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KT-Tech Sound Compression - Music at 32 Kbit/s 258

Posted by timothy from the fine-print-time dept.
Robert Buccigrossi writes: "KT-Tech, whose wireless video compression was featured in a previous Slashdot story, has released a demo for real-time sound compression at http://www.kttech.com/. Like their video, the sound compression is symmetric and is suitable for wireless real-time communication in software. It sounds better than Windows Media and MP3 at 32 Kbit/s for music and 4 Kbit/s for voice." According to the site, "licensing KT-Tech's sound codec is easy," but I bet it's not as easy as .ogg.
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KT-Tech Sound Compression - Music at 32 Kbit/s More

KT-Tech Sound Compression - Music at 32 Kbit/s

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  • as long (Score:2, Funny)

    by madcoder47 ( 541409 )
    as long as it's better than any of RealNetworks Codecs, how bad could it possibly be?
  • How does K-Tel sound on KT-Tech?

  • Limited Use (Score:4, Insightful)

    by commonchaos ( 309500 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @06:48PM (#3067545) Homepage Journal
    This apears to be a pretty targeted solution "suitable for wireless real-time communication in software" so comparing it to wma/mp3/ogg doesn't really apply. As far as if its better or not, it doens't really matter, mp3 is still the de-facto standard for end-user music encoding, simply because everybody uses it. And a licenced codec will never take over the "market"

    • Re:Limited Use (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ttyRazor ( 20815 )
      Mp3 was "targeted" as an audio codec for video files, and wasn't intended as a stand alone audio format. That didn't stop it from becoming the de facto standard music format, did it?

  • Bandwidth isn't the problem (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anztac ( 322182 ) <theAnztac&hotmail,com> on Monday February 25, 2002 @06:48PM (#3067546)
    MP3 at 32 bit sounds so horrible it hurts my ears, but if it's for wireless technology I can see it's precidence. Really though, why would you try to outdo ogg? Personally I don't think bandwidth is the problem at the moment, the 3G networks will solve that (hopefully.) The problem is really with the devices themself. Battery life, useability, etc.

    • Re:Bandwidth isn't the problem (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cryptochrome ( 303529 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @07:00PM (#3067634) Journal
      Nonsense. Bandwidth will always be a problem. No matter how much bandwidth you add, no matter how big you make your highways, no matter how much oil you drill, people will always use as much as you make, even if it means wasting it or creating enough traffic to degrade the whole thing. There is no substitute for efficiency. A better license can compensate for inferior technology to only a minor degree.
      • Efficiency is good, not at the sacrifice of quality though. At least in my opinion.
      • > Nonsense. Bandwidth will always be a problem.

        I agree wholeheartedly. Journalists/reporters in warzone areas don't have multimegabit links, in fact, they are happy they can get a 28k8 or higher link. And that's when 26fps PAL size video and 16bits 44khz audio with Dolby Pro Logic in super cool broadcast quality MPEG-2 format is just _right_ out.

    • It's sill a problem. The 3G networks, or even 2.5G (EDGE, GPRS, etc) offers bandwith enough to play decent quality music. The problem is the cost.

      The new packet based systems charge on a data download basis as opposed to the old per minute charge. This is great news for WAP, SMS and other small text-based things. Here in Sweden the biggest mobile operator Telia charges about 2 cents per Kb for GPRS, so reading som e-mails, broswing some news via WAP or whatever won't cost you much and you don't have to hurry as you did with the 50 cents/min charge over GSM. But with high bandwith features like audio the picture is quite different.

      At 32kbit/s (which offers quite poor audio) you're downloading 4 Kbyte/s. That's 8 cents per second, or $4.80/min. That's a little hefty for me thank you very much... A more efficient codec could really save you some bucks.

      I think I'll wait till 3G is widely available and not horribly overpriced. I'm hoping it won't be that many years. Streaming from monkeyradio.org directly to my handset would be really neat :)

      Regards / ushac
      • Don't confuse pricing per Kbyte for normal data transfers and data from internal content providers. Each packet is logged and marked. They can track every packet that is external or internal content, and price per packet on destination. The phone companies will let you use their content providers at a cheaper rate, almost unlimited for a small price.

        Then you get locked into their content, everything else costs too much. Nice business model, locks customers into a controlled subscription rate.

