Audio Compression Primer

Hack Jandy writes "For those of you with a little extra time this afternoon, check out Sudhian's primer to all things concerning audio compression. The article details everything from DRM to CRC matrixes (with a healthy dosage of Ogg)."

Comments

Is FLAC worth it?

[Megaweapon]

"FLAC is the Linux users lossless audio codec of choice"

Unless your doing some form of audio editing or "production" recording, is lossless really worth the extra size compared to a 192kbps Ogg or MP3? I usually have more problems with static from the stupid 3.5mm jack than a lossy format.

Virtually dismisses lossy compression

[Sanity]

This article doesn't seem to talk much about ogg at all, unless I am missing something, in fact, it virtually dismisses all lossy algorithms in favour of lossless algorithms which achieve only 50% compression (instead of 90% compression with lossy).

Each to their own, but I am more than satisfied with oggs or mp3s encoded at a reasonable bitrate - I think the popularity of hardware such as iPods suggest that most other people are too.

Waste of time . . .

[barryman_5000]

Not very informative for slashdot ppl. I think we should have had an article more about code or something. I think most slashdotters understand codecs and the differences in lossless and lossy compressions. Waste of 15 minutes.

more algorithms

[barik]

While the article is a primer, I was a little disappointed in the algorithmic treatment given in the article itself. Right now I know of two excellent free publications: Introduction to Sound Processing and The Sounding Object, which both treat the theoretical, DSP side of things. Any other resources that Slashdot readers can recommend for those who are interested in the subject of audio compression and representation?

Re:I still hear MDCT distortions

[radish]

Not wanting to get some award for pedantry, but all music recording is "lossy". If you listen to a CD, you're not hearing the exact same sound you'd here in the studio, those cymbals sound diffrent due to sampling, quantization etc. So when it comes to "lossy compression" causing "artifacts" - it's only creating different artifiacts, there already were some.

Of course this doesn't go against what you're saying at all, other than calling FLAC "perfect" is wrong. It might be the same as the CD, but that has it's own problems.

Re:AAC

[Skuto]

AAC is *much LESS* expensive than MP3. Just compare the licensing costs from Vialicensing (AAC) vs Thomson (MP3).

The parent is plain wrong. ("Don't believe all you read on the internet, kids")

Hey! Me too!

[Just Some Guy]

I do the exact same thing, except that I keep my entire CD collection on CD. If I ever need a new format, I can go back to the CD and reencode without transcoding from another lossy format.

I've got about 350GB of lossless audio goodness in a set of nice oak bookshelves built into my wall. Considering that the time it takes to get up, get a CD, rip it, and encode it is not much longer than it takes to locate a FLACed album on my fileserver and encode it - that is, the encoding stage is several times longer than the "get up and rip the first track before starting to encode" phase - I think I'll stick with my current system.