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You have to do this specifically because AAC is patented.

That is: Third-party AAC libraries do exist. But they infringe on AAC patents. If software patents didn't exist, or if patents had a shorter term, reverse engineering and reimplementing these formats would be legal, no matter what the licensing restrictions.

Now go back and read my comment, and the thread in general -- this is about what would happen if there were no software patents. On the one hand, this would mean vorbis and theora might never see the light of day, and certainly wouldn't have seen what success they have. On the other hand, we'd be able to use AAC and h.264 without those licensing restrictions.

AAC is an open standard, as in the spec is publicly available for anyone.

There are even open source implementations:
  - http://www.audiocoding.com/faac.html (encoder)
  - http://www.audiocoding.com/faad2.html (decoder)

AAC is an open standard, as in the spec is publicly available for anyone.

There are even open source implementations:
  - http://www.audiocoding.com/faac.html (encoder)
  - http://www.audiocoding.com/faad2.html (decoder)

1. AAC is not Apple proprietary, nor was it developed, subsidized or (parent company) purchased by Apple. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

2. "Microsoft will never support AAC..." - except, it seems that they already do. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zune (not to mention Windows Mobile....)

3. The faad and faac are illegal in the US - try http://www.audiocoding.com/ - source is there, not binaries (see Wiki, again) and then also try to tell me what is the issue? Are you trying to suggest that there is nothing available for free on Linux / other that plays AAC files - legally? How about VLC? The world doesn't begin and end at the FSF - although the FSF is really, really fab, it's not the world. If anything in media playback is the word, it's VLC - but that's just me.....

Otherwise, your idea of Walmart dropping WMA because it is proprietary and won't play on iPods is probably quite true - I think that was the insightful part.

Because they are giving away source, not binaries. So they are not distributing an encoder or decoder per se. They even acknowledge this.

If AAC has license fees, why does http://www.audiocoding.com/ give faac & faad for free?

Jobs didn't want that, though. He didn't want universally compatible music, he wanted ipod-and-only-ipod compatible music, which is why these new higher priced songs are only offered in AAC.

Sony and Archos (at minimum) make players which support AAC. Commercial libraries like BASS and Alarity support encoding and decoding of AAC. FAAD2 is a free/open AAC decoder. The Helix Community has supplied a decoder which supports AAC (and lots of other things.) You can get Cellphone AAC Players for Symbian or Windows Mobile.

Can you please explain again how non-DRM'd AAC audio files create Apple lock-in?

There is! http://www.audiocoding.com/

Though, you do have to pay for a license to use an AAC encoder, so using this commercially you take your chances (though you get a licensed encoder with iTunes so business can just use that or go buy Coding Technologies encoder). You don't have to pay royalties for your content though.

Ah, the one thing I forgot.... open source AAC codecs:
http://www.audiocoding.com/

Here's One. I assume the specs are out there too, as there are some open source AAC projects, like this one.

Not to mention DRM has nothing at all to do with decoding AAC. Don't confuse AAC with iTunes' Fairplay-protected AAC files.

I think the parents was refering to "Apple's iTunes music", which, it would stand to reason, would be the music Apple circulates.

I don't think he was lying, I do think you were just overreacting.

Also, aac does have a "Linux codec".

You can get opensource AAC tools here:
http://www.audiocoding.com/

Don't confuse, aac does NOT necessarily mean it includes any DRM. It'superior MPEG standard audio compression. FAAC gurantees it's here to stay. Open Source mpeg4 aac codec - FAAC http://www.audiocoding.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding

The LAME and MAD are encoders not decoders.

I HAVE to play WMA with a WMP (as a plugin or as a player) and iTMS AAC with iTunes.

They probably use AAC software from http://www.audiocoding.com/
Since it's patented you're probably not allowed to distribute binaries of it (even though PLF for example does), but it is allowed to distribute source code, since that's regarded as just a blueprint, just like lame (mp3 encoder) and freetype (Apple bytecode interpreter).

It seems that they are using the OSS faac to do the actual MPEG4 audio encoding, which they have integrated into their QT4L wrapper.

So I suppose that they might be using QT itself for the H.264 part but not for the audio part (the summary is quite misleading). I'm not all that familiar with the source, but this is what it seems.

Note1: On the FAAC site there are the relevant notices of the licensing of MPEG-4 audio

Note2: The QuickTime Pro app in windows is licensed to generate MPEG-4 audio but custom apps aren't

1: AAC is an open standard and there are open-source encoders/decoders.
4: Apple probably couldn't sue or demand money if a competitor implemented AAC

Apart from these open source license issues you also have to pay attention to the involved patents of the AAC and MP4 formats that are handled by the licensing administrators Via Licensing.

Then ask Via Licensing:

Who needs to license MPEG-4 AAC patents?
An MPEG-4 AAC patent license is required for manufacturers or developers of complete (or substantially complete) end-user encoder and/or decoder products.

