when I say, thanks, but no thanks.
Free Software for me.