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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
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.
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.
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.
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...
OGG is an audio file format.
From the Vorbis FAQ:
Ogg is the name of Xiph.org's container format for audio, video, and metadata. Vorbis is the name of a specific audio compression scheme that's designed to be contained in Ogg. Note that other formats are capable of being embedded in Ogg such as FLAC and Speex.
In other words, Ogg is comparable to avi files. And you are capitalising Ogg when you shouldn't. It isn't an acronym.
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.
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
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
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.
I've tried it three times. It seems like the shops over here won't refund it without a fight and ad hominem attacks muttered under one's breath ("I bet you pirated the disc already...").
I'm not going to waste my hate on the morons at the cash registers anymore. I'd rather not buy the CD at all. It hurts their sales figures all the same.
The owls are not what they seem
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.
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
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
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.
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.
AVI (Audio Video Interleave) _is_ an acronym. Please capitalize :-)
Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
I'd rather not buy the CD at all. It hurts their sales figures all the same.
No, returning hurts more, since it costs the store money to have things returned. They will be less likely to carry things that are returned frequently.
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.
"I'd say it's encoded, but not compressed."
:) All digital music "samples" the analog source. A music CD is only 16-bit (I'm not counting the 20-bit gold plated ones - Rykodisc?) for the most part, and 24-bit audio is the *gold* standard for getting near the fidelity of vinyl with a quality turn table and speakers without the drawbacks associated with analog.
And I'd say its compressed.
I'd say we all need some good DSP usage on files such as MP3s, WMAs, AAC, and OGG files to reinsert the "lost layers" on the fly during playback...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Whats even stranger is my dual opteron 2ghz has 2 MFM hard drives!
DVD-Audio won't play in regular DVD players or computers, so nobody cares about it.
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
A52 is the number of the ATSC standard where AC3/DD is defined for use by HDTV. Since the standard is freely available, the developer of liba52 presumably used the A52 standard to develop the AC3/DD decoder.
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.
Well, maybe that's what people who don't work professionally with digital media mean by it, but that's kind of like calling Explorer "The Internet."
My video compression blog
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!