Yet another lossless audio compressor..., Would it make any sense? Options

[TBeck]

Hi,

(sorry, my english isn't very good...)

i have been working (for fun) on lossless audio compression since about 1997. Finally i would like to bring this thing (especially the never-ending-search for just a tenth of a percent more compression...) to an end. In the light of the big bunch of existing Compressors, i am not quite sure, if it would be of any use to add one more Compressor to the public. The preparations for a useful release would be much further work, and i wouldn't like to waste my time for something not needed.

My Compressor uses similar techniques like FLAC, but far more elaborated. Compression ratios lie between Monkey's Audios High- and Extra-High-Mode (Can be better than Extra High at the expense of a considerable increase of encoding time). Encoding Speed is a bit slower than Monkey's, Decoding Speed is much higher on most Files. Seek-Times should also be better cause of the maximum (independent) frame length of 250 ms.

I would like to read some opinions. Would it make any sense to release it?

Thanks

Thomas

[Skymmer]

Let me be like Bart here, and encourage TBeck to join up with the FLAC team, and..

Oh god, I'm afraided it but why FLAC? Don't think that I'm flaming but I just don't like direct biasing.

I don't really think your codec will survive in an ongoing lossless competition without some extra features and/or promotion

Agree, but partly. Lossless compressors are always have been pieces of software mainly for experinced and interested users so even if your compressor will have only one extra feuture - it will have success, although among quite limited group of users.

For TBeck I can only advise the following:

+ Make your compressor open-source to spread it everywhere without limits

+ First of all develope the format. In ideal it must:
- support any kind of input files. 8/16/24/32 bit/IEEE float, mono/2 channel/multichannel, any sample rate.
- support non-audio data embeded into files (RIFF chunks)
- be error resistant. At least error detection and decode-throught-errors, at most the error correction.
- provide tagging possibility. APEv2 tags are highly recomended.
- be asymmetric but providing high compression ratios, same or better than Monkey's Audio.
- be very fast at decoding and to be hardware friendly
- provide ReplayGain support
- provide possibility to improve compression ratios without breaking the backward compatibility
- provide full Unicode support

+ After you developed the format just provide native reference compilations for
most well known platforms and also plugins for at least 2-3 famous players on
such platforms. Also support for burning/editing applications will be just great.

Good luck !

This post has been edited by Skymmer: Apr 2 2006, 18:46