This thread was sparked by Josh Coalson's recent post in reply to me about his desire for Apple to support the FLAC format he authored.

I believe Josh is on to something here. With all the recent announcements from Apple and EMI about desiring all music record labels to support open, unprotected (non-DRM) audio formats, one thing has been overlooked: a Lossless compressed format.

Apple, with their iPods, iTunes software and Apple TVs (and soon iPhones) has support for open (unprotected), non-proprietary audio formats:

WAV or AIFF - original source audio files (no compression) - industry standards
MP3 - lossy - MPEG 1 Level III - an international standard
MPEG 4 Audio (AAC) - lossy - an international standard

Their ALAC (Apple Lossless) is non-standard and proprietary, and seems to be based on many elements of FLAC. Josh (the author of FLAC) has set up a petition page for Apple to select his open, free FLAC lossless standard for support by Apple. You can voice your concern to Apple on this issue via a link to Apple on Josh's page at:

http://flac.sourceforge.net/itunes.html

I encourage all people who are interested in iPods, iTunes, iPhones and Apple TVs being able to natively support FLAC to contact Apple (politely) and ask for Apple to adopt this open-source free lossless standard format (FLAC) in all their audio products. That way Apple will truly have open, standard (read non-proprietary) support in their popular iPod, iTunes and other products that can freely be read by other competitior's software and hardware products.

The more open formats that Apple adopts, the better we all are. Being tied into proprietary Microsoft WMA (DRM and non-DRM) and Apple ALAC formats is not wise in the long run and will require audio conversions in the future. Better to support a popular, non-proprietary, free lossless format now.

Isn't FLAC coming to iTunes with Leopard already?

I though much of the reason for ALAC was that they needed something that they code encode in realtime in a G4 at a low percentage of the total CPU so they could use it to stream over the air from iTunes to Airport Express? While FLAC is very computationally cheap to decode encoding is another matter.

From what I have been told, Apple went with ALAC because 1) MPEG4's ALS wasn't finished yet and 2) it would be cheaper and faster to them to create a decoder from scratch using technologies they knew were unpatented (or were easy to license if necessary) than running FLAC through several patent lawyers.

Rumours only, and might be a command line FLAC utility only. We won't know for sure until Leopard is released. Might also be FLAC 1.1.2 based, as it sometimes takes Apple years to catch up with latest release builds. Also, even if iTunes has FLAC import support (which may happen), it is very unlikely that iPods, iPhones and Apple TVs will be able to play back FLAC (.flac) files without them being converted to another format first. Anyway, it won't hurt to light a candle under Apple to get full native FLAC support included in all their hardware and software line, and not just in the new Mac OS.


FLAC encoding has gotten much faster in FLAC release 1.1.4. This should be a moot point now as CPUs have gotten much faster since then too.


Your point is well taken, but if the FLAC rumors being built into CoreAudio for MAC OS are true then Apple is likely satisfied with any potential patent concerns about FLAC.

As far as I know (correct me if I am wrong), but any built-in CoreAudio codec on OS X has been available via iTunes for encoding. I don't see any reason for them to not add FLAC to iTunes if they add it to CoreAudio.

Just posted my feedback. Hope it all works out in FLAC's favor!

I would like Apple to support FLAC in iTunes as it is completely free (so is iTunes though) but is not a proprietary format. ALAC is fine and all for streaming audio via the AirTunes Express setup but computers have reached a step where they can probably do this with any lossy/lossless audio format, not just ALAC.

I doubt Apple would add FLAC support to the current line of iPods though, I am not sure if the older generation ones (mainly the 4G and below iPods along with the 1G mini/nano and 1G shuffles) would have the processor power to play FLAC. It would be nice for 5G/5.5G iPod owners but I don't see Apple implementing FLAC support in the iPods until the 6G models, if they even add FLAC support to the iPods at all.

I filled the form. I hope people in Apple listen to their customers wishes.

oh how I wish this idea would die... libFLAC has always encoded faster than the itunes ALAC encoder. once you know the design of both codecs, this is intuitive: ALAC is basically FLAC with a few extra algorithms on top that add complexity (adaptive LPC, individual rice escape codes), which is also why I don't buy that patent-fear was the issue either (roberto, who told you that?). apple is very probably more exposed to litigation with ALAC than FLAC due to the added complexity.

P.S. if anyone knows a better way to get apple's ear than this petition, let me know. (see also)

Josh



anything that can play ALAC can play FLAC with more headroom given the same effort at implementation. (by that I mean comparing a VLSI ALAC decoder that took a team 6-12 months to implement against libFLAC plugged in with a couple days work is not representative.) I think FLAC was playing on 3G ipods running ipodlinux before there even was an ALAC.

personally I think the only use for lossless on portables is not having to transcode to sync. audio quality is not an issue.

Josh,

Perhaps you could put a link on the FLAC home page in a prominent place, so more people can find the link to your page about contacting Apple to add FLAC support? I believe you used to have it featured on the main page, but the link/description appears to have gone away. You might also like to link to this thread as well, so Apple devs can see that people really desire FLAC support.

Thanks.

Some random thoughts

1) I think FLAC is a great codec but I'm a little lost here...Apple's support is wanted/need why? I'm not an itunes user but as a music lover I have to be happy they are finally supporting some sort of lossless codec (which can be transcoded in a pinch, no?)

