Audio compression is a little bit different from Speech compression. Speech compression can afford to deal with a much more limited range of frequencies and types of sound. Audio compression has to deal with music, speech, and other recorded sound.
OpenAVS is the open source implementaion of AVS (Advanced Coding of Audio and Video ). AVS is competing with MPEG-4 and H.264 to replace the current worldwide compression standard, MPEG-2. Please note that Chinese companies own majority of AVS patents.
Created: 24/03/2008
by Maxim SmirnovMore...
IPsupermarket allows individuals, companies and business to license, buy or sell their various kind of audio codecs, video codecs, image codecs, speech codecs, wireless software, RTOS, device drivers, reference designs, patents and software IP.
Created: 22/10/2007
More...
SPDemo is an assisting tool for teaching speech & audio processing techniques developed in SIPL.
Using SPDemo one can select from a variety of speech & audio processing techniques and parameters in a straightforward and simple way. The results of this processing are shown both numerically and graphically, in order to ease the analysis of data. The purpose of SPDemo is to enable experiments with different audio & speech processing algorithms without actually implementing them.
Free for educational purposes.
Created: 05/02/2007
More...
Everybody know, that MP3 CANNOT be compressed (commonly on MP3 forums some guys offer genius idea to use zip for MP3 collection, but moderators stop such stupid threads before all other guys describe such ideas level). Common compression ratio for MP3 files is 1:1.01 even for very good compressors.
This utility allows to compress with ratio 1:1.2! Let's test it!
Created: 31/05/2006
by Dmitriy VatolinMore...
Codec Library is a links database supposed to cover all the codecs
developed. You will be able to view resources associated with a codec as well as download the codec you are looking for.
Created: 19/03/2006
by Maxim SmirnovMore...
WinPCWare has some links on file compression software and a number of entries for video/audio encoding, decoding, transcoding; for the latter see Multimedia section.
Created: 05/05/2006
by Maxim SmirnovMore...
The European Broadcasting Union (EBU) is the largest professional association of national broadcasters in the world. Cooperation in the technical sphere is one of the EBU's major activities. The Union is in the forefront of research and development of new broadcast media, and has led or contributed to the development of many new radio and TV systems: radio data system (RDS), digital audio broadcasting (DAB), digital television (DVB), high- definition TV (HDTV). There are a number of open publications on video and audio streaming and broadcasting, relevant marketing and production issues (see EBU Technical Review).
Created: 01/03/2006
by Maxim SmirnovMore...
It is a very good site to know about audio technology and ask your questions. The site is organized as a forum, it has comprehensive FAQ.
Created: 11/02/2006
by Maxim SmirnovMore...
The page of TSG SA WG4 working group of 3GPP. TSG SA WG4 (Codec) deals with the specifications for speech, audio, video, and multimedia codecs, in both circuit-switched and packet-switched environments. Other topics within the mandate of SA WG4 are: quality evaluation, end-to-end performance, and interoperability aspects with existing mobile and fixed networks (from codec point of view).
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is a collaboration agreement which brings together a number of telecommunications standards bodies. The original scope of 3GPP was to produce globally applicable Technical Specifications and Technical Reports for a 3rd Generation Mobile System based on evolved GSM core networks.
Created: 31/01/2006
by Maxim SmirnovMore...
National Software Testing Labs (NSTL), employed by Microsoft, ran a proctored double-blind test that compared 64 kilobits per second (Kbps) WMA Pro (stereo) to the High Efficiency AAC Profile (HE AAC). The 12 segments of audio were presented by a proctor in a double-blind test to 300 individual listeners of both sexes and over a wide variety of ages. The paper states that 37% of the listeners preferred WMA Pro, 34% expressed identical preferences, and 29% preferred HE AAC.
Created: 31/01/2006
by Maxim SmirnovMore...
The page contains comparative tables on general and technical information for a variety of audio codecs. There also links to some comparative tests.
Created: 30/01/2006
by Maxim SmirnovMore...
Real is making their client software available in an Open Source program. Download this software and you can develop your own MP3 or H.263 player! Free of royalties if you are distributing it for free - commercial products pay a royalty. The Helix DNA Client contains support in source code form for the following data types: MP3, H.263, SMIL, JPEG, GIF, PNG, RealPix, PCM, WAV.
Created: 30/10/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
Portal site labels itself as a place with Resources for Engineers, Researchers, and Marketing People in the Streaming Media Field. The Knowledge Base has a good selection of links to standards, tutorials, code, etc. of interest to compression aficionados.
Created: 09/03/2001
by Mark NelsonMore...
