Apple Lossless Audio Codec Project becomes open source
Apple this week made its Lossless Audio Codec project for high-quality audio files open source under the Apache license, allowing anyone to make their own ALAC files.
The ALAC audio codec was developed by Apple and is supported on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, iTunes and most iPods. Apple made the announcement this week that the project is now open source via the MacOS Forge website.
ALAC compressions reduces the file size of audio files, but as represented by its "lossless" name, the compressed files do not have any loss of information. Decoded ALAC files are identical to an original uncompressed audio file.
Lossless audio formats like ALAC, FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), and WavPack are popular among audiophiles, as they retain the original quality of the recording while taking up about half the space of the original file.
The ALAC project made open source by Apple contains the sources for both the ALAC encoder and decoder, as well as an example command-line utility called alaconvert. With this, users can read and write audio data to and from original Core Audio Format and WAVE files.
ALAC files are stored within an MP4 container with the file extension ".m4a" -- the same extension used by the AAC format that most iTunes purchases are stored in. However, as a lossless format, ALAC is not a variant of AAC.
Available under the free Apache license, the ALAC sources allow users to use the software for any purpose, including modification and distribution. The license requires that any original copyright, patent, trademark and attribution notices in redistributed code be preserved, and notifications be provided for every licensed file that may have been changed.
ALAC has been a part of the Mac OS X Core Audio Framework, as well as iTunes 4.5 and QuickTime 6.5.1, since April of 2004. The format is also used for Apple's AirPlay wireless streaming technology.
The ALAC audio codec was developed by Apple and is supported on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, iTunes and most iPods. Apple made the announcement this week that the project is now open source via the MacOS Forge website.
ALAC compressions reduces the file size of audio files, but as represented by its "lossless" name, the compressed files do not have any loss of information. Decoded ALAC files are identical to an original uncompressed audio file.
Lossless audio formats like ALAC, FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), and WavPack are popular among audiophiles, as they retain the original quality of the recording while taking up about half the space of the original file.
The ALAC project made open source by Apple contains the sources for both the ALAC encoder and decoder, as well as an example command-line utility called alaconvert. With this, users can read and write audio data to and from original Core Audio Format and WAVE files.
ALAC files are stored within an MP4 container with the file extension ".m4a" -- the same extension used by the AAC format that most iTunes purchases are stored in. However, as a lossless format, ALAC is not a variant of AAC.
Available under the free Apache license, the ALAC sources allow users to use the software for any purpose, including modification and distribution. The license requires that any original copyright, patent, trademark and attribution notices in redistributed code be preserved, and notifications be provided for every licensed file that may have been changed.
ALAC has been a part of the Mac OS X Core Audio Framework, as well as iTunes 4.5 and QuickTime 6.5.1, since April of 2004. The format is also used for Apple's AirPlay wireless streaming technology.
Comments
Btw, did I ever tell you how much I.....
am first!?
inevitable
Why? I'm curious.
Btw, did I ever tell you how much I....am first!?
We're not on YouTube. Please at least pretend you've passed puberty.
The ALAC audio codec was developed by Apple and is supported on the iPhone, iPad, Mac, iTunes and most iPods. Apple made the announcement this week that the project is now open source via the MacOS Forge website.
A
Why is Apple even bothering with this? Does anybody really use ALAC?
Why not simply make iOS so it supports the popular lossless formats? Is ALAC superior to the other lossless formats?
The resultant files are quite big (25-35MB for a single track) but I didn't want to lose any quality (well CDs aren't perfect to begin with, but any *more* quality I mean).
This is the codec I used a few years ago to rip all my CDs before throwing them out (got sick of carting them from apartment to apartment).
The resultant files are quite big (25-35MB for a single track) but I didn't want to lose any quality (well CDs aren't perfect to begin with, but any *more* quality I mean).
I generally use .flac, because it is a popular format.
Is ALAC better for any reason? Do popular players generally support it?
On top of this, any open source codec is great news for the surrounding community.. keeping a file format open allows the similar formats to learn from, adapt, or provide input to each other.
The user wins here!
I generally use .flac, because it is a popular format.
Is ALAC better for any reason? Do popular players generally support it?
well, if Apple supports it for iTunes (probably more expensive
unless this happens, i will also stick with .flac when using my computer
Is ALAC better for any reason? Do popular players generally support it?
I am not a codec expert, I don't know whether it's better or worse than FLAC.
I imagine until today no-one supported ALAC except Quicktime and iTunes, but now that it's open source we should see it appear in libavcodec, which is the library most of the other players use.
Lossless audio formats like ALAC, FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec), and WavPack are popular among audiophiles, as they retain the original quality of the recording while taking up about half the space of the original file.
In my experience, the resulting Apple Lossless file ends up being about 60-65% of the original AIFF or WAV file. I've been encoding in ALAC for a while now and it eats up space fast. For me, I grew tired of re-ripping my collection every time I got a new computer that provided a substantial increase in drive space. Now, everything goes to ALAC and from there I can scale down to anything I would need. Before ALAC, I couldn't really get rid of my CDs in case I wanted to re-rip in the future, but since converting to it, I really don't need those CDs any more (they just sit collecting dust in my storage room).
