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KT-Tech Sound Compression - Music at 32 Kbit/s
Robert Buccigrossi writes: "KT-Tech, whose wireless video compression was featured in a previous Slashdot story, has released a demo for real-time sound compression at http://www.kttech.com/. Like their video, the sound compression is symmetric and is suitable for wireless real-time communication in software. It sounds better than Windows Media and MP3 at 32 Kbit/s for music and 4 Kbit/s for voice." According to the site, "licensing KT-Tech's sound codec is easy," but I bet it's not as easy as .ogg.
as long as it's better than any of RealNetworks Codecs, how bad could it possibly be?
How does K-Tel sound on KT-Tech?
My other sig is extremely clever...
This apears to be a pretty targeted solution "suitable for wireless real-time communication in software" so comparing it to wma/mp3/ogg doesn't really apply. As far as if its better or not, it doens't really matter, mp3 is still the de-facto standard for end-user music encoding, simply because everybody uses it. And a licenced codec will never take over the "market"
MP3 at 32 bit sounds so horrible it hurts my ears, but if it's for wireless technology I can see it's precidence. Really though, why would you try to outdo ogg? Personally I don't think bandwidth is the problem at the moment, the 3G networks will solve that (hopefully.) The problem is really with the devices themself. Battery life, useability, etc.
~Anztac
This is part of the license agreement to which you must agree before downloading the file to play the demo sounds... 4. TERMINATION. This Agreement will automatically terminate after one (1) year. KT Tech may terminate this Agreement earlier if you do not abide by the terms and conditions of this Agreement. In the event of any termination, you must destroy all copies of the Software and all of its component parts. Am I going mad or does this mean that we would be required to delete the software from our hard drives after a year? Is this a standard part of a software license agreement?
It will be interesting to see if this format takes off not only as a streaming format but also as a general computer audio format. It would be very nice indeed to have portable players for .kts files. Finally flash sticks would be usefull for storing large quantities of songs! Wouldn't that be nice?
Once upon a time...
This is not better than Media Player. Media Player has better sound quality, smoother buffering/recovery from congestion, a better UI, and is seamlessly integrated into the OS.
I have a problem with sites that are setup up using FrontPage wizards. It's so...1998...
"According to the site, "licensing KT-Tech's sound codec is easy," but I bet it's not as easy as .ogg. "
You know, I like free software as much as the next guy, but I understand and respect the fact that companies have to make money. I fail to see why it was necessary to throw in a dig at this company that is doing neat things just because they want to profit from their invention. Just because its not free doesn't make it bad.
Now go ahead and mod me down.
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
I hope they plan on releasing higher bitrate demos of music if they want to show this as a new format, because most mp3 music sounds bad even at 128 kbps, let alone 64 kbps.
I have to wonder how good the quality of this compression scheme will be overall. When listening to spoken words, I generally have to have it at 56 kbps or higher or the words run together for me. Other people may be different, however, so I'm not going to say that I have to have it my way 100% of the time. Music, however, is a different story. I can barely listen to anything at 96 kbps and below in any format, because the tones don't generally sound right. For music, I have to argue that it's not going to replace MP3 or OGG or any other sound compression format that there is.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
Anybody compare them yet? Too bad they don't have a comparison with ogg vorbis. :(
You know something? Ogg, being under the BSD, is easier to license than whatever license KT Tech does. I think you are reading way too much into a line like that.
However, why would people really bother with this when they can stream Ogg Vorbis for Free (as in speech)? It's not as if there is anything currently on the market that has better quality than Ogg anyway. So why do people bother developing commercial software in this area?
Who will licence this technology for free? It's no good for linux if it's proprietary.
.ogg and this. It's neat, and I'd like to see an explanation of the math, though...
The other problem is that it won't co-exist with MP3. One format or the other will win out, and as we see with minidiscs, it's all about marketshare.
It's nice for proprietary technology (VOIP comnes to mind) but otherwise seems useless. With commercial technology, in 6 months there will be better compression, just like
I'm a concientious
This just in!
I'll consider downloading it if they have it as a winamp input plugin. I'm not gonna download/install the player just to hear a demo, then uninstall it afterwards.
