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AAC Chosen For DVD-ROM Section Of DVD Audio Discs
sootman writes "According to a news post at HighFidelityReview.com: 'The DVD Forum has chosen AAC for the DVD-ROM zone of DVD-Audio discs - the inclusion of a low-resolution (lossy) track suitable for solid-state and portable devices has long been championed by DVD-Audio figureheads such as Dolby's John Kellogg as a way of enhancing the value of the format to all listeners, not just those interested in its high-resolution potential. The selection of AAC came after a number of competing formats were proposed; they included MP3, ATRAC and Microsoft's WMA. Additional formats, such as [Ogg Vorbis] for example, were not put forward for consideration.'"
the sound of all those people who told apple they were nuts for choosing it...
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I think we're going to be hearing quite a bit of hilarious whining from the four people that actually use and enjoy OGG.....
will it be protected by Region Code and CSS??
Okay, this is your cue to roll around on the floor with froth coming from your mouth and blood pouring from your eyes screaming "Ogg Vorbis, Ogg Vorbis!"
Crushing my karma one post at a time.
Is this just a matter of updating the firmware and drivers, or do I yet AGAIN have to buy new equipment?
But this is slashdot. A slashdoter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber!
Lock in? AAC is an open standard and was NOT created by Apple. Of all the next generation audio formats (that aren't open source) it's the most open.
We should be happy.
So exactly how are we supposed to go about ripping now?
Do we rip the DVD-A into an mp3 or do we crack the AAC into an mp3?
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
From the article:
... AAC can also deliver multi-channel content."
"High Fidelity Review has learnt that AAC was chosen for a number of reasons, a Forum member told us that it was clear from the outset that it was "...sounded much better than the others," although WMA was not included in the early stages of testing.
"Another positive factor was that AAC is perceived favourably by the music industry because of its associated copyright protection measures and a history of use by legitimate, paid download organisations such as Apple. Conversely, content providers shudder at the very mention of MP3, it is seen as being the root of all evils where piracy activities are concerned. But as reader Mitchell Burt pointed out to us, AAC itself does not provide any rights management functions; the Apple iTunes implementation via their on-line store uses a proprietary DRM package named FairPlay."
I would also suspect that licensing AAC from Apple is an easier process than licensing MP3 would be from Thompson.
libertarianswag.com
Much as I like and appreciate Ogg Vorbis, was there any real expectation of them putting it on the DVD? Many home users probably still have old boxes, have never *heard* of WinAMP, much less consider installing something on their computer, and there is only one or two hardware ogg vorbis players out there.
Though I am a bit surprised that they didn't go with MP3 -- it seems that hardware player compatibility would have been an overriding goal, but who knows.
May we never see th
no because AAC isn't proprietary. It's the audio layer of the MPEG4 standard
a media organization didn't choose wma? holy shit! does this mean i am free to download dvd-a (insert orgazmo joke here) from itunes for a dollar a track? wheee!
I also reply below your current threshold.
DVD-Audio is dead, AC3 w/ normal, copyable DVD's has won the day.
Something about that whole "anyone can master it" thing really excites the hordes of audio engineers that I know. "Hi, ten people will be allowed to work with this" technology tends only to be worked with by ten people.
--Dan
I've been using it for years since it comes as the standard in my minidisc player. It sounds decent, gets good compression and now the CODEC is even available for use on PCs (which it wasn't when I got my minidisc player). Sure, Ogg sounds better and compresses better, but AAC is nothing to sniff at either.
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
That Apple utilizes the DRM features of AAC doesn't mean that everyone else is required to use it. Using iTunes, I can rip CD tracks to AAC that *don't* have DRM - which can even be played on a number of Linux-based media players.
Format,
That I will not be buying into. I suppose if you're into that sort of thing then all of these niche markets are great.
But, a vast majority of people are perfectly happy listening to music on low bitrate mp3s.
Caution: Contents under pressure
"Ogg is not an audio codec, so don't compare it to AAC"
OGG is an audio file format. So is Aac.
RTFA. There's no DRM with AAC either, that's something bolted on by Apple.
-AAC sucks, they should have gone with Ogg
-They should have gone with MP3 -WMA isn't so bad, it should have won -Great, more Apple lock-in -Apple's dead anyway-When I was a kid, DVD-ROM tracks where in uLaw raw format and we liked it.
-I don't have a DVD player, you insensitive clod.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
There's no DRM with AAC either. Apple added its own layer of DRM, "Fairplay" onto the AAC format. Of course that doesn't mean that the DVD-Audio people won't do the same thing.
ScienceSeeker.org
AAC supports DRM. It does not require it. The DVD forum may or may not put it in. (I would suspect they would, but it is not required.) That may have been a requirement for consideration, or it may not have.
There are other reasons to use AAC besides DRM. It has smaller file sizes for the same quality level as MP3 for instance. (Ogg may be better, but it's open to debate.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
I know there'll be a lot of hurt looks out there because OGG wasn't chosen, but let's look at this from a different perspective:
It's not WMA.
The competition for this was legitametely between AAC and WMA because those are two proven technologies that happen to include DRM. If the alternative to AAC is WMA, then I'm all in favor of (as if I have a vote) this decision because this is another niche that Microsoft has not filled.