What kind of weird world do you live in where a patented algoritm requiring royalties equals "an open standard"? These patents mean Apple is free to harass and sue anyone who implements and/or distributes AAC without paying the Apple tax. This completely excludes all free and open source software. Why do you think FAAC are afraid to distribute binaries?

Ok, let me just say that I am a developer implementing an AAC player so I am familiar with it backwards and forwards. I am not at all familiar with MP3 per se so maybe I don't have my facts straight on MP3 itself... but AAC has some amazing features that MP3 doesn't have. Let's see, it has:

• Perceptual noise shaping (PNS): Noise can be sent just by labeling it as "noise" without having to accurately encode it.
• Temporal noise shaping (TNS): Information can be concentrated where it is needed.
• Different window lengths: long vs. short, so that areas where there is rapid signal change can be encoded with more information.
• Gain control: Enhance the dynamic range.
• Kaiser-Bessel windowing: More optimal than the sine windowing which I think MP3 is limited to. Oh, and it can switch between the two, also.

And that's just a few of them. It also has long-term prediction and so many other things. In fact the worst aspect of AAC is that it's very complicated to implement and if you turn on all these features (like long-term prediction, etc) you end up needing a lot of CPU to play it. But that is the right way to design a standard. Mobile phones three years from now are going to have Pentium II class CPUs standard, I would estimate, so we'll be able to use all the fancy features of AAC. And until then, there is AAC low-complexity.

If you want to learn a lot about AAC, check out the Audiocoding website.

A few links:
- Audiocoding - open source AAC codec
- MPEG-4 - MPEG 4 specification making reference to AAC

MP3 is MPEG-1 Layer 3 audio. Are you saying AAC is the audio compression defined by MPEG-4? I didn't think so...

Don't believe me, read for yourself:
- Apple's AAC page
- AAC licensing page
- Audiocoding - open source AAC codec
- MPEG-4

Note you may have to search for either AAC or "Advanced Audio Coding".

My suggestion? Consider AAC next time you reencode. Since it's part of the MPEG-4 spec (thus having massive industry support as opposed to VQF's "kind of neat" support) and offers a vast improvement in the size to quality ratio (as well as being supported by more portable devices than any other format other than MP3/WAV), it's already the next big thing.

More info at audiocoding.com.

CDex
Ogg Vorbis Audacity

CD-DA X-Tractor AudioCoding Mp3splt Mp3Wrap

Alba Extractor PeerCast GNUMP3d Mp3 Tag Tools

GramoFile FFmpeg

JAZZ++ Open Sound World

Wow. Slashdot really sucks. If the lameness filter actually prevented ascii art, they might have an excuse.

Here's a list of hardware AAC players. There's a lot more of them that you think.

These guys didn't do anything special. The libraries they used have been out and available in a simple command-line form for quite awhile. They apparently just made it more accessible to the public. The libs are available at http://www.audiocoding.com/. I've played with the command-line version before and it works fine.

Almost entirely untrue.

AAC is not obscure. It is not a non-standard format. It's standardized as part of MPEG-4...I'm sure you've heard of MPEG, right? The standards group responsible for the multimedia compression behind MP3 and DVDs? And most players are working their tails off to get support for it, because it's smaller and more ubiquitous than even MP3.

The only think you got right is that, no, it won't play 8-track tapes.

More TRUE info here.

Seriously, I don't think the problem is the AAC, it's the DRM. And that is common between iTunes and the WMA stores.

http://audiocoding.com/download.php

iTunes supports quite a lot of different third-party players

You're wrong. iTunes doesn't support anything other than an iPod when you're running iTunes For Windows. Quote:

"Other MP3 players do not work with iTunes for Windows."

Having said that, I'm using iTunes as a catalog and jukebox on my PC with 192kbps AAC files. Taking files with me is a two step process: I drag & drop directly from iTunes onto a Python script I wrote to transcode AAC files I want to listen to on the road to 128kbps MP3 (decode to wav, encode). I then use another program (RioRio) to transfer music to my Diamond Rio 500 (because the included software was Music Match - and that thing absolutely sucks).

My 500 only has a 64MB capacity, so the transcoding doesn't take long. Yes, it's messy - but it works and I have hi-def on the desktop, low def when I'm mobile and don't care.

As an aside, anyone know of any other jukebox & catalog software for Windows that doesn't make you put files in a playlist before you can listen to them? (Which is what turned me off every other player before I found iTunes).

AAC may be new (which is what you're talking about) but it is certainly standardized.

"Standard" in that phrase refers to files that meet the Mpeg-2/4 standard for AAC audio in an LC profile, which Apple Music Store Downloads don't (they encrypt the data, which decrypts to standard AAC during playback if a license file is available). They are quite "standardized," which means a standard has been published describing how to write a decoder for each of the 9 profiles, and most PC uses of AAC use the Low Complexity profile. They are most certainly as much a "standard" as MP3. As for programs and devices not playing them...that'll clear up quickly. At present, there are a dozen media player options for Mac, Windows and Linux, and since Apple's built AAC support into iTunes and the iPod, more portables will be jumping on board soon enough.

