[HN Gopher] The Quite OK Audio Format for Fast, Lossy Compression ___________________________________________________________________ The Quite OK Audio Format for Fast, Lossy Compression Author : smlckz Score : 76 points Date : 2023-08-08 11:27 UTC (1 days ago) (HTM) web link (qoaformat.org) (TXT) w3m dump (qoaformat.org) | marcoc wrote: | How can one create a professional looking pdf like the QOAF | specification one? | [deleted] | GraemeMeyer wrote: | Two-column layout in Microsoft Word, large header, smaller | footer, with appropriate font choices would get you basically | all the way there. | jfk13 wrote: | HTML+CSS, converted to PDF via the Save As PDF feature in | Firefox. (Or the same could be done with other browsers, but | this one apparently comes from FF.) | crumpled wrote: | I looked at the PDF, and can confidently say I could typeset | that in a word processor, using a stylesheet to sustain it. | | That's not what they did, apparently. | | The document properties call out https://cairographics.org | kenferry wrote: | Cairo's a couple layers down from what you're talking about. | It's the actual glyph rendering. | codeflo wrote: | It's interesting that this works in the time domain (instead of | frequency domain), and I wonder what the resulting quality | limitations are, if any. The sound samples on the demo page, at | the least the dozen I clicked on, didn't seem all that | challenging. Few, mostly synthesized instruments, low dynamic | range. My ears aren't good enough to evaluate audio codecs | anyway, however. | MobiusHorizons wrote: | Seems to have similar design criteria as opus but I don't see any | comparison. | rockstarflo wrote: | What is the tradeoff there? | daneel_w wrote: | That in terms of quality per any bitrate it comes nowhere near | ubiquitous formats like AAC or MP3 when produced with good | encoders. But it's good to have (possibly) patent-free | solutions available. | DamonHD wrote: | > QOA is slower than ADPCM, doesn't compress as much as MP3 and | sounds worse than FLAC (duh). But I believe it fills a gap that | was worth filling. | jandrese wrote: | MP3 compression is very fast on modern hardware. This may | have a niche for low power devices, especially if they are | battery constrained. | kragen wrote: | "very fast" could mean many different things that vary by | orders of magnitude | dale_glass wrote: | It's probably something we (https://overte.org/) can use. | | We have a 3D environment with spatial audio. Audio is | encoded server-side, and since it's spatial everyone needs | their own mix. We're using Opus, and audio encoding turns | out to be the usual limiting factor on small servers. | | So this kind of thing is exactly up our alley: an alternate | option that uses less CPU than Opus, but consumes less | bandwidth than raw audio. | | But adding supporting for FLAC is also on our list. It | seems nicely performant when compared to Opus. | brnt wrote: | Doesnt Opus (speex?) have some low CPU settings? | dale_glass wrote: | It does, and I've tried tweaking that, but the | performance difference isn't very significant. | | I appear to be able to get maybe 30% better performance | -- pretty nice, but not nearly big enough especially on | low end servers. | doublepg23 wrote: | I'm not sure much gets better latency than Opus but | LyraV2 seemed interesting https://opensource.googleblog.c | om/2022/09/lyra-v2-a-better-f... | dale_glass wrote: | Could be an option, but we take high audio quality as a | point of pride and encode in Opus 128k by default. Audio | doesn't only include speech but also any sound effects, | media present in-world, etc. | | But that might be an interesting experiment. Right now | the low cpu usage/high quality/faily high bandwidth usage | category is something we're looking to have an option | for. | Aldipower wrote: | An _audio_ format which is _quite_ ok? Not sure, if I need that. | Pet_Ant wrote: | What is the LFE channel? | | It should be spelled out explicitly, but I figured out the rest | | L-Left,R-Right,C-Center,FL-Front Left,FR-FrontRight,SL- | SideLeft,SR-SideRight,BL-BackLeft,BR-BackRight | | --- | | Edit: LFE-LowFrequencyEffects... so subwoofer? | | https://www.dolby.com/uploadedFiles/Assets/US/Doc/Profession... | entropicdrifter wrote: | LFE is an industry standard term for the subwoofer channel. | It's the ".1" in "5.1","6.1","7.1" etc | bravura wrote: | Low frequency energy, I assume. Ie bass. Your subwoofer or | ,,bottoms" if you have several. | ok_dad wrote: | LFE is usually a bass shaker which is a subwoofer but it moves | a weight instead of a cone, so you get vibrations in your seat. | It stimulates movement to your body somewhat, I use two for my | sim racing rig, one under my seat to inform me of the car | dynamics and immersive feeling, one under my pedals to inform | me when ABS is active and when my tires are spinning. | ape4 wrote: | What's going to be the next Quite OK thing? | p1mrx wrote: | Quite OK Food. It tastes like sand but the shelf