That's fine whatever floats your boat. It is however viewed differently almost everywhere else.



I am not giving you "the" policies. I am giving you "a" policy. One that everywhere I go is the same. And I think it is somewhat a golden rule. It really can defuse a situation. As opposed to what happened. Sorry. Take it or leave it you won't break my heart.



I did not include you in explanations of my own faults. Whenever I included you it was due to mutual faults. We both could have really handled the situation in a better manner.



Well I think banning would have been a bit harsh. The only time you ever warned me personally for anything it was in response to the way I was editing and quoting things when you switched to IBB. And the instant you mentioned it I altered it no questions asked. Fine by me. I to would preffer hashing it out through discussion. But sir pirhaps in the future we should air dirty laudry in private if something of this nature is to be the outcome. I look back and perhaps we have "hashed" things out. But at what cost to the forum.



It is an oppinion. I am free to have it. I am not going about claiming it is a fact. Ask me at any time and I will say exactly what it is. I do feal that at least in this thread you have masked your oppinion as fact a bit. But I am over it. And I know you probably do not care or will be aloof. Suits me fine. If you don't think my oppinion here is qualified, at least not within this community. I am tempted to tell you to ban me outright. I am me. I have oppinions and I can't stop it. No matter how hard I try. I am human. Instead I ask that if you think I am going to far afield dont burry or hide it. Just tell me outright to tone it down a bit. And I will. You, I, we don't have to do this sort of thing. I am generally a more than accomidating person. I do though realise I can at times get wound a bit tight. I'm working on it. We all have our faults. All of us. There has just been alot of stuff going on and being said lately that led up to this. By people who should have known better.

Anyhow just so long as it is over and we can agree to disagree. Even if you make a habbit of trying to belittle me. Honestly I am not nor have I ever been out to cause trouble.

I can't say if the numbers for QuickTime are steady, but I know that it's pretty common to have it installed on a PC. QuickTime 6.0 included support for MPEG-4 out of the box; there was an MPEG-4 Simple Profile video codec and an Low Delay MPEG-4 AAC audio codec. The encoding capabilities in QuickTime Player are disabled unless you pay Apple, but none the less, they are present in the QuickTime library. The decoder is there anyway.

Actually, each of the companies backing AAC are larger than Microsoft in their own markets:
- Sony is bloody huge and make a lot of things Microsoft don't do, and have some markets where they are larger. The make game consoles, TV's, DVD and VHS players, cell phones, stereo sets, etc.
- Dolby have been around for years and probably have a pretty good name in the business.
- AFAIK AOL is after all the largest ISP in the world, whether you like them or not.
- Apple has their own niche, and AAC is already big there and WMA is non-existant. You will probably see them expanding to the PC market soon; Apple made the first steps with the iPod, and soon you'll probably see iTunes for Windows too. (I know Apple doesn't fit into this group, but they probably have the best brand in the computer industry.)

Why is it important for these companies that WMA under no circumstances replaces MP3? Because it would make them dependant on the whim of Microsoft, and they wouldn't know if they were allowed to use WMA five years from now. On the other hand, Microsoft will still have World Domination if AAC replaces MP3 and WMA. It'll just be World Domination w/ AAC in stead of World Domination w/ WMA You shouldn't overestimate Microsoft's brand anyway; many PC users are surprisingly critical towards them...

In the end, even if WMA replaces MP3 on the PC, AAC won't die. Ivan Dimkovic made some arguments why AAC suits the media industry better, and I trust he knows what he's talking about (whether he "breathes MPEG" or not). Both AAC and WMA are relatively new technologies, but where WMA was promoted by MS even when it sucked, AAC is now surfacing as something that really is better and doesn't have a bad reputation.

About those extensions, you didn't actually expect an average user to know what they meant? Of all those extensions, only two are relatively important: MP2 is important as the predecessor to MP3, and MP3... well...

BTW, Neo Neko, you shouldn't claim you're the "better man" of you and Dibrom. It's not something one chooses to be, but something one turns out to be. Why don't you just stop before they ban you?

@Neo Neko:

I thought you said you said you were done with this.

[quote][quote]@Neo Neko:

Speak for yourself regarding trolling.  I think my past record in this community speaks well enough for itself regarding my behavior.[/quote]
That's fine whatever floats your boat. It is however viewed differently almost everywhere else.[/quote]

I'm not sure if you're trying to imply that "everywhere else" I am viewed in a negative light or what. I certainly don't think this is the case though from mentions I have seen of my work with this community on other forums.

