Fraunhofer says HD-ACC will make CDs "obsolete"
By Donald Melanson 
posted Jan 8th 2008 12:57PM
posted Jan 8th 2008 12:57PM
Those Fraunhofer folks are nothing if not prolific, and it now looks like they're getting a little boastful as well, as evidenced by some comments reps from the group made at CES this week. As MacWorld reports, Fraunhofer IIS is not only saying that its new HD-ACC codec is "better than CD," but that it "makes CDs obsolete." That is apparently due to the codec's lossless compression of 24-bit music content, as opposed to the 16-bit, 44.1 kHz quality now found on CDs. What's more, the HD-AAC encoding process embeds a so-called "core layer" on any device that supports plain old AACs, although you'll obviously need a player with an HD-AAC decoder in order to take advantage of the fully lossless signal. Of course, some formats have a tendency to take off more quickly than others, so we'll just have to wait and see how HD-ACC plays out in the grander scheme of things.
HD-ACC or HD-AAC? I'm guessing the logo is the correct one.
AAC - Advanced Audio Encoding.
Get it right, guys! Engadget seems to be alternating abbreviations up there at whim.
I swear to god..if another company uses "HD" in their advertising i am gonna loose it!! HD this, HD that, sweet mother of god!
hey look at my HD Coke, HD Pepsi, HD cell phone etc etc etc....stupid!!!!
I'd drink some HD Mountain Dew if they made it and bring on the all-nighter!!
Let me hop in my GMC Sierra 2500 HD!
haha, what's next EngadgetHD?
wait...
And top it all off with a shiny web2.0 ball logo.
Have you seen the HD sun glasses yet?
http://www.seen-on-tv.ws/hd-vision/hdvision.html
24 more colors then REAL LIFE! /sarcasm
agreed btw
In Quebec we have a company that markets "HD lenses" for your glasses. To make it even more dumb, they show how glasses make your view of a TV look more clear...
A healthy, young person can hear in the range of 20-20,000 Hz. Since most tech-saavy audio folks are neither young, nor healthy, the point is?
The bit rate has nothing to do with that. The bit rate matters for volume less than 100%, which is almost all the music. And 16 bit just doesn't cut it. 50% volume is only 8 bits, enough to introduce artifacts.
Um, 50% volume in a 16-bit file can be represented by 15 bits, not 8.
That is the average person though.
I work a lot with audio, so I do have to have a good ear. This is where training your ear comes in, this is what the average person doesn't have/do.
I have not taken a test to see what my hearing range is vs a few years ago, but I do know that by taking care of my hearing (staying away from prolonged loud noise [ apprx. 60 and ^ dB I believe], and even very prolonged soft noise [fans, AC units, etc]) it has gotten a lot better at hearing other frequencies and frequency changes… thus I can hear better quality over lower quality. I’m not saying I can hear it all, I don’t know that I would be able to hear the HD-AAC difference or not.
But then again, it also depends upon what your speakers/phones can output.
16 bits is enough for high level audio, but not for music with much dynamic range like classical music (if the stereo is high enough quality too). In theory, I think that 18-20 bits would be enough.
Then extra sampling frequency is not required because we can hear over 20kHz (we can't), it's because it avoids using brick-wall anti-aliasing filters that modify the phase of the signals we do hear (under 20kHz).
Are you guys at CES 2003?
ACC or AAC? Proof articles people!
A lossless audio codec? Incredible! What amazing new innovations will Fraunhofer come up with next?
Oh, wait... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_compression_(data)
None of them start with "HD", though!
i am sticking to mp3 till the day i die. i still cant tell the difference between 128kbps mp3 and cd.
If you can't tell the difference, get a better sound system or get your hearing checked.
it must be nice being rich. im sure you have so many friends with your money and sarcasm :)
Then you should have stayed with cassettes mate.
Mp3 files are bad, specially when encoded at around 128k. I usually do mine at 192k. And even then, I can still hear the compression. Headphones are very good at masking mp3 shortcomings. However, listening to the file on regular speakers, you can tell. I always listen to the high hat and crashes coming out from the drums track. If those two sound clear, then you have a good transfer.
