Compression - Sub 50% ratio Lossless Audio Compression

Author

Sub 50% ratio Lossless Audio Compression

Dan

2004-09-28, 3:55 pm

Hi Folks,

Ive been messing with audio compression for sometime, just as an
interest, and ive got a compressor and decoder that easily compresses
44khz 16bit WAVs to < 50% in ~95/100 cases and never less than 55% so
far (of course, throw white noise at it and other special cases and it
falls right over, im talking your everyday music and sound audio
here!).

Theres a few little quirks with it at the moment, but I'll have those
nicely ironed out in a few days time, and Im feeling this is
potentially a useful product to market.

However, at the moment, its just a bare cmdline util, and would need a
host of GUI and other stuff bolted on to make it 'saleable'.

Im self employed as it is and to get this to a marketable state would
require me taking some time out from my usual 'contracts' or finding
houts out of thin air!

If its not worth doing then I sharnt waste my time on it and
concetrate on what I do to earn the food money and just finish it off
in its cmdline form.

So what I need to know really, is

1. Is there a use for lossless audio codecs these days, seeing as
everyone is so in bed with MP3, ORG etc etc

2. Who would have a use for it?

Thanks for your help

Dan

Phil Frisbie, Jr.

2004-09-28, 3:55 pm

Dan wrote:

> Hi Folks,
>
> Ive been messing with audio compression for sometime, just as an
> interest, and ive got a compressor and decoder that easily compresses
> 44khz 16bit WAVs to < 50% in ~95/100 cases and never less than 55% so
> far (of course, throw white noise at it and other special cases and it
> falls right over, im talking your everyday music and sound audio
> here!).
>
> Theres a few little quirks with it at the moment, but I'll have those
> nicely ironed out in a few days time, and Im feeling this is
> potentially a useful product to market.

Who have you surveyed? With 200+ GB hard drives now commonplace, lossless
compression seems unnecessary.

> However, at the moment, its just a bare cmdline util, and would need a
> host of GUI and other stuff bolted on to make it 'saleable'.
>
> Im self employed as it is and to get this to a marketable state would
> require me taking some time out from my usual 'contracts' or finding
> houts out of thin air!
>
> If its not worth doing then I sharnt waste my time on it and
> concetrate on what I do to earn the food money and just finish it off
> in its cmdline form.
>
> So what I need to know really, is
>
> 1. Is there a use for lossless audio codecs these days, seeing as
> everyone is so in bed with MP3, ORG etc etc

Lossless audio is primarily used for editing, and then it is compressed with a
lossy codec for distribution.

> 2. Who would have a use for it?

Maybe it would be useful for archiving the original files.

> Thanks for your help
>
> Dan

--
Phil Frisbie, Jr.
Hawk Software
http://www.hawksoft.com

Pete Fraser

2004-09-28, 3:55 pm

"Dan" <zed@japmetal.com> wrote in message
news:9abf668.0409280905.4059bdb9@posting.google.com...

> 1. Is there a use for lossless audio codecs these days, seeing as
> everyone is so in bed with MP3, ORG etc etc
>
> 2. Who would have a use for it?
>

I will eventually archive my 2000 or so CDs to Hard Disk
(to save space for more books).

I would need to compress losslessly, and stream from a
server to a decent DAC in my living room.

The technology is almost there (at the appropriate cost
and convenience point.)

However, there's an open source codec (FLAC),
and Apple now has a lossless codec.

What would your solution add?

Willem

2004-09-28, 3:55 pm

Dan wrote:
) 1. Is there a use for lossless audio codecs these days, seeing as
) everyone is so in bed with MP3, ORG etc etc

Given the existence of FLAC, I would say that lossless audio encoding is
in use, dunno how widespread. It's also in the 50%-55% range.

A quick goole turns out it's homepage is flac.sourceforge.net

SaSW, Willem
--
Disclaimer: I am in no way responsible for any of the statements
made in the above text. For all I know I might be
drugged or something..
No I'm not paranoid. You all think I'm paranoid, don't you !
#EOT

Phil Karn

2004-09-29, 3:55 am

Phil Frisbie, Jr. wrote:

> Who have you surveyed? With 200+ GB hard drives now commonplace,
> lossless compression seems unnecessary.

A more appropriate statement might be that with 200+ GB hard drives now
commonplace, lossY compression seems unnecessary.

Even with 200GB+ disk drives, a lossless scheme that effectively turns a
200GB drive into a 400 GB drive still makes sense to me. Especially
since it doesn't cost *anything* in lost quality.

A lot of people now seem to be adopting lossless compression, e.g., Flac
or Shorten, for their "primary" archives ripped from CD, and then
decompressing and re-encoding into whatever lossy format is appropriate
for their portable music devices. This makes a lot of sense to me.

Phil

Phil Carmody

2004-09-29, 8:55 am

"Phil Frisbie, Jr." <phil@hawksoft.com> writes:

> Dan wrote:
>
>
> Who have you surveyed? With 200+ GB hard drives now commonplace,
> lossless compression seems unnecessary.

I don't follow. Care to elucidate? Are you saying that if you want
lossless, you might as well just stay raw?

But surely that's an argument against all locally stored compressed
files.

Phil
--
They no longer do my traditional winks tournament lunch - liver and bacon.
It's just what you need during a winks tournament lunchtime to replace lost
.... liver. -- Anthony Horton, 2004/08/27 at the Cambridge 'Long Vac.'

Bob

2004-09-29, 9:27 pm

On 28 Sep 2004 10:05:37 -0700, zed@japmetal.com (Dan) wrote:

>Hi Folks,
>
>1. Is there a use for lossless audio codecs these days, seeing as
>everyone is so in bed with MP3, ORG etc etc
>

Useful for archiving. Useful as a base for
future ideas/projects/algorithms

>2. Who would have a use for it?
>

Well I'm always interested in such things. :D

>Thanks for your help
>
>Dan

I can't see actually making money from this
idea. If I were you, I would just clean up the
command line code, write up a text file describing
the algorithm & file structure, and release it
as open source.

Now, a lossless compression ratio of 8:1,
*that* would be a whole different story :D

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