Apple Lossless
Apple Lossless , also known as Apple Lossless Audio Codec ( ALAC ), is a free codec developed by Apple for lossless audio data compression . The compressed audio data are saved in MP4 files with the file extension .m4a or .mp4 . The process compresses the original to an average of around 60 percent of the original size. It does not offer any options or various modifications and requires relatively little computing effort for decoding.
Apple's own iTunes software can be used to compress uncompressed linear PCM material from WAV or AIFF files (e.g. from audio CDs ).
Apple Lossless is also used by Apple's AirPlay service, which streams music to other AirPlay-enabled devices over WiFi . The Apple Lossless format can also be played by all multimedia devices from Apple, such as iPod , iPhone , iPad or Apple TV .
technology
It is based on linear prediction with coding of the residual signal using Golomb-Rice codes . The bit stream is saved via its own, non-standardized extension in the MP4 container format, since the process itself is not included or intended in the standard. (The standardized lossless audio codec in the MPEG-4 standard is MPEG-4 ALS .)
history
Apple Lossless was introduced as part of QuickTime 6.5.1 on April 28, 2004 . The format can therefore be used by all programs that support Quicktime, for example Apple's iTunes from version 4.5.
As a result of reverse engineering work by the Australian student and hacker David Hammerton, code for a simple decoder in the C programming language has been available since March 5, 2005 . This has meanwhile resulted in a program that can convert files in Apple Lossless format into WAV format .
As part of a Google Summer of Code project, Jai Menon implemented a free (under LGPL ) encoder for the format, which has been included in the FFmpeg package since August 20, 2008 .
The Apple Lossless Audio Codec has been free software since October 2011 and is subject to the Apache license . With the publication of the source code and its free usability, ALAC can also be used for long-term archiving, in which the losslessly compressed original can then be exported, depending on technical progress, newer compressions.
Supported media players
hardware
- Denon DJ Prime 4
- Pono player
software
- Apple Music
- aTunes
- Clementine
- FFmpeg converts various audio formats to Apple Lossless including tags (artist, title etc.)
- foobar2000
- iTunes
- Mp3tag can process Apple Lossless files (.m4a)
- QuickTime
- Rockbox
- VLC
- GStreamer and thus all programs that use it such as B. Phonon
- XLD converts all audio qualities (including formats with 24 bit and 96 kS / s and higher) to Apple Lossless or other file formats
- Poweramp (Android)
See also
- Audio format for a list of other methods.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b http://alac.macosforge.org/
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from November 25, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-bad-plugins/html/gst-plugins-bad-plugins-plugin-faac.html
