Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)

http://alac.macosforge.org/

by scorchin • 15 years ago

395 177 15 years ago

alac.macosforge.org

gtrak• 15 years ago

What's the point of this over flac?

jpeterson• 15 years ago

iTunes does not support FLAC.

willidiots• 15 years ago

iDevices don't support FLAC, IIRC.

mortenjorck• 15 years ago

It allows you to play lossless audio on the combined 400 million(1) iPods and iOS devices out there.

(1)http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/04/apple-lawsuit-reve...

juliano_q• 15 years ago

Well, FLAC already can be played in the millions of Android phones out there. I don't see the point in having two different formats, it will just make worse for the consumer who want to change from one platform to another. I bought a lot of FLAC music and it is a shame that I can only listen it on my Android phone and not on my iPod.

icefox• 15 years ago

Been hunting around, but does anyone know the first ipod to support it?

andfarm• 15 years ago

It plays on iPods and other iOS devices. Other than that, not much -- FLAC's compression ratio is a bit better on average, and more non-Apple devices support it.

The release of this code isn't really all that exciting, as there's already a free reverse-engineered implementation in libav. (It might not support all the modes described in this source release, though.)

wefqwef123• 15 years ago

he means ffmpeg

tjpick2• 15 years ago

consumer products that actually support it?

Andys• 15 years ago

Android market has had at least one FLAC player for at least 2 years now

artsrc• 15 years ago

I have had something like this for 3 years:

http://www.logitech.com/en-au/speakers-audio/wireless-music-...

BitMastro2• 15 years ago

FLAC has been supported by Rockbox http://www.rockbox.org/ since 2005.. I remember using it in my iriver H300, iPods were supported as well

msbarnett• 15 years ago

Dedicated playback hardware on iOS devices.

jsz02• 15 years ago

I'm not familiar with the current state of FLAC but as of a few years ago ALAC offered better meta-data in the MP4 container. Part of the reason I abandoned FLAC years ago was constant problems with meta-data. I would often end up corrupt files post-tagging or the player would simply not show meta-data I had meticulously added to my bootleg collection. I got the sense at the time that there was a lack of agreement on how meta-data was supposed to work in FLAC files.

uriel• 15 years ago

Afaik FLAC this days uses an ogg container, which is where the metadata goes, so support should be as good as for Ogg Vorbis.

In practical terms, I have a huge collection of FLAC, and never had trouble with metadata, sounds like a bug in whatever player you were using.

nitrogen4• 15 years ago

Note to uriel: your last few posts are all [dead] for some reason.

  uriel 2 hours ago | link [dead]

  Afaik FLAC this days uses an ogg container, which is where
  the metadata goes, so support should be as good as for Ogg
  Vorbis.

  In practical terms, I have a huge collection of FLAC, and
  never had trouble with metadata, sounds like a bug in
  whatever player you were using.

mikeash• 15 years ago

In addition to iOS playback as mentioned by other posters, ALAC is also used when streaming AirPlay audio. I would have killed for this code a few years ago.

tiles• 15 years ago

For those unfamiliar with the site, MacOSForge is an official Apple site which hosts repositories for code included in OS X (see http://www.opensource.apple.com/ and the sidebar)

The announcement with timestamp for today is on the homepage: http://www.macosforge.org/

kahawe10• 15 years ago

I don't know why Apple has gotten THAT much flak for allegedly being totally closed and locking you down worse than Microsoft did back in the dark ages etc. Yes, they have certain core products which are their own and they don't open them up and the locking down of their iPhones, well, it could be a blessing and a curse. I will only say that from the perspective of a regular customer, the quality control done on apps is probably not such a bad thing but yes, for app developers it probably just sucks. And the music you buy online on iTunes now comes pretty much without any DRM in high quality AAC.

But they are not ONLY "evil" because at the same time, Apple did contribute to open standards and there is a lot of Open Source available. It is, however, still a business so for me, it seems they are playing it smart and do "open" where it also benefits them and their customers and do "closed/locked down" where it is critical for their own success or in accordance with their product philosophy or the reality distortion field.

jhuni16• 15 years ago

The problem is that Apple's business model is based upon selling artificially scarce content (music, applications, etc) over closed and restrictive platforms. A couple of open products isn't going to change their fundamental business model.

