TAK 2.1.0 Options

[TBeck]

Final release of TAK 2.1.0 ((T)om's lossless (A)udio (K)ompressor)

This release brings speed optimizations and multi core support for the encoder. The dedicated LossyWav-codec that was available in the beta releases has been removed.

It consists of:

- TAK Applications 2.1.0.
- TAK Winamp plugin 2.1.0.
- TAK SDK 1.1.1.
- TAK Decoding library 2.1.0.

Download

Download the archive in the upload section: TAK 2.1.0

What's new

Improvements:

- Encoding speed improvements of about 10 to 20 percent (depends on preset and cpu) for cpus with the SSSE3 instruction set. Since SSSE3 (note the three 'S') isn't supported by AMD, only Intel users will benefit from those optimizations.
- The encoder now creates up to four threads to utilize multiple cpu cores. Specify the thread number in the General Options dialog of the GUI-version or with the -tn option of the command line version. By default only one thread is created. You will only notice a speed up, if the encoding speed isn't already limited by the performance of your drives.

Modifications:

- Added the -cpu# switch to the command line version, which lets you control some cpu optimizations.
- The file info function now also shows the name of the codec used to compress the file.
- Moved the verify-option from the details-dialog to the general compression options dialog.
- All dialogs with an Add-files-option locked the source folder until the dialog was closed. Hopefully this is no longer the case.

Known issues:

- If you use pipe decoding and the application reading the pipe is beeing terminated before the whole file has been read, TAKC may get into an endless loop and has to be manually killed with the task manager. I don't think this is a big issue but i will try to fix it in one of the next versions. BTW: Big thanks to shnutils for testing the pipe decoding!
- There seem to be some compatibility issues with pipe decoding to some other applications ("crc1632.exe" has been reported). I will try to fix it in the next release.

Why is it called 2.1 and not 2.0.1?

Usually i increase the second place of the version number if some option has been added which isn't backwards compatible (can not be decoded by earlier versions) but will only take effect, if it is explicitly activated by the user. This was true for the LossyWav-codec that now has been removed. But i didn't want to go down to 2.0.1 because of the possible confusion occuring when i later released another 2.1 which would have nothing in common with the current beta 2.1.

More information

You can find some useful information and speed comparisons in the Beta 3 thread.

Have fun...

Thomas

This post has been edited by TBeck: Jan 9 2011, 04:06

[TBeck]

1) Support for HDCD bit recognition
I don't think this is the business of a lossless codec...

That's why I call it 'wish-list', usually wish will not become reality, otherwise the human race will be much better with the earth.

My reason is simple, because the HDCD decoding through Foobar2000 not working, whenever not working should be fixed, of course it's the lowest priority, and I'm not programmer, can't help even if I want to.

I hope my response didn't appear rude. This was not my intention. To be honest, i don't know much about HDCD.

Im running windows 7 ultimate 64,dual core and encoding is done with foobar.Now i put this line in options for takc
-e -p4 -ihs - %d but im just wondering couse it was written that this new 2.1.0 version have some optimizations,maybe i can get tasks done faster couse its a windows 7 64 b and its intel dual core...

The cpu specific optimizations will be selected automatically, but you may add -tn2 (creates 2 encoder threads) to your command line to utilize both cores. However, some users have reported even better performance when using foobar's inbuilt multi threading.

BTW: I am already working on the next release. This is what i have done so far:

- SSE2/3 optimizations of the decoder (affecting only p2, p3 and p4).
- Some tiny general speed optimizations.
- Slightly better compression for some problem files and especially for 96/192 KHz 24-bit audio.
- Some preparations for multi channel audio.

[zver]

1) Support for HDCD bit recognition
I don't think this is the business of a lossless codec...

That's why I call it 'wish-list', usually wish will not become reality, otherwise the human race will be much better with the earth.

My reason is simple, because the HDCD decoding through Foobar2000 not working, whenever not working should be fixed, of course it's the lowest priority, and I'm not programmer, can't help even if I want to.

I hope my response didn't appear rude. This was not my intention. To be honest, i don't know much about HDCD.

The cpu specific optimizations will be selected automatically, but you may add -tn2 (creates 2 encoder threads) to your command line to utilize both cores. However, some users have reported even better performance when using foobar's inbuilt multi threading.

BTW: I am already working on the next release. This is what i have done so far:

- SSE2/3 optimizations of the decoder (affecting only p2, p3 and p4).
- Some tiny general speed optimizations.
- Slightly better compression for some problem files and especially for 96/192 KHz 24-bit audio.
- Some preparations for multi channel audio.

Thank you very much and hope that tak becomes even faster