Apple's Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) Now Open Source

[*LTD*]

The main advantage of using competing lossless formats is that they are supported by ALL devices on any platform.

This is key. And especially appropriate how massive the market share is compared to a single device centred around the closed source iOS.

Incorrect.

iOS leads all other non-Windows OSes in market share. World-wide.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/050211-apple-ios-share.html

http://www.bgr.com/2011/10/03/ios-and-mac-os-x-market-shares-hit-record-highs/

 

[reel2reel]

No way. The filesizes of many lossless files are huge.

But these "huge" files are being downloaded everyday. FLAC is hugely popular. Nobody said there can't be alternatives, 256 kbps for disposable stuff and ALAC for the stuff worth keeping.

This is great news.

 

[LoganT]

I'm not sure internet speed is the reason Apple hasn't offered Apple Lossless yet. For sake of argument let's say the average size of an Apple Lossless file is

40 MB (it's probably less than that) and let's say the number of songs on a album is 20 songs.

That's 800 MBs. People download HD movies and HD TV shows that are way bigger than that and they only enjoy those once.

 

[dasmb]

Yes. It is possible to create a file of noise which ALAC can't reduce in size. But ALAC is designed for audio that doesn't sound like complete noise, and thus can be losslessly compressed to something smaller. Basically, if a human can hear something other than just noise, there's some amount of redundancy in the information theoretic sense. And that allows lossless compression in size.

You're describing lossy compression, which completely removes information which isn't heard (hence "lossy"). At best, lossy compression is acoustically identical to the source according to the human ear, but it can never reproduce the exact information of the source.

Lossless compression eliminates information that is actually duplicated, most obviously silence or "held" notes. Losslessly compressed information, when decompressed, is identical to its source at the data level.

Waveform data is nothing more than sound intensity at a certain bit strength, recorded at a certain sample rate. You can technically play any bits you can imagine as if they were a sound waveform...such as, say, the text of Moby Dick. It would sound completely insane, but you could do it. If you were to do this, and lossily compress the resulting waveform -- using any lossy algorithm, at any bit strength -- you could never decompress this file, and get back the text of Moby Dick, like you could with any lossless format. That's the benefit of lossless -- the sound is just smaller, not different.

Had efficient lossless compression been around in the late 80s, we might have gotten MiniDiscs that actually sounded good, or CDs that were twice as long.

----------

I'm not sure internet speed is the reason Apple hasn't offered Apple Lossless yet. For sake of argument let's say the average size of an Apple Lossless file is

40 MB (it's probably less than that) and let's say the number of songs on a album is 20 songs.

That's 800 MBs. People download HD movies and HD TV shows that are way bigger than that and they only enjoy those once.

Considering the average album UNCOMPRESSED is about 800 MB, your math is flawed by 2x. And yes there are nerds who would download an album at 400MB and even pay more for the privilege. I'm one.

 

[TigerWoodsIV]

MP3s are not "still quite good". LAME encoding has improved, but it still sucks compared to lossless.

Android may have more market share, but it's the same as PCs; Windows has more market share, but Apple has the best-selling laptop & desktop. Apple is a hardware-centric company that happens to produce exclusive, fantastic software optimized for the hardware.
The iPhone has more users than any other Android phone. More people buy a MacBook Pro 15" than people buy e.g. a Dell XPS 15z. But there's so many of these single models which Apple products easily beat that, cumulatively, Apple's competition has more users than Apple.


Awesome news! Kudos to Apple!

Honestly, in a blind test can you tell the difference between a LAME 320mp3 and FLAC? I mean even if you could, for anything portable there is going to be outside noise that would drown out the smallest details a 320mp3 would lose. Like in a car, on a bus, on a train, walking outside, not too mention the equipment you'd be using to play on the go. So unless you're just listening at home on high quality equipment, LAME mp3 is "quite good." And regardless of the smallest things you may pick out, is doesn't suck that's for sure. I have very good hearing and can't tell a V0 from a FLAC in almost any circumstance.

 

[marcusj0015]

There is more than one device running iOS. You've got iPhones, iPods, Apple TVs, etc. Plus there have been over 250 Million iOS devices sold. That's a lot to use this format.

Anyway, this is great news. Nobody could (or rather should) be unhappy about.

Not to mention ANY PC or Mac running iTunes, OR anything adding ALAC compatibility from the free source code Apple released today.

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Honestly, in a blind test can you tell the difference between a LAME 320mp3 and FLAC? I mean even if you could, for anything portable there is going to be outside noise that would drown out the smallest details a 320mp3 would lose. Like in a car, on a bus, on a train, walking outside, not too mention the equipment you'd be using to play on the go. So unless you're just listening at home on high quality equipment, LAME mp3 is "quite good." And regardless of the smallest things you may pick out, is doesn't suck that's for sure. I have very good hearing and can't tell a V0 from a FLAC in almost any circumstance.