The argument that "Apple is just a business" doesn't hold weight for me either because there are clearly superior business models out their like Google's which is based upon free software (linux) and intelligent cloud services (search).

ethank3• 15 years ago

This is fantastic. Apple uses AAC partly because of the patent royalty (http://mp3licensing.com/) which they have to pay on every iPad/pod/etc sold, as well as because it is just a better format.

MP3 is a total racket held by Thompson Technicolor, on top of being a pretty crap format.

Hopefully this is a portends Apple offering lossless through ITMS on top of the 1080p rights they are hunting down right now.

pork• 15 years ago

MP3 may be a crap format, but it's the VHS of the digital world.

klodolph• 15 years ago

It's the DVD of the audio world, ten years from now. It's supported everywhere. The quality is good enough, but we have better.

DarkShikari• 15 years ago

This is fantastic. Apple did AAC because of the patent royalty (http://mp3licensing.com/) which they have to pay on every iPad/pod/etc sold

Since when did Apple "do AAC"? AAC is a standardized format that makes up part of MPEG-4, contributed to by dozens of companies and organizations. The patent licensing is handled by Via Licensing, not Apple. AAC has patent licensing fees too; over a dollar per device (albeit with a very low cap, IIRC).

, as well as because it is just a better format.

MPEG-4 AAC was the successor to MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3), by the same organization, so this is no surprise.

ALAC was -- for many years -- a proprietary FLAC-alike. There was no real reason to use it except for compatibility with Apple devices, as the two use nearly identical compression methods and the incompatibility is purely gratuitous.

ethank3• 15 years ago

Sorry: USE aac.

AAC has no patent for streaming or distribution. When we did direct-to-consumer digital sales this is why I used this rather than Mp3, and ALAC for lossless over FLAC because of the support issue.

AAC does have a patent fee for codec usage (i.e., devices).

ugh3• 15 years ago

MP3 was great for its time. It’s not a crap format, there are merely better formats available today. They weren’t when MP3 came to the market. (Specifically AAC was developed as a successor to MP3.)

I’m also not sure whether this tells you anything. Apple started selling AAC encoded music at a time when no† music player could play it. Many mistakenly thought that AAC was some sort of proprietary Apple codec and it might as well have been.

Today more people than ever have an iOS device or an iPod. There is no need at all for Apple to play nice and make sure that others can also use the ALAC. Why should they?

Also: What’s the incentive for offering lossless music? No one† can tell the difference. Do you really think Apple will start catering to audiophiles? Because of the switch to flash memory space is limited, Apple’s current devices are not a good match for lossless music.

—

† Don’t be pedantic.

ethank3• 15 years ago

Lossless music - there is an audience for it, and it creates the ability to stratify prices, which the labels/rights-holders/distributors like. See the vinyl boom, hdtracks.com, http://www.becausesoundmatters.com/, etc.

So will Apple cater to audiophiles? No. Will they cater to margins? For damned sure they will if it serves them and those they entice to sign over content. Why would they switch to 1080P otherwise?

Also: given device sizes it would be nice to have raw uncompressed/lossless and I could downsample at will to suit specific devices/systems.

savoytruffle• 15 years ago

ALAC is used in AirPlay streaming (it was first announced along with the AirPort Express in mid 2004). This might be a plan to make AirPlay audio streaming more ubiquitous.

yuhong• 15 years ago

"Apple started selling AAC encoded music at a time when no† music player could play it"

Not that it mattered at the time as they were DRMed anyway.

altrego992• 15 years ago

> Why should they?

Because others already have FLAC?

Isn't it similar to the kid offering to share his bicycle, to his neighbor, with the hope of friendship, knowing fully well that it will do no real benefit since his neighbor already has an equally good machine?

colanderman• 15 years ago

This article is about ALAC (a lossless codec developed by Apple), not AAC (a lossy codec developed by the ISO and used by Apple).

ootachi3• 15 years ago

This is incorrect. In the past, Apple has tended to prefer patented formats, because they are the holders of many of these patents and so increasing their use benefits them. If Apple had preferred patent-free formats at the time of the iPod, they would have chosen Vorbis, which has an open royalty-free encoder that is superior to QuickTime's rather poor AAC encoder.

Since the Apache license grants a patent license, this development regarding Apple Lossless would seem to be a reversal of their previous stances. I'm glad to see it.