life is above | average. | m463 wrote: | Sounds like soylent. (except my direct experience with | soylent leads me to think super-processed isn't that OK | foodwise) | bartwe wrote: | Hopefully a movie format | WithinReason wrote: | MPEG1 is actually quite OK | kragen wrote: | has anyone benchmarked qoa to see roughly how many instructions | per sample it needs? all i see here is that it's more than adpcm | and less than mp3, but those differ by orders of magnitude | | like, can you reasonably qoa-compress real-time 16ksps audio on a | 16 megahertz atmega328? | | hmm, https://phoboslab.org/log/2023/04/qoa-specification has some | benchmark results, let's see... seems like he encoded 9807 | seconds of 44.1ksps stereo in 25.8 seconds and decoded it in 3.00 | seconds on an i7-6700k running singlethreaded. what does that | imply for other machines? | | it seems to be integer code (because reproducibility between the | predictor in encoding and decoding is important, and a | significant part of it is 16-bit. | https://ark.intel.com/content/www/xl/es/ark/products/88195/i... | says it's a 4.2 gigahertz skylake. agner says skylake can do 4-6 | ipc (well, mops/cycle) | https://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=628, | coincidentally testing on an i7-6700k himself, but let's assume | it's 3 ipc, because it's usually hard to reach even that level of | ilp in useful code | | so that's about 380 mops per sample if i'm doing my math right; | that might be on the order of 400 32-bit _integer_ instructions | per sample on an in-order processor. if (handwaving wildly now!) | that 's 600 8-bit instructions, the atmega328 should be able to | encode somewhere in the range of 16-32 kilosamples per second | | so, quite plausibly | | for decoding the same math gives 43 mops per sample rather than | 380 | | i'm very interested to hear anyone else's benchmarks or | calculations | Turing_Machine wrote: | I looked around, but didn't see any mention of potential patent | issues. I assume that this has been considered? The Ogg Vorbis | people spent a lot of time on that back when they were developing | their format. | | Other than that, looks great! | speedgoose wrote: | The website says it's made in Hesse. No software patents to | care about there. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_E... | morelisp wrote: | Probably the most infamous audio format patent ever was owned | by a German research institute. | speedgoose wrote: | I guess you mean this one: | https://patents.google.com/patent/US5812672 | | That was an USA patent from Fraunhofer, who made quite some | cash from mp3 license fees (100 000 000EUR according to | Wikipedia). | nullc wrote: | No. The claim that there are no patents in Germany on | this stuff is common internet misinformation(*). There | are a great many coding patents from Fraunhofer all | around the world, including in Europe. | | Presumably because it's much easier to get injunctive | relief in Germany I've seen more codec related litigation | there than anywhere else. | | (*) Like many pieces of misinformation it has its roots | in a seed of truth: Particularly between 1998 (State | Street) and 2014 (CLS v Alice) the case law in the US | supported software patents. | | The real confusion is that "Software patents" is an | obscure term of art which refers to patents specifically | on software methods without any reference to a physical | machine or good. | | When non-patent-attorneys say "software patents" they | mean something more like "something I could infringe by | writing software". But clever drafting allows people to | write patents that software causes an infringement of | without it technically being a "software patent": The | patent's claims language will say something like "A | recorded media containing instructions..." or "A | microprocessor programmed to...". And this has been true | in the US and Europe through the whole span. | | Which is why there is an awful lot of patent action | impacting software in places where "software patents" | don't exist, such as the US (as of right now) and Europe. | IshKebab wrote: | You can absolutely patent software in Europe. Sorry. It's a | common misconception that you can't. There's a stupid dance | you have to do so it isn't technically "software" that you're | patenting... but really it is. | Turing_Machine wrote: | Maybe not, but that doesn't help people who aren't using it | in the EU. | speedgoose wrote: | True, it hasn't stopped hobbyists from using x264, ffmpeg | or VLC in the past but that would probably prevent | companies in some markets to use this audio format. | ericls wrote: | The smaple page preloads all the files before playing... Which | wastes lots of bandwidth. | g0xA52A2A wrote: | Some previous discussions. | | 3 months ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35738817 | | 6 months ago - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34625573 ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-08-09 23:00 UTC)