[quote]I am not giving you "the" policies. I am giving you "a" policy. One that everywhere I go is the same. And I think it is somewhat a golden rule. It really can defuse a situation. As opposed to what happened.[/quote]

Since I don't think you got the point I was trying to make, I am uninterested in how things are "everywhere else". I happen to feel that many other forums are managed poorly in this regard, and I think that the HA experience vs other forum experiences often bears this fact out. And if you still don't get it, by responding to you in the manner I did vs other more dimissive, passive, or so-called heavy handed approaches I was actually giving you the benefit of doubt beyond being here simply to troll. Ignoring you or not making you aware of the fact that certain attitudes are unwelcome was not and is not an acceptable approach.

[quote]I did not include you in explanations of my own faults. Whenever I included you it was due to mutual faults. We both could have really handled the situation in a better manner.[/quote]

Again, speak for yourself. The "mutual faults" you listed were not mutual. If you want to make apologies for yourself, that's fine, but do not make apologies for me.

[quote]I to would preffer hashing it out through discussion. But sir pirhaps in the future we should air dirty laudry in private if something of this nature is to be the outcome. I look back and perhaps we have "hashed" things out. But at what cost to the forum. [/quote]

I have found that discussing these things in length privately often does not result in much of an effect. It also causes the admins of this board to take much more flak when carrying out administrative issues because other board members have not been aware of certain problems and so they feel that we have acted hastily or wrongly, etc. Mentioning these things in public, in context, provides more incentive for the person being addressed to actually pay heed to the message while simultaneously providing examples of the way the forum rules around here work to other people reading the threads.

[quote]I do feal that at least in this thread you have masked your oppinion as fact a bit.[/quote]

The problem is that you do not seem to recognize the critical differences between mere "opinions" and weak or strong arguments.

[quote]I am tempted to tell you to ban me outright.[/quote]

If you'd prefer to play the matyr role even further, then that could be a possibility. On the other hand, I am tempted to ask you to simply stop whining.

[quote]I am me. I have oppinions and I can't stop it. No matter how hard I try.[/quote]

Whether or not I believe this, in that you "have no choice" so to speak, this still isn't an excuse for posting trollish or inflamatory comments.

[quote]Instead I ask that if you think I am going to far afield dont burry or hide it. Just tell me outright to tone it down a bit. And I will.[/quote]

That's exactly what I did, and look what happened.

[quote] I do though realise I can at times get wound a bit tight. I'm working on it. We all have our faults. All of us. There has just been alot of stuff going on and being said lately that led up to this. By people who should have known better. [/quote]

Please don't attempt to shift blame or appeal to pity for the things you have said or the way you have handled yourself. If you flew off the handle because you wrongly interpreted a rather generalized comment as some sort of personal attack, that is your problem, not someone elses.

[quote]Even if you make a habbit of trying to belittle me.[/quote]

I don't make a habit of trying to belittle anyone on the forums here, but I will tell you now that I don't take lightly to belligerent retorts to observations I have made on forum policy and a given users approach to this.

Very off-topic - but with IBF can you stop a user from posting to a single thread? Might help stop similar situations outright, without punishing anyone else by closing the thread completely?

I am new here I have no desire or intent to start or prolong any fights whatsoever or to inflame or otherwise damages the feelings of anyone. I started reading this thread because I have begun to use AAC (I am on a mac) and I am interested in its development in other markets. Reading this thread I also read the veritabe war between Dibrom and Neo Neko.

Now that that is squared away and without expressing my views on who is right I would simpy like to say that the comment that started this war, is not inflammatory in the least, simply a statement of a desire to keep a discussion on a path that is constructive. I think that someone construeing such a statement as an insult is the manifestation of someones desire to start and argument. Just my opinion, I hope this isn't going to turn into a baseless me bashing thread.

Low Complexity!

Low Delay is used in telecommunications only.

Well there is a larger context and history that it can be viewed from. One that I feel gives more than adequate justification for my response. But you are new here.(Welcome to the forum BTW) And strictly speaking without that context and history the comment was rather benign. Though I do feel that untill the subject had been specifically broached it was better left unsaid. Since it's mention it has gone to become a noticable part of the thread.

In the end I don't know when things between Dibrom and myself will be "squared away". At this point they are quite far from it. And I don't know if they ever will be. Irregardless of who started it though I am making an effort to stop it and ignore his contiuation of it. I did however take the opportunity to speak with someone else in more reasonable tones to learn what the actual original greevance was. While I don't agree with everything they disagreed with I do see room for improvement on my part. The difficulty arises because I see room for improvement elsewhere as well.




Back to the real topic. AOL has licensed AAC. I still don't see it as signs of a great impetus towards AAC. Infact outside this forum AACs mention is actually rather rare and sparadic. Irregardless I am curious as to exactly what AOL has licensed. They plan to use AAC along with their proprietary streaming server to provide their radio services. To date AAC has done quite well at mid to high bitrates. Say 100Kbps and up. Perhaps 80Kbps. For broadband this is not a problem. But even with AOL the majority of it's subscribers are at 56k or less. And at that range recent tests IIRC showed that AAC(Not Dolby AAC mind you) was less than adequate. Which has led to alot of talk and hype about AAC+. Is AAC to be licensed like MP3 in the respect that MP3 and MP3-Pro(the equivalent to AAC+) are to my knowledge as separate entities? If so was this included in the AOL/Dolby deal? If not it makes me question it a bit more.

