AAC FILE SUPPORT!!!!!!!!!!!

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 9:18 pm

The difference is that EVERYBODY can use FLAC.

The only codecs that will ever be successful ALWAYS will be the ones that MOST people can make use of. If MP3 had been tied to a single platform it could never have succeeded in the way it has.

It's like evolution through natural selection.

siddhu · Post by **siddhu** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 9:53 pm

Guys, get your facts straight!

Development
------------------------

AAC is NOT a format developed by Apple. AAC is the audio portion of the open standards MPEG-4 specification for audio and video.

MPEG 4 is an open standard allows development of software players + encoders across all platforms - Linux, Mac, and Windows.

It is a format that has been adopted by Apple as it currently is the best sounding lossy compressed audio file format.

It has been jointly developed by a consortium of companies including Frauenhofer and Dolby.

http://www.mpegif.org/mpeg4/

http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mp ... ndard.html

http://www.dolby.com/assets/pdf/press_r ... _MPEG4.pdf

Adoption
----------------------
Rather than being some esoteric "proprietary" format of Apple, AAC and it's subsets such as aacPlus have been adopted as:

- The official compressed audio file format for the compressed audio zone on DVD-Audio discs.

- The official file format for use on 3G networks with most high end GSM phones supporting aacPlus audio (as of now)

- AAC is already deployed by major mobile communication players such as "mmO2", "Vodafone", and "SK Telecom".

Additionally, the aacPlus variant of AAC has been:

- Certified by the European Broadcasting Union as the best sounding compression format.

- Used by "Digital Radio Mondial" (the new global digital AM radio specification).

- accPlus is used by "XM Satellite Radio".

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 11:29 pm

Interesting.

I must admit, i'd not really payed AAC that much attention until now, it seems that there are too many codecs jostling for widespread acceptance at the moment, i just wish that there could be one clear choice.

On closer inspection of those links it's clear that there's no point in comparing AAC with FLAC anyway, AAC is still a lossy codec and requires a licence. FLAC is truly lossless and truly free.

alan* · Post by alan* » Wed Jul 20, 2005 8:42 am

As far as I can understand it, anyone with itunes (mac or pc) can convert / import music files in aac or apple lossless. itunes is a free download so doesnt this also make it freely available to anyone on any platform ? What is the difference between this and flac?

jbible · Post by **jbible** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 1:24 pm

FLAC is 100% lossless. The sound quality equals that of 16/44 wav/aiff but at half the file size.

AAC is a lossy compressed format similar to Ogg or Mp3.

So you lose sound quality with AAC...you do not lose quality with FLAC.

siddhu · Post by **siddhu** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:12 pm

alan* wrote: anyone with itunes (mac or pc) can convert / import music files in aac or apple lossless. itunes is a free download so doesnt this also make it freely available to anyone on any platform ? What is the difference between this and flac?

Jibble,

Alan* is talking about Apple Lossless (in addition to aac) which is exactly that; a Lossless compression format.

So their is no real difference between FLAC and Apple Lossless except perhaps licensing terms.

For example: We chose to put Apple Lossless files on the Amon Tobin Splinter Cell 5.1 DVD-Audio disc so that people who wanted a CD could burn a CD with minimum hassle using iTunes with no loss of quality.

Martyn · Post by **Martyn** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 2:33 pm

siddhu wrote:their is no real difference between FLAC and Apple Lossless except perhaps licensing terms.

Is there any difference in size? I think Flac compresses to roughly half the size of wav, i guess that's the real tester.

The big deal with both Flac and Ogg is the total freedom from licencing though, thats the one that people should be supporting imho. i guess time will tell but it's interesting how Flac is the one that Ableton have chosen to support, that can't hurt it's publicity at all, a lot of people on this forum had never heard of it till now.

siddhu · Post by **siddhu** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 3:44 pm

Apple Lossless also compresses to half the size.

BTW: I am not pro FLAC vs Apple Lossles, AAC vs OGG or whatever. I just get annoyed by posts that show total ignorance to certain essential background information such as AAC being the audio subset of MPEG - 4 (true) vs being a proprietary format of Apple (false).

If anything I am for whatever format has the best sound quality. So for lossy compressed I would go with AAC, and for lossless I would support FLAC or Apple Lossless depending on licensing terms and implementation.

I do think though that with iTunes supporting Apple Lossless, and iTunes being such a simple and solid cross platform application (and free to boot), that Apple Lossless is a highly useful format.

If you look for FLAC softs there still is no FLAC encoder that has the streamlined elegance of iTunes.

jbible · Post by **jbible** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 3:46 pm

siddhu wrote:For example: We chose to put Apple Lossless files on the Amon Tobin Splinter Cell 5.1 DVD-Audio disc so that people who wanted a CD could burn a CD with minimum hassle using iTunes with no loss of quality.

Ah I see now. I wasnt aware of the Apple Lossless. Thats a shame though about the Amon Tobin disc. Big fan of Amon (have most of his vinyl)...would be much more prone to purchase the DVD if it featured FLAC and OGG formats rather than Apple Lossless and AAC. I might still but I would have to figure out a way to rip or convert to a prefered open source format.