I bet all this hype is just a hoax to get her a new job. Heh.
I'm not sure if this is gonna be the next golden egg. Mp3 by hook or by crook, is now well entrenched into the market.
.. KT sounds better than mp3 at 32k .. but who has mp3's under 128k ?
.. for a product you have to relearn, just cause it sounds a little better.
.. especially the mpe-sceners .. who were weened on free music. Anyone who was buying music in the 80's remember how long you waited before buying your first CD? (at $45.00 for 'The Wall' i didn't buy a second for quite some time)
.. or 10X more efficient to make a world-changing difference in an established market.]
I do notice some differences at the lower levels
As much as it hurts to say this, having multiple compeating forms is gonna be hard in the digital music world. How many non-geeks have a diamond rio.
If you bought into the mp3 craze for $286.00 (a few years ago) and spent a month making yourself computer literate enough to use the rio for your morning workouts at the gym. What are the odds that you are going to be willing to shell out more $$
I think the mass market [the same folks buying into the m-life hype] is going to be a little less inclined to jump on a band wagon
I think this falls under the 10X rule again.
[the 10X rule being that something either has to be 10X cheaper
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Full Tenured Professor of Mathematics at the U.S. Naval Academy
First woman to achieve the level of Full Professor in the Science Faculty
Did she really have to mention that? Doesn't her work speak for itself?
At the intersection of computation and biology.
But ya i checked it out. The really impressive ones are the 8kbit comparisions. At 8bkit the kttech definatly sounded better. The 32kbit rate was more debatable.
Of course this comparision means nothing, every time i've been invited to listen and compare, whether it's for WMA, RM and MP3Plus the samples i'm given always sound better for the product the company is pushing, so what it really works and sounds like in real applications remains to be seen.
btw, they're "player", is a "strait off the template" SDI MFC application with no installer. The app opens with an empty document and the menu options File->Open, File->Stop and File->Close. Not even a play button!
-Jon
this is my sig.
Sure, I know what you're implying, and I know that you're just trying to get a reaction, but come on... At least /try/ to do better.
Personally, I can't wait until Ogg Tarkin is functional. I hate the current MPEG-2 and proposed MPEG-4 licensing restrictions. I want to be able to encode video that's just as high quality at the same bitrate as some big hollywood studio. No, I'm not pirating videos, I make my own videos (or legal edited copies of movies I purchased legally -- supreme court ruling: it's legal to edit copies of movies you have legally purchased, for example removing scenes you don't like. It's also legal to pay someone to do that editing for you. It's not legal to sell the modified copy itself, however).
A solution to the problem with music today
I can compress any Britney Spears song down to zero bits without loss of quality.
Sound at 32 bit/s will sound horrible, and probably always will. Mind you, this technology is dealing with 32 kilobit/s rate.
er... Tried all the demos, although the video is kinda impressive, the audio files do not sound better than WMA at any speed. Is this just me?
I'm wondering how long it'll take for someone to hack apart the ktsplayer executable and rework it as a Winamp module?
Now color me stupid, but why would i care/want symmetric compression?
For the most part, this tech is used for broadcast or playback. In that case, make it non-symmetric and put all the power at the head end.
The only time symmetric makes sense is for interactive applications (video conferencing, telephony) -- and it doesn't sound like the target audience for this.
The sound samples they have provided are very basic, not utilising the full spectrum... and IMNSHO, they sound poorer than the MP3 equivalents.
hey Dante, here's an informative experiment you should do before the moderators ride in an trample this mess -- go read at Threshold :1, Nested and see how that series of postings looks.
/., Taco has won."
Hmmmmm, where's that idoiot AC guy's posts?
(That's ok, I don't assume someone with a UID > 250,000 to understand how the moderation system is supposed to work. Most moderators don't either.)
"The day I get an account just to troll
"Better" is such a subjective measure. Personally, I felt that the WMA format preserved more of the important tonal attributes to the voice demo, whereas the KTS sounded swishy and robotic (like a person making a cell phone with piss-poor reception.) It's not perfect, in fact, I'd say it sounded just as "good" as the other formats (relatively speaking, given the bitrates.) It all depends on what you want to hear.