        Of course you can pay 10x the cost and listen to mp3.com.
        -
        Today you can go to a gas station and find the cash register open and the toilets locked. They must think toilet paper is worth more than money. - Joey Bishop

    • With a bit of pre-processing, you can make 32Kbps MP3s sound, well, tolerable. Just filter them with a low pass filter set to about 4,000 hertz, and use mono. With a bit of work, you can make it sound about as good as AM radio.

      -- this is not a .sig
    • Trouble is that 3G isn't showing any signs of coming around soon. It's required a massive investment to get the infrastructure for current phones rolled out, and there simply isn't anyone left with the money to do another rollout of 3G so soon. Plus in many countries (particularly Europe) the phone networks have bid so much for the rights to install 3G that they've got no money left to build the damn things! If I were you, I'd not expect to see 3G networks for at least 2-3 years (from talking to friends who work with mobile phones).

      The thing is though, the more bandwidth the phones need, the more it's going to cost the phone companies - phone base stations are limited (a) by range and (b) by the number of simultaneous transmissions they can handle, and (b) is dependent on the bandwidth required per phone. If you're putting base stations around a major city such as downtown London or Manhattan, where (b) is the limiting factor, then increasing the number of simultaneous transmissions will reduce the number of base stations required, and so reduce your costs.

      Grab.

  • License agreement (Score:3, Informative)

    by Dante Alighieri ( 561749 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @06:49PM (#3067549)
    This is part of the license agreement to which you must agree before downloading the file to play the demo sounds... 4. TERMINATION. This Agreement will automatically terminate after one (1) year. KT Tech may terminate this Agreement earlier if you do not abide by the terms and conditions of this Agreement. In the event of any termination, you must destroy all copies of the Software and all of its component parts. Am I going mad or does this mean that we would be required to delete the software from our hard drives after a year? Is this a standard part of a software license agreement?

    • Re:License agreement (Score:2, Interesting)

      by lkturner ( 556290 )
      Deleting the files from your hard drive is one thing. Since this is targeted at wireless, I would think it would be embedded in hardware. Talk about a forced upgrade. After a year of owning the acclaimed all in one cell phone, pda, audio player, etc - you must destroy it's firmware because it contains the KT Tech sound codec. Ouch.
  • It will be interesting to see if this format takes off not only as a streaming format but also as a general computer audio format. It would be very nice indeed to have portable players for .kts files. Finally flash sticks would be usefull for storing large quantities of songs! Wouldn't that be nice?

  • A one string violin (Score:5, Insightful)

    by banuaba ( 308937 ) <drbork&hotmail,com> on Monday February 25, 2002 @06:50PM (#3067555)
    "According to the site, "licensing KT-Tech's sound codec is easy," but I bet it's not as easy as .ogg. "
    You know, I like free software as much as the next guy, but I understand and respect the fact that companies have to make money. I fail to see why it was necessary to throw in a dig at this company that is doing neat things just because they want to profit from their invention. Just because its not free doesn't make it bad.

    Now go ahead and mod me down.

    • The Beam in Thy Eyes (Score:2, Interesting)

      by (void*) ( 113680 )
      You know something? Ogg, being under the BSD, is easier to license than whatever license KT Tech does. I think you are reading way too much into a line like that.

      • Re:The Beam in Thy Eyes (Score:5, Insightful)

        by banuaba ( 308937 ) <drbork&hotmail,com> on Monday February 25, 2002 @07:01PM (#3067642)
        I'm not disagreeing with that statement. But there is no *point* to adding that little tidbit on to the end of the article. All it is is a dig at a company that has done something cool. It's offtopic and petty, IMHO.
        • I don't see it as a dig. I see it as a reminder to that there is a free alternatives out there, and they had better come out with something better if they want to survive as a proprietry format. It need not be interpreted as a demand for them to release it free.
          • the only point for saying it that way is as a dig. it doesn't add to the story,and it was only put there as a smart ass remark.
            • the other part being that I like Ogg Vorbis both as a concept (good license etc, smart people doing shoestring-budget research / implementation with good results) and in practice (I never turned my CD collection into MP3s, but I am turning them into Ogg Vorbis files). It doesn't get enough attention, and this (KT-Tech's codec) is precisely the sort of product which invites a comparison, even though KTech's is really a different market, at least unless ogg gets a whole lot skinnier. The availability of free software alternatives, though, (depending on how broad the universe of 'alternatives' is allowed to be) is one factor that does drive down licensing fees for the payware.