Looked up some info. Still seems FLAC is slightly superior to ALAC.
http://members.home.nl/w.speek/comparison.htm
Slightly smaller file size and quicker encoding/decoding.

Sometimes I feel all this competition only hinders development. It just seems like all these companies should chose just a few formats and stick with them. Instead of trying to compete to come out with the next best thing they should work together to create something open source and universal. I dont see why Apple just didnt integrate FLAC into iTunes and iPods rather than taking it changing it slightly and throwing the name Apple on it. I mean FLAC isnt as obscure as people think. It is spreading fast...even Autechre has adopted FLAC as their format of choice.

And asking Ableton to support all these formats is bad for all of us. The more formats they have to add, the more time they spend working on integrating support for all these formats instead of something new and usefull. Adding uneccesary features that will bloat the software. I think going with open source formats was the best choice for everyone involved. Maybe a Mac/iTunes user would see things differently. But I for one will never even consider installing iTunes on any machine I own. By adding support for these formats Ableton would just be feeding these companies competitive urges.

jbible · Post by **jbible** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 3:49 pm

siddhu wrote:If you look for FLAC softs there still is no FLAC encoder that has the streamlined elegance of iTunes.

For MAC I couldnt tell you but for PC...dbpoweramp adds a context menu. Just right click on a file and choose convert...choose FLAC, hit OK and your have your flac files. I cant imagine anything being more streamlined than that.

siddhu · Post by **siddhu** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 3:57 pm

jbible wrote: Ah I see now. I wasnt aware of the Apple Lossless. Thats a shame though about the Amon Tobin disc. Big fan of Amon (have most of his vinyl)...would be much more prone to purchase the DVD if it featured FLAC and OGG formats rather than Apple Lossless and AAC.

Apple Lossless was chosen simply because almost everybody has iTunes. So there would be no problem for the vast majority of music fans to burn a CD with the files.

aacPlus was chosen because AAC supports up to 48 channels at 96Khz!! You can create high res multi-channel audio at 96Kbs with aacPlus at tiny file size.

If you love Amons music get the dvd. It contains 4 formats on the disc.

1) A high res (24bit/96Khz) DVD-Audio 5.1 mix which automatically downmixes to stereo if you don't have a 5.1 set up.

2) A video standard res (20bit/48Khz) 5.1 mix which automatically downmixes to stereo if you don't have a 5.1 set up.

3) aacPlus files in 5.1 and stereo for mobile devices such as GSM phones.

4) Apple Lossless so you can burn CDs for the car or portable player.

siddhu · Post by **siddhu** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 4:08 pm

jbible wrote:
siddhu wrote:If you look for FLAC softs there still is no FLAC encoder that has the streamlined elegance of iTunes.
For MAC I couldnt tell you but for PC...dbpoweramp adds a context menu. Just right click on a file and choose convert...choose FLAC, hit OK and your have your flac files. I cant imagine anything being more streamlined than that.

Jibble you just made my point! If you are putting files on a DVD for mass release the files have to be easily accessible to your audience base. Why use FLAC if there is not an easy Mac encoder?

Let me ask you this purely from a project manager/producer point of view:

Your releasing a major soundtrack and you want to make it as easy as possible for your audience so; "What is easier for my audience to work with on a cross platform level, Apple Lossless manipulated by iTunes (which most people are familiar with) VS dbpoweramp on PC and unkown encoder on the MAC?"

The answer should be pretty simple...

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 4:09 pm

I think me and my friends must be in a weird minority - we seem to have avoided iTunes like the plague.

Although if I was a mac-head and it was my bundledplayer I can see how I'd end up using it. I can also see how casual Win users might buy into it if they had an iPod, I have no figures or idea on the usage percentages for this.

all I know is that of about 20 people I can think of who use their computer for their entertainment system, only 2 of these people use iTunes - both are on Mac's . The rest use a variety of players.

It's possible that my friends are highly un-representative though.

I'm going to try opening an apple lossless file now if I can find one and see what happens (ie: does any app try and open it), anyone know where I might find one to test online. I know this will seem weird if you are immersed in Apple culture - but it is a complete alien format to me.

are ALL .m4a files lossless? , I thought that two formats shared the same suffix an mpeg2 variant and an mpeg4

siddhu · Post by **siddhu** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 4:20 pm

Angstrom,

Just download iTunes and you can encode and transcode Apple Lossless files right away.

Go into "preferences->import" and choose it.

Good luck!

jbible · Post by **jbible** » Wed Jul 20, 2005 4:21 pm

True. I understand from a $$ perspective. But that also proves the point that the whole problem starts with Apple. Rather than embracing an already existing and freely available format and integrating it into iTunes/Pod etc they feel they have to create a slight variation on that format and put their name in front of it. The whole apple ego just turns me off. If they added support into iTunes/iPod for open source formats I just might consider using their products...but until then I wont.

And I am with Angstrom. The circle of artists, labels, and friends I work with avoid the whole iTunes thing as well. So you stating that iTunes is something used by the majority makes me realize I am in the minority. Thats why I am so clueless on the AAC and ALAC thing. I follow open source audio formats pretty closely but since these formats are pretty much iTunes related they dont mean squat to the circle I am involved with.

AAC FILE SUPPORT!!!!!!!!!!!

No More Mis Information and Rumours