To those people coming here and bitch and write "lucky you because you're rich" or "not everyone is as rich as you" please stop it. Who says you have to own the gear in order to know if it's good or not? Don't you go to the stores, talk to people, have any friends who may own it??? Don't you have a job??? If bitching is all you're going to post, please just don't post anything at all.
I, for one, can tell the difference between 128kbps and 192+ kbps on laptop speakers, ipod earbuds, and $20 headphones
SACD and DVD-Audio discs also offered superior audio quality than CD, but they failed to make CDs "obsolete". So what makes them think that better audio quality will lead to success?
They've got "HD" in their name.
It's compressed yet lossless, and 24bit, so you can make it downloadable (or sell it on flash) and so you don't need to buy disks to get full quality but you can download and have even better quality than CD's.
I guess that for some obscure reason official companies think they can't sell FLAC (or APE) encoded files..
Unless I misunderstood the article, this sounds like a codec for audio files and not discs. Just like our MP3 files are not sold at Best Buy or Circuit City. So, the may be targeting downloading services like iTunes and Napster. If it's better than MP3, then it'd be worth checking out.
I wonder what kind of file size you end up with when using their compression for 24bit vs 16bit?
That is the most important question yeah, and I doubt it's much better than FLAC or APE, but who knows.
I believe FLAC supports up to 32Bit compression already..
And it's patent free and open source..
I wish Record Companies would just sell discs with FLAC files on them, an make new CD players which can read the FLAC files on the CD's.. Then u can just drag the files to your music library on the computer and and them to your 160GB iPod, or encode them to whatever you want.
And you wouldn't HAVE to tag music ever again!!!
I hope this IS something good, and I hope WMP fully supports it when it becomes a standard (if it ever does).
I haven't seen a good codec except MP3 and WMA. If the quality is good, file is also big, or it's not supported with players & hardware. If the file is small, then the quality is very bad, and again, it's not supported much.
I just don't understand people who accept 64kbps in WMA or 128kbps in MP3 as "good" quality and cannot tell any difference with a higher bitrate.
I just cannot listen to low bitrate music, I just don't enjoy it. I hope this codec will change my thoughts. So what exactly are we waiting for?
Most people can't even tell youtube music/video is mono sound..
Probably cheap audio equipment.
You can't understand how not everyone has the exact same hearing? Can you not understand people who need glasses either?
It's not the same thing.
If someone really has hearing problems, then they would use hearing aid, just like using glasses when there's a sight problem with eyes.
But I don't understand the situation where someone does NOT have hearing problems but can't "recognize" the difference between high quality and low quality audio either.
"But I don't understand the situation where someone does NOT have hearing problems but can't "recognize" the difference between high quality and low quality audio either."
Simple, it's not an actual hearing problem, it's an attitude problem. Probably these people simply don't CARE enough to discriminate between the two.
Example: I once had a friend who was a minor audiophile. Always wanted to have the best receiver or disc changer or speakers, best car stereo or whatever. And he used to ridicule me when I said I didn't notice any real difference between MP3's and CDs (actually I could tell the difference if the MP3s were 128kb or lower, 192kb and above is when I get kinda foggy on it...).
However...
When you get down to it, this guy actually had TERRIBLE hearing. I could set the TV to a comfortable level, for me, and he'd say it was so quiet I might as well turn on the subtitles. When he would adjust it so he could hear dialog, it would be annoyingly loud to me. He would nigh constantly misunderstand what people said, if it was spoken in low tones or if there was moderate background noise. But he could identify (and ridicule) him some mean MP3s...oh yeah!
I rather suspect that his hearing was damaged by his predilection to turn stuff up really loud, which is something many people do but that I pretty much didn't during the tenure of out friendship. But, in recent years I've discovered that music can take on a whole new depth when you 'crank it' and if it's played on higher quality gear (though I still refrain from doing so as I don't what to damage my hearing). But so what ? I rarely ever just sit and listen to music. I usually just put it on in the background at home or at work, and play it in the car (where it has to contend with engine and road noise), so I'm not super concerned with having the highest possible audio fidelity, thus it's not so much that I "can't" tell the difference as it is that I usually just "don't".
My vote is for Blu Ray CD's to win this format war :)
Theoretically you could put an AAC encoded data onto a blu ray disc, though there wouldn't be any player for that available I'm sure. That would be a good thing to look into. Better than WMA on DVD, which is apparently the latest in cross formatting optical media.
whats a CD?
and this is different from 24-bit .wav files how? geez if you really want to go all out, go with a 128-bit .wav file, which exists btw.