              [The comment about the licensing cost actually came from a different submission on the same topic, but I didn't feel like just glibly including their claim of 'easy' licensing -- easy compared to what? I just supplied one 'what.' :)]

              timothy

          • I'm sure glad I'm not the only one. The Slashdot crew has always liked their silly digs . . . erm, comments, and I think it's refreshing, in this period of post-dot-bomb anti-Open-Source kneejerk backlash, to have someone still pointing out that there's something out there whose licensing agreement is, well, hard to beat, in terms of ease. :-D
        • It's offtopic and petty, IMHO

          When you use software, you have to abide by the terms of the license it is released under. Unless you've been living under a rock, you must realize that licensing terms may vary, and that the choices you make about what licenses are and aren't acceptable profoundly affect your rights. Discussing the licensing terms associated with software is always topical.
        • You've been around long enough to know that much of the editorial additions are offtopic and petty. I don't like it anymore than you, but complaining about that or Katz is as likely to achieve results as pounding sand.

      • Ogg, being under the BSD...

        I just got a mental picture of the BSD Daemon sitting on the Vorbis "Guy With a Shovel", poking him with his pitchfork and yelling, "Say 'uncle', say 'uncle'!"
    • I fail to see why it was necessary to throw in a dig at this company that is doing neat things just because they want to profit from their invention.

      It's not because they want to profit from their invention, it's because they want to control other people's use of the codec just because they publicly identified it first. There are a number of ways to get paid without abusing our idea ownership system (street performer protocol, support contracts, etc.) that don't violate the freedom of others by taking a government-sponsored monopoly.

      I guess it's true what they say, if you have to ask, you'll never know. Proprietary knowledge *is* bad precisely because it's not free. It cuts off an entire branch of human inquiry, like pruning all the best branches off a tree before they've been given the chance to mature and bear fruit.

    • Wow, you are touchy. The "dig" that you are taking offense at is in response to KTTech's statement, "licensing KT-Tech's sound codec is easy". The editor(?) just responded to that statement.
    • You know, I like free software as much as the next guy, but I understand and respect the fact that companies have to make money.

      Companies do not have to make money - they either will or they won't, according to free market forces.

      Or at least that is the way it is supposed to work...

      grumble.
      • But no company is going to make money by giving away their product for free. Product being what they do, not their code.

        On another note, most people @ slashdot probably don't care about this anyway as it will only be really useful in the realm of portable devices. I mean who wants to rip their cd collection to hd and have it sound less then perfect? The only reason that I keep versions of my music around at a bitrate lower then 192kbps is for my Nomad II.
  • I hope they plan on releasing higher bitrate demos of music if they want to show this as a new format, because most mp3 music sounds bad even at 128 kbps, let alone 64 kbps.
  • I have to wonder how good the quality of this compression scheme will be overall. When listening to spoken words, I generally have to have it at 56 kbps or higher or the words run together for me. Other people may be different, however, so I'm not going to say that I have to have it my way 100% of the time. Music, however, is a different story. I can barely listen to anything at 96 kbps and below in any format, because the tones don't generally sound right. For music, I have to argue that it's not going to replace MP3 or OGG or any other sound compression format that there is.

  • Comparisons (Score:2, Informative)

    by SynKKnyS ( 534257 )
    http://www.kttech.com/SoundCompression/SoundCompre ssion.html [kttech.com]

    Anybody compare them yet? Too bad they don't have a comparison with ogg vorbis. :(

    • ya. (Score:2)

      by jon_c ( 100593 )
      But ya i checked it out. The really impressive ones are the 8kbit comparisions. At 8bkit the kttech definatly sounded better. The 32kbit rate was more debatable.

      Of course this comparision means nothing, every time i've been invited to listen and compare, whether it's for WMA, RM and MP3Plus the samples i'm given always sound better for the product the company is pushing, so what it really works and sounds like in real applications remains to be seen.

      btw, they're "player", is a "strait off the template" SDI MFC application with no installer. The app opens with an empty document and the menu options File->Open, File->Stop and File->Close. Not even a play button!

      -Jon

      • Re:ya. (Score:2, Insightful)

        by mcspock ( 252093 )
        if they spent all their time working on a slick MFC app instead of writing a good decoder, i wouldn't be impressed.

        think about it: any flunky can write mfc apps, how many people out there can do codec work? not many, i assure you.
        • I disagree. If one wishes to sell a product, one must market that product. Having the only player for a companys codec be a complete 2 hour hackjob does not represent the company very well. It is a bad marketing move to give people a low quality first impression, which is exactly what they did.

