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Man what a showcase for Opus this is. Don't get me wrong, this sort of thing is a valuable exercise and we are better off with better encoders for these older
by cogman10 4mo ago
Man what a showcase for Opus this is.
Don't get me wrong, this sort of thing is a valuable exercise and we are better off with better encoders for these older codecs. But look at the numbers for Opus on this benchmark. It simply blows all the AAC encoders out of the water even at 64 kbps.
- ndiddy 4mo agoThe biggest advantage for having a good AAC encoder isn't efficiency, it's that for nearly the past 2 decades the de facto standard for live streamed video has been RTMP with H.264 video and AAC audio. There is basically no support for any other codecs. If you want to send a video stream to Youtube or Twitch, you will be sending H.264 and AAC. If you want an idea of how ubiquitous this is, I just checked in OBS and it will not even let you select different video and audio codecs in streaming mode, it just (correctly) assumes that anybody who's streaming will be streaming H.264 and AAC.
- repelsteeltje 4mo agoSample accurate editing is with AAC is a pain though. Especially if you also have video, because frame rates are usually incompatible. If you want flexibility without fully transcoding both audio and video, Opus is your friend
- ksncksmckwkf 4mo agoOpus is your friend as long as the software you’re using supports it—besides, Apple’s AAC-LC can beat out Opus in low bitrates scenarios. Whether you like it or not, AAC is still the standard.
- ErroneousBosh 4mo agoEditing with any playback-only format like AAC or H.264/5 is a pain. Everyone I've seen complaining about slow choppy playback in DaVinci Resolve appears to be using long-GOP codecs which require a massive amount of processing to decode. It's something like playing out two seconds of video to access every single frame.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- CharlesW 4mo agoPlus, at 96+ kbps (assuming an Apple-quality AAC-LC encoder) Opus loses its quality advantage. So at higher bitrates, the benefit of choosing Opus is that encoders/decoders are royalty-free.
- pkulak 4mo agoAm I reading that chart wrong? I see Opus ahead across every bitrate.
- CharlesW 4mo agoThe evaluation tools used are helpful for encoder development, but at best they're imperfect proxies for human perception, and their predictions are often inconsistent with the human experience. I assume that statements like "apparently the best AAC encoder" aren't meant to be taken too seriously, since everybody who does this stuff knows that ABX/MUSHRA tests with real humans is what tells the tale. On Opus vs. AAC specifically, there's a long history of studies like https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301428302_Perceived_Audio_Quality_for_Streaming_Stereo_Music https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301428302_Perceived... to help answer that question. (There are interesting charts at the top of page 1175.)
- lozf 4mo agoThat paper was published in 2014. The reference Opus encoder has certainly had a number of improvements that affect sound quality since then, whereas very few AAC implementations have.
- CharlesW 4mo ago> The reference Opus encoder has certainly had a number of improvements that affect sound quality since then… Yes, but not for high-bitrate music applications.¹ For example, Opus 1.2 really improved the quality of music encoding at 32–48 kbps. Opus doesn't have to be great at everything to be great at what it does, just like AAC-LC doesn't have to be. (¹Opus 1.6's experimental Opus HD looks very promising for this!) Apple's and Fraunhofer's closed-source AAC-LC encoders have seen regular, minor quality tuning, and they benefit from the research and engineering work that have been done for the AAC family of encoders (HE-AAC for bitrates down to ~48 kbps, HE-AAC v2 to 32 kbps, xHE-AAC below that).
- booi 4mo agoAlso the fact that hardware-accelerated AAC and even full AAC offload is ubiquitous in modern-ish hardware. I think my rice cooker can play AAC audio
- lesscraft 4mo agoNo one really offloads AAC, apart from Apple. Opus can be decoded on very cheap microcontrollers entirely in software using the reference library.
- philistine 4mo agoOn a microcontroller doing nothing else sure. But on a phone, a tablet, a laptop, you absolutely want hardware decode to preserve your battery life.
- nulld3v 4mo agoThat's their point though. Basically no modern phone/laptop/tablet other than Apple offloads audio decoding (of any codec) to hardware. You can check this on Android phones by installing the Codec Info app.
