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Faster Audio Decoding and Encoding Coming To Ogg and FLAC (phoronix.com)

Posted by msmash on from the backend-tech dept.

FLAC and Ogg now have faster audio encoding and decoding capabilities thanks to recent code improvements. An anonymous reader writes: Robert Kausch of the fre:ac audio converter project informed news outlet Phoronix about recent changes he has made to FLAC and Ogg for bolstering faster performance. Kausch says he updated the CRC checks within FLAC and Ogg to a faster algorithm and those patches have now been accepted upstream. The Ogg and FLAC updates were merged this week for using the optimized CRC algorithm. As a result of this, encoding and decoding FLAC is now 5 percent faster, while encoding and decoding Ogg FLAC is 10 percent and 15 percent faster, respectively. Opus sees about one percent faster decoding, while Vorbis does decoding at two percent faster pace.

11 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. One step forward, one step back by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So after the latest patches for speculative execution vulnerabilities, you'll end up with performance about the same as you used to have.

    1. Re:One step forward, one step back by nospam007 · · Score: 2

      "So after the latest patches for speculative execution vulnerabilities, you'll end up with performance about the same as you used to have."

      No, it's faster and so you can play a 3 minutes song in 2 minutes.

  2. What does 5-15 Percent speed mean? by jellomizer · · Score: 2

    While I like to see faster algorithms in general as a good thing. But some questions.
    Where does Flac and ogg stand on Quality/encoding speed compared to others?
    Will this range make it more competitive to others, or is there too big of a gap?
    For those who move to the new version how much time will they really spend. Will they just get a minute of their time a day or hours?
     

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    1. Re:What does 5-15 Percent speed mean? by mishehu · · Score: 2

      ogg in of itself is simply a container format. It does not actually handle the compression/decompression of the streams within it, that's handled by other stuff such as libvorbis for vorbis encoded streams.

    2. Re:What does 5-15 Percent speed mean? by DigitAl56K · · Score: 5, Informative

      Flac is lossless, it's full quality.

      Opus, except at _extremely_ low bitrates, has similar or better quality than the most commonly used modern codecs:
      http://opus-codec.org/comparis...

      Flac is fast to encode and decode. Opus decodes slower than MP3 but on par with AAC LC, and encodes slightly faster than AAC LC and on par with MP3. Performance will vary a bit by encoder:
      http://fmedia.firmdev.com/audi...

    3. Re:What does 5-15 Percent speed mean? by TeknoHog · · Score: 3, Informative

      Flac is lossless, it's full quality.

      Flac is fast to encode and decode.

      Just to elaborate, Flac was designed for light/fast encoders at the possible expense of compression ratio. It would decode in software in portable music players that often had hardware decoders for MP3 and AAC. In comparison, other lossless formats at the time such as APE had somewhat better compression ratios, but were much heavier to encode and decode. I guess the prevailing idea was that portable players don't need lossless quality, but Flac changed that. Of course, Flac is also Free software.

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  3. So a 5% to 15% speed improvement is newsworthy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Man, we must be reaching some kind of technological plateau. I'm all for speed gains... but come on. I guess compiler flags would potentially make more difference than that.

  4. Re:Ogg by execthts · · Score: 2

    Basically all Android devices. Built-in ringtones and notification sounds are all in .ogg.

  5. Re:Ogg by jwhyche · · Score: 3

    Correct me if I'm wrong, and someone will, but I think Spoify uses it.

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  6. Re:Not about FLAC or OGG by the_germ · · Score: 2

    They are the official reference codecs provided by Xiph Foundation. These are used on every Android device and in every Linux distribution. Most software that will process FLAC or Ogg uses these libraries too.

    They are easily the most commonly used implementations.

  7. Re:Depends... by jrumney · · Score: 3, Informative

    It's a new algorithm to calculate the same checksum. It doesn't break compatibility with anything.

    FLAC and Vorbis reference decoders are both lacking any processor specific optimizations, so a new checksum algorithm is only a fraction of the potential for optimization. For Vorbis, there is Tremor as an alternative, which does have some ARM specific optimization, but for FLAC the reference codec is all there is.