Microsoft's vision of the future paints a picture where every media device is running MS licensed technology. Microsoft knows that operating systems and software are quickly reaching a point where the existing solutions work, meaning that the real money is in things that keep changing. Look at Caterpillar and their dirt movers. When they released their first model, the next 10 years were filled with constant innovation, but they eventually reached a point where the basic design was so solid, your basic earthmover looks the same as it did 20 years ago.
Software is going to reach the same point, and Microsoft knows this and wants to control something that keeps changing, and derivative stories aside, that'll be content.
Cheer this decision, it's another pie that Microsoft's finger has been slapped away from.
An analogy: A $30 to $40 cassette radio's battery cost is 4-$5 = 12.5%
I think the format was chosen so as to be the most universally compatible. After all, Apple made AAC / iTunes cross platform - most other formats [that are secure] are Windows only.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
unlike WMA, AAC is an open industry-wide format-- much like MPEG.
Sure-- you'd have to pay a license fee for commercial use, but they can't keep you from accessing documentation and implimenting it on your own.
FLAC is where it is at! I have very discerning ears and even at the highest bit rates, I can still hear audio artifacts with pretty much any codec. However, I do use Ogg Vorbis on my portable audio device because it is the only free(dom) codec that it supports.
How thoughtful of them to support solid state devices. I was afraid I'd have to buy one of those vacuum tube-based DVD-Audio players.
(Watch, some audiophile's going to go post a link to a player that really DOES use tubes. *sigh*)
You can quite easily rip to AAC without DRM.
Also, the MP3 patent holders are trying to add optional DRM to MP3, so they'll be even more alike in the future.
The format was useless the second it was finished thanks to the analog out requirements.
Too bad...
The nice thing about OGG is that it has superior quality. I always prefer to transcode OGGs into MP3 for inclusion into my music library, rather than MPC, MP3PRO or WMA. There's less transcoding loss (only FLACs are better at that).
"A vast majority of people think Britney Spears songs are high quality music"
Ummm...no. Brittany Spears fans are a minority of people, not an overwhelming majority. It just happens that the Spears fan group is quite large, larger than groups of fans for other "artists".
I have not bought a single music CD since the crippled CDs appeared on the markets.
The owls are not what they seem
You say this like it's an unexpected bad thing. But suprise, as technology advances, you will have to buy new hardware to use it. Can I assume by your comments that you are still using a 5.25" floppy drive in your 386?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
AAC supports DRM. It does not require it. The DVD forum may or may not put it in. (I would suspect they would, but it is not required.)
I am certain they will.
And what then. All music from now on will require iTunes to play, and a license from Apple? This is what I don't like about DRM and certain companies owning it. It forces us to choose one product if we've already chosen another.
And when it comes to DVD-ROM music formats it looks like we're not GETTING a choice. It's iTunes compatible or nothing, which unless Apple supports Linux is going to again leave Linux out in the cold.
Well assuming that you will be playing this audio under windows, what stops someone from writing a "fake" audio card driver that does nothing but dump audio into a wav file?
On my mac my unprotected AAC's outnumber my purchased iTunes songs by 100:1.
How? By ripping my existing CD collection.. duh.
Licensing MPEG-4 AAC costs USD 15,000, on top of actual royalties--sweet mother of fuck, there's no way I can afford that! Are there any licensing cooperatives that individuals can join?
AAC ('Advanced Audio Coding') is the MPEG-4 audio standard, a.k.a. ISO 14496-3 -- it's hardly obscure or non-standard.
/ documents/w2670.html out for the ISO 14496-3 draft, if you're curious, or just search for ISO 14496-3 on Google. :)
Several of the digital and satellite radio systems use AAC, and a number of software music players support it; Apple's use of AAC to hold higher-quality-than-MP3 digital audio on the iTunes Music Store and for playback on the iPod is just the most-visible example of it.
You can check http://www.tnt.uni-hannover.de/project/mpeg/audio
--Rachel
You can quite easily rip to AAC without DRM.
You can, but this isn't a case of ripping from pure audio to AAC, this is supplier provided AAC, which no doubt will have DRM.
How many DRM players of AAC are there? One. iTunes. There is no doubt in my mind the big players behind Apple have swindled their way into this one too, and swayed decisions to use AAC.
So in future when AAC is the only way you can buy Discs of music you HAVE TO USE ITUNES. That sucks, and closes out everyone else in the market. And people try to say Apple isn't a monopoly.
All I know about Bush is I had a job when Clinton was president. -- Saddam Hussein
"All I know about Bush is that I gave jobs to Clinton who was president. -- Monica Lewinsky
Maybe I'm not getting something about DVD-Audio, but why put a sub-cd-quality copy of the music on the disc?
First, is DVD-Audio DRM'ed so you can't rip and encode? Second, if somebody's going to spend the extra $$ to buy a disc with super extra high quality, are they going to care about a lossy stereo encoding?
Karma: Contrapositive
That Apple utilizes the DRM features of AAC doesn't mean that everyone else is required to use it.
No it doesn't mean it has to be that way, but it will be. Do you think when music is distributed on DVD and cdroms have gone the way of the dinosaur that there will be no DRM on them? there will be.
Again I reiterate. Only one player plays DRM AAC files, and thats Apples iTunes hence it is lockin to Apples player.