My guess is AAC+ and AAC can be treated as the same thing, as they form part of the same standards set out in MP£G4? You would hope AOL uses AAC+ otherwise as you say, at ~40kbs it's a mid-card scorer on the tests.

But I wonder. If it were to be treated as the same thing then should it not be called simply AAC? Perhaps then it would be a sub profile of standard AAC. But by all accounts I have seen it getting separate treatment from AAC.

Also there was talk that any DSP that supported MP3 supports AAC. But If I am not mistaken DSP that support MP3 do not as a general rule support MP3-Pro. They would also likewise not support AAC+. Though in such general aplications as portables I have no high hopes for DSP any more. People may think they are the key to AACs sucess. And I do think DSP will be the one area AAC will surely win. The market for DSP are dwindling and begining to leave the consumer space.

It's my impression that "AAC+" will indeed just be called AAC. What we call AAC right now is AAC Low Complexity profile. AAC+ (isn't that just Ahead's marketing name?) will be called AAC High Efficiency. I think that whether HE AAC will be successful is mainly determined by two things: First, if the license fees, like MP3Pro, are twice as high as the normal version, it might not see widespread use; if it costs the same as LC AAC, it will probably be more common. Second, if Dolby and Fraunhofer make their codecs support it, other companies will likely buy those versions. AAC HE also has the advantage over MP3Pro that it isn't five years late

It seems to me that AAC is made for both hardware and software codecs, so I guess we'll see it in DSPs.

Heh.. how did you come to this conclusion?

His continuation? As far as I see you are continuing despite saying several times otherwise. Hope this time you actually do what you say..

Anyway, more AAC news today: Nokia and Warner Music made a deal which brings music to Nokia 3300 device encoded with MP3/AAC.
http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/4125.cfm
http://press.nokia.com/PR/200306/905961_5.html

I'd not realized this is fresh news, since I've been using it in the Blue Hawaii beta for two weeks. Mock me for naive simplicity, but it works and sounds great! I can listen to the 1411 kbps Washington state radio station Microsoft supports, and it takes equipment and ears better than mine to distingush the quality. Will someone tell me what the Rado@AOL stream rate is?
My one cavil is that, in the AllJazz station I favor, hiss in older recordings seems overly emphasized.
I got exhausted reading the back and forth flaming, so maybe someone mentioned it. But, surely one factor has to be AOL's hopes for averting stream ripping. After all, every piece played has a "Click to buy" link.

DSP will not go away completely. But their prominence will dwindle. It is only a matter of time. As things evolve who wants to buy a separate portable for each function? DSP will always be perfect for specific use applications. Especially in corporate applications or a communications function. They are made to do a few things but do it well. But there are devices being developed today that will do more and the public will want to do more. Dibrom you seem to know so much. I am honestly curious and perhaps you can answer this for me. Is it more cost effective to design and embed a single DSP in a multifunction portable device for each and every function the device supports. Or would it be better to implement a more powerfull, less specialised general processor perhaps aided by special DSP but only for intensive things like encoding of audio and video. Decoding could be handled by the general processor.

I stopped replying to his posts and ignored many of them that sought only to continue this snafu quite a while back now. How am I continuing??

Nostradamus, is that you?

Really, Neko, you should stop posting like if you already knew the future. Who do you think you are to make such statements? It only makes you look like a fool desperate for attention.

Spreading some "IMO" and "I think" or "I believe" in your posts would do a lot of good to them. Would also give you credibility (or, at least, avoid you losing even more).

Basically what you're saying then (by not answering the question) is that this conclusion you have reached is based on conjecture and opinion only, and that you have no actual sources to back it all up?

I don't know how many times I have to continue to point out this matter to you. Simply put, stop spreading FUD in this thread -- things like "I wonder..", "poor, poor AAC", your little jabs towards Ivan and crew, or now your roundabout manner of casting doubt on AAC by proclaiming the death of DSP. If you have something remotely substantiated to say, then fine, but if you're only here to cast doubt and pick fights then, once again, you're better off doing it somewhere else.



I'm not even going to bother with answering this. Why? Because I don't work with DSP's and quite frankly I don't have the industry experience to make claims about whether or not "DSP's are dwindling and begining to leave the consumer space." I don't consider myself a qualified authority, and I surely don't consider you to be one either. I'd prefer to keep the conjecture to a minimum and not speculate on something which I'm not involved with. However, that doesn't stop me from asking for the references you use for the highly speculative claims that you continue to grace us with in this thread.