A comparison of various lossy audio compression schemes. Panos Stokas provides his take on the whole situation, and includes tons of links to files, articles, and more food for thought. Most readers seem to like this web page, but one reader had this negative comment: This website is patently and fatally flawed to the nth degree. Nothing but misconception and conjecture with no real basis in scientific analysis. Very misleading to the uneducated in audio compression.. Another reader says Just reading "However, we have not found a single implementation that did not produce serious amounts of distortion in our testing sample. Nobody seems interested any longer." about AAC of all things, makes it apparent that this guy has no idea what he's talking about or what he's doing.
Created: 19/11/1999
by Mark NelsonMore...
Clipstream Video is an streaming video encoder and server technology that uses only standard web servers. Clipstream compresses video (.mpeg, .mov, .avi) to its streaming video format. A java applet on a web page is used to decode the stream, no additional plugins or downloads are needed. One can try Clipstream Video without restriction, except for a flashing logo. Similarly, you can stream and play only audio with Clipstream Audio solution.
Created: 19/08/2001
by Mark NelsonMore...
HawkVoice is a game oriented, multiplayer voice over network API released under the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL), with
support for Linux/Unix and Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000. It is designed to be a portable, open source code alternative to DirectPlay(R) Voice in DX8.
Created: 09/03/2001
by Mark NelsonMore...
A good comparsion chart showing the relative merits of various audio formats. Includes links to definitions and other support information for each format.
Created: 14/11/1999
by Mark NelsonMore...
SoftSound deals with all aspects of processing the digital audio signal. We build audio coders to drastically reduce the data rate of high quality audio and speech coders for extremely low bandwidth situations. SoftSound produces the Shorten and ATELP audio coders.
Created: 18/12/1998
by Mark NelsonMore...
Despite the protestations, you can use LAME to create MP3 streams. It does it with the magic of the ISO demo code. LAME isn't lame, lots of people seem to like it.
Created: 15/09/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
This open source project aims to create a free H.323 stack. The project was started as a reaction to the high cost of commercial implementations of audio and video compression code implementing the various components of H.323. Roger H. adds There are now several useful applications which use the library
including OpenMCU (a reliable multi person conference server)
and GnomeMeeting (a GTK/Gnome GUI client for Linux/BSD Unix.
As of Jan 2006, the G.711 and GSM audio are supported in software. The video H.261 codec is fully supported.
Created: 14/03/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
The MoviX project is a series of three different tiny Linux CD distributions containing all the software to boot from a CD and play multimedia files through MPlayer, the best multimedia player in the Unix world:
eMoviX: a micro Linux distro meant to be embedded in a CD together with all video/audio files you want, so that the CD will be able to boot and automagically play all files;
MoviX: a mini CD Linux distro able to boot directly from CD and load in RAM a console interface to MPlayer. From the interface you can easily play DVDs, VCDs, audio/video files Audio CD, internet radios, TV, you name it!
MoviX2:same as MoviX, but it makes use of X and makes use of the nice MPlayer GUI.
Supported formats are all formats supported by MPlayer, most noticeably DivX but more in general any AVI, MPG, QuickTime, MP3, OGG/VORBIS and a few others.
eMoviX is at release 0.8.0rc1, MoviX is at 0.8.0pre2, and MoviX2 is at pre0.3.0pre2 as of April, 2003.
Created: 05/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Jerry Gibson, Toby Berger, Tom Lookabaugh, Rich Baker and David Lindberg. Drawing on their experience in industry, research, and academia, this powerful author team combines their expertise to provide an accessible guide to data compression standards and techniques and their applications.
Created: 27/12/1998
by Mark NelsonMore...
This is a simple class that reads default tags (the ones suggested by xiph.org) and the common "COMMENT" tag used by WinAmp and other players and tag editors.
Created: 27/07/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
OggPlay is an Ogg vorbis audio player for smartphones. I started working on this project in early April 2003. The 1st version for the SonyEriccson P800 was released end of April. Many people have contributed localized versions, new skins, documentation, and are helping with porting the application to other phones since then. OggPlay has become a true open source project
Created: 16/07/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
JMAC is a Java implementation of the Monkey's Audio decoder/JavaSound SPI. Currently, Monkey's Audio format up to 3.97 version supported. JMAC is distributed under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License.
Version 1.65 of JMAC is shipping as of July, 2004.
Created: 10/07/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
WMA To MP3 Converter was written for converting WMA to or from MP3/WAV files. So, with WMA to MP3 Converter, you may convert WMA to MP3, convert WMA to WAV, convert WAV to WMA, convert MP3 to WMA.
Created: 10/07/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
When listening to recordings of human speech (like audio books, conference recordings, ...) it can be useful to have the ability to adjust the playback speed without changing the pitch of the recording. This simple command line program can do this for you. Playing a audio book at 150% of its original tempo is still intelligable and saves time, therefore the name of the program.
Created: 13/06/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
MP3 To WAV Converter is designed for converting MP3 to WAV and converting WAV to MP3. It converts batches of MP3 to WAV or WAV to MP3 on-the-fly. Play MP3/WAV files, edit Mp3 file's ID3 text, and search MP3 or WAV files from a folder or the whole disk.