128 bit wavs? Really? Care to provide a link?
A few moments with a calculator and wikipedia to look up some suitable numbers reveals that 128-bit precision lets you measure the distance light travels IN A YEAR to a precision of 1,000,000,000,000th the diameter of a Helium atom. No way anybody's sampling audio to that resolution.
Maybe you're confusing resolution and sample rate? 128kHz I could accept, but absolutely not 128-bit.
VeganFreak: You are such a moron.
Nice response Chris. + Vote for you.
forgive me for talking about formats so experimental, that they're not, as of now, known to the public. anyways thanks for the nice reply Mike!
128KHz is a sensible, believable, achievable upgrade.
A 128-bit ADC just isn't, for many reasons.
The highest precision audio ADC listed on Analog Devices website is 24-bit. Being generous, if somebody could make an ADC with 1,000,000 times more resolution than that, it would still only be 44-bit (2^20 == 1,048,576).
You (VeganFreak) are going to need to introduce a bit of science or a link to an article to convince us that this super-experimental technology exists.
the only proof that i can provide is the fact that ProTools supports it. and if you want proof of that, i'm sorry to say that i cannot back it up. i'm sure some audio engineers would back me up though.
Nope. 24-bit @ 192KHz is the best spec I can find for anything on digidesign.com
Stop and look at the numbers involved. 128-bit resolution is just so ridiculously, impossibly, pointlessly high. If such a thing did exist, it would be able to detect the sound of a gnat farting 10 miles away.
well, fl studio supports 32-bit, so thats higher right there. and to my knowledge it supports 192Khz.
The software might do 32 (inevitable since it's a more CPU friendly size) - I was talking about hardware to capture the sound in the first place. Without that, there's little point.
i dunno, i'm starting to doubt myself. =[
Can we just have one, two or three discs formats on the market? Please?
My wife and I was having this dicussion the other day. But in our lives, CDs are already obsolete. I always thought PMP's and hard drive based car audio systems would make the cd obsolete.
So how about I encode a song in mp3 at 128kbps. Then I decode it and subtract from the original file. I compress the rezidue with zip. I can "distribute" the mp3 to "older devices" and "archive" the mp3+zip on my hard drive.
I call this "AtanasHD" standard. :)
Naw, how about you upload that diff zip to your blog and post a link so dark star can discover that he needs his ears checked.
I've read about a couple of blind mp3 hearing tests, one by Maximum PC, with at least some people who thought they had trained ears, and no one could consistently tell the difference between somewhat higher variable bit rate mp3's (I think at least 160 kbps) and lossless audio files. So I think the recommendation was to use 192 vbr mp3's and don't worry about it. I know I can't tell the difference between a 192 vbr mp3 and the cd it came from using decent headphones through a good stereo.
And when a new codec comes out in the future with better compression and sound quality, are you going to re-encode those crappy files to the new one? And what about when mp3 is not supported anymore by the new col poratble players because its a mega old compression scheme? RIGTH.. we already have a 160GB iPod - so pretty soon we wont even need to use anything but lossless codecs. I already rip all my CD's to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) which already has all the features of this new codec but its Free and Not Patented. Which mp3 and 'im sure this new codec is not - since its made from the same people as mp3 was.
@ Krumm
That made me think also... what rate are the studios recording at? I'm sure it's pretty high, but also, what are they distributing at? Because if you already have a 128kbps mp3 and convert it to AAC, then you still really only have a 128kbps file, because you can't put back what isn't there. So maybe more people would be able to tell the difference in audio quality, if companies did release on a higher quality format.
I really hope this doesn't make CDs obsolete.
Nothing can beat buying a CD and adding it to your collection, and not just adding to your hard drive...
First off...this article doesn't fully explain things. The sampling rate referred to (44.1 kHz, 16 bit)is what is currently used to master CD's. Please don't confuse this with the bit rate at which you encode your MP3's at. When a CD is created, the music is digitally encoded from a lossless source (DAT, analog, etc). At 41.1 kHz it already losing information, but until now it has been acceptable because most of the information lost is outside most humans' hearing range. When you encode your MP3's, you're re-sampling this digitized information, losing even more information. That's why 128k or lower sample rates generally sound bad.
