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.

Comments

Limited Use

[commonchaos]

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"

A one string violin

[banuaba]

"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.

The next golden egg

[RembrandtX]

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.

I do notice some differences at the lower levels .. KT sounds better than mp3 at 32k .. but who has mp3's under 128k ?

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 $$ .. for a product you have to relearn, just cause it sounds a little better.

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 .. 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)

I think this falls under the 10X rule again.
[the 10X rule being that something either has to be 10X cheaper .. or 10X more efficient to make a world-changing difference in an established market.]

Re:Bandwidth isn't the problem

[cryptochrome]

Nonsense. Bandwidth will always be a problem. No matter how much bandwidth you add, no matter how big you make your highways, no matter how much oil you drill, people will always use as much as you make, even if it means wasting it or creating enough traffic to degrade the whole thing. There is no substitute for efficiency. A better license can compensate for inferior technology to only a minor degree.

Re:The Beam in Thy Eyes

[banuaba]

I'm not disagreeing with that statement. But there is no *point* to adding that little tidbit on to the end of the article. All it is is a dig at a company that has done something cool. It's offtopic and petty, IMHO.