Surely if they combined efforts with the Vorbis people to improve their codec for low-bandwidth streams, the two development teams could produce a single codec that's better positioned to push aside the more popular codecs like Microsoft's ASF? Seems like a terrible waste of effort to write this from scratch.
Btw. I tried the demo but it's only available in (Microsoft Windows?) binary executable format with no source available.
...when I hear it.
..or at least the pops/dings/digital blurbs
I can see applications for this beyond just the mass market. My first thought would be for carrying additioanl voice circuits over a T1 line. (Say, for carryting voice traffic between two locations in a large company.)
A T1 line suports 24 circuits, each of which has IIRC 64Kbps (ignoring RBS, etc.) Whatever. Each of these circuits can support one conversation. Using this technology, several more conversations could be carried on one circuit. (Their web site states 8Kbits for high-quality voice; 4Kbits for intelligible voice.) Even using the 8Kbit rate, that means 8 conversations could be carried on one voice circuit.
The result? A single T1 could carry 192 conversations instead of just 24. Or, put another way, get 8 T1's of voice capacity for the price of just one T1. At anywhere from $600-$1000 per T1, that adds up really fast.
Now, how long would it be until the phone company decides to replace POTS circuits with one of these? Dial-up users would find their modems capped at 8Kbits? Blech!
They added noise to all the other encodings. Don't believe me? I re-encoded their 8 kbps kts stream to 8.5 kbps rm and even after the recompression it sounds better, listen.
Whoa. Ok, so I take it you made the cardinal sin of slogging on in without having read enough to be familiar with trolldition?
/.
Ok, I'll apologize for taking the normal shot I would at any of the regular idiots here on
Take this as a warning -- slashdot is a festing cesspool of troll and even more unsavory types. You'd probably want to normally read at least at threshold 1 if you expect any chance of seeing any sensible discussion.
Score : 0 and below belongs to the ACs and crapflooders. Kharma whores and trolls venture about in the upper realms (if they're any good).
Yes, all my stuff is now at a higher bitrate, but my machine is twenty times as efficient in every category mentioned above. Forget more efficient lossy algorithms. I'm going to be interested in lossless compression Real Soon Now.
Has anybody else noticed that all of the .kts files are larger than the mp3 files?
.6KB larger
8kbps =
32kbps = 3.3KB larger
64kbps = 4KB larger
I know that its not a big deal with those small amounts. But, also, those demo files are pretty small. What will be difference when using larger files or streaming?
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
You know, I like free software as much as the next guy, but I understand and respect the fact that companies have to make money.
Companies do not have to make money - they either will or they won't, according to free market forces.
Or at least that is the way it is supposed to work...
grumble.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
And here's a link to copyrighted Britney Spears songs compressed in this 1:0-ratio format. Grab it now before the RIAA take it down!
Can someone tell me why Ogg Vorbis files end in .ogg? What happens when the Ogg Tarkin project gets to where people regularly use it? Why call them Oggs when you really mean Vorbises or Vorbes (Vor Beez)?
YIAAM (yes i am a musician), and theres NO DOUBT the 8kb/s file is better than mp3 and wma. but the 32kb/s and 64kb/s files were horrible compared to them. the matrix song example at 32 sounds robotic and artificial using the kts compression, very flat. the others are clearer and more spacial. in both "higher" bitrate examples i found the quality to be wma > mp3 > kts.
ogg vorbis came first, fuck you, let ogg tarkin project worry about their gay file extension... hey .GAY sounds good!
Check out this.
Yeah. If it wasn't for:
* The cost of having a a zillon linuxcluster to perform the conversions in both ends.
* The increase in delay introduced by compression and decompression.
* The significant extra complexy introduced into the telephone network
* That the telcos wouldn't save a dime
Go ahead - create a startup!
Why not just store the original PCM wave? If you don't care about the size, what good does the 50% you gain from a lossless compression scheme do you anyway?
The speech, even at 8kbits/sec, doesn't sound as good as speeck encoded at 1kbit/sec (yes, one) with DSP Truespeech...