Created: 06/06/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
This is the free version of Shorten, which was forked from the commercial version from SoftSound. Not sure about all the legalities here, but I don't think SoftSound is actively selling the commercial version, so this may be your only choice.
Created: 10/05/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
In this article I describe a translation of most of the WMF SDK interfaces, data structures, constants, functions into C#. NOTE: Digital Rights Management (DRM) support is not included in this translation.
Created: 25/04/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
VorbisSPI is a Java Service Provider Interface that adds OGG Vorbis audio format support to Java platform. It supports icecast streaming. It is based on JOrbis Java libraries.
Created: 11/04/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
This site is dedicated to open source QuickTime development for popular open source audio and video codecs. We are currently working on Ogg Vorbis, an audio codec developed by Xiphophorus, and MNG, an animation video codec.
Created: 04/04/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
QuickTime Alternative will allow you to play QuickTime (.mov .qt) files. This way there is no need to install the offical QuickTime Player. It also supports QuickTime content that is embedded in webpages. The QuickTime plugins include iPIX and QuickTimeVR.
Created: 28/03/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
Real Alternative will allow you to play RealMedia files without having to install the official RealPlayer. You do need a media player that is capable of playing RealMedia files. The included Media Player Classic supports it. Supported are RealAudio (.ra .rpm), RealVideo (.rm .ram .rmvb), RealText (.rt), and ReadPix (.rp). Not fully supported are: Streaming smil files (.smi .smil) and Realmedia embedded in webpages.
Created: 28/03/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
Media Player Classic is similar to Windows Media Player 6.4 but with features pertained to minimalist advanced users. It also supports DirectX 9 and VFW drivers for capture. It supports viewing through ActiveX controls of Real and QuickTime files.
Created: 28/03/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
GermaniXEncoder is a universal Transcoder for various sound formats like MP3, MP2, Real Audio, WMA, Ogg Vorbis, ALF2CD, DSP, GSM, G.721, G.723, G.726, RAW, PCM, ADPCM, uLaw, aLaw, MPC, and Monkeys Audio. In addition, the Encoder has a transformer for some transforming features, an Audio Recorder for recording from all input sources to mp3, mp2, pcm, adpcm, wma and ogg-vorbis. You can also split large MP3 files with their CUE sheets into songs.
Version 1.80.1195 RC2 was shipping as of Februaru, 2002.
Created: 22/02/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
This is a suite of programs which will help you to convert your existing mp3 files into ogg. The suite includes a text and a graphical frontend. Requires mpg321, mp3info, oggenc, vorbiscomment (zenity for gui).
Created: 22/02/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
Roberto Amorim is a familiar and friendly presence on the Hydrogen Audio board. This link points to the many audio compression listening tests he has conducted. These include evaluations of AAC and MP3 encoders at a rew different rates.
Created: 14/02/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
Foobar2000 is a relatively new audio player for Windows PCs. It seems to be attracting a little bit of interest among the literati, perhaps because it is mostly open sourced. It has a nice list of features, including tremendous list of codec support, as well
as some unusual ones, such as the ability to play files in Zip archives.
Created: 11/01/2004
by Mark NelsonMore...
The Microsoft® Windows Media® Player 9 Series Software Development Kit (SDK) provides information and tools to customize Windows Media Player and to use the Windows Media Player ActiveX® control. This documentation also provides information about using Windows Media metafiles.
Created: 15/12/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
This project on the the Code Project web site shows you how to build a roll-your-own media player for Win32, using the standard multimedia API.
Created: 14/12/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Hello, and be welcome to ReallyRareWares, a site for researchers (or nostalgic people like me) that miss the old days of multimedia encoding. Here you'll find reviews and history of old software (encoders and decoders), deceased codecs (VQF, ePAC), oddities (AUPECg2, Astrid AAC), and so on, as well as downloads.
This app from AbyssMedia is advertised as being able to turn your computer into complete audio recording studio. That means you have the ability to record from external inputs directly to MP3, OGG, WMA, or WAV format. Includes niceties such as MP3 and OGG tag editors, Voice Activated recording, skin support, and more.
Version 6.05 is shipping in November, 2003.
Created: 15/11/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
RealNetworks has created a semi-freeware project dedicated to creating a highly capable multmedia client for UNIX and Linux systems.
Created: 18/08/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
This is a Win32 program that manages SoundFont files. These files are the ones used by Creative Labs to program their Midi cards. I think.
Created: 15/08/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
This ActiveX control is used by developers of audio applications to provide low-latency streaming compressed audio.
Created: 09/08/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Supplies you with detailed info about the attributes of all sorts of media files, naturally including MP3, AVI, WAV, MPEG2, and much, much more. Looks to be Win32 only.