I hope the EU comes after Apple as hard as they look to be coming after Microsoft soon
What is AAC?
AAC is the audio codec used in the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standard. Yes, AAC is the same codec used for audio on those DVD movies you own.
MPEG-4's AAC is essentially the same as the AAC defined in MPEG-2, but with some extra capabilities added to make it more useable in the mobile world (such as the 3GPP multimedia format for mobiles phones)
AAC has been with us for a good while... it's nothing new... and it's good to see that it's going to be around for a good while more and has edged out WMA.
At a comparable bit-rate I much prefer Ogg, MP3 or even WMA to AAC. I dislike the tonal output of AAC. Oh well, it's just another format I wil stay away from.
"AAC ('Advanced Audio Coding') is the MPEG-4 audio standard, a.k.a. ISO 14496-3 -- it's hardly obscure or non-standard."
Hardly any digital music players will play it. In fact, I went to a store recently and saw a dozen or so different MP3 players. None of them played AAC.
"Apple's use of AAC to hold higher-quality-than-MP3 digital audio on the iTunes Music Store"
No, they used AAC solely because it was more amenable to digital-rights-denial.
I cannot wait to see Microsoft saying it is unfortunate the DVD people chose to "limit choice" and hurt consumers by going with AAC instead of WMA...
Apple has no monopoly on music formats, music stores, music players, or DRM schemes.
They have a "monopoly" on Fairplay only to the degree anyone has a "monopoly" on anything - Adobe has a "monopoly" on Photoshop, Macromedia has a "monopoly" on Director by these measures.
You're totally speculating whether or not the DVD forum will choose a DRM scheme, and speculating even further that that scheme will be Fairplay, and further that only one software music player in the world will ever play it. Based on all these fantasies, you've decided Apple is evil.
I don't think I'm allowed to laugh that hard at my desk.... _g
"It'll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself." - Henry Rollins
"I've been using it for years since it comes as the standard in my minidisc player"
Why? Seems pointless when CD and CD-R is around. Is the size so important that you have to pay so much more for it and have so much less storage?
The first letter of a sentence is supposed to be upper case, so uppercase the 'u' in uppercase, you uppercase twit.
Apple is more monopolistic than M$. Imagine if Microsoft had the same sort of lock that Apple does: to run Windows, they would force you to buy Microsoft-brand machines. The Apple world is much more closed and monopolistic than the PC world.
You're totally speculating whether or not the DVD forum will choose a DRM scheme
LOL. omg. serious. get a GRIP of yourself.
Are you even hinting that RIAA/MPAA/**AA around the world will NOT use DRM on future products?
Oh wow that is naive.
Ha ha. Here's the silver lining. OGG will not be associated with DRM, AAC will. Once people realize just how bad an idea DRM is, then they will want to be looking at an open and free format.
I see no indication that out of the many, many, DRM schemes out there that the DVD forum will choose Fairplay, or that Apple won't license Fairplay to others.
On what basis should the EU look at Apple? They haven't forced anyone to do anything.
there is no use arguing... he's never going to look past his blindness in thinking that apples digital music foray is in some way the wintel equivalent of Microsofts owning EVERYTHING. which it isnt
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
"On what basis should the EU look at Apple? They haven't forced anyone to do anything"
With this logic, neither has Microsoft.
In this particular case, I agree with your speculation, but it remains speculation nonetheless. I notice you chose to address only part of my statement, though - what evidence do you have that Apple will somehow force them to use Fairplay?
Someone actually makes a motherboard with integrated tube-based sound! Sounds like you would need an air conditioner to keep that bastard cool...
I think you're a little mixed up about DVDs. Yes, AAC is part of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 standards, but DVDs don't use AAC, they use AC3, LPCM and (sometimes) DTS.
"Wintel" is a bad term, considering that half of the machines you are thinking of don't even run on Intel. They run AMD.
The better term is "PC". The PC was co-invented by Microsoft and IBM, and it is remained as an evolving standard (or set of standards).
I remember about 10 years ago the now-defunct store chain Title Wave(great video rental choices, etc) had a devoted Minidisc music section. I wonder if those albums released on Minidisc are worth anything on ebay now.
Some decisions just make sense...
AAC is a good format (better than MP3, same quality , on average, as Ogg (IMHO) and much better than WMA AT ANY BITRATE)
Not that WMA is bad, but it's too picky... One music in 64kbps sounds very good, another one sounds like crap.
Kudos!
how long until
What are all these A* things?
I see (errr, hear maybe) AC3 audio in movies I download quite often. Now the lib that handles this seems to be A52. Why is this -- is AC3 and A52 the same thing? Is AAC also the same thing or is it unrelated?
And what then. All music from now on will require iTunes to play, and a license from Apple?
I think you missed a key part of the thread above. AAC is not an Apple format. Even if the DVD Forum does specify that DRM will be used, it won't necessarily be Apple's DRM. So far, Apple hasn't licensed FairPlay to anyone else.
It seems to me that they're adding compressed files into the DVD-Audio standard so that we'll be able to copy them to our portable digital music devices - which is a good thing! It wouldn't make sense to implement a DRM system which would be incompatable with 80% of the portable digital music hardware out there.
seriouslyexcited.net
http://www.vialicensing.com/products/mpeg4aac/stan dard.html
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
Much as I would like to see more widespread acceptance of Ogg I can see why it doesn't get considered in these sort of situations.