I've used it to encode audio book content for use on an old PDA (Casio E-100), 90 minutes of better-than-just-understandable speech = ~ 5.5MB
The lossless encoders I have used get a maximum of 60% and an average of 75% compression. They are FLAC, shorten, and monkey's audio. However, they are a hell of a lot faster than lame and oggenc. (20 seconds per song with Monkey's audio.)
If you encode with oggenc at 100% quality, it makes files about 1/3 of the original size and you probably can't tell the difference. But you might possibly have some artifacts that are a caused by a flaw in the algorithm which you won't have in a lossless encoder that works correctly.
Got friends?
I need two bits for my own codec. I find that
00
fully rounds out the Britney experience.
i mean, isn't it obvious? once you use a modem everything starts working better, because you choose to not to pick sloppy bloatware.
Many demo programs ("trial versions") have built in expiration dates, where the software stops functioning after a set time limit. This is very common and perfectly legal (to the extent of my knowledge). They're generous to give you a year, many programs expire after 30 days.
Maybe for the same reason they develop operating systems and applications. What's Linux's market share? How about Windows? How many people use MS Office? OpenOffice/AbiWord/everything else combined?
You may not like commercial software, but about 99% of the world does, outside of servers.
Does anyone else think a poorly designed webpage with an ugly frontpage theme is a good sign of someone who doesn't know what they are doing?
Thank you for your relatively respectful reply.
A patent is the exact opposite of propietary knowledge. Its supposed to promote the science of progress and the useful arts.
It is supposed to do that, but it does not. It locks that knowledge away (in plain view, no less!) for 17 years, which in the software field is nearly always longer than the useful life of the knowledge. (LZW and RSA being notable exceptions) Consider Wizards of the Coast's patent on collectible card games and Amazon's patent on one-click shopping. Engines of innovation they are not.
In a monopoly, a single company is the sole provider of a product or service and has no competition. The basic idea of licensing a product is to provide other channels of distribution for that product. That channel could even compete with the original provider much in the same way that ISP's compete when they are sourced from the same provider. The secondary distribution channel is the opposite of a single provider. So to create a monopoly, the company has to explictly disallow the licensing of the product. That decision is made without the help of any government sponsors.
That is a weak argument. It's like saying "Standard oil contracted out with local gas stations, so they weren't a monopoly". The fact that they *need not* license the technology for which they've been granted a monopoly is sufficient to give them monopoly bargaining power.
Now lets say that the inventor offers a free public license for anyone to use the patent. In this scenario, there is no cost associated with utilizing the invention and now the ability to use it is free as well. In this case, where is your contention?
This is fine, so long as the license truly is free. It is the abuse of idea ownership, not the mere fact of it, which is the problem. If patent law required that everyone do this, there would be no problem with patent law. The problem with idea ownership is practical, not metaphysical or religious.
It must be with trade secrets. Thats where information is never released and anyone is free to determine the secret and use it. They just have to be clever enough to use their freedoms to figure it out.
I think you're saying "trade secret law would flourish if patents went away"? I'm not totally sure. But although keeping secrets is not a very friendly thing to do, so long as others are not prohibited from independently discovering the secret, it doesn't seem nearly as sinister as patent and copyright law are today.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
We regret to inform you that, after careful consideration, we have declined to induct your troll into the Troll Library.
You should promise and desire but need to work on your technique.
Thank you for your time and please try again.
Won't happen. To do this would require the replacement/upgrade of all the telecom switches and this would be EXPENSIVE. Those big 7/REs aren't cheap, believe me we have one at work (university). It would be a bightmare trying to get the system to work with this new compression and to get that to interface with older systems that didn't. To make matters worse, the system would be exponentially more expensive. Right now the audio data is just sent PCM (uncompressed), no compression hardware needed. IF you want to do compression, now you have to have the compression hardware on EACH AND EVERY CHANNEL. Multiply this by millions of lines and add in the overall system upgrade and you have a cost nightmare.
Any sort of quantization is lossy, so I would expect that as new DVD/... audio standards are introduced, it would make more sense to use lossy compression on signals with higher bandwidths and higher initial bit depths then to just stick with a lossless PCM -- in the end you might get the same bitrate, but the lossy 96/24 would have more headroom in perceptually important frequency bands and would ultimately sound better than the lossless 44.1/16 stream. So which would you choose?