Created: 08/08/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
The Helix DNA Producer is a project that Real Networks has dropped into the open source space. Producer is a platform for creating streaming content and downloadable media files.
Created: 21/07/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
This product performs a huge number of conversions among different media types. Want to convert your huge collection of MP3 files to WMA? No problem. MPEG-2 to AVI? No problem. MediaConvert even handles some unusal conversions, such as video to animated GIF. And naturally, a huge number of conversions between various image formats, including GIF, JPG, PNG, and a host of additional types.
Release 2.3 shipped in Julyy, 2003.
Created: 15/07/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Billed as a front end for the Lame encoder, LameFE actually supports much more than that on the Win32 platform. Rip CDs, encode using Lame, Monkey's Audio, or Ogg Vorbis, or playback using a similar batch of codecs.
Created: 06/07/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Having trouble with your Windows Media Player? This program gathers up all your information and stores it in a compressed file that you can quickly mail to your tech support pal in Redmond.
Created: 12/06/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Maaate consists of a set of libraries that let you analyze the audio streams encoded in MPEG files. Besides simply parsing the audio out of MPEG files, it also does some sort of energy detection, silence analysis and more. But reading between the lines I think this library's strength is supposed to be a nice architecture that lets you easily add the modules you need for your work.
Created: 28/05/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
This open source project gives you the ability to read and write AVI files under Linux. The really interesting part about all that is that this is done using the Win32 DLLs from Microsoft to do the compression and decompression. Clever!
The avifile component is shipping version 0.7.37 as of May, 2003.
Created: 25/05/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
A free Win32 media player that can handle quite a few popular audio and video formats.
Reader Brian H. says: Incredibly fast, and has just the features that I need.
Created: 25/05/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Apple's iTunes 4.0 player is able to play music across a local
network or the Internet, using a proprietary protocol. This protocol
not only tells machines how to stream audio content, it provides
access to playlists and track information as well.
The folks at the Digital Audio Access Protocol project are determined
to reverse engineer that protocol so they can use the iTunes protocol
on other operating systems or platforms.
Created: 11/05/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
A set of tools to manipulate OGG Media Streams. The command line tools provide information about the stream, and allow you to extract from or create/merge streams.
Version 1.0.2 is shipping as of May, 2003.
Created: 08/05/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
This app allows you to both record and play sounds on your Mac in various formats, including MP3 and MP4. Also includes a bulk conversion utility for changing formats, and has the ability to export to iTunes.
Created: 08/05/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
This open source project is an attempt to create a replacement for GraphEdit, a tool Microsoft provides in the DDK.
Created: 04/05/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Microsoft supplies this free tool as a way for developers to check their files for validity before shipping. Looks like it knows how to inspect ASF, WMA, and WMV files.
Created: 04/05/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
VLC is an Open Source multimedia player that supports your usual mix of audio and video formats. Support is currently included for MPEG-1, -2, -4, mp3, ogg, and more. The site includes precompiled binaries for a really nice range of platforms, including Windows, Mac OS X, varios Linux flavors, and even BeOS!
Version 0.5.3 of this player is shipping as of April, 2003.
Created: 17/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
FreedomAudio is a free Open Source package that lets you stream MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files from your web site. It renders audio using a small Java plugin. The nice part about using a plugin is that you only have to download an install this once. Freedom Audio also now supports a plugin-free mode, but apparently this results in reduced fidelity.
Version 1.08 Build 20 shipped in April, 2003.
Created: 15/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
From the web site: gtranscode is a GTK+ GUI (graphical use interface) front-end for transcode in order to make this powerful tool easier to use. transcode is a powerful video and audio processing tool that can read in just about any format of video and/or audio and convert to just as many different formats. In addition to transcode's extremely flexible modular concept for reading/writing different formats and codecs, it can apply filters, do re-sampling, resizing, cropping, and more.
Version 0.1.5 is shipping in April, 2003.
Reader Erin S. raves about gtranscode: Excellent usability, easy to install, and not only supports all the major functions of transcode, but anything it doesn't support, you can add manually...the most versatile transcode yet!
Created: 15/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
From the web site:crip is a terminal-based ripper/encoder/tagger tool for creating Ogg Vorbis/FLAC/MP3 files under UNIX/Linux. It is well-suited for someone seeking to make a lot of files from CDs and have them all properly labeled and professional-quality. One thing to note is that the author of this free package has removed MP3 support, and limits you to Ogg Vorbis or FLAC for encoding.
Version 3.4 is shipping as of April, 2003.
Created: 15/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
This FAQ provides good information about various audio file formats, which naturally includes quite a few compressed formats. It also has a few links to other relevant pages.
Created: 14/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Description from the web site: Media Wizard is a powerful, all-in-one multimedia application supporting playback of all popular formats, audio and video conversions (CD to WAV; CD to MP3; CD to WMA; CD to OGG, WAV to MP3; MP3 to WAV; WAV/MP3 to WMA; WMA to WAV/MP3; WAV/MP3 to OGG; OGG to WAV/MP3; WAV/MP3 to CD; AVI to MPG; MPG to AVI; etc.)
