Comments on: ALAC now open source https://ma.tt/2011/10/alac-now-open-source/ Unlucky in Cards Tue, 08 Nov 2011 01:36:22 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0-alpha-61516 By: Marcos https://ma.tt/2011/10/alac-now-open-source/#comment-532786 Tue, 08 Nov 2011 01:36:22 +0000 http://ma.tt/?p=39637#comment-532786 The claim about perceived audio quality is certainly debatable, one thing however is not: You need an open-source lossless format for long-time archiving. As long as I can compile (or write from scratch) a certain decoder for my current system, I will always have the possibility to encode the file into any other format needed, even after hundreds of years.

]]> By: Seth https://ma.tt/2011/10/alac-now-open-source/#comment-531859 Wed, 02 Nov 2011 02:23:33 +0000 http://ma.tt/?p=39637#comment-531859 In reply to Otto.

Apple has a history of reverse-engineering things. After all, Mac OS X is UNIX based. Maybe they’re running out of ideas. 🙂

]]> By: Darren https://ma.tt/2011/10/alac-now-open-source/#comment-531850 Tue, 01 Nov 2011 22:21:57 +0000 http://ma.tt/?p=39637#comment-531850 @OTTO – I think you under estimate the potential this has to change the live music market. FLAC has quickly become the defacto standard for bands distributing lossless recordings of their concerts. It has long be used alongside the SHN format by live music tapers and traders. The reason it has potential to change things is because Apple owns the portable listening device market and most of the live music aficionados hate that they don’t support FLAC.

Look for tapers and traders to drive adoption of ALAC and for bands to start distributing high quality ALAC instead of FLAC.

]]> By: zz https://ma.tt/2011/10/alac-now-open-source/#comment-531126 Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:43:48 +0000 http://ma.tt/?p=39637#comment-531126 http://mp3fs.sourceforge.net/

been using this for years.. storing in flac, copy directly with any bitrate as mp3 and transcode into anything.

]]> By: Tomas M. https://ma.tt/2011/10/alac-now-open-source/#comment-531097 Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:57:52 +0000 http://ma.tt/?p=39637#comment-531097 FLAC For The Win! Many new devices have native support for FLAC these days.

It’s like we should feel very delighted that DRM mogul threw us a penny…

]]> By: Otto https://ma.tt/2011/10/alac-now-open-source/#comment-531084 Fri, 28 Oct 2011 17:47:48 +0000 http://ma.tt/?p=39637#comment-531084 Awful nice of them to open source it, but it probably won’t really change anything. ALAC was reverse engineered 6 years ago. The libavcodec already has support for encoding and decoding to it. Most recent change I know of about it was 2 years ago when they added 24-bit support.

FLAC is still a better codec as it gets pretty much the same compression and has a much, much faster algorithm for encoding and decoding. If only it had the device support that ALAC has. Kinda wish Apple had gone with it instead of inventing something new.

]]> By: Aaron D. Campbell https://ma.tt/2011/10/alac-now-open-source/#comment-531081 Fri, 28 Oct 2011 15:21:12 +0000 http://ma.tt/?p=39637#comment-531081 I’m just hoping that some of the Linux tools will start to support ALAC now so that I don’t have to bother with FLAC ALAC transcoding any more.

]]>