Why am I getting this subject in the submission form?
Is anyone else getting this as well?
Thanks,
Bob
As somebody once said, I don't want to have a toolbox filled with tools for all my jobs, I want a hammer that does all my jobs.
Who said THIS? No no, not "who" because no *person* could have said something this inane. WHAT said this? This is just about *the* *stupidest* thing I have ever heard.
You want ONE tool for all jobs? You want a bicycle that doubles as a toothbrush, a microscope and an entertainment system? An airplane that can wash dishes and clean swimming pools while being used to direct traffic at busy intersections? A coke machine that styles hair, photographs the license plates on speeding cars and sterilizes surgical equipment all while at the same time taking high resolution pictures of interstellar space?
Different tools for different jobs are GOOD things. Sure it's nice to have tools that can be used for multiple purposes like, say, duct tape, but you won't want your house to be built with it in lieu of nails!
PLEASE tell me you were making a really poor attempt at humor and relieve my fears that the human race is devolving.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
The KTS files didn't sound that much better to me, and they certainly didn't sound as nice as OGG Vorbis.
The files weren't any smaller than the mp3s or wmas, either. I can get a much better music quality with OGG Vorbis at the same bitrate. Why should I use this one?
No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness. --Aristotle
But the place you really see voice compression on T1s is between corporate PBXs - if you've got enough traffic between your offices to keep 12 or 24 channels full, it might make sense to run a private line, and until the mid-80s lots of companies did this, but by the time everybody's PBX was smart enough to be good at it, the price of Voice-by-the-minute from long distance telcos was cheap enough that almost everybody ripped that stuff out except for multiple offices in the same city. But compression equipment has become cheap enough and good enough that lots of people are rebuilding those networks that we ripped out in the 80s, especially since IP data networks mean that even if VOIP isn't cost-effective by itself, you can piggyback some voice on a data network for not much extra operating cost, and the equipment cost may pay off pretty quickly.
Companies are more likely to use voice compression on international circuits, because the price of pipes across the ocean is usually atrociously high, but the price per minute for phone calls to much of Asia is also atrociously high, so a dedicated line using compressed voice is still often a good deal. It doesn't usually sound as good as a Real Telephone Call, but lots of Asian telcos don't have the best sound quality either. The other big trend that's appearing in international calls is VOIP over internet connections - the quality is more variable, but the price of a T1 or E1 internet connection in Asia is often similar to the price of a 64kbps or 128kbps frame relay PVC.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
the other part being that I like Ogg Vorbis both as a concept (good license etc, smart people doing shoestring-budget research / implementation with good results) and in practice (I never turned my CD collection into MP3s, but I am turning them into Ogg Vorbis files). It doesn't get enough attention, and this (KT-Tech's codec) is precisely the sort of product which invites a comparison, even though KTech's is really a different market, at least unless ogg gets a whole lot skinnier. The availability of free software alternatives, though, (depending on how broad the universe of 'alternatives' is allowed to be) is one factor that does drive down licensing fees for the payware.
:)]
[The comment about the licensing cost actually came from a different submission on the same topic, but I didn't feel like just glibly including their claim of 'easy' licensing -- easy compared to what? I just supplied one 'what.'
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
As an Air Force Tech Controller, I have to agree. The bandwidth could be utilized much more efficiently. The only problem, what about current infastructure? Since a T-1 (and E-1) is based off TDM (which is channelized), how would you change this? Other than a little doohicky attached to each port on a MUX, but it would be on both ends. Still, Telecoms could use this to squeeze more phone lines, even 3rd world nations could save a bundle buy increasing bandwidth for a narrow price. Of course, govn't agencies in the states won't utilize this for about 10-20 yrs....