However, Fraunhofer's new codec samples at 24 bit (up to 192 kHz). What this does is capture most of the analog information, making it effectively lossless. By sampling at a higher bit rate you give yourself and the electronics more headroom to process the data through filters and compressors. Also, sampling at a higher bit rate affects the spacial image of the music...in other words the perceived sound stage. The higher bit rate can "detect" shorter time differences between the left and right channels than 44.1 kHz can, and this difference is notable by the human ear and can affect perceived sound quality.
When a CD is created, it done so at 44.1 kHz. Using this new codec would require a new medium to deliver it, thus making CD's obsolete in their traditional sense.
Alright, so then will they start recording in HD-AAC, so that there is no quality lost?
I wasn't totally correct before. Not all recording is done via analog. I, myself, recently purchased a 24-bit 4 to 1 input to Firewire box that I will use to record my girlfriend singing and playing her keyboard. I did this knowing that eventually the industry will probably trend toward this, and then I have at least captured as much information as I can...even if it some of it gets tossed before the final product. This will be a gradual change, I would expect, for the industry.
Achiles heel of digital music isn't the resolution it is recorded in but is the manner in which the music was originally mastered. There are only few good sounding 16 bit redbook recording out there because majority of sound engineers make great stride to make CDs sound good mainly when played on boomboxes.
So, using higher res format to store the file will somewhat improve the audio quality, but mastering the audio properly from the start will make much much more difference. Upsampling 16bit crap to 24bit crap isn't going to do much.
The problems with 16bits 44.1khz is this format is almost perfect. Barely a normal persona can find the difference between a spectrum from 16bits and 24bits.
Of course, market will need consumers and the best way to obtain is to publish a (usually useless) new feature :hey... 48khz is better that 44.1khz!.. or 102khz (dolphin frequency), 16bits is uncool, 24bits is fine... but why don't jump on 32 or 64bits instead?.
For the notes, Britney spears sound the same on 16 or 24bits, just bear with it. :-P
HD-AAC may be better than CD, but Napster made them "obsolete" years ago.
I was under the impression that CD's were already obsolete...
Well, not for Engadget it seems...
Mr. Fraunhofer, the kids don't care about quality anymore.
Why doesn't it support a higher sampling rate, like 96kHz, so as to more closely duplicate the original, analog sound? A CD's 44.1kHz can only emulate a smooth (natural) sine wave so well, and some DAT's actually record at 96kHz. This is why vinyl, to this day, still sounds much warmer and natural than a digital CD.
Yep with all the clicks, pops, static and rumble which you can never totally remove from vinyl playback.
MP3 are cool but we had a lot of fun with them is time for a higher quality format to take place.
At least so we can go deaf in style.
Flac
Hey, i liked tommys explanation, thanks for a thought out post. regardless of what you all think about CDs and the obsolesance, i believe that this is a good thing, i also believe a standard is a good thing as well. so if it does take off i hope that we can all enjoy it and look back on CDs as fondly as many look on records which still have good sound quality.
im all for it, then again im an audiophile ...
and to whomever said that headphones cant display artifacts in sound as well as speakers, hasnt the vaguest idea what hes talking about.
I will only support such a format if its DESIGNED as CD was to NOT have ANY DRM. if the Standard permits DRM I have no interest in it.
Sounds good on the surface. I'm always for greater quality and the closer we get the true lossless encoding the better. Of course, if the studios would stop crapping up the sound by increasing the volume all the better too.
However, I don't care about how good it is. I don't care if it can deliver headshots in Halo, or actual head on the couch. I don't care if it can generate a Whopper every 4 hours from THIN AIR.
I'll take a crappy 128K MP3 all day long over a format that has DRM in it.
Now that is what I am interested in. For me personally, it is DRM formats on one side (which I will never touch), and non-DRM formats on the other side (my real choices come from come from here).
If this gets implemented without DRM, then I'm excited. If somebody wraps DRM around this, then it might as well not exist.
Hi Fraunhofer
http://flac.sourceforge.net
This is how it's done.
Regards,
The rest of the world.
You can already get lossless multichannel 24bit/96KHz audio with both FLAC and WMA lossless. I don't know why Fraunhofer thinks their HD-ACC is special.