Imagine all the other formats have big organisations backing them. Each will have skilled sales people, glossy presentations showing the features and benefits of their format and resources to plant "incentives" to the right people. Presentation is important.
Contrast and compare with Vorbis. The team have enough resources to code, but what about the money, sales reps, glossy presentations? No chance.
I am sure Vorbis really does sound better than other codecs but I think the final choice is based on a numnber of factors, sound quality only being one of them.
Also there is the question of DRM. That was probably a requirement, not just icing on the cake. That would certainly exclude Ogg Vorbis from the start.
What's wrong with just plain old simple PCM? It's not like they are short of storage space on DVD. The only reason I buy CDs at the moment is because it's not compressed, I can encode it into my format of choice - whatever that may be.
But I suppose that's part of the reason, they don't want people ripping the music. And this is most likely why the format will fail. What's the point of buying music if you can't listen to it on your portable player?
There are only three recognized formats for audio on DVDs. On PAL DVDs, the compressed format is MPEG-1 Layer 2. On both PAL and NTSC DVDs, PCM (uncompressed digital audio) is used. On NTSC DVDs, the compressed format is Dolby Digital AC-3. The "AAC" you refer to is not the AAC that is sometimes referred to in the MPEG-2 specification; however, MPEG-2 for DVDs is a restricted subset of that specification. In fact, I get paid to show folks how to do this every day, since it's my work.
There's a great FAQ as to the formats for DVD audio.
However, the AAC standard referred to in the article is part of the MPEG-4 standard, and the MPEG-4 AAC does incorporate the formal MPEG-2 specification's AAC as one part of its capabilities.
This is a bit off topic, but since we're on the topic of DVD-audio, I might raise this issue.
If I understood this story correctly, AAC was chosen as the lossy method for storing portable versions of the music on a DVD-A disc.
The actual multichannel, high-fidelity audio on DVD-audio is stored either uncompressed, or losslessly compressed with Meridian Lossless Packing, MLP.
So far the only DVD-Audio playback solution for PC I have seen is WinDVD (ech) combined with Creative Audigy2 (yuch). Some sources say it's some exclusive marketing thingy, others say that the Audigy2 has hardware decompression for MLP or something.
I have an Envy24HT based sound card which is capable of playing back the 24bit/192kHz/2ch and 24bit/96kHz/5(.1)ch hi-fi audio streams specified in the DVD-Audio specification. It's just that I'm not aware of any software that would let me play back such disks on my PC in any operating system.
Does anyone have any interesting information regarding the state of software MLP decoding? Perhaps a good idea for an open source project, no?
Then again, I have yet to see an actual DVD-Audio disc...
What does this mean for someone who just recently bought a stand-alone DVD player, and has a DVD drive on their computer which they wish to use to backup the DVD's they purchase?
anything?
Aside from the mispellings (the unneeded and silly-looking "U" in favor that was phased out many years ago), there is your odd reference to:
"legitimate, Ipaid download organisations such as Apple."
A search on iPaid turns up deregatory articles about the iPod. So Apple is a legitimate iPod organization? Why not just say that iPod is their product. sheesh.
Please fill in the blank:
We're Apple Computer, and because we're an abusive monopolistic company, if you don't license Fairplay from us, then we'll __________________ and you'll be sorry you ever messed with us.
This is a pretty decent one actually. I've auditioned it. I'm still sticking with 'redbook' cds for a while longer, but you asked for it...
http://www.shanling.com/CD-T200C.htm
My
it's just as easy to bolt DRM onto Ogg's container format as it was for AAC. In fact, there was an article on Slashdot not too long ago about a company who is selling a toolkit that implements exactly that.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
That's true in a practical sense for North Americans, but MPEG audio is valid under the DVD specification.
If the video is NTSC, a DVD must contain either AC-3 or LPCM. It may also contain MPEG-1, MPEG-2, DTS, or SDDS audio.
See also the DVD FAQ.
-Dave
The point is that this is the format chosen for the computer "session" of a DVD audio disc. Which means that the software will have to take care of it (and iTunes will probably be the first to have it working, I'm sure)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The whole format (along with SACD) offers consumers nothing except a more expensive alternative with "stronger" DRM. As people realise this, there's no chance of it catching on.
DVD-Audio players are required to have analog outputs only, which for multi channel music means you have to run 6 RCA cables (!) from your DVD-A player to your receiver (plus the digital audio and video cables you need for playing DVD videos). And the "superior sound quality" of both DVD-A and SACD is well outside the range of human hearing. At least AAC, DTS, and CD's can be sent to your receiver digitally. (A few companies offer player-receiver pairs that use a proprietary firewire type link to cut down on the cables, but all of a sudden you're in the $5,000+ range and you suddenly become locked out of switching players or receivers to a different brand.)
Whereas if you by a DTS audio disc, for example, you don't need any new equipment, the signals are sent to the receiver in digital form, and you have full multichannel audio. But those don't seem to be getting much support from the publishers. Meanwhile most people (myself included) are likely to be content with DPLII and its cousins like CS2, Logic 7 and the like that do quite a good job rendering stereo sources into multichannel.
Who is greasing the palms (so to speak) of the DVD Forum?