Something like this is already being done and I think it is called pairgain. Basically the phone company splits a single phone line into two or more, I'm not entirely sure how it works though. One thing to remember here is that T-1 is just a circuit. The telco runs different services over that circuit. For instance an ISP might order a T-1 with DS0 service for dial-in access and a second one with DS1 service for bandwidth. Once you start playing around with DS0 you can add PRI, ADTSe, AMI, B8ZS and a truckload of other services. Your point though makes sense and perhaps the telcos will make use of this new codec to create yet another service. I'm not sure if it's a good idea here in the U.S. though because the phone system in many areas is already held together with spit and duct tape.
New compression schemes are a dime a dozen. I don't know much about music compression, but for voice compression, 4.8 kbps has been a free federal standard for around 10 years (CELP 1016). There's a 2.4 kbps standard (MELP) that's proprietary. The KT 4.0 kbps coder might beat CELP, but it's not a breakthrough compared to other proprietary codecs. It's only a breakthrough compared to free codecs, so it's only interesting if it's also free.
Are generally intended for wireless communications, for example half-rate GSM at 6.5 kbps, and federal CELP 1015 at 4.8 kbps used in military radios. It's also used for some international phone circuits, hence the crappy audio you get if you call Romania or someplace like that. They're generally too computationally expensive to use for ordinary domestic phone calls. It's cheaper to just burn 64kbps (PCM) or (sometimes) 32 kbps ADPCM of bandwidth. On the domestic fiber networks, the raw bandwidth is still cheap.
Before anyone starts comparing Ogg Vorbis at 32kbps against KT Tech's 32kbps implementation, let me remind everyont that Ogg Vorbis is not ready at 32kbps yet. This is planned for the RC4 release (Ogg Vorbis is currently in the RC3 release) where all the low to very low bitrates will be tuned. It is not possible to compare Ogg Vorbis at 32kbps against KT-Tech now simply because RC3 doesn't support the encoding at that bitrate. The currently lowest quality (encoding at -q 0) will give approximately 64kbps.
Does that mean I am less than half stupid ?
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
There just isn't space in the market for another Evil Audio Codec. There's MP3 everywhere, which has been retro-fitted with evil by the Fraunhoffer Institute. Hot on its heels is WMA, which is evil by default. You've even got RealAudio still wandering around out back, cackling to itself from time to time.
" But no company is going to make money by giving away their product for free. Product being what they do, not their code."
.Alot of linux distributions also offer a range of pay for versions of there product which offer better tech support nice packaging and other things.
,not neccesarily what they give away for free. A company can spend alot of time developing something ,(say a an audio codex), and then give away that codex then sell hardware/special software to stream it /some other thing to take advantadge of it in some way.The point is that 90 percent of the work may go into the codex which is given away freely and only ten percent into the thing which makes the money.
The issue is not that they are giving there product away but what licence they place there product under and hence what restrictions that licence places on the person using there product.
"Companies do not have to make money - they either will or they won't, according to free market forces."
The point that this post makes is basicly, "you can bring a horse to the river but you can not nessecarily make it drink",just because you make something does not mean you 'will' or nessecarily 'have' to make a profit.I could set up a company to make product x and then decide to give that product away free.For example There are many companys/individuals out there who started making a game with a view to making a profit and then for one reason or another , did not sell the game but gave it away for free with its source and accompanying materials under an open licence .
"But no company is going to make money by giving away their product for free." well alot of linux ditributions allow people to download there ditribution for free , they even host the iso's
The question you have to ask you're self is where is a company making there money , that is there product
_________________________________________________
Oh, I'm so l33t! I listen to classical! I don't like electronic music! I'm an audiophile, I can hear the difference between 256kbps MP3's over ordinary copper network cables and gold-plated network cables!
Actually, the electronic stuff is nice and broadband, so it'll give the codec a real workout. I use electronically generated test tones for setting up broadcast-quality MPEG encoders, then optimise with whatever content they're going to be streaming.
Granted, orchestral music is going to be very hard to compress well, but if you like how an orchestra sounds, you're going to *hate* lossy compression.
Come back and post when you've heard a *real* orchestra, or better yet played in one.
That way I can get more songs onto my measly MP3 player.
Of course, this gets used in fairly noisy environments, so I can't really hear the sound quality lapsing.
My Journal
98% percent of telco's cost is about those lines buried into ground. Actual cost of switching equipment is minimal.
fucktard is a tenderhearted description