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MP3 is getting very long in the tooth, not to mention the fact that it's encumbered by patents. A new codec would be nice, but hardware adoption of the codec wi

by nvmc 14y ago

MP3 is getting very long in the tooth, not to mention the fact that it's encumbered by patents. A new codec would be nice, but hardware adoption of the codec will take a while. Long enough, dare I say, to kill it dead in the water.

randallu 14y ago
Why would you say that? Most "hardware" decoders are DSPs that run software loaded onto them at runtime. This goes for anything with an OMAP, Tegra or Samsung (Samsung's own decode block) SoC in (that I know for sure) and probably almost everything else. Tegra3 and OMAP4 can decode WebM in hardware, for example.
- wmf 14y ago
  The problem is that they never develop firmware updates so if those DSPs don't support yet another open codec on release day, they never will.
  - gillianseed 14y ago
    perhaps, but even so that does not mean that it won't get supported in later generations. I'm sure people said the same thing about FLAC but it is now supported in lots of devices, like those running Android.
  - randallu 14y ago
    I'm pretty sure Tegra2 got firmware updates during its lifetime, and I know that TI do updates for OMAP. Those updates might not make it through to consumer devices, but that used to be the case for things like GPU drivers too. Google pushed an updated SGX driver for the Galaxy Nexus with 4.1, and Apple pushes updates to their own drivers every release.
- nvmc 14y ago
  I should have worded my comment better. I mean that adoption by hardware manufacturers will be slow. What's the incentive? Even for a firmware patch? MP3 is `good enough', and everyone already uses it.
  - iSnow 14y ago
    Opus is royalty-free, in contrast to mp3. And it will be used in WebRTC. I can see some devices picking up Opus to support WebRTC and possibly some (not portable music players, obviously) dropping mp3. Obviously neither you nor I have a crystal ball, but I see Opus as the PNG of audio codecs - not displacing the lousy but entrenched de-facto standard (GIF/mp3), but slowly taking over at the technological edge.
- pslam 14y ago
  Almost no hardware audio decoders use DSPs, or at least actually need to, since about a decade or more now. The manufacturers you mention use DSPs for bad reasons - usually the inertia of software already using a coprocessor and not being willing to license a new codec for the general purpose core. Audio decoding and encoding is an extremely low percentage of available CPU, and it's just not worth off-loading it. Video is another matter, at least when talking about HD. It's still very much worth using special purpose DSPs for that. For audio, the existence of hardware DSPs is simply not a barrier to entry.

by nvmc 14y ago

randallu 14y ago

Why would you say that? Most "hardware" decoders are DSPs that run software loaded onto them at runtime. This goes for anything with an OMAP, Tegra or Samsung (Samsung's own decode block) SoC in (that I know for sure) and probably almost everything else. Tegra3 and OMAP4 can decode WebM in hardware, for example.

wmf 14y ago
The problem is that they never develop firmware updates so if those DSPs don't support yet another open codec on release day, they never will.
- gillianseed 14y ago
  perhaps, but even so that does not mean that it won't get supported in later generations. I'm sure people said the same thing about FLAC but it is now supported in lots of devices, like those running Android.
- randallu 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure Tegra2 got firmware updates during its lifetime, and I know that TI do updates for OMAP. Those updates might not make it through to consumer devices, but that used to be the case for things like GPU drivers too. Google pushed an updated SGX driver for the Galaxy Nexus with 4.1, and Apple pushes updates to their own drivers every release.
nvmc 14y ago
I should have worded my comment better. I mean that adoption by hardware manufacturers will be slow. What's the incentive? Even for a firmware patch? MP3 is `good enough', and everyone already uses it.
- iSnow 14y ago
  Opus is royalty-free, in contrast to mp3. And it will be used in WebRTC. I can see some devices picking up Opus to support WebRTC and possibly some (not portable music players, obviously) dropping mp3. Obviously neither you nor I have a crystal ball, but I see Opus as the PNG of audio codecs - not displacing the lousy but entrenched de-facto standard (GIF/mp3), but slowly taking over at the technological edge.
pslam 14y ago
Almost no hardware audio decoders use DSPs, or at least actually need to, since about a decade or more now. The manufacturers you mention use DSPs for bad reasons - usually the inertia of software already using a coprocessor and not being willing to license a new codec for the general purpose core. Audio decoding and encoding is an extremely low percentage of available CPU, and it's just not worth off-loading it. Video is another matter, at least when talking about HD. It's still very much worth using special purpose DSPs for that. For audio, the existence of hardware DSPs is simply not a barrier to entry.