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Opus — the Codec To End All Codecs
New submitter jmv writes "It's official. The Opus audio codec is now standardized by the IETF as RFC 6716. Opus is the first state-of-the-art, fully Free and Open audio codec ratified by a major standards organization. Better, Opus covers basically the entire audio-coding application space and manages to be as good or better than existing proprietary codecs over this whole space. Opus is the result of a collaboration between Xiph.Org, Mozilla, Microsoft (yes!), Broadcom, Octasic, and Google. See the Mozilla announcement and the Xiph.Org press release for more details."
Cue MPEG-LA calling for a patent portfolio to be created and licensed for hard cash, under their gracious auspices, of course.
Ezekiel 23:20
Opus has support for up to 255 channels. Indeed, lossless was the most glaring omission, but considering the obsolescence of MP3HD, I think they must had good reasons to leave it out.
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Audiophiles? Really? The only format they care about is original wax drums rubbed with a diamond and amplified by analog equipment connected by gold cables soaked in unicorn tears. They want nothing to do with digital audio codecs.
"What would make an audio codec something worth using that would make you switch?"
A car stereo that supports it, phones that support it, etc... There is a reason that mp3 is still the king, it can be played on 98,543,221.5 different brand sof devices and another 800 are created that support mp3 every 6 seconds.
Ogg? 5 devices.
Apple's codec? 5 devices.
mp3 will be around for another 10 years simply because I can buy a $0.25 chip and make the toaster my company is making play mp3's.
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