Just short of two weeks ago, the *malakas* announce to the world that they'd selected Windows Media as the standard video compression for the HDTV DVD standard. As if it was better than Divx or QuickTime after a little more work.
Great job, DVD Forum!
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Merriam-Webster calls you a liar.
So far, Apple hasn't licensed FairPlay to anyone else.
Exactly. Leaving them as the only player to play Fairplay tracks, and when DVDROM comes out encoded as Fairplay, then only iTunes will play them on computer.
The logic is so simple it's astounding, I'm surprised nobody else is seeing it
"Again I reiterate. Only one player plays DRM AAC files, and thats Apples iTunes hence it is lockin to Apples player."
Wha, you never heard of Real Player? The last time I heard, it will do AAC files.
Granted, very few people use Real Player anymore in comparison to other alternatives...
And (speculation follows) its only a matter of time before WinAmp will play AAC considering how much of an emphasis AOL is giving to iTunes, and as you know, AOL owns WinAmp (Nullsoft)...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Let me get this straight, Apple won't license Fairplay to anyone, yet somehow all the new DVDs are going to come out with Fairplay DRM encoding. Exactly how is that going to happen, the magic Fairplay elves hiding out in the duplication plant?
The logic is so simple it's astounding, I'm surprised nobody else is seeing it
Perhaps it is you who are mistaken...
Because we all know that Apple's choice of the DRM will be the DRM they use. How do you know they won't develop their own version in house?
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Given the announcement yesterday that the mp3 standard is going to support surround sound, does AAC do it?
It would make sense if we are talking about playing audio DVD's through your lounge 5 speaker system.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
Being perfectly honest, the choice of AAC is not going to be of much concern to the average user. However, this selection points out something that I've noticed in my years cycling through several careers: audio production/radio engineering --> graphic design --> desktop publishing --> IT --> and now moving into programming and DBA duties. What I've noticed is that it's not possible for most "experts" in a given field to actually understand other fields that they may encounter in their work.
... wetware. The MP3 standard was useful to introduce people to the concept of media free/independent music playback, but it is encumbered by the albatross that is licensing fees from teh Thompson corporation. Instead, consider that Ogg Vorbis was made for YOU! Each and every human on the planet has a free licence to use Ogg Vorbis in any way they wish so long as they give back to the community. This is the way the world was meant to work. Free exchange of ideas, information, music, codecs, movies, etc...
A case in point. Where I work, we are planning on implementing long range wireless for a short run (about four city blocks). From the perspectives of my boss and our resident Cisco guy, the wireless bridges we got are "networking equipment". But in reality, these devices are solidly radio devices. Having a good deal of knowledge about ethernet, IP addresses and MAC tables isn't going to do us one bit of good in setting these guys up. Fortunately, I have some radio engineering background which means I know more than they do about fresnel zones, signal strength (no you shouldn't use a laptop to do this) and parabolic dishes. However, both my boss and the Cisco guy argue that these devices are networking equipment first and just a small part radio. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
I've also seen the same thing going the other direction. Back when I was doing audio production, I heard all sorts of weird and misinformed comments and choices being made where techology was concerned. Things like "Make sure you use high quality DAT tapes to prevent hiss" or "I wouldn't use a home CD-R burner to archive audio since the materials that most CD-Rs are made of are pretty low grade and will cause signal loss and dropouts in the audio". Obviously clueless statements made by "experts" in the audio biz.
Then you have the people who think that only if you pay a premium price for something will it actually have any quality. Even though , if they KNEW what they were talking about from a technical perspective, they could have done it with less expensive equipment and gotten identical results.
A lot of decisions like this are either made by people who don't understand the technology, or (more likely) they are trying to cater to the lowest common denominator. The choice here if we are talking technical merit, would have easily gone to Ogg Vorbis. But, I am certain there are some strong business pressures from chip makers (the people who manufacture the AAC codec chips used in players), the music industry and possibly the software industry who forced the issue and made AAC an "offer they can't refuse" Alas this is the way almost every business is run these days.
I really wish I could get excited over thiis choice in audio format, but I can't. And I seriously urge all of you to consider the implications of not having a free audio codec as a worldwide standard. The major problem is how a proprietary codec could become perverted by business interests and profit motive. The open standard codec is immune to this because it's community property owned by the commons. Someday there might come a time when the only way to get music to work on your portable player is to buy music that is made by the player's manufacturer. This forces you into buying equipment you may not really want or can't afford. This can't happen if the choice of a free and open standard is the worldwide, established standard. Instead, ANYONE can make a player, software or hardware or even
And so to the
DVD-Audio won't play in regular DVD players or computers, so nobody cares about it.
you want m3u2sburner. It's still not a interface, but much better than openmd or real one. basically, it's a bit of a hack that convert your mp3 files to wav, then uses daemon tools to present the collection of wav files as a cd for simple burner so you can bypass all the drm nonsense.
Hmm...modded 'troll'? Well, perhaps I should have said that with mp3's, there's no potential for DRM to be added on...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
s/interface/good interface/
must use preview next time... -- commandertaco
No, it's the sheer power that Apple wields with less than 7% of the marketshare. 7%! Can you fathom that? Of course everything will be tied to Apple. (Now shutting off the sarcasm).