Why does any of this matter? You're not going to convert anyone to MP3/AAC and it's not even what this post is about.

and btw, I CAN tell the difference, the psychoacousticanalysis MP3 and AAC does to the music muddies the mids and makes my ears hurt after listening to it, not to mention the louder it gets the more painful it gets. ALAC suffers none of those problems at the same volumes.

 

[dasmb]

Honestly, in a blind test can you tell the difference between a LAME 320mp3 and FLAC? I mean even if you could, for anything portable there is going to be outside noise that would drown out the smallest details a 320mp3 would lose. Like in a car, on a bus, on a train, walking outside, not too mention the equipment you'd be using to play on the go. So unless you're just listening at home on high quality equipment, LAME mp3 is "quite good." And regardless of the smallest things you may pick out, is doesn't suck that's for sure. I have very good hearing and can't tell a V0 from a FLAC in almost any circumstance.

This is such a foolish argument. There are plenty of applications for both lossy and lossless compression and they have nothing to do with what sounds best. For example, mp3 is not designed for re-compression, so no matter what bandwidth your mp3s are they will sound worse when compressed to, say, 128 kb/s than a lossless file would have. "Recompression is stupid," you say, but that doesn't stop people from using Bluetooth headsets, which recompress signals. As do many cloud music services.

If you want the most flexibility with your music, your source should be lossless. As should any music you record. Hard drives are stupid cheap, sound quality is forever. You've got your compressed music in the cloud, and iTunes will convert everything else on transfer if you let it.

And yes, I can tell the difference, mostly because MP3 is a 18 year old format that should have died a decade ago when the MPEG4 standard produced AAC. MP3 struggles with certain tones inside the audible band, percussion especially including ringing cymbals and open snares, and with passages that feature these sounds it's clear at any bitrate. MP3, Vorbis, AC3, AAC and HE-AAC all model sound very differently, as evidenced by low-bitrate samples. These qualities diminish in "noticeability" at higher bitrates but never disappear, as they are fundamental to the model.

 

[igazza]

Is this a step toward offering Apple Lossless on iTunes? Hopefully.

The lossless files are to large for now.

 

[Prodo123]

Honestly, in a blind test can you tell the difference between a LAME 320mp3 and FLAC? I mean even if you could, for anything portable there is going to be outside noise that would drown out the smallest details a 320mp3 would lose. Like in a car, on a bus, on a train, walking outside, not too mention the equipment you'd be using to play on the go. So unless you're just listening at home on high quality equipment, LAME mp3 is "quite good." And regardless of the smallest things you may pick out, is doesn't suck that's for sure. I have very good hearing and can't tell a V0 from a FLAC in almost any circumstance.

Honestly? Yes, I can.
In a noisy room? Yes, I can.
With Apple Earphones? Most of the time, no, I can't.
That's the problem; people can't hear the difference between MP3 and lossless audio because their equipment is crappy. They sound equally bad, but if you're a careful listener, then you can tell slight differences.

 

[LoganT]

Considering the average album UNCOMPRESSED is about 800 MB, your math is flawed by 2x. And yes there are nerds who would download an album at 400MB and even pay more for the privilege. I'm one.

What kind of uncompressed are you talking about? Are you talking about Apple Lossless/FLAC or WAV/AIFF?

 

[StoneyG]

ALAC on iTunes? That will happen when there is a massive boost on average download speed for the world. For most people, that would be a lot of bandwidth. Not to mention, ISPs need to cheapen up plans or make unlimited more viable for this kind of thing. Last but not least, storage space overall would need to be massive to store a lot of songs. So I don't see it happening

Not that you're wrong, but how many people actually have or buy or download a lot of music? An extra couple hundred megs a month wouldn't make THAT much of a difference.

 

[Prodo123]

What kind of uncompressed are you talking about? Are you talking about Apple Lossless/FLAC or WAV/AIFF?

Lossless is divided into two categories: compressed and uncompressed. Compressed files such as ALAC and FLAC use a compression method similar to ZIP that retains the original integrity of the data while reducing the file size, as arn explained in his reply on the first page.

Uncompressed is raw data. Such as WAV and AIFF. No compression whatsoever.

He is also wrong; an average uncompressed album NEEDS to be less than 700MB, since that's the maximum amount of data a CD can hold.

Nevertheless, I agree with him. I'd rather pay for lossless CD/vinyl than crap iTunes.

 

[TigerWoodsIV]

This is such a foolish argument. There are plenty of applications for both lossy and lossless compression and they have nothing to do with what sounds best. For example, mp3 is not designed for re-compression, so no matter what bandwidth your mp3s are they will sound worse at, say 128 kb/s than a lossless file would have. "Recompression is stupid," you say, but that doesn't stop people from using Bluetooth headsets, which recompress signals, as do many cloud music services.

If you want the most flexibility with your music, your source should be lossless. As should any music you record.

I just think it sounds a little ridiculous to say that a good encode from LAME sucks. I'm not arguing the uses of lossless, or that it's technically better. I'm simply saying that for an insanely high percentage of people they sound identical and therefore saying it sucks just doesn't seem right.