Well, on the DSP point, I do think it's likely that consumer-type portable devices will stop relying on DSP chips at some point in the not-too-distant future, because general-purpose processors will be powerful enough to run software to play at real-time with no skipping (this is already possible if you don't multitask -- you can play mp3s just fine a 300-400 MHz PocketPC device running a general-purpose processor like the Intel XScale). Once these are more commonly at 600-700 MHz there'll be no reason to pay lots of money for a custom-designed DSP chip when you can just download software to your PDA (that as a bonus can also do everything else a PDA can do). Same way nobody buys stand-alone DSP-chip-based "home stereo" mp3 players -- we just play on our computer, decoding using a general-purpose processor and software implementations.

@Delirium

I think you and I are on a similar wavelength here. DSP are not going to disappear. But they are no longer going to be in charge of what you can and can not do. At this point I could get a solid state MP3 player or for a little more I could get a pocket PC capable of playing MP3 and more. Perhaps soon even AAC. Add to that the possibility for bluetooth and wireless and it could not get much better.

@Dibrom
First nothing I have said was intended as "jabs towards Ivan and crew". I have the utmost respect for Ivan and crew. The only jabs ever purposefully or intentionally aimed at anyone was you. And that was many many posts ago in this thread. Also please don't speak of sources to back anything up. You have not provided anything to this point either. And if you don't want me to type any more of what you call FUD or conjuecture please don't post anything like

because it is misleading to say the least. Oh and if I am having a problem with words please don't put ones I never said in my mouth. Where did I say anything about

which contradicts what you just quoted of me.

As to picking a figh I don't have to at this point. Not since you are overtly provoking. My question to you was honest and sincere. I am not sure what I could ever do to please you accept shut up and go away. But I am not going to do that. Sorry.

Cheap DSP and VLSI designs will be very important for years to come because of price - of course, the only valid answer is "time" - we will see what is going to happen in next 1/2/5 years, but I am quite confident that cheap fixed-point architectures will be cores of all cheap multimedia CE devices.

Neo Neko:

The whole industry of serious audio is behind AAC. Only MS is behind WMA. WMA has some importance only from a PC (better say Windows) user point of view and related uses, and even here is still miles behind MP3. AAC is beginning to be and will be important from all perspectives. AAC has been under serious design and development for many years. MS has been releasing new, sometimes backwards incompatible versions of WMA from time to time. AAC is standarized. WMA is not. There is much available hardware that is already able to decode (and encode?) AAC. How much of WMA? DSPs are and will always be important from the point of view of small, cheap and fast, specialized devices. Over general purpose processors, I believe there are various AAC engines available, whilst the only WMA engine is from MS.

Now, your style of argumentation is to use firm assertions that are backed just from vague suppositions and digressions of how things are, were, or will be. And the way Dibrom is seen here from most people differs quite a bit from the way I believe you are seen, and not exactly in the sense you suggested.

Even for the general CPU architectures AAC is available from several vendors,

Encoder is available either as floating point or fixed point code (for fixed-point only CPUs), it is also available as very fast "consumer" grade codec (fastest AAC encoder I've seen is running 35x times real time encoding on P4 2.0) or highest quality "pro" codec.

Available to all architectures (Intel, ARM, PPC, DSPs , ...) and OS independent, and worldwide standard - it is miles ahead of WMA in every aspect - except one, that WMA is backed by MS.

We will see what will "win" - all arguments in favor of AAC, or "MS backing" of WMA.

I was just curious as to where you found that information.

AFAIK, some key elements of the WMA codec were designed by H.S. Malvar, who practically came up with the MLT and did a lot of research on fast implementations (both integer and floating point) for various transforms.

Are there other aspects (bit allocation, quantization, entropy encoding) besides the transform where a typical (HE) AAC implementation is significantly faster then WMA?

As far as the transform kernel is in question, AAC and WMA use same transform, although AAC allows two window shapes (sine and kaiser) and adaptive window shape switching, making it more flexible for certain types of signals.

I didn't directly refer to speed, but to other aspects. WMA uses loads of static tables (ffmpeg - wmadata.h) and its memory requirements imposed a lot of design issues on cheap DSP devices.

AAC, on the other hand, could use various approximations for the inverse quantization factors (various AES papers were published on this) and fast huffman decoding, making it much easier to port to limited hardware architectures. This also translates to battery consumption, etc..

Do you have an indication for what signals (or how often) AAC switches between windows? Can this be done directly or is a similar scheme as for switching between windows of different lengths necessary (eg. nonsymmetric transition windows).


OK, thanks for the clarification.

Most reference implementations use KBD windows for "long" blocks, improving performance of tools like TNS (because small overlap) , and sine windows for "short" blocks. Start and stop widnows use transition shapes, which are combinations of sine and KBD windows.