I think the "logic is so simple it's astounding, I'm surprised nobody else is seeing it" guy perhaps doesn't understand economics.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
Mp3 is good enuff for me!!
What I'd like to know is why the Ogg people, or anybody else, for that matter, would care what was chosen? They could have chosen to use morse code for all it matters, since nobody's buying these discs. The fidelity of these discs is indistinguishable to 98% of humanity, and the additional features are irrelevant.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
DVD Forum announced provisional support for three video codecs:
Microsoft's VC-9
MPEG-2
MPEG-4 AVC (aka H.264)
Both VC-9 and AVC have substantial, provable enhancements in compression efficiency over the MPEG-4 Simple Profile used in DivX's HD profiles. What's your issue here?
Also, QuickTime is a file format, not a codec. One could easily implement any of these three codecs inside a QuickTime file.
My video compression blog
I'd think that the industry forum would have been leary of adopting an OSS code based CODEC that could be sued by some idiot company that claimed that IBM copied their code and plugged it into the Ogg Vorbis Codec.
Oh Wait, SCO doesn't own any audio companies.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
No, only one player plays Apple's Proprietary DRM AAC files. You're making the rather large assumtion that they'll use Apple's Fairplay DRM technology. Why should they choose to pay Apple royalties, hmm, instead of developing their own or using an open standard?
Don't just stand there, get that other dog!
>Hardly any digital music players will play it. In fact, I went to a
>store recently and saw a dozen or so different MP3 players.
>None of them played AAC.
Yet the vast majority of digital media players that are sold will play it.
>No, they used AAC solely because it was more amenable to
>digital-rights-denial.
You do realize that you could strap FairPlay onto just about any codec, including Ogg Vorbis, right?
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Is that you, Preperation H. Raymond?
Oh, listen up to what I'm singing
Raymond's here, Raymond's here
I'm here to stop your butt from stinging
Raymond's here to help
Oh, if you have a vein that is distended
Raymond's here, Raymond's here
Apply this cream and you'll be mended
Raymond's here to help
"Yet the vast majority of digital media players that are sold will play [AAC]"
Only a minority of them will. The ones that play MP3-only are the vast majority
Most anything can be bought with quality "like it used to be". Thing is, when technology first comesout, it is usually really expensive by it's nature. So it's worth it to spend the extra money on quality (people expect quality if they pay a whole lot). However when a device is cheap, it'll be made using cheap parts since dollars count.
If you want quality electronics, buy pro stuff. By prepared to pay for it though. It cost money back then for quality, it costs now. Want a good, reliable printer? Drop $1000 on a pro laser. Don't expect it out of a $30 inkjet. Want a VCR that will last 10 years? Buy a semi-pro SVHS unit. But be ready to spend $300, not $50.
There is a plenty large market for pro and semi-pro elecetronics. They are manufactured better, have better quality (like better output quality, as well as workmanship), and usually better features. However, it all costs more money.
Has anyone found any decent software for a mini-disc player?
:)
Yes, I find that iTunes works wonderfully. Of course, you need to get rid of those stupid minidisc players and get an iPod, but hey - I'm much happier now personally
How much you want to bet those "lossy, lower fidelity" AAC files will also be encrypted on the discs?
If the industry got it at all they wouldn't worry about a "low fidelity" format on the disc - they'd just give the damn things away (or nearly so) on the artist's record label sponsored website. Release a new track each week before the DVD release date and track the hits and file sharing patterns to predict which markets they need to move the most physical product to on opening day; schedule release parties with the bands appearing in the cities that generate the most buzz; reward independant web based publicists for driving traffic to the band's websites...
In short, they could do everything they do now with expensive radio... without expensive radio.
uhhh... that is, if they got it. Which they don't and probably never will... so.. uh, never mind.
It might contain MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 audio, but even this, according to a later section, is only Layer-2 audio, and not the same thing as AAC. There's a reason that AAC is called MPEG-2 NBC--NBC stands for non-backwards-compatible.
Anyone know where I can get WinAMP for OS X or Linux? It sounds dreamy, with the catchy WinSomething name thing going for it.
Goodness knows, _most_ Windows users strive for excellence in computing technology.
--
Let's not delude outselves into thinking that the music industry will do anything to improve access to and portability of music - the DRM upon which they will eventually settle will probably be "play once, then repurchase". Divx DVDs? Anyone?
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
Good luck with your medical condition.
Best Buy can have you arrested
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
And a few other people, both before and after the movie.
Da Blog
In Soviet Russia the Ogg capitalize you.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Agreed.
AAC != MPEG BC, which is the stuff on DVDs
-Dave
What about MPC? :(
--- March, milde, march!
So what? Darl will sue anyhow.
Have you ever owned one?
At the time they were released, they blew away any other portable system when you needed something that was small, shock-proof and had cheap media. I bought an MZ-R90 (smallest recordable unit at the time) for about $400, I'm still glad I bought it despite the fact that they're going for about $60 on ebay today.
Sure, now you can buy a small player unit with a built-in harddrive, but it won't be shock-proof. The players that use flash-ram are shock-proof, but the memory cards are damn expensive.
Heck, I just figured that people liked having to license the patented audio technology for every playing device that is manufactured.
Anyone know where I can get WinAMP for OS X or Linux?