In my experience, the resulting Apple Lossless file ends up being about 60-65% of the original AIFF or WAV file. I've been encoding in ALAC for a while now and it eats up space fast. For me, I grew tired of re-ripping my collection every time I got a new computer that provided a substantial increase in drive space. Now, everything goes to ALAC and from there I can scale down to anything I would need. Before ALAC, I couldn't really get rid of my CDs in case I wanted to re-rip in the future, but since converting to it, I really don't need those CDs any more (they just sit collecting dust in my storage room).
I'm pretty sure Apple's computers are going to start coming without optical drives soon, so ripping CDs once and for all is a good strategy now (they will continue to sell the external optical drive for a while probably though).
I generally use .flac, because it is a popular format.
Is ALAC better for any reason? Do popular players generally support it?
Yes, the most popular players all support ALAC, and none of them support FLAC. The iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, iPod Classic, iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad, and any machine with iTunes installed.
Yes, an iPod Shuffle can playback ALAC files, but it's best for those who have iDevices and many CDs to rip their content in ALAC for storage, then backup those files, and then use iTunes to create 256-320Kbit/s AAC versions of tracks for their devices. You save space, which is more costly and limited on your iDevices than on your Mac/PC drive.
I suppose you can use FLAC, but if you need to convert to AAC then you have to go through more steps than needed while iTunes simply makes it easy.
PS: Pro Tip: For those wanting to convert all your content into ALAC, 1) remember that it won't make the quality any better than it already is so taking a 64Kbit/s Mp3 you grabbed from KaZaA back in the day will still be the same shitty quality but will now take up 1Mbit/s on your drive., 2) don't convert a 12 hour audiobook to lossless as you're have 1Mbit x 43,200 seconds or about 40GB just for some spoken word. For poor quality audio you can either use iTunes Match to get updated music files to DRM-free 256Kbit/s AAC, or purchase/replace another way. For audiobooks there is a setting in iTunes specifically for spoken word.
For those wishing to convert here is an excellent utility. http://tmkk.pv.land.to/xld/index_e.html
As to those arguing we can't hear the extra quality in lossless I'd point out I don't really need my pictures at max res to look at them most of the time but I sure as hell like to know I have the max quality stored away. I see no problem storing lossless versions with such low cost of storage these days even if I can't hear the difference. Once you go down you can never go back ... or something like that
AsI understand it, iCloud will be making the lack storage size on iDevices and file size conflict moot soon.
Why is Apple even bothering with this? Does anybody really use ALAC?
Why not simply make iOS so it supports the popular lossless formats? Is ALAC superior to the other lossless formats?
Because nobody uses FLAC except audiophiles and the Linux crowd. This opens ALAC to third party applications which solves the audiophile half of the equation, and the FOSS crowd can fend for themselves (as per normal).
I believe it enables ALAC distribution for the future, though I have nothing to base that on. I certainly don't expect to see ALAC downloads from iTunes in my lifetime, but I'd like to be wrong.
BTW, ALAC is superior to FLAC in low-power usage scenarios (like PMPs, smartphones, etc.)
One thing I would really like to see is an option to downres ALAC audio to 256k AAC in iTunes, instead of 128k AAC. It would make it much simpler to consolidate lossless + AAC within one library.
The PC users who also have iDevices will be moaning about .FLAC as they are in the middle of being able to use both while most Apple only users are happy with ALAC. Given both FLAC and ALAC are lossless discussions about superiority are pointless. It comes down to use and convenience..
I wrote on another thread that those that support open source codecs don't care about ALAC being open source. They'll still use FLAC because it's not owned by a big bad corporate entity. They don't care about supporting the best option or must universally accepted option, it's about politics (or anti-politics) to them.
BTW, ALAC is superior to FLAC in low-power usage scenarios (like PMPs, smartphones, etc.
The iPod Shuffle has supported ALAC for years. I pointed this out to AI when this finally changed but they didn't seem interested. I thought it was a big deal.
I wrote on another thread that those that support open source codecs don't care about ALAC being open source. They'll still use FLAC because it's not owned by a big bad corporate entity. They don't care about supporting the best option or must universally accepted option, it's about politics (or anti-politics) to them.
My comment was more end user oriented I don't know much about the open source fraternity so I accept your opinion there. I assume they all want us to be using Ubunto etc. ?
p.s. love the footer. So true lol
If ALAC is stuck at 16/48 then it is still only good for ripping old CD's.
The question I have is will we now be able to download ALAC files in something more than 16bit 48kHz and will iTunes play them? Another person mentioned that CD quality is not all that great anymore and that is right. I download FLAC files at 24bit 96kHz which is really the start for High Rez sound now-a-days. A typical album will take up a little over a GiG of space at the rez but it is much better quality. There are more and more albums now available at an even higher 24bit 196kHz too.
If ALAC is stuck at 16/48 then it is still only good for ripping old CD's.
Where are you getting these FLAC files? How do you know the source isn't just a CD that someone ripped to FLAC 24bit 196KHz?
The iPod Shuffle has supported ALAC for years. I pointed this out to AI when this finally changed but they didn't seem interested. I thought it was a big deal.
The complaint I've heard from a friend with audiophile-itis is that the D/A converters in most PMPs (iPods included) aren't really good enough to benefit from lossless audio.