Edit: That said, I agree with Dark Shikari that it would have been better had Apple Lossless never existed and if they had just used FLAC instead.

hexley• 15 years ago

QuickTime has a poor AAC encoder? I don't think you'll find anyone credible who seriously believes that.

rsynnott3• 15 years ago

> If Apple had preferred patent-free formats at the time of the iPod, they would have chosen Vorbis, which has an open royalty-free encoder

That would have been a good trick, given that the very first release of Vorbis was only a year before the iPod hit the market.

necubi• 15 years ago

There's no mention of a patent grant. Does anybody know the state of ALAC with regards to patents?

stock_toaster• 15 years ago

I believe the apache 2.0 license [1] includes a grant.

     3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and 
     conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants 
     to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, 
     royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) 
     patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, 
     import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license 
     applies only to those patent claims licensable by such 
     Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their 
     Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their 
     Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) 
     was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against 
     any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a 
     lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution  
     incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or 
     contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses 
     granted to You under this License for that Work shall 
     terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.

[1]: http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

kinetik• 15 years ago

So, the next question is: is the container format (MPEG-4 Part 14) patent encumbered?

jolan• 15 years ago

Someone came up with a reverse engineered decoder 6+ years ago:

http://craz.net/programs/itunes/alac.html

Nice to have an encoder now too.

daeken• 15 years ago

I worked on this with craz, taking directly "decompiled" code into a useful form. This was by far one of the most interesting things I've ever done -- if you want to get into reversing or increase your skills, do a codec! I built a stupid simple reference encoder in Python right after, but never managed to really get it right; wonder if I still have all the old code around.

sneak• 15 years ago

ffmpeg has had both encode and decode support for alac for some time.

lyime• 15 years ago

This is amazing. Since running Mugasha for the past few years, encoding in AAC has been a huge hassle. Lib faac has terrible encoding quality compared to good ones like Nero and Apple.

psychotik• 15 years ago

I hope Google adds (hardware) support for this to Android - it would add another option for patent un-encumbered audio formats, outside of Vorbis.

metajack2• 15 years ago

FLAC has been around longer and is also part of the Xiph.org project along with Vorbis. If Google wanted to add a lossless codec, they certainly could have before now.

(Disclaimer: I am associated with Xiph.org.)

nitrogen4• 15 years ago

It looks like it's been done, as of Honeycomb for tablets and Ice Cream Sandwich for phones: https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=1461

sunsu• 15 years ago

Would be great if android implemented encoding to that format now. Its a pain to try to get the same audio formats from both Android and iOS devices because both platforms encode to completely different formats.

frou_dh2• 15 years ago

I've got all my CDs ripped in ALAC so that I can use the iTunes option to have the tracks automatically transcoded to smaller, lossy AAC when putting them on iDevices.

I welcome this open sourcing because it makes my 'archival' format slightly less oddball.

sitkack3• 15 years ago

ffmpeg already can transcode from alac to flac, I rip with itunes and transcode to flac for my Sansa Clip.

splicer6• 15 years ago

FINALLY!!! But what does this mean for the future of FLAC?

lclarkmichalek• 15 years ago

Nothing much? People with lossless collections in FLAC are likely to continue building them in FLAC. And if they switch over to AAC, then there is no loss. With free lossless audio codecs, everyone wins.

Samuel_Michon4• 15 years ago

ALAC ≠ AAC

ALAC : AAC : : FLAC : MP3

metajack2• 15 years ago

The Xiph.org project has always maintained that if there are royalty free audio codecs available for everyone, then we've won. We never cared that they were ours, but no one else seemed to be building them.

It's a little silly that Apple rolled their own when a perfectly good option was available, but the world still wins.

I hope they try and get it standardized. That would make it even better.

splicer6• 15 years ago

Anyone know the URL for the repo? It looks like they're using Subversion, but I don't see any svn:// links anywhere.

dmaz• 15 years ago

http://svn.macosforge.org/repository/alac/trunk

splicer6• 15 years ago

Thanks :D

codys2• 15 years ago

Sweet.

And not so sweet: I get a nice failure to build the "convert-utility" on link.

It seems that there is some work to be done on this. I expect the best thing would be for the knowledge/info contained within the source to be merged into exsisting software.

codys2• 15 years ago

I see a trac browser for SVN, but i see no SVN link. Any idea what that may be or what an easy way to determine it is?

angus77• 15 years ago

Is there an advantage to this for someone who owns no Apple products and has no iTunes account?