          Whats the reasoning for it anyway? Are they that in a hurry to beat the guy who next week is going to claim "better then mp3 at 32kbit", it's been done, they only way a company with a product like that is going to get anywhere is to market it as well as possible, and one way to do that is not have a shitty looking player.

          -Jon
    • Anybody compare them yet?

      Yes, and frankly it doesn't sound all that great. All three formats sound like crap at 32kbps and 64kbps. I don't anticipate anyone forsaking their mp3 collection to switch over to this.

    • They cheated (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Magila ( 138485 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @07:19PM (#3067759) Homepage
      They added noise to all the other encodings. Don't believe me? I re-encoded their 8 kbps kts stream to 8.5 kbps rm and even after the recompression it sounds better, listen [earthlink.net].
    • The comparisons were questionable.

      At 8 kbps, the KT voice was better, sure. And at 4 kbps it was roughly intelligible. But the 32 and 64 kbps tests were of questionable materials. The 32k was of electronic rock, and the 64 of synth. How do you take electronic synthesizer music and judge what it's supposed to sound like?

      Let me hear the same tests on acoustical instruments (say, flute and piano) or an orchestra. Then maybe it'll count.
      • Oh, I'm so l33t! I listen to classical! I don't like electronic music! I'm an audiophile, I can hear the difference between 256kbps MP3's over ordinary copper network cables and gold-plated network cables!

        Actually, the electronic stuff is nice and broadband, so it'll give the codec a real workout. I use electronically generated test tones for setting up broadcast-quality MPEG encoders, then optimise with whatever content they're going to be streaming.

        Granted, orchestral music is going to be very hard to compress well, but if you like how an orchestra sounds, you're going to *hate* lossy compression.

        Come back and post when you've heard a *real* orchestra, or better yet played in one.

  • The question is.... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by gartogg ( 317481 )
    Who will licence this technology for free? It's no good for linux if it's proprietary.

    The other problem is that it won't co-exist with MP3. One format or the other will win out, and as we see with minidiscs, it's all about marketshare.

    It's nice for proprietary technology (VOIP comnes to mind) but otherwise seems useless. With commercial technology, in 6 months there will be better compression, just like .ogg and this. It's neat, and I'd like to see an explanation of the math, though...
    • First off, with the target platform being mobile systems (ie cellphones, and other devices that run on a 3G network), linux is kind of out of the equation. Second off, just because it is proprietary doesn't make it no good for linux. Oracle is proprietary, yet it is very good for linux server adoption. And third, it doesn't have to co-exist w/mp3 because they are different tools for different jobs. By the way, minidiscs still have quite a cult following, especially with the newer players that are barely bigger than the media that they play.
      • As somebody once said, I don't want to have a toolbox filled with tools for all my jobs, I want a hammer that does all my jobs. Specialized codecs are a pain because at best you have to think about which one to choose, and at worst you have to compare a bunch of them to pick the best one, which may or may not be available. People want one codec that does the job best at all levels.

        Nothing in the Ktech codec profiles suggested that they couldn't be adapted to higher quality stuff, which after all is easier to do right than the low bitrate performers. Their still image compressor can handle lossless, too.
        • I want a hammer that does all my jobs

          I thought the quote was something along the lines of "If your only tool is hammer, all the problems seem like nails", which implies that there is the concept of "right tool for the job". You don't usually try digging holes with a hammer do you?

          Whether the problems domains for high-quality (ogg) and high-compression (ktech codec) are overlapping enough or not to make one codec potentially work for both I don't know (I'm sure there are ./ readers who can give decent answer), but I wouldn't count on that being the case. Much like JPEGs and PNGs can peacefully co-exists -- even though both are for image compression -- I can easily see the need for at least 2 separate codecs, if their goals are different. Larger the audience, more compromises one has to make.

        • As somebody once said, I don't want to have a toolbox filled with tools for all my jobs, I want a hammer that does all my jobs.

          Who said THIS? No no, not "who" because no *person* could have said something this inane. WHAT said this? This is just about *the* *stupidest* thing I have ever heard.

          You want ONE tool for all jobs? You want a bicycle that doubles as a toothbrush, a microscope and an entertainment system? An airplane that can wash dishes and clean swimming pools while being used to direct traffic at busy intersections? A coke machine that styles hair, photographs the license plates on speeding cars and sterilizes surgical equipment all while at the same time taking high resolution pictures of interstellar space?

