Semi-relatedly, is there anyone working on hardware encoders or decoders for audio codecs that are plausibly patent-free (e.g. mp3, vorbis, flac, opus)? AIUI d

Semi-relatedly, is there anyone working on hardware encoders or decoders for audio codecs that are plausibly patent-free (e.g. mp3, vorbis, flac, opus)? AIUI decoding for some of these formats can be a battery drain, particularly for devices with tiny batteries like ear buds, watches, ipod nanos.