EDIT: Looking at http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Lossless_compa... it looks like the only clear advantage ALAC has is iTunes/iDevice support. FLAC has faster encoding/decoding speeds, and it's unknown if ALAC has error handling (which FLAC has). FLAC also supports RIFF chunks, has pipe support and is ReplayGain compatible, and has some support for embedded CUE sheets.

mitjak• 15 years ago

And yet the most major popular MP3 player on the market can't play FLAC, which will probably mean it will remain as obscure as it is now (i.e., mostly used among audiophiles).

tomjen3• 15 years ago

Not really. Flac is lossles, and based on what the grandparent said a better format.

So, store your music in flac and convert as needed.

ZeroGravitas3• 15 years ago

It's not that obscure. You can buy Metallica and Beatles tracks in FLAC.

aw3c2• 15 years ago

Predicting the future based on current popularity is utterly useless. Just think of the Internet Explorer.

lloeki• 15 years ago

I read a comparison months (if not years) ago where one voluntarily flicked random bits and erased portions of files in FLAC and ALAC files, and the result was that ALAC was way, way more resilient than FLAC.

cabirum• 15 years ago

The FLAC repository havent been updated for two years.. Shouldn't it be called dead?

darklajid• 15 years ago

What is the newest mp3 "format feature" you're using?

From which git repository do you clone your encoding software?

Have you used WAV files recently? I haven't read about major progress on that front either.

BitMastro2• 15 years ago

Unfortunately I'm getting more and more biased against Apple these days, but then why they didn't use FLAC from the beginning? The FLAC format was stable from 2001 and Apple introduced ALAC in 2004, was it just as a way to be able to use DRM?

kennystone• 15 years ago

Apple needed DRM at the beginning to get label deals. Now they don't.

myspy3• 15 years ago

As far as I know, is FLAC de- and encoding more battery consuming than using ALAC. So ALAC is the mobile format to go.

powrtoch• 15 years ago

> it's unknown if ALAC has error handling

Shouldn't take us long to find out now.

blasdel2• 15 years ago

When I was comparing them years ago I found that a lot of FLAC implementations had a lot of trouble with seeking properly, skipping to the wrong spot and then reporting a third spot as the current timecode.

Then you have the metadata problem — ALAC is in a normal mp4 container so everything's uniform and well-used, with FLAC you're stuck with the ogg container or its proprietary system. That wouldn't be so bad, except that almost nobody puts metadata in their FLAC files, instead preferring to bundle along separate text files with a description of the tracks and info about the rip. I think they do it so that the whole file's hash stays constant.

cageface4• 15 years ago

I haven't found that to be the case at all. All the FLAC files I've purchased have proper FLAC tags, often including cover art. I've never had problems with FLAC seeking at all.

Better still, FLAC provides excellent command-line tools for encoding, decoding and tagging so I can script batch operations easily. I'm not aware of anything similar for ALAC. Maybe with the codec in the open these tools will emerge?

b3b0p2• 15 years ago

What I don't get is why don't places like iTunes and Amazon offer Lossless options for downloading? I mean, here they are bragging about 720p, 1080p, high definition video which is gigantic in size, approaching or exceeding gigabytes for a typical 2 hour movie. Yet, we can't spare the extra space or bandwidth for a higher quality audio file which is still a fraction of the size? I don't get it.

southpolesteve• 15 years ago

Check out www.murfie.com

They do downloads and offer ALAC and FLAC

frou_dh2• 15 years ago

That video isn't lossless either. The mostly-indistinguishable-from-lossless point has already been reached for downloadable audio, whereas video is still creeping up on it.

jfb• 15 years ago

Not even remotely. H.264 is wondrous, but it can't compete with even ProRes. If we all had gigabit pipes, Apple would be selling/renting the latter over the former, believe you me.

