The final release of TAK 1.0.3 ((T)om's lossless (A)udio (K)ompressor).

Download links removed. TAK 1.0.4 has been released.


1. TAK Applications 1.0.3b (Updated 2007-12-16)

containing the GUI and command line compressor:

2. TAK Winamp plugin 1.0.7

containing the playback plugin for Winamp:

3. TAK SDK 1.0.5

containing the SDK documentation and the decoding library dll for developers:

4. TAK Decoding library 1.0.6

containing only the decoding library dll which is part of the SDK. It's provided for end users using third-party applications utilizing the library, who want to update the library to the current version:

Comments and discussion should go into this thread: TAK 1.0.3

History

2007-12-16
Fixed a bug in the GUI version ("Tak.exe"):

- If the maximum size of the wave file meta data was set to 0, the compressor stopped with an "Error writing destination" error.


What's new in the Applications

New Features:

- Support for pipe encoding.
- New command line switch -ihs (ignore header size) for pipe encoding.
- New command line option -sts (set seek table size) for pipe encoding.
- New command line switch -silent (silent operation).
- The command line option -wm now let's you specify a maximum size for the wave meta data.
- New command line switch -pMax to select the strongest encoder preset.
- The file info function shows you how much space (if any) in the header is beeing wasted because of pipe encoding.

Improvements:

- Tiny compression improvements for the presets 0 to 2, rarely also for the stronger presets. The average improvement for my test corpus is about 0.05 percent. Not much, but it comes without a significant speed penality.
- Small decoding speed improvements of 4 (preset 5) to 8 (preset 0) percent on my system.
- The Readme file now contains a simple contents section with links to the most relevant topics. There is also a new section about pipe encoding. If you want to use it, please read the text...

Modifications:

- The decoder had to be modified to guarantee error robustness (decoding through errors) for files created by pipe encoding with the -ihs (ignore header size) switch applied.
- Some modifications of the decoding error log file ("Tak_Deco_Error.txt").
- In TAK 1.0.2 there was no difference between the presets -p4/p4e and -p5/-p5e. This irritated some users. Now they are slightly different.
- Command line: The alternative syntax (-pT to -pI) for the preset specification is no longer supported. Now -p0 to -p5 is obligatory.
- GUI: The buttons for preset and evaluation level selection have been removed from the encoder options dialog. Please use the comparison table instead.
- GUI: Moved the Verify switch from the general encoder options to the details dialog.
- GUI: The Save wave file meta data switch has been removed from the encoder output options sheet. Please use the Wave file meta data - Maximum Size setting on the stream options sheet instead.
- Because of an update of my Delphi compiler the binaries are now about 35 KB bigger.

Fixed:

- Some applications crashed if they tried to redirect the output of the command line version. This seems to have been caused by a bug in the Delphi runtime library. Now i am accessing the console directly, what hopefully avoids this trouble.

What's new in the encoder/decoder library (affecting the applications, the decoding library and the Winamp plugin):

Modifications:

- The decoder had to be modified to guarantee error robustness (decoding through errors) for files created by pipe encoding with the -ihs (ignore header size) switch applied.

What's new in the SDK (compared to 1.0.4):

Interface changes (Adaptions for TAK 1.0.3):

- The tak_Preset_xxx-constants have been removed from the include files. TAK's presets are now named purely numerical (no more Turbo, Fast...).

Thanks, keep up the great work.

If it is encoding setting of GUI and will encode it with Maximum Size of Wave file
meta data as 0, I become Error writing destination.

Click to view attachment

Even if I appoint a direct -wm0 option in a command-line and encode it,
the error is not given.

Thank you. I can confirm this bug. The command line version is affected too: it will ignore the setting and store the wave meta data.

This bug does not affect the file integrity!

And probably not many users disable the storage of the wave meta data, otherwise some of the beta testers would have found the bug.

Therefore i would like to wait with a fix until the release of 1.0.4. I hope, that's ok.

Thomas

Thomas, are you receptive to more feature requests?

Here i was wrong: The command line version is working as expected.


Surely

Will it be good by recognition to be a problem of the GUI application side?
Because I rarely do it, I wait for the setting of meta data to the next version.

yoshikaku

Fine. The bug is only related to the GUI version and as i wrote above, it will not affect the file integrity.

Additionally there is anyhow little reason to set the wave meta data size to 0. The standard wave header is about 44 or 46 bytes big, therefore you will hardly save a significant amount of space if you disable the storage of wave meta data.

Thomas

I just have released a fixed V1.0.3b.

Thomas

I thank for fast correspondence. Thank you very much.

I am sorry that Comparison(Turbo,Fast...etc) indication has disappeared with it and TAK 1.0.3x GUI Version.

yoshikaku

COOL

Minimal (not necessarily representative) test: works, very fast, very good compression

Input 8 bps mono WAV 4 MiB

product: time, compression factor

WAVPACK: 120s, 2.97 | used "nonrecommended" extreme settings
TAK: 6s, 3.21

Future plans ? Up-to-date info in English ( "aktuelle Version TAK 1.0.2 sowie das Zubehör" ) ? Open sourcing ( a minimal decoder at first ) ? Even better audio compression ? Compress those GIF's with OPTIPNG/PNGOUT by far more than "test corpus is about 0.05 percent" ?

If you are talking about the dynamic comparison table in the encoder options dialog: It's still there.

But instead of Turbo fast etc. the presets are now named p0, p1 etc. And because i have removed the preset buttons you now have to click into the table to select a preset.





I don't understand this...

Thomas