AAC files (why do people have trouble with those letters? It's double As, then a C, stands for Advanced Audio Coding, doesn't look like the start of te word ACCessory) are the new MP3 in just about every way except one: they don't have MP3's expensive licensing costs.

• AudioCoding
• AAC input plugin for XMMS

"2.2.2.8 AAC codec

AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is an audio codec sometimes found in MOV and MP4 files. An open source decoder called FAAD is available from AudioCoding.com. MPlayer includes libfaad 2.0RC1, so you do not need to get it separately.

See the license information on its Web site.

As far as I know, there is nothing on sourceforge for AAC playback (unless MPEG4IP has moved there since I last looked). FAAD (Free AAC Decoder), however, is availible here and can be compiled into an xmms plug-in. I doubt it can cope with Apple's DRM though...

For those of you wanting to play AAC file on Linux, then you should check out Audio Coding. It is open source under the GPL. There is both an encoder and decoder.

Eat your heart out :)

As everyone should be aware, mplayer playes quicktime movies on linux. Unfortunately, alot of people have problems with the audio. Basically, the problem is that the new quicktime movies use aac (advanced audio codec) audio instead of mp3 like older quicktime files. The solution of course is to install aac support for mplayer.

To do this, first you must install the codec. The codec that supports aac is available at audiocoding.com. It's called FAAD2. I used the cvs (1.2 beta) so I don't know if the stable 1.1 will work. (The 1.1 requires a small patch to get it to compile with newer forms of the libsndfile or forms of gcc > 3.) Other than that it compiled fine. The second change is that the libraries for faad are installed in /usr/local/lib. Apperently mplayer doesn't, by default, look in /usr/local/lib. I symbolically linked the libraries to /usr/lib (where mplayer DOES look), but I assume you could add /usr/local/lib to the search path.

Hopefully this helps many of the people who want to run these and other quicktime files on linux. Mplayer has made great strides and while it's not perfect, (crashes if you try to run 2 qt files back to back without restarting), it is the best there is for linux, (or for that matter any other system). (As an alternate note, the rpm faad2-1.1-fr1.20030409.i386.rpm does not work. While it installs to the correct place, the mplayer config is not able to detect the version of faad from it. I've heard that it will work as long as you also install the devel package, but did not test it.)

Now, it turns out that it's pretty easy to embed mplayer into mozilla, (or in my case phoen...err, firebird). You just need to go to the mplayer plugin project at sourceforge, download, compile and put in your plugin directory and mplayer will but up inside your browser so that those embeded-only files are no longer a problem.

Basically, as others said, the problem is that the new quicktime movies us aac (advanced audio codec) audio instead of mp3 like older quicktime files. The solution of course is to install aac support for mplayer.

To do this, first you must install the codec. The codec that supports aac is available at audiocoding.com. It's called FAAD2. I used the cvs (1.2 beta) so I don't know if the stable 1.1 will work. (The 1.1 requires a small patch to get it to compile with newer forms of the libsndfile or forms of gcc > 3.) Other than that it compiled fine. The second change is that the libraries for faad are installed in /usr/local/lib. Apperently mplayer doesn't, by default, look in /usr/local/lib. I symbolically linked the libraries to /usr/lib (where mplayer DOES look), but I assume you could add /usr/local/lib to the search path.

Hopefully this helps many of the peopole who want to run these and other quicktime files on linux. Mplayer has made great strides and while it's not perfect, (crashes if you try to run 2 qt files back to back without restarting), it is the best there is for linux, (or for that matter any other system). (As an alternate note, the rpm faad2-1.1-fr1.20030409.i386.rpm does not work. While it installs to the correct place, the mplayer config is not able to detect the version of faad from it.)

My apologies - I should have been a bit more specific.

Did you download and install this file? Or another one?

If you did install that file, did you run ldconfig as root before compiling mplayer? (That one caught me out - the installation of faac/faad doesn't do it for you, so mplayer won't autodetect it when compiling.)

• ATRAC1 Stereo (292 kbps)
• ATRAC1 Mono (146 kbps)
• ATRAC3 Stereo Longplay 2x (LP2) (132 kbps)
• ATRAC3 Stereo Longplay 4x (LP4) (66 kbps)

• ATRAC-1 (ATRAC1 Version 1)
• ATRAC-2 (ATRAC1 Version 2)
• ATRAC-3 (ATRAC1 Version 3)
• ATRAC-4 (ATRAC1 Version 4)
• ATRAC-4.5 (ATRAC1 Version 4.5)

• ATRAC3 352 kbps
• ATRAC3 264 kbps
• ATRAC3 132 kbps
• ATRAC3 105 kbps
• ATRAC3 66 kbps

• [Minidisc Webpage]