EDIT: Of course, at comparable bitrates, H.264 would likely be superior to ProRes (75-250Mb/s), but the computational complexity involved in decoding even intra-frame only H.264 versus a mezzanine format like ProRes would certainly point towards sending the latter rather than the former down the pipe, ceteris paribus.

b3b0p2• 15 years ago

Yes,I know this, but the size of the video files are much greater than the music files. I hear people complaining about the sizes of lossless music files, but not about 1080p video files. In fact, I have read comments from people complaining about only having 720p available from iTunes because of their 1080p televisions. However, these files are measured better in terms of gigabytes instead of megabytes. In other words, lossless music files shouldn't be problem, especially so with the cost of storage and bandwidth available. They are not that large when you compare them to even compressed video files (that are 720p or even 1080p).

idspispopd• 15 years ago

Apple tend to shun "completeness" for simplicity to the average user. I.e. 1. Extra complexity without a significant consumer demand. 2. Licensing issues with the studios, should these be priced higher for example.

thirdsun• 15 years ago

Boomkat.com is an excellent source for lossless music. They offer almost everything as FLAC, which unfortunately I have to convert to ALAC in order to make it available in iTunes/on my iPhone. Quobuz.com on the other hand offers ALAC, WAV and FLAC. Basic french language skills will enable you to buy music there.

rsynnott3• 15 years ago

There have been rumors for the past few months that Apple will do just that. This release might be consistent with that; it will undoubtedly expand the audience, less because of the source availability, and more because of the Apache license patent grant.

renownedmedia• 15 years ago

Awesome! Now embedded devices like my car will be able to play more than just MP3's!

splicer6• 15 years ago

I just tried building libalac.a on Linux using GCC 4.6.1 and it worked! There were quite a few warnings though.

To eliminate the warnings, edit /trunk/codec/makefile and add -Wno-multichar to CFLAGS.

BuddhaSource• 15 years ago

A successor to MP3.

We know there are better formats than MP3 today but getting mass adoption is difficult. Open source ALAC will give birth to new 3rd party supporting players, not to mention apple products already supports it & we have higher chances of mass adoption.

chrishenn• 15 years ago

It doesn't make sense to use ALAC on mobile players. It's lossless so the file size is huge — you can't tell the difference between an ALAC file and whatever is sold in the iTunes store on a mobile device. Especially when the storage space is so little.

rsynnott3• 15 years ago

No, AAC was a successor to MP3, about a decade ago. This is a lossless format, so not really suitable for the same roles.

joe_the_user• 15 years ago

Open source, sure. But patent free?

Comment here indicates no:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166268

If AAC costs $1/device to implement, who exactly cares that the code is "opened"?

ootachi3• 15 years ago

Two mistakes here:

(1) Apple Lossless, not AAC. Apple is not open-sourcing their AAC decoder, which is part of QuickTime.

(2) The Apache license grants a royalty-free patent license.

sandGorgon2• 15 years ago

does this mean that FLAC will soon be irrelevant ?

Today a lot of high-fidelity audio players support FLAC as the default lossless format. This kinda meant that that iPods and these players lived in different universes as far as lossless is concerned.

If the release of this codec means that h/w manufacturers are able to incorporate this codec into their silicon (I'm not sure if the open source license extends to hardware), then effectively there is no real reason to use or support FLAC anymore (minor differences in quality nonwithstanding).

Anybody know which codec is more power efficient ?

altrego992• 15 years ago

Irrelevant is a strong word, and I very much doubt it. The only reason for making this open source was for devices to be able to support this more. However FLAC has been open source for quite a while - consequently most device makers willing to make the effort to support loss-less audio codec already did so with FLAC. Support for ALAC will mostly come for these devices. Conversely, I see no reason for any device to support ALAC and not FLAC.

According to Wikipedia, FLAC is more efficient in encoding/decoding speeds - with same compression ratio. This translates to it being more power efficient.

Lastly this news will matter to only a few audiophiles who are also Apple geeks.

Making something open source is a welcome gesture, but I hope Apple will do this for other items which will have better reaching consequences.

sandGorgon2• 15 years ago

Conversely, I see no reason for any device to support ALAC and not FLAC.

Isnt this implemented in silicon (or atleast implemented as some DSP-specific library) ? AFAIK that costs money.

Today, if you wanted a lossless player, that player had to have FLAC - which was taken from a commercial vendor like Tensilica [1]. But now that ALAC is an alternative, why would I even try to spend more money and also add FLAC ?

Plus, it is reasonably trivial to convert all FLAC to ALAC [2]

[1] http://www.tensilica.com/products/audio/audio-codecs/flac.ht... or http://www.tensilica.com/products/audio/audio-codecs.htm (no ALAC)

[2] http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm

sambeau• 15 years ago

I suspect that the big news here might be Airplay.

If you put this together with the rumours of an AppleTV there could be something very special here, especially if they are pre-emtively paving the way for open-source, 3rd party developers.

Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now open source (Apache license)

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