          Different tools for different jobs are GOOD things. Sure it's nice to have tools that can be used for multiple purposes like, say, duct tape, but you won't want your house to be built with it in lieu of nails!

          PLEASE tell me you were making a really poor attempt at humor and relieve my fears that the human race is devolving.
  • I'll consider downloading it if they have it as a winamp input plugin. I'm not gonna download/install the player just to hear a demo, then uninstall it afterwards.

  • The next golden egg (Score:4, Insightful)

    by RembrandtX ( 240864 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @06:58PM (#3067626) Homepage Journal
    I'm not sure if this is gonna be the next golden egg. Mp3 by hook or by crook, is now well entrenched into the market.

    I do notice some differences at the lower levels .. KT sounds better than mp3 at 32k .. but who has mp3's under 128k ?

    As much as it hurts to say this, having multiple compeating forms is gonna be hard in the digital music world. How many non-geeks have a diamond rio.

    If you bought into the mp3 craze for $286.00 (a few years ago) and spent a month making yourself computer literate enough to use the rio for your morning workouts at the gym. What are the odds that you are going to be willing to shell out more $$ .. for a product you have to relearn, just cause it sounds a little better.

    I think the mass market [the same folks buying into the m-life hype] is going to be a little less inclined to jump on a band wagon .. especially the mpe-sceners .. who were weened on free music. Anyone who was buying music in the 80's remember how long you waited before buying your first CD? (at $45.00 for 'The Wall' i didn't buy a second for quite some time)

    I think this falls under the 10X rule again.
    [the 10X rule being that something either has to be 10X cheaper .. or 10X more efficient to make a world-changing difference in an established market.]
    • Ah, but most people don't own MP3 players, and what does it matter which format you use if you're only ripping your own CDs? Your early adopter syndrome is your own problem.

      Besides, you can always re-encode your downloaded music into mp3.

      BTW, the iPod was also designed to handle multiple formats. The next generation of firmware that comes out alongside Quicktime 6 whould handle the .aac format, for instance, which is better than mp3. No reason they couldn't do kts.
      • Re-encoding is a big fat no no,
        unless you like listening to
        chirps, static, and the band at
        the end of a tunnel.
      • "Ah, but most people don't own MP3 players..."

        I dunno about that, I can count 20 people off my head easy whom I know have, and use frequently mp3 players of various types. [only about 4 of them are computer geeks, a lot are just people who were sick of cd players skipping, or loved to dl music off napster]

        I think that Diamond, a tleast has sold *MANY* of these units, enough for them to be banned at my wife's school (a VERY low income middle school)

        Of course the logic also applies that if diamond didnt sell enough of the rio 300 .. they wouldn't be on the rio 600 now.

        But i digress, keep in mind im talking 'mass-market' here. Folks that own a pII 300, and use AOL on a 56k dialup. Early adopting (fools) like myself *grin* know hopefully what we are getting into. I expect about 1/3 of the crap i buy to be useless: I cite OmniSky, Adlib Sound Cards, and EISA card supporting motherboards as my biggest gripes *chuckle* But to your average american consumer.. the power AOL user.. who just now are starting to get into the DVD market. Trust takes a while.

        mp3 is easy, its been in so many newspapers, and all over the media. I mean, its been in use since when 92' 93' ? (and earlier if you used mp2) Its what the non technical american feels comfortable with.

        I'm not dissing KT at all .. good work on them, to improve on a compression format as popular as mp3 is better than i can do .. the idea of that math makes my eyes water.

        My point was just that, the mass market knows mp3. and the cold,hard,(sad) truth of the matter is that unless something is either sierously marketed .. or REALLY is a tremendous improvement over the existing model .. its not going to get main-stream attention.
    • I do notice some differences at the lower levels .. KT sounds better than mp3 at 32k .. but who has mp3's under 128k ?


      Well, nobody encodes their cds at 32k or 64k, but they do broadcast at those bitrates. An improvement there could be useful.
      • That way I can get more songs onto my measly MP3 player.

        Of course, this gets used in fairly noisy environments, so I can't really hear the sound quality lapsing.
    • "but who has mp3's under 128k ?"

      Nobody, but you obviously didn't read the article. This format is meant to be used for wireless-realtime communication (which are voice applications). There is no need (right now at least) for voice to use 128kbps.