- coldtea 4mo agoSnapdragon chips do (used in many/most androids), Samsung own exynos also does iirc. If the OS/platform doesn't use it that could be another thing, but those chips do offer audio coded decoding, including aac
- philistine 4mo agoYeah no. All chips in computers, tablets, etc. have hardware decode. Intel chips have hardware decode. AMD, Arm, Raspberry Pi, what have you.
- LtdJorge 4mo agoI’m pretty sure no x86 chip has hardware decode/encode for audio. Together with dGPUs, they tend to have decoders for JPEG and decoders/encoders for H.264, H.265, AV1 and sometimes VP9.
- stefan_ 4mo agoI think often of how all it would have taken was a bomb for the 10 or so people that years ago at some browser vendor consortium out of pure self centeredness went „nah lets fragment“. We could have saved many many collective years, electricity and eyeballs simply watching the most basic content.
- derf_ 4mo agoAt one point in I think 2012 three of us who normally all live in different countries were riding in the same car in Australia. We advised the driver to be extra careful (she was dating one of us, so incentives were aligned). But it is nice to hear that you have been thinking of us, too.
- jshier 4mo agoYouTube actually supports H.265 and VP9 ingest, depending on the streaming protocol. I can actually stream 4K@60 H.265 from my Mac Studio with < 5% CPU usage due to the hardware encoder support in OBS. https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/live/guides/ingestion-protocol-comparison https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/live/guides/ingesti...
- ndiddy 4mo agoNice, glad some sites are finally trying to move forward. It looks like they only support H.265 video with AAC audio, so this should still be helpful for people who are streaming H.265. https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/live/guides/hls-ingestion#media_format_requirements https://developers.google.com/youtube/v3/live/guides/hls-ing...
- davidgerard 4mo agoyeah I use vp9 with opus for uploads by choice, it's great! YouTube serves vp9 but it always re-encodes my videos as AV1. Annoying. (I would upload as AV1 but the encoder is slooooooooow.)
- nwallin 4mo ago> (I would upload as AV1 but the encoder is slooooooooow.) If you're using libaom, try switching to libsvtav1. It's still slow, but it's slooow instead of slooooooooow.
- someonebaggy 4mo agoThe RTMP protocol comes from Adobe Flash which only supported a limited set of codecs, the only still useful ones being H264 and AAC. Nobody published the needed protocol extension "enhanced RTMP" until 2022 and it still isn't supported widely. RTMP is not a generic container for any codec, like Mastroska - RTMP is tightly coupled to the codec.
- palmotea 4mo ago> Man what a showcase for Opus this is. I take it you mean this Opus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_(audio_format) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_(audio_format)) not that Opus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_(AI) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_(AI)). I read almost all the way through your comment thinking there was a decent probability you were saying this new AAC encoder was written with Claude Opus.
- theandrewbailey 4mo agoI've never been AI guy, and have more fascination with audio. I've long stopped being excited when I read "Opus" on HN. It's refreshing when it turns out to be the audio codec.
- Aachen 4mo agoTo be fair, Opus was never a great name. I always feel the need to specify further when using it outside of a clear context of music codecs (also way before Claude was announced). Love it in every other way though
- pezezin 4mo agoNo, he was talking about the Opus Dei because this code quality can only be reached by God himself /jk
- numlock86 4mo agoOpus, the codec, has been a thing looong time before Claude.
- divan 4mo agowhy is this downvoted? for people who aren't in audio codec dev space, parent comment reads exactly as 'Opus 4.8 rewrote the codec and blew out all competitors'
- spider-mario 4mo ago> for people who aren't in audio codec dev space You don’t need to be in the audio codec dev space to have heard of one of the most widespread audio codecs of the last decade (used by YouTube, WhatsApp, SoundCloud and added to WebM in 2013).
- skydhash 4mo agoI would like Opus, but I’m using a subsonic client on iOS and my choice has been Flac (Alac?), MP3, or AAC. Opus wouldn’t play (There are some that supported it, but I didn’t like their UX).
- CharlesW 4mo agoYou might like Poppy (in beta), which supports all media servers (including OpenSubsonic/Navidrome) and Opus as a first-class music format. https://www.reddit.com/r/PoppyApp/comments/1tiyki0/about_poppy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PoppyApp/comments/1tiyki0/about_pop...
