Lossless audio compression rocks!

[pglewis]

Monkey's audio: mac.terrashare.com

* Platform: Win
* How much: Free
* How fast: 3.7 min for 650MB in "high" mode
* How good: 362.1 MB (55.7% of original size) for 650MB in "high" mode
* Other: Includes Winamp plug-in to play compressed files in real time, and allows seeking.

I've tested it on a few projects, and it's pretty easy to use. 16-bit works well, 24-bit support has just been added and is in "beta".

Since I haven't been using it very long, I'm not at the point where I'll fully trust it with any critical audio without other backups. But it's been great, thus far. I've witnessed < 1 day turnaround for bug fixes from the author. If you're archiving a lot of WAV files, this is worth checking out.

[This message has been edited by pglewis (edited 06-16-2000).]

 

[pglewis]

*boink*

Monkey's audio has moved to: www.monkeysaudio.com

I had to clean a ton of stuff off the drive yesterday in order to keep recording . On audio files that were individual instrument tracks (not a full-blown stereo mix, all 16-bit only) I was seeing better than 60% compression!! using the high setting with the latest version (still beta). On full mixes I was seeing more around the benchmarked 40% compression. Did I mention it's free?

Updates with improvements are released practically every other week, and bug reports seem to have fixes in a day or two. You don't even have to decompress to listen to the file in Winamp. My caveat in the last paragraph of the original post still holds, but I plan to support this guy's excellent work.

 

[-monkey-]

Hey there,

I just wanted to say thanks for the nice remarks about Monkey's Audio.... it's really great to hear when people like MAC.

I also wanted to comment about "trusting" MAC. Honestly, I'm always a little nervous using some strange lossless coder too (I'm a bit paranoid), but if it makes you feel better, just use MAC's "Verify" feature. If a compressed file passes a verify, you can rest assured that it will decompress perfectly. (MAC uses about ten CRC32's every second of CD audio....very strong error detection)

Again, thank you

 

[MrBoogie]

That's a pretty impressive compression ratio for being lossless. Is that really possible? It blows my mind. Not wanting to start another mac vs. pc war, but will you being porting to pc?

 

[MrBoogie]

Ok. I just looked at the website and realized MAC is Monkey Audio Compression. right? hehe. I thought you meant the platform My bad. I dont pay enough attention.
Can't wait to try it out!

 

[-monkey-]

Hehehe....

I'm sorry to use MAC without introducing it as Monkey's Audio Compression.

About the compression ratios, it just depends on the music. I have some classical CD's that take less than 1/3 of the originals, but I have some hard rock CD's that only get down to like 7/10 of the original's size. It really depends on content, but I can assure you that Monkey's Audio is bit-for-bit lossless. Also, you can see a comparison of all of the leading lossless coders on the monkeysaudio.com webpage.

Later.

 

[pglewis]

Whoa... usin' the search engine, are we ? Some folks around here create a lot of wav files. Whatcha got goin' on is pretty darn handy for us. I'm feeling evangalistic.

I don't personally mistrust MAC at all . Just the standard disclaimer, ya know. Good to see you around here, Monkey.

 

[dobro]

So, is it that music with lots of effects is less compressible than music recorded close to the original sound?

 

[drstawl]

I think it's program material that fits the algorithm used in the compression engine.

 

[-monkey-]

Howdy,

Monkey's Audio gets the best compression on quite and "predictable" music. Basically the whole goal is to make the sample values as small as possible by using prediction. Well, if the music is quiet to begin with, that's a good start. Also, simple music like a piano solo has less information (sort of) than a complex hard rock riff, and so it's more predictable.

You can kind of see what sort of stuff compresses the most by watching the VBR display in Winamp while you play an APE file. You'll notice that the intro will be a lower bit rate than the middle of the song. (where it's typically more complex)

If you're really interested in the techy / geeky stuff, I'd recommend you give the theory paper that comes with MAC a looksie. I think it'd make some sense to 'ya.

Later.