New Standard: USAC, sussesor of (HE)-AAC Options

[pdq]

I think you will find that no matter how many times you reduce the data by 30%, you can never get below 2 bits.

[benski]

One thing that's curious about USAC. Much of the additional compression comes from the changing of the final (lossless) compression from Huffman to Arithmetic. I remember from the USAC paper at AES Budapest that this change alone was responsible for a 5% improvement.

[Speckmade]

Think of it this way: years or R&D and over a million Euros/Dollars went into the standardization of AAC and now USAC. I wouldn't understand why one should give away the use of such highly specialized, sophisticated technology for free.

Because the profit for society and progress in general would be much bigger. It's kinda logical for people with a common need to get together, form a community and to have people from that community trying to satisfy the needs of the community. If you feel you're part of such a community you may want to serve them without a long-term plan on exploiting it. - Cooperation, you know; the internet wouldn't exist without that kind of thinking.

- I hope these four sentences can give you a first idea...

[Garf]

Because the profit for society and progress in general would be much bigger. It's kinda logical for people with a common need to get together, form a community and to have people from that community trying to satisfy the needs of the community. If you feel you're part of such a community you may want to serve them without a long-term plan on exploiting it. - Cooperation, you know; the internet wouldn't exist without that kind of thinking.

- I hope these four sentences can give you a first idea...

The commercial/corporate community that needed a unified speech and audio codec did exactly what you described, and due to how MPEG license pooling works (IIRC), use of this codec will even be free for them.

Everyone else that was not involved in the development will have to pay for it. This means you.

Basically, your argument doesn't do anything to answer the question you were replying to.

[Garf]

Reference software
http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/open/29view/29n12756b.txt
http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc29/open/29view/29n12756att.zip

In true MPEG style, the quality is absolutely atrocious. You'd have thought they'd have learned from what happened at 3GPP, but no

[C.R.Helmrich]

In true MPEG style, the quality is absolutely atrocious.

You mean the audio quality? A higher-quality encoder will become available, but it only does mono at the moment. See http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/meetings/stoc...m#_Toc325960263.

Chris

[IgorC]

Maybe it's this particular encoder.

Because I have tried USAC files from official test and it was quite good. http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=797609

[Garf]

In true MPEG style, the quality is absolutely atrocious.

You mean the audio quality? A higher-quality encoder will become available, but it only does mono at the moment. See http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/meetings/stoc...m#_Toc325960263.

Chris

Will it stay mono or will that change? I could see the point in removing some parts of the good encoder so you can license a few copies of the true good encoder, but the stereo coding seems to be an important part of USAC, so leaving that out seems to undermine the point?

[IgorC]

You mean the audio quality? A higher-quality encoder will become available, but it only does mono at the moment. See http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/meetings/stoc...m#_Toc325960263.

Chris,
Is there any possibility that there will be a commercial encoder besides of reference implementation?

USAC stereo encoder would be highly required at 32-48 kbps.

[C.R.Helmrich]

Because I have tried USAC files from official test and it was quite good. Is there any possibility that there will be a commercial encoder besides of reference implementation?

Those files from the USAC verification test were created with an unpublished reference quality encoder, not the reference software. I'm confident that an encoder similar to this reference quality encoder will be available for purchase in the near future.

Will it stay mono or will that change? I could see the point in removing some parts of the good encoder so you can license a few copies of the true good encoder, but the stereo coding seems to be an important part of USAC, so leaving that out seems to undermine the point?

I know and agree, but don't know if/when it will be able to do stereo.

Chris