This is a Win32 program, and version 8.0 is shipping as of April, 2003.
Created: 14/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
This is a batch image converter that lets you go back and forth between AVI and GIF. I don't know what the practical limits are on the size of animated GIF files, but I've seen some pretty cool short videos in the format. This looks to be the way to create them.
Release 1.09 shipped on July 15, 2002.
Created: 14/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Yet another conversion program: All Converter is a powerful, all-in-one, multimedia application converting the media files among the most popular media formats.With All Converter,you can convert MP3 to WAV,MP3 to WMA ,MP3 to OGG,MP3 to VQF, WAV to MP3,WAV to WMA,WAV to OGG,WAV to VQF,WMA to MP3, WMA to OGG,WMA to VQF,OGG to MP3,OGG to WAV,OGG to WMA,OGG to VQF,VQF to MP3,VQF to WAV,VQF to WMA,VQF to OGG, normalize files,and support ID3 tag v1, v2 to file name conversion and vice versa.
Created: 14/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Creating Audio and Video content with Windows Media 9 is made possible by the authoring tools listed on this page. At the time this is entered, the list of tools includes:
WMA MP3 Recorder turns your computer into complete audio recording studio. You can record sound from any internal or external source into WMA/MP3 format sound file directly without use additional disk space.
Version 5.60 is shipping as of April, 2003
Created: 08/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Advanced RealMedia Repair is a package that will help you repair your broken RealMedia files. Supports both video and audio files.
Created: 07/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
This tool lets you package content encoded with the Series 9 codecs in traditional AVI containers. Future applications should use the ASF file container, but legacy apps may be constrained to the AVI format. This tool allows the old and the new to work together.
This tool was shipping in a Beta version as of April, 2003.
Created: 07/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
These ActiveX controls provide real-time compression and rendering of audio and video streams, supporting standard formats such as H.263, MPEG-4, G.723 and more. It appears that they are designed for IP Telephony, but they also advertise the ability to do straight-up compression to/from disk or memory. You can use a demo version for free, with limitations, but upgrading to the pro release is going to set you back a bit. Redistribution is included in the price, though.
Version 3.0 is shipping as of April, 2003.
Created: 05/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Vlorb is a high-quality Audio CD to Ogg Vorbis encoder. It does this by operating as a console front end to cdparanoia and CDDB on Linux systems.
Vlorb 1.0pre9 shipped at the end of March, 2003.
Created: 04/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
SoX aims to be the Swiss Army Knife of sound processing programs. It shows up on the data compression radar by virtue of the fact that SoX is able to convert between a wide variety of compressed formats, ranging from MP3 and Ogg to ADPCM and linear PCM. SoX has ports to a really nice variety of platforms, including Win32, Linux, NetBSD, and more.
Release 12.17.4 was shipping as of March, 2003.
Created: 03/04/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Matt Woodward has written an article for Ars Technica that gives a good rundown on capturing and compressing video. There's a great deal of detail here, which you should be able to use to walk through the process, even if you are a rank beginner.
Created: 31/03/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
OGG-S is an open source project that aims to create a Digital Rights interface for all media files, but particularly for Ogg Vorbis.
This project is shippnig Beta 1 in March, 2003.
Created: 30/03/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
A DirectShow filter which will allow you to play AVI files containing AC3 encoded audio. A nice stream of releases with steady improvement.
Version 0.66b is shipping as of March, 2003.
Created: 26/03/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
MMPlayer is a Mobile Media Player for the Palm OS. It supports a wide variety of audio formats, including Windows Media, MP3, Ogg and WAV. Video isn't supported in the current release, but is anticipated as part of MMPlayer 2.0.
Created: 19/03/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
An article from Microsoft giving you the lowdown on the best way to use all the tools shipping with Windows Media 9. This includes basic guidelines on setting up a streaming media system, comparison to Media Services 4.1, locations of bottlenecks, performance evaluation, and advanced tuning tips.
Created: 17/03/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Digital media needs metadata to be supremely useful. For example, wouldn't it be nice if your CD player showed you artist, album, and track information while it was playing a song? MP3 tracks have ID3 tags to supply this information, but naturally, Microsoft has created an extensive set of APIs for embedding metadata in all types of media. This article will bring you up to speed on metadata support for media encoding, playback, and more.
Created: 17/03/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Ace Media Player supports an impressive list of media types, including Real, MPEG, DivX, QuickTime, VCD, WMF, and of course, MP3. This is a commercial product, but you can get a 30 day eval copy.
Version 2.2 of Ace Media Player shipped in March of 2003.