2) That said, there are certainly Apple/itunes blogs, forums, etc - I suggest working that side of the fence. In general, FLAC needs to a raising of awareness anyway. The average Joe/Jane (read: the majority of Apple's customers) doesn't even know it exists, let alone why it's better than wav/aiff.

3) I haven't read anything (yet?) but if Apple is going to drop formal DRM then I have to assume they are at least going to use watermarking with the customer's ID at time of purchase. I'm not sure what this entails but it could be that Apple whipped up their own lossless codec to make this easier. To the best of my knowledge no one makes a watermarker for FLAC.

I have no doubt Apple will introduce FLAC support, if it is not with Leopard (likely if you ask me) it will be soon after.

I get the impression FLAC gains popularity in the professional audio world. Topics like this where people are looking for ways of extending FLAC to support specific needs in the industry are a sign of that.

Apple has been pretty active in the pro audio world lately and there are signs they are increasing this, if you believe the rumours surrounding Logic Pro and Soundtrack Pro. When FLAC is gaining ground in the pro world and they want to serve that market, supporting FLAC makes perfect sense.

A dude, when I asked them why didn't they go with ALS or FLAC.

Another thing he said was this:



Considering that this dude works at Apple (and they really hate when their insiders talk to outsiders), I won't disclose his name.

unfortunately that extra step is something that most itunes users will never do.


you can't really watermark a lossless stream in the conventional sense; since it's lossless you'd have to watermark the original signal before compression, at which point it doesn't matter which codec you use.

about FLAC support in Leopard, I don't know what is happening either, does anyone have some evidence they can point to or is it all still rumor at this point?

Josh

It's in CoreAudio so why should it be there if it isn't going to be supported?

All iPods except the shuffle have no special audio playing hardware it's all done using optimised ARM code on the CPU. An issue with ALAC on iPods is buffering, it can't prebuffer as much compressed audio and therefore has to spin the disk up more often consuming power. This wouldn't be an issue on the flash based ones but then they wouldn't be able to store enough songs using ALAC so I don't think Apple enable it.

Since iPods already play ALAC the issue would be locating FLAC decoder optimised for ARM under an appropriate license or writing one from scratch. You'd need to hand optimise some of the functions in ARMcode to get it to work I expect, although you might get away with a C implementation using the very lastest GCCs.

I'm fairly sure the original shuffle couldn't be adapted to ALAC. The new shuffle is a posibility (no don't ask me what's inside it because I can't tell you) but again Apple wouldn't do it due to lack of enough flash space to store sufficent songs.

there is no need to write one from scratch or do hand-optimization, as I said libFLAC has been working on iPods for quite some time and it's BSD licensed. also rockbox uses a FLAC decoder based on ffmpeg's having only one simple function written in ARM asm.

Josh

Any news on this ? Leopard is coming out, and nobody's talking !

Is FLAC still implemented in CoreAudio ?
Has it been implemented into QuickTime ?
Is it going to be ?

If so, then maybe we have a chance to see iTunes FLAC support via QuickTime, in both Macs and PCs of course.

If not...............

So what's the latest news ? There is no more NDA now, so developers with Leopard versions can speak.

Thank you.

Leopard is coming out but it isn't currently out so we probably won't hear anything until Leopard has reached the retail market, probably a few days after as well. I am actually anxiously waiting to see if they include a new AAC encoder with Leopard. I thought it was supposed to use a new AAC encoder that will be included with a separate iTunes/QuickTime download released the same day the OS becomes available. That is another topic for another discussion though.

Feedback sent. In the meantime install Rockbox on your iPod to get FLAC support.

Leopard is out today folks ! Maybe we'll finally have some news ?

I'll have my copy of Leopard installed by tomorrow night. I'll see if I can play a FLAC file.

Sent the form to Apple already, hope they'll listen.

There's no harm to support FLAC, and it's a good show if Apple willing to support open-sourced projects, not going towards the same way that Microsoft walked.

well if there is any good news today, be sure to PM me here or send a mail to the flac list so I can update the site.

I'm afraid I'll have to let you down, there doesn't seem to be any support for FLAC in Leopard here.

FLAC is supported in the Leopard via its developer SDK for Leopard per an AAC developer, see here:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=525616

So it appears that end-users will have to to wait for Mac application developers to start using the FLAC tools embedded in the Leopard SDK inside their Mac apps before they see this FLAC support.

i am using wavpack, myself. but i cant think of it being much help just to add it to itunes. i would rather them skip itunes, and have ipod support, if they did only one or the other.

What does it mean "supported (...) via its developer SDK"? That's a quite inaccurate statement and I don't think word "supported" can be used with what there is in the Leopard developer SDK. An example implementation of an AudioCodec built on top of libFLAC is all there is. Without any attempts to support any container file format that is used for FLAC (native FLAC, Ogg FLAC) it's of no use to normal users, and of little use even to developers. And there are no "FLAC tools embedded in the Leopard SDK".

For interested a bit more details on that subject in my post here.

Arkadini wrote :

Really ? Now THAT's good news ! But I thought that was impossible :

Josh Coalson wrote :

So arkadini, can you please enlighten us ? Thanks.

Thanks for the clarification. I am not a developer, so was just reporting what the AAC developer had said in the other thread about Leopard FLAC support. Sorry to hear that Apple didn't better support FLAC in Leopard.