Ok, yesterday I saw the news about AUCDTECT & I was interested by the appz concept so I follow the link & I fall on TTA lossless website obviously from the same developer ... I recall I saw a news about it something like a month ago but at the time I said to myself: "Well a new lossless codec can't beat old one like Flac/MonkeyAudio (nor Wavpack/Optimfrog/Shorten) so it doesn't worth a try" ... furthermore at start I disliked the codec name "the truer than other true audio codecs" ... which sounded as stupid to me as "the losslesser than other lossless audio codecs" ... so I didn't try it at that time ... damn how idiot I was

Despite being new this lossless codec is great ... it jumped out from nowhere directly to my N°2 favored lossless codec after Flac ...

For me & as far as I tested it ... it's something between Flac & Ape not far from taking the best of both world ...
It has slightly better compression (1-2%) than Flac & slightly worst (1-2%) than Monkey Audio ...
It has encoding speed very close to Flac CL4-5-6 or Ape CL H-N

So it is very close to the best existing lossless codec without being the best in any specific area BUT being a very good N°2 choice in ANY area ... if Vorbis is the "Jack of All Trade" of lossy ... TTA is not far from beeing the "Jack of All Trade" of lossless ...

over Flac it has the advantage of:
- better thinked compression level/better default setting
- the highest compression level is faster/better

over Ape:
- clearly open sourced
- native command line

over Wavpack:
- no 5 sec seaking delay
- better winamp tag layout/display

ok TTA is not perfect it has flaws:
- leaks good linux audio players support (XMMS, ...)
- leaks good masstaggers support (mp3tag, ... )
- no option in winamp plug (RG... the plug doesn't display the encoder version)
- indeed no hardware support
(- use ID3V1-V2 instead of Ape-Vorbis Tags
==> this is not really a flaw in winamp the tags are displayed as flac/vorbis does which is the best way no matter the tag type IMHO)

so the biggest flaw of the codec is external to itself ... the main reason why I still use Flac over TTA is : leak of 3rd party appz support ...

give it a year or two & TTA will be a major lossless codec if it continue this way ...

Any other people have opinion on TTA ? either good or bad ?
I would like people to point me to flaws I may didn't have noticed to moderate my enthousiasm

Well, I guess tta was off to a bad start here at HA because it has been discovered that the comparisions they published were clearly biased towards their encoder (I don't know if this situation got any better)

You can probably find the thread where it is discussed doing a search.

BTW: Since you are so eager to advertize TTA, I would recommend you add a link to their site to your post

Oups ... http://tta.iszf.irk.ru/

I re-read the 2 or 3 old post related to TTA ... & if I re-post that's because I know several old & listened to users were a bit agressive about TTA ... but I often disagree with these people (Hi Garf;) ) Ok the 2 TTA devs may have been a bit enthousiast themselve about their codec & may have post an early unfair comparison ... but that doesn't make TTA a bad codec ...

ok Monkey Audio still have a little advantage in compression ratio at equivalent speed ... but for such a young codec ... the result kicks ass ...

it's open source, linux & hardware friendly if other dev/compagny wanna support it ... it has foobar & winamp early but not crappy support ... a speek front ... very competitive speed/ratio ... if I still understand why people (me included) may still favor flac or MA ... I think it is already as good (not to say clearly better) than wavpack/optimfrog/shorten ... which is really impressive for such a young codec ...

The only thing I didn't seriously test so far is its greedyness ... but it's seem ok at first look ...

So plz people be nicer with TTA devs, this codec worth it ...

Ok the TTA dev maybe made an error with an unfair comparison ... but we all make misstake ... when I first joined HA I disliked MPC much ... & finally I use it too (... sometimes) ... so ...

how do you know all that? did you look at the source code, look for hardware-compatible design, i.e. analyze the codec w.r.t. computational requirements, buffering, etc? did you run your own comparisons on real data? it sounds like you are just excited and repeating their claims.

I expect the only upcoming codec that has much of a chance for hardware support is wavpack4.

Josh

Actually there's a new version of the TTA frontend at my new website:
http://members.home.nl/w.speek/tta.htm

New features:
* Option to delete the source files after successful compression.
* Option to run TTA in idle priority class.

jcoalson:
hehe feel frustrated about such a good competitor that's very good for flac future LOL ... don't worry flac is still my favorite ... at last for some months ... tta being very good doesn't suddenly make flac obsolete ... got 120 gig of flac & I am very happy with it

Speek:
Thks a lot ... I use your flac front, your ogg front, your mpc front, your tta front ... what would I do without you

Why don't you answer Josh's question instead of trying to ridicule him ? How do you know if TTA is "hardware friendly" ? Did you do the research ?

Also, I see no compelling reason to use TTA instead of e.g. Monkey's Audio or Wavpack 4.

The age of the codec is not that important. I don't expect TTA to "magically" beat other lossless codecs in a few years. It's not like the compression ratios of e.g. Monkey's Audio improved substantially over the last few years.

I'm not saying that TTA is a bad codec, but I do have a problem with your excessive praise about it.


Edit: Argh, I accidently hit the submit button too soon.

PoisonDan:
I feel like TTA will become the Vorbis of lossless ... a first choice codec always put down by high ranked HA users ... that's really sad ...

... nevermind ... if anyone, not pessimistic, is interested in TTA ... I emailed MP3Tag dev http://www.mp3tag.de/en/index.html about the possibility of MP3Tag TTA support & here is the answer I get:

Hi!
I had a look at their website and some posts on HA and I'll consider adding
TTA support to an upcoming release of Mp3tag.
Best regards,
~ Florian

Plz people, ask Florian to make his great masstagger support TTA too
... the more we are the more Florian will seriously "consider" adding TTA support to MP3Tag