Created: 11/03/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Another company determined to swim upstream with a commercial media player. Although in this case, jetAudio Basic is free, jetAudio Plus is the the commercial product. You'll pay for the upgrade if you decide you need support for creating MP3 and MP3Pro files, broadcasting MP3 files, and converting files to MP3 or MP3Pro.
jetAudio has a nice looking UI with some alternative skins. Version 5.01 is shipping as of March, 2003.
Created: 11/03/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Power WMA Recorder is a program that can create WMA files from any available sound source directly without using any additional disk space. In addition to supporting Microsoft's WMA format (including the variable bit rate option), Power WMA Recorder can encode directly to MP3 format.
Version 1.34 is shipping in March, 2003.
Created: 08/03/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
ezConverter is a program that is designed to make it easy to convert your audio files between various formats. Converts between WMA, MP3, MPEG, and many more formats. ezConverter also takes input directly from your sound card, allowing you to record from analog inputs or from the output of other programs. The publisher advertises it as fast and easy. You can download a trial version from the web site, but registration is going to set you back roughly $US 25.
Version 1.1 was shipping as of March, 2003.
Created: 06/03/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Your Microsoft Xbox is a great gaming platform, but it also has the capability to do much more. What a bargain it would be if you could use it as a digital media player, serving up MP3 files across the network, perhaps with nice videos on the high-definition outputs. All this becomes possible with just two things. First, you need to get a copy of the free Xbox Media Player, which lets you play DVDs, Internet Radio, MP3 files, etc. Second, the hard part: you need to get an Xbox Modchip, which lets you bypass Microsoft's security restrictions and do as you please with your hard-purchased computer.
Version 2.3 is shipping as of February 15, 2003.
Created: 06/03/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
This page has links to the big batch of downloads that developers might need to work with Windows Media 9. At this time, the list of available packages includes:
This site describes itself as The ultimate resource for enhancing your Media Player 9 Series for Windows. By this they mean plugins, themes, skins, visualizations, etc.
Created: 25/01/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
BonkEnc is an audio CD ripper and an encoder for various audio formats. It can produce Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and BONK files. More formats are available through plug-ins.
Created: 19/01/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
Microsoft has released DirectX 9.0, which naturally includes support
for an updated list of audio and video encodings.
Created: 19/01/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
This is a copy of the AC3 Audio compression standard from the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC.) It's nice to see a standards committee that is able to make their documents freely available to the public.
Created: 19/01/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
This page has links to download all the various components of Windows Media 9, including the media player, codecs, encoders, embedded toolkits, and more.
Created: 19/01/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
PC Magazine used a jury to compare the codecs used in several popular media players, with interesting results.
Created: 14/01/2003
by Mark NelsonMore...
A nice set of links to AudioCoding information. Since this is a Wiki site, it is highly collaborative - registered users can provide updates and modifications to the site at will. (I think.)
Created: 13/12/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
Nellymoser is the leading provider of proprietary speech and audio software technology and solutions in the areas of compression, modification, synchronization and conversion. Our products improve speech and audio quality and efficiency in bandwidth-constrained environments while creating more immersive, interactive environments for your applications and services.
Created: 09/12/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
The Asao libraries from Nellysoft have been designed specifically to address the need for a very small footprint, low bandwidth speech and audio compression. Asao will operate at a variety of bit rates (12/16/24/32 Kbps). This new technology can be rapidly harnessed for applications such as streaming over mobile data networks, Internet radio and embedded platforms such as toys and other consumer devices.
Created: 09/12/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
The cwenc utility is primarily a tool for musicians working with Cakewalk music production software, such as Home Studio and Sonar. cwenc enables you to export your original music to a compressed audio file format, such as MP3 or Ogg Vorbis, from within the mentioned Cakewalk products. cwenc is a direct replacement for the time-limited demo-version of Cakewalk's commercial MP3 encoder program, which is packaged with both Home Studio and Sonar.
Created: 30/10/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
This site collects information, links, and review on Windows Media 9. Includes some detailed information on the codecs that are part of the new package.
Created: 12/10/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
MediaPipe is a flexible framework to manipulate media on MacOS X. It allows you to build decoding, filtering, encoding and even streaming pipelines that correspond exactly to your needs. Additionally, if a format is not supported, or a transformation missing, it features an SDK that allows you to quickly implement the pipe you want.
Created: 12/10/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
A rather terse description on SourceForge: Stream transcoder will be designed for use in relaying and converting streaming audio between various formats. MP3 and Vorbis will be supported. In Beta 4 as of September, 2002.
Created: 29/09/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
This product is used to convert audio files from one format to another. The programs know how to do various conversions between WMA, MP3, and Ogg Vorbis. It's also smart enough to do CD ripping. This appears to be shareware.
Created: 15/09/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
The folks at Ogg Vorbis would like to see their audio format work its way into some hardware players. One good effort towards making this happen is a fixed=point implementation of the algorithm, which can then presumably be ported to machines using cheaper CPUs that lack the sophisticated FPUs of our desktop machines.