Here's a nearly perfect clone of Nullsoft's Winamp media player for *BSD and */Linux operating systems. It may work in Mac OS X under an X11 server.
This is just a conception, saying that float is not always more expensive than fixed.
Unless you already have sold millions of players, and your customers demand a firmware-only upgrade to your player that contains an FPU-less DSP. Shipping all-new motherboards to them would prove rather expensive.
I'd say the fact that compressors are still being utilized is indicative that 98dB is simply not enough for the way all music is currently being engineered
I call BS, for several reasons:
First of all, audiologists have demonstrated an illusion of "louder == better" in double-blind tests on human listeners. A record that's 3 dB louder than the competition's may "sound better" to the listener even though the rest of the mastering process may have introduced more noise. Apparently, the record labels may be trying to get the record to sound "better" on already-heavily-compressed commercial FM radio (which is just one big fat advertisement for major label albums, but that's another rant for another day), and they're willing to clip the shit out of drum hits to achieve this.
Second, adult ears have greatly reduced response to frequencies above 16 kHz. I'm 23 years old, and I tested myself not to have any ABXable response above 17500 Hz. There exist noise-shaped dithering techniques that push virtually all dither noise above 16 kHz, extending the dynamic range in the most audible 2000-4000 Hz band above 120 dB.
Finally, room noise fills in a lot of the gaps. With an amplifier's volume set such that -90 dBFS is just below room noise, prolonged exposure to full-scale CD causes hearing loss. In fact, because of several reasons including the fact that the brain itself makes noise, human ears can't hear below 0 dB SPL even in the quietest of conditions. (In fact, that's part of how 0 dB SPL was defined.)
I'm all for 32-bit mixing and 32-bit early stages of mastering. I'm also all for advanced dithering techniques that give the feeling of a 20-bit master in a 16-bit literal word length. In fact, there exist several examples of great-sounding CDs mastered without hypercompression. Even for the most inept of audio engineers, most of the expensive (i.e. better than Audacity or Cool Edit) audio packages can maintain 32 bits up until final mastering and make the most of 16 bits (that is, noise shaping) when exporting to Red Book-spec audio.
Then the solution is vmware or something similar
Wouldn't it be straightforward for Secure Audio Path to detect VMware given the, ahem, quirks of its virtualization?
The average consumer won't care enough to push DVDA over CD (can you really hear the difference?) but DVD players cost $30 now
Do pocket DVD players cost 30 USD as well? Once I see a Sony Discman audio player with an MSRP at or below 100 USD that supports two or more of SACD (2.8 MHz PDM), DVD Audio (24-bit lossless compressed PCM), and the audio of DVD Video (Dolby Digital), then we'll talk. (Many DVD Audio titles have both lossless and Dolby Digital audio for compatibility with All Your Installed Base.) Perhaps this is part of the reason for choosing AAC as an alternative content-type on new DVD Audio titles: to use a PC as a pocket audio player's DVD drive.
why do PAL DVDs have to support MPEG-1 Layer 2 audio?
Nationalism. As far as I know, MP2/MP3 is Fraunhofer's baby, and Fraunhofer pays tax to a nation of Region 2.
But compression usually suggests that the data is being made smaller, taking up less room. That's not true for audio sampling since there was nothing digital before the sampling process.
Recording studios often use 32-bit mixes and masters internally. They down-convert the digital signal to 16-bit (ca. 94 dB) before making the final master to etch into glass for CD replication. Noise-shaped dithering takes advantage of the human ear's reduced response above 16000 Hz and expands the perceived dynamic range to 20 bits (ca. 118 dB).
Also, QuickTime is a file format, not a codec.
In practice, "QuickTime video" means "the latest Sorenson video codec whose decoder is bundled with the current version of QuickTime Player for Windows and Mac OS."
Who has published "something similar" of which you speak? Let me list the PC virtualizers of whose existence I am aware and why they don't constitute solutions to circumvent the Secure Audio Path without running your sound card's DAC into an ADC:
A single 'Macrovision' protected VHS?
A single 'region locked' and 'css' protected DVD?
Congratulations on saving so much money!
GPL Deconstructed
Oh, I never sasid it existed *today*, just that it's probably doable.
Do you really think a virtualizer more accurate than VMware is doable by a public company without attracting a hostile takeover from Microsoft Corporation? Or do you think anything short of a public corporation could finance development of such a virtualizer?
the advantage is clearly with the emulators, since you can always use older versions of OSs for which detection didn't work with the emulation you're using.
And particular DRM'd works might require a Windows Update, breaking older versions of operating systems.
I agree, but not just because of the Lossy AC3 format. The DVD Video disc standard supports regular uncompressed lPCM audio at 24/20/16bits at 96/48khz, and you can use 1 to 8 discrete channels as well. (just don't exceed 6.144 Mbps)
All you have to do is burn a DVD video disc with only audio or blackness/slideshow, etc. Compatible everywhere, no need for specific DVD-Audio players, just put and play, no need for visual cues either, but certainly available.
On top of that, manufacturers won't care. The average asian standalone DVD Video player will play mp3 and various mpeg1/2/4 formats from data discs. DVD-Audio is the failing attempt to produce a format with a better "protection" than the original DVD format, which already had decent audio capabilities.