 

[DustinT]

This is a great move. I think its a small step towards having an option for Lossless audio from the iTunes store. a+

 

[StoneyG]

As is often the case: Some get it, and most do not.

 

[Prodo123]

I just think it sounds a little ridiculous to say that a good encode from LAME sucks. I'm not arguing the uses of lossless, or that it's technically better. I'm simply saying that for an insanely high percentage of people they sound identical and therefore saying it sucks just doesn't seem right.

Nope, not ridiculous. Insanely high percentage of people use Skullcandy, too.

 

[TigerWoodsIV]

Honestly? Yes, I can.
In a noisy room? Yes, I can.
With Apple Earphones? Most of the time, no, I can't.
That's the problem; people can't hear the difference between MP3 and lossless audio because their equipment is crappy. They sound equally bad, but if you're a careful listener, then you can tell slight differences.

I truly wish I had your ears then. I can sometimes detect differences (my setup is my MBP to an external USB DAC/headphone amp to Ultrasone Pro 900 headphones), but even with what I consider pretty good equipment it's so hard unless you're specifically trying to pick out differences and impossible with outside noise leaking in because the differences are usually very minor details.

 

[justinfreid]

Good news for widespread support, but one wonders why Apple didn't just go with FLAC in the first place.

Maybe they initially wanted some type of lockin or planned their A series of chips to to have built in decoding of ALAC, something they couldn't do as easily with FLAC.
But it is good to see the source of any software shared like this.

 

[aberrero]

I feel more comfortable listening to lossless audio because I know that all the sound I'm hearing is part of the actual recording and not a compression artifact. It encourages me to listen to the music more closely because I feel like I can "trust" it more.

Anyway, this is great news. I might start using ALAC instead of FLAC now.

 

[ramuman]

I'm in the market for a McIntosh 402 and Revel Ultima IIs. Hopefully this makes things easier with limited use of Sonos.

 

[Prodo123]

For those arguing the lossy vs lossless:

LAME MP3 VBR V0 vs AIFF waveforms, stereo on Audacity
Top is AIFF, bottom is LAME.
Note the flatter, rounded edges and peaks of the LAME encoding. Also note the missing smaller peaks.
Most noticeable at 15:31 mark.

The LAME has overall less music than the AIFF (obviously). Here you can see just how much is missing. Your opinion may differ, but that's quite a lot of peaks missing from the original waveform.

 

[dasmb]

I just think it sounds a little ridiculous to say that a good encode from LAME sucks. I'm not arguing the uses of lossless, or that it's technically better. I'm simply saying that for an insanely high percentage of people they sound identical and therefore saying it sucks just doesn't seem right.

An insanely high percentage of people think Bob Dylan sings the Stealers Wheel song "Stuck in the Middle with You." Most people don't care about quality, period. We're talking about why somebody who DID care might choose NOT to lose information.

Even so, I'm sure LAME is fine, and lossy compression is very good at modest bitrates. Almost all of the music on my iPod is 256-320 kb AAC, and I love the hell out of the 256 kb Vorbis stuff on Spotify (Been listening to MPEG family compression so long that Vorbis' slightly different model is sort of quaint in its contrast, like the difference between two 4-color dithering patterns, or pointillism vs. impressionism from twenty feet away). There are a handful of albums where I consider lossless an absolute necessity, mostly because they're well mastered recordings I listen to a lot and there are sounds I would miss if I couldn't hear them.

You didn't ask if I thought it sucked, though, you asked if we could tell the difference. I can, often enough, that I prefer AAC or lossless.

 

[firestarter]

All we need now is for Apple to change that annoying option in iTunes that offers 128kbps re-compression to AAC.

I keep both ALAC and 256kbps VBR versions of tracks in my iTunes (and it's annoying managing both). If Apple offered an automatic re-compression better than 128kbps, I'd dump my mp3s tomorrow.

128kbps just isn't good enough for any sort of listening, yet I don't need/want the full size and quality of ALAC when I'm out and about with an iDevice. Allowing me to select re-compression at anything above 160 would be ideal.

 

[dasmb]

For those arguing the lossy vs lossless:

....

While I agree with your premise, a waveform at that zoom has only about 100k of information TOTAL. You're basically comparing a compressed visual to another compressed visual, and that is wrong.

 

[Prodo123]

While I agree with your premise, a waveform at that zoom has only about 100k of information TOTAL. You're basically comparing a compressed visual to another compressed visual, and that is wrong.

Then the differences are more extreme. If there's this much data missing when it looks condensed, imagine how much is missing when it's uncompressed.
Quite a lot, hmm?

Here's another visual: MP3 is green, AIFF is blue. Two condensed waveforms superimposed on one another.
MP3 has moved major peaks back a little bit and removed too many for this music sample to be enjoyable for me.
And I swear I did not mess up the repositioning.
EDIT: The encoding process adds some microseconds to the song. I didn't mess up; the encoder did. Deleted picture