- lutoma 4mo agoYou can give Arpeggi a try. It’s still in beta and Testflight only, but already (imo) by far the best iOS app for Navidrome/subsonic servers. It also supports Opus playback on current iOS versions (since Apple added native support for the codec).
- jck86 4mo agoChoosing a lossy audio codec has become such a no brainer. Either use opus and be done with it or if for some reason opus cannot be used then use aac for compatibility with insane high bitrate for good quality without having to do research on what encoder and mode to pick. Still having a good quality and default aac encoder is great. Though I don't get why it is mainly CBR.
- ksncksmckwkf 4mo ago[flagged]
- jck86 4mo ago> Falser words hath never been spoken. Why? Care to explain? I have fully switched to opus for lossy since I cannot be bothered to find the sweet spot for aac encoders and bitrate. Opus simply is too good and convenient and has been for ages. What other lossy codec is better and for what reason? Under what circumstances and use cases? I really need put effort in looking for edge cases to not choose opus. Aac is good too, but way too many choices to make for storing mass material for the long term and be sure the quality is always good enough.
- Aachen 4mo agoI have the same experience as you and wondered if GP (green account at the time of writing) was trolling. Their other comments seem reasonable though. Based on those, I'm guessing their issue might be compatibility. (Still a flippant and useless comment in isolation, though) I've not had any issues myself (all players I use supported it already once I learned of Opus' existence about six years ago), but GP doesn't seem to be the only one in this thread. Platforms like youtube don't seem to have an incentive to switch, everyone wants to be compatible with them and they'll re-encode uploads anyhow
- unethical_ban 4mo agoSince you didn't detail your objection, I assume you're angry at the idea of choosing a lossy codec. Parent comment means that if one is to choose a lossy codec, the choices are simple.
- a1o 4mo agoI think the biggest issue with Opus is the problem with its specification being lacking, see: https://nothings.org/stb/stb_opus.html https://nothings.org/stb/stb_opus.html This essentially causes opus to never be used in games or in things in stores that may have issues with specific licenses.
- kderbe 4mo agoThis essay says it's not possible to make a public-domain implementation of Opus. But it could be released under BSD (as libopus is), which is fine for games, as evidenced by the Licenses section of the credits in many games.
- scratcheee 4mo agoThat’s going a bit far. I’m in the games industry and have used opus regularly, it’s a great codec for games, often the hardware decoding is so restricted that we’re using software regardless so we might as well use something like opus. The licensing restriction is unfortunate, but only restrictive for those with very specific goals, under normal conditions BSD is a wonderful license for game devs since you’re free to use the code and only have to add an acknowledgement somewhere. I suppose a public domain game might hit the same limitation, though as a non-lawyer I would guess the chance of anyone with standing trying to sue anyone implementing from this spec is realistically zero (though I don’t fault stb for being unwilling to roll those dice!)
- duskwuff 4mo ago> under normal conditions BSD is a wonderful license for game devs since you’re free to use the code and only have to add an acknowledgement somewhere. And it's not as though libopus is an outlier in using a BSD license. A lot of other commonly used libraries have similar licenses; a few examples that come to mind which are likely to show up in games are zlib, curl, Lua, and SDL.
- chaosharmonic 4mo agolibopus isn't even an outlier in using it for a media format specifically. See: everything coming out of the Alliance for Open Media
- sbseitz 4mo agoMost of my collection is Opus 256K, the only downside is support. A lot of tools like Bliss/Roon don't support it :(
- arikrahman 4mo agoTook me a second to realize you were talking about the encoder not the model before going into this article
- subarctic 4mo agoDefinitely thought you meant claude opus but now from reading a couple other comments it sounds like you mean something else called opus?
- Mashimo 4mo agoThe open source codec opus https://opus-codec.org/comparison/ https://opus-codec.org/comparison/
- richrichardsson 4mo agohttps://opus-codec.org/ https://opus-codec.org/ Been around a lot longer than Claude Opus.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- bob1029 4mo agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_(audio_format)#/media/File:Opus_bitrate+latency_comparison.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_(audio_format)#/media/Fil...