      This format is trying to get a good sound with fewer bits per second. Anybody can make a codec that sounds good over 128kbps.

    • You stumbled over the truth when you typed "but who has mp3's under 128k?", but then you picked yourself up and kept right on walking past it, never letting it slow you down. ;)

      This isn't a competitor for mp3. They're obviously not TRYING to compete in the high bandwidth area, where mp3 (as you correctly noted) has such a lion's share of the market that it probably won't be unseated in the neat future.

      By focusing on 8-32kbps bitrates, they're obviously shooting for a whole different market... probably for the 2-way real-time and streaming communications markets, where mega-low bitrates come into play.

      I don't think they're trying to replace the 128kbps+ music that's commonly downloaded off the internet.

  • not as easy as ogg but... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    at least they've probably decently documented their format and have it working on something other than pcs like some DSPs and will likely gladly port to other processors/OSes and DSPs to get support.

    ogg has bit rate scaling and such but good luck finding example code to do this or even a decent document describing it. it could be very cool for internet streaming of audio by encoding at a high bitrate and simply shaving off bits to whatever rate the end user is connected and low processor useage to. provided it even works.

    hell the faqs at both ogg sites haven't been updated sine 2000 so far as i know.

    i work for a large company who has some interest in providing ogg support in it's products (more as more people ask for it) but without decent documentation and sample code, it's not going to happen on any product for quite some time.
    • OK fine, the documentation is lacking, but the support and sample code is not. Here's the code [xiph.org] for rc3, with sample apps and all the encoder and decoder source. Google can help you find some doc's. Need more help, try the mailing lists [xiph.org], and if all else fails you can usually find a developer hanging out on #vorbis on irc.openprojects.net, all very helpful to people who ARE open minding and have actually checked these things before running off their mouths.

  • That's nothing (Score:5, Funny)

    by epepke ( 462220 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @07:08PM (#3067698)

    I can compress any Britney Spears song down to zero bits without loss of quality.

  • Winamp rul3z! (Score:3, Funny)

    by TheSHAD0W ( 258774 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @07:11PM (#3067721) Homepage
    I'm wondering how long it'll take for someone to hack apart the ktsplayer executable and rework it as a Winamp module?
  • The sound samples they have provided are very basic, not utilising the full spectrum... and IMNSHO, they sound poorer than the MP3 equivalents.
  • Surely if they combined efforts with the Vorbis people to improve their codec for low-bandwidth streams, the two development teams could produce a single codec that's better positioned to push aside the more popular codecs like Microsoft's ASF? Seems like a terrible waste of effort to write this from scratch.

    Btw. I tried the demo but it's only available in (Microsoft Windows?) binary executable format with no source available.
  • ...when I hear it.

    ..or at least the pops/dings/digital blurbs

  • Mass market? I don't think so... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by martyb ( 196687 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @07:18PM (#3067754)

    I can see applications for this beyond just the mass market. My first thought would be for carrying additioanl voice circuits over a T1 line. (Say, for carryting voice traffic between two locations in a large company.)

    A T1 line suports 24 circuits, each of which has IIRC 64Kbps (ignoring RBS, etc.) Whatever. Each of these circuits can support one conversation. Using this technology, several more conversations could be carried on one circuit. (Their web site states 8Kbits for high-quality voice; 4Kbits for intelligible voice.) Even using the 8Kbit rate, that means 8 conversations could be carried on one voice circuit.

    The result? A single T1 could carry 192 conversations instead of just 24. Or, put another way, get 8 T1's of voice capacity for the price of just one T1. At anywhere from $600-$1000 per T1, that adds up really fast.

    Now, how long would it be until the phone company decides to replace POTS circuits with one of these? Dial-up users would find their modems capped at 8Kbits? Blech!

    • Won't happen. To do this would require the replacement/upgrade of all the telecom switches and this would be EXPENSIVE. Those big 7/REs aren't cheap, believe me we have one at work (university). It would be a bightmare trying to get the system to work with this new compression and to get that to interface with older systems that didn't. To make matters worse, the system would be exponentially more expensive. Right now the audio data is just sent PCM (uncompressed), no compression hardware needed. IF you want to do compression, now you have to have the compression hardware on EACH AND EVERY CHANNEL. Multiply this by millions of lines and add in the overall system upgrade and you have a cost nightmare.

    • We