DTS is just another lossy format, that uses more bitrate than AC-3. Certainly it sounds better, but never as good as 24/96 lpcm (raw).
As for Ogg Vorbis, sorry, current spec seems to require too much hardware and power for standalones. There seems to be a v2 planning to address that and produce a more hardware friendly format; but only Xiph knows...
The ideal player is a regular DVD-ROM drive attached to something, that lets it read data discs filled with audio in different formats; including lossless, not just lossy. Add a bit more hardware and have it handle the various video formats (and containers) as well.
Or at least there is a demand in the community for this. Everyone will soon have dvd burners, just as everyone seems to have cd burners these days. Who cares what the powers that be dictate, the people will always rip it somehow and put it in their favorite non DRMed physical format.
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
Lots of solutions have been suggested -- VMWare, a self-signed root certificate, various driver hacks, and hardware hacks all the way down to a quality microphone.
For that matter, what about ReactOS? And what about user feedback?
Most users would not buy a DVD that required them to play it on a computer. Somehow, I'm guessing the hardware on any "trusted" DVD player will be _very_ easy to hack -- something like a modchip? Add to that the fact that we already have non-compliant DVD players, and most of us don't want to go buy a new one.
As for me, I will quietly sit here borrowing CDs from people and ripping flac files (or buying them from magnatune), and as soon as DVD burners or terabyte storage gets cheap enough and a good format is available, I'll be ripping full-quality DVDs.
Once they've got us all locked into an Orwellian DMCA scheme, I laugh and pull out my multi-terabyte archive of stuff, release it onto Kazaa, start giving away burned copies on street corners with only a license that insists that for each copy I give to someone, they must burn two for someone else...
This is not because I'm evil, and I hope that I will never end up doing that. I would rather use something like Magnatune and actually pay the artists and be completely unrestricted in how I use the music. I would rather still use Creative Commons licensed stuff, but honestly, I haven't seen The Matrix nearly enough times. Fatboy Slim, Prodigy, and Jimi Hendrix are all still damn good. I don't need to buy new music, and so I would start the piracy like mad if I ever thought that such things would be limited in their use.
I would probably choke to death on rage when I could no longer listen to classic songs about freedom, or even songs from ICP and Limp Bizkit about breaking heads for no reason in absolute disrespect of authroity, without surrenduring my freedoms to a central authority -- without playing them all on some offshoot of Longhorn.
I almost did anyway when I heard Metallica bitching about Napster -- I wanted to throw some of their own lyrics back at them. Lyrics like "So fucking what?" was my first reaction. My next reaction was somewhat longer: "All the justice pain and greed money talking" but I'm not sure that's actually what's being said. Either way, the whole song "And Justice For All" rebels against exactly what I thought of Metallica as doing.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
This is all covered quite well in this article. And here is another article which provides support for a simple claim: uncompressed recordings sound better.
From what I've seen, dynamic range limitations of a CD is not the issue. The issue is louder is precieved as better. To make it sound louder (digital has a hard limit regardless of 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit or 128 bit.) There are very few CD's where anybody can hear the noise introduced by not enough sample bits in quiet parts on a CD.
The CD's are compressed to make them sound louder than the competition. Number of bits doesn't matter. They are not trying to make the quiet parts sound better. They are trying to make all the parts sound louder. Highly compressed (high THD levels) are common in modern CD's. After playing a few new cd's, play an old one. It will sound quiet because the average level to provide headroom for peaks is 8-16 DB lower than a highly compressed CD. If you play a lot of older CD's and then play a newer compressed CD, you will quickly want to grab the volume and turn it down because it sounds like it's blasting. (The TV commercials are louder than the program perception. The peak values are the same.)
Switching to a new format with more bits does not change the race to sound louder than the other guys. Expect more highly compressed crap so their pressing doesn't appear to sound quiet. They can and will compress to the limit again for the same reasons. Repeat after me "Louder sounds Better". Until you can program your jukebox to adjust the volume for each CD can the side by side comparison on merits of CD's take place. Then I fully agree, uncompressed sounds better. Uncompressed to sound as loud as compressed, it has much higher peaks (not clipped and distorted by compression).
There will be a few "Audiophile" recordings made, just as there is now with CD's, but don't expect the clear channel stuff to get the "pure recording" treatment. Remember the days of DDD CD's? Digital recorded, Digital mixed, and Digital mastered with no signal processing at all? What happened to the DDD recordings? They just weren't as popular as loud recordings.
The truth shall set you free!
"(Ogg may be better, but it's open to debate.)"
Then let me close it: Ogg Voribis is better.
There, that's settled.
What quality does it equate to?
When will I be able to hear it at my local Richer Sounds store?
A blog I run for the wealth
Hey, sounds like a good business model: write a good virtualizer that defeats DRM, get bought by MS
Hey, if it worked for Connectix twice...
Background: Connectix wrote a PlayStation 1 emulator called CVGS. After Sony lost a lawsuit to enjoin Connectix from distributing it, Sony just made Connectix an offer it couldn't refuse and bought the darn thing. And when Microsoft bought Virtual PC, it seemed to want to prevent Connectix from even thinking about extending it to support Xbox titles.
I was kidding.
Faith is the very antithesis of reason, injudiciousness a critical component of spiritual devotion. Jon Krakauer
What we need is Digital Analog audio
Are these AC3?