I'd like to announce version 0.5.0 of CELT. CELT is a very low delay (<10 ms), high quality audio codec suitable for applications such as network music performance and high-quality teleconferencing.

This release includes simplifications to the bit allocation code and includes a new low-complexity mode that can be enabled (without breaking compatibility) on the encoder side and which results in a 50% saving on the CPU. There are several other optimisations and bug fixes included. The API has also been slightly modified, so code using CELT will have to be updated (minor changes).

Note that the bit-stream still isn't frozen yet. So the good thing is that you can still give us feedback so we can improve it. The bad thing is that you can't rely on backward compatibility yet.

Perhaps not worth a new full announcement:



CELT is still undergoing active development but we're pushing towards finalizing the bitstream. We still have much to work on: Dynamic bit allocation, improved stereo coding, and overall psychoacoustic tuning are still TODO items. Now is a good a time as any to get involved if you'd like a chance to help improve the codec *before* the bitstream is set in stone. It would be especially useful to discover if anyone is aware of any torture samples with which CELT currently gives poor results.

If you'd like to help out with CELT but don't know where to start, feel free to drop me an email or join the CELT discussion in #vorbis on freenode irc.

Cheers

This part is one that interests me somewhat. Please, don't rush to freeze the bit-stream. In this stage, please announce it so that more people know that the bit-stream isn't fixed yet, so that they shouldn't rely on it for storage yet, but this is for the good of the format.

Perhaps announcing it at a high volume site like Slashdot would be a good thing (if I had not checked Hydrogenaudio, I would not even know about CELT). Of course, there will be whiners (they are always there), but the thing is that it will raise more exposure to CELT and some moderately informed people may become aware of it.


Thanks, Rogério Brito.

Perhaps you can suggest some good things to have completed (obviously not the bitstream) before we make a push for wider attention. There are a number of obvious things, like a more accessible explanation of the purpose of CELT on the web-page. I recently added win32 builds of the simple example encoder/decoder tools, which I considered a pre-requisite (so that non-developers on Windows could try out the quality of CELT), but I'm curious to hear if you have other ideas.

I think that the general public doesn't really get that codecs add delay, nor really appreciate the importance of delay until they experience a first hand comparison, nor do they appreciate the quality improvement of full-bandwidth speech vs wideband speech. So I'd expect a slashdot announcement to complains by folks who don't appreciate the purpose of CELT being unhappy that CELT isn't something else entirely. I also don't expect there to be a lot of hidden codec developers lurking on slashdot. Of course, I could be totally wrong, but this is why I wouldn't rush to draw that kind of attention.