Created: 15/09/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
Josh Taylor of ZDNet did a quickie informal comparison of the new Windows Media 9 format and gives it a thumbs-up.
Created: 15/09/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
This German news item reports on a test that pitched Ogg Vorbis against MP3, Window Media, AAC, and RealAudio. My Babelfish translation says In particular with 64 kBit/s Ogg Vorbis could convince and left the entire prominent competition behind itself. I think that means it won!
Created: 15/09/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
Microsoft's web page for all things releated to the new Windows Media Player and more. At this time you can download the beta version of the new player, get information, and sample various media.
Reader Serg N. commented: Very good quality, support for [very] low bitrates, lossless mode. It's not open source, but it's free!
Created: 15/09/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
Intel has created a new library designed to deal with varous primitives used in Data Compression. Intel says: Intel® Integrated Performance Primitives (IPP) is a software library which provides a range of library functions for multimedia, audio codecs, video codecs (for example H.263, MPEG-4), image processing (JPEG), signal processing, speech compression (i.e. G.723, GSM ARM*) plus computer vision as well as math support routines for such processing capabilities.Unlike their previous libraries, this is now a commercial product which is going to cost you as much as $199. Works with Windows and Linux.
Created: 18/08/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
This web site aims to provind blind quality testing of sound codecs. The range of tested codecs includes various MPEG-4 AAC, MPEG-1 Layer III, OggEnc, WMA, RealAudio.
Created: 18/08/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
One of the home pages of the Ogg Vorbis project, this is a good place to start if you're looking for downloads, documentation, or Ogg Vorbis software.
Created: 08/08/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
RealNetworks has announced that they are going to be Open Sourcing a significant portion of their server products. Outlook from the Open Source community is guardedly optimistic.
Created: 08/08/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
Real Networks is going to add support for the Ogg Vorbis audio format in their client software, ZDNet reports. This could go a long way towards legitimizing the upstart competitor to MP3.
Created: 08/08/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
This page contains links to a wide variety of Ogg Vorbis documents, including specifications, programming guides, and technical discussions.
Created: 07/08/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
A nice set of papers on audio coding. Includes goodies such as the ISO standards on MPEG-2 part 3 audio coding.
Created: 07/08/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
This article from Microsoft's Knowledge Base talks about the role of the codec in Microsoft's Media Technologies.
Created: 09/07/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
This conversion tool will convert between several audio formats, including MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, APE, MPC, CUE, AAC, MP4, M4A, TTA, AC3, FLAC, OptimFROG, Speex, WavPack, ALAC. Does resampling. Supports ID3V1 and V2, plus other goodies.
Created: 09/07/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
This site has a nice collection of codecs, including DirectShow filters, MPG4, MJPEG, and other video codecs. A few audio codecs and AVI test sequences as well.
Created: 02/06/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
This site is mostly oriented towards capturing and storing DVD - good advice on how to use various tools, codecs, hardware, etc. Very active site.
Created: 19/04/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
KT-Tech seems to be active in various compression areas, developing their own algorithms rather than implementing standards. Their web site has demos of their latest still image and video technologies. One interesting product is software to improve the performance of other encoders, such as those used by Microsoft's Windows Media codecs.
Update: the web site now offers online demos of sound compression as well!
Created: 26/02/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
Course notes on audio compression. Discusses simple compression methods, then psychoacoustics and MPEG Audio.
Created: 26/02/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
The term "Multimedia" obviously covers a lot of different topics. Compression is one of them, and there is certainly a great deal to learn about compression and media formats at this conference.
Created: 24/02/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
UCSB research activities, including speech coding, audio compression, video coding. Lots of links to demos and publications.
Created: 22/02/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
What was once Intel's software now belongs to Ligos Technology. This is the home page for downloads, documentation, support, etc.
Created: 05/02/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
This Wikipedia entry describes the Vorbis codec, used in the open music codec Ogg Vorbis. Overview, a few interesting links, not much detail.
Created: 27/01/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
This is the home page for the IETF group that reviews RTP packetization standards. Links on this page for all the drafts you can imagine for sending video and audio over RTP streams.
Created: 27/01/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
The folks at Slashdot are having a chat trying to decide what the best non-MP3 codec is for home music recording. Ogg Vorbis gets a lot of votes the last time I checked the thread, but WMA and MP3 have a fair number of adherents.
Created: 22/01/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
Historically, the BTSC has been involved in MPEG Audio from the very start. This site provides some background information on the various MPEG Audio standards.
This site provides some info on the background of MPEG, plus a couple of links to standards and so on.
Created: 19/01/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
Ogg Vorbis is a fully Open, non-proprietary, patent-and-royalty-free, general-purpose compressed audio format for mid to high quality (8kHz-48.0kHz, 16+ bit, polyphonic) audio and music at fixed and variable bitrates from 16 to 128 kbps/channel. This places Vorbis in the same competetive class as audio representations such as MPEG-4 (AAC), and similar to, but higher performance than MPEG-1/2 audio layer 3, MPEG-4 audio (TwinVQ), WMA and PAC.
DataCompression.info reader Serge enthusiastically said: Hell! The best lossy codec to date!
Created: 17/01/2002
by Mark NelsonMore...
The Open Mash Consortium supports the Mash streaming media toolkit and distributed collaboration applications based on the Internet Mbone tools and protocols. The consortium is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation Internet Technologies Program (Grant ANI-9907994) and by contributions from consortium members.
Created: 13/12/2001
by Mark NelsonMore...
Technical report CUED/F-INFENG/TR.156 , Cambridge University Engineering Department, by Tony Robinson. A somewhat terse technical report describing some of the theory behind the design of the Shorten program.
Created: 07/12/2001
by Mark NelsonMore...
Les Atlas at the University of Washington has developed a new method for coding speech and music for transmission over slow lines. The technique, called fine-grain scalable audio encoding, prioritizes the most important part of the signal, allowing reconstruction at the remote end even if the face of lost packets.
Created: 05/12/2001
by Mark NelsonMore...
ACDZip is a zipping and unzipping program that gives you the power to compress image, audio, video and document files. It includes fast image previews and is ideal for opening zip files, backing up files, saving hard disk space, preparing files for distribution and protecting them with encryption and passwords.
Created: 28/11/2001
by Mark NelsonMore...
Dali is a project at Cornell that aims to create a programming environment dedicated to the manipulation of video, audio, and image data. Naturally, this includes multiple codecs for various data types.
Created: 14/11/2001
by Mark NelsonMore...
The ACM Multimedia conference for 2002 takes place December 1-6, 2002 in beautiful Juan-les-Pins on the French Riviera. Get your submissions in quick before the show fills up.
Created: 04/11/2001
by Mark NelsonMore...
From the submitter: This site presents a new audio coder design that achieves efficient compression with fine-grain bitrate scalability. Issues regarding scalability are discussed, and a new approach to measuring coding efficiency is presented. A windows command-line demonstration coder is availiable to download. At present the coder achieves subjective transparency at approximately 96 kbit/s/chan, similar to the FhG (non-scalable) MP3 coder.
Created: 19/07/2001
by Mark NelsonMore...
These guys are responsible for some of the work that took the MP3 standard to its next revision: MP3Pro. They say their current focus is the development and marketing of SBR-enhanced codecs.
Created: 15/06/2001
by Mark NelsonMore...
Lots of information on this site concerning compression of still pictures, moving pictures, and audio. Much of the site is devoted to comparisons of a few different algorithms. A report section draws a few conclusions about the whole thing.
Created: 25/10/2000
by Mark NelsonMore...
An audio compression format invented at NTT's Cyber Space Laboratories. Get your player and compressor right here. (English avaible by following the sharp-eyed link.)
Created: 30/07/2000
by Mark NelsonMore...
This conference is being held June 5-9 in Istanbul Turkey. The call for papers deadling is June 10, 2000. This is the 25th anniversary meeting of the ICASSP.
Created: 31/12/1999
by Mark NelsonMore...
Includes editing software, file formats and converters, codecs, and links. This page is at the University of Hannover, Germany. While there appears to be a wealth of software on this site, it would appear that you need special privileges to get access to ti.
Created: 26/11/1999
by Mark NelsonMore...
Links to lots of info regarding the audio compression portions of the MPEG standards. This includes an overview, the MPEG Audio FAQ, pointers to resources, some free software, and test bitstreams.
Created: 19/11/1999
by Mark NelsonMore...
The PIC Sound Processing System (SPS) uses the ELS arithmetic Coder from Pegasus. Here are the latest raw figures for the 4 most common sound formats. 4 formats using the full dynamic range (-32768..32767 for 16-bit and 0..255 for 8-bit).
Created: 07/11/1999
by Mark NelsonMore...
The AFsp package contains audio file utility programs and a library of routines for reading and writing audio files. This ftp site contains three different releases of the software. Includes programs to compare, copy, filter, an analyze audio files. Also has resampling, LPC, and noise generation programs. Executables for Windows and Sun, with a wide variety of file formats supported.
Created: 25/01/1999
by Mark NelsonMore...
DirectX is Microsoft's blanket technology term for a group high-performance rendering and compression libraries. DirectX 9.0 is shipping as of March, 2003.
Created: 01/01/1970
by Mark NelsonMore...
This article on Microsoft's web site goes into many of the interesting
features included in WM9 codec, such as fold-down from multiple channels to stereo, high resolution multichannel content, and more. Highly technical.
Created: 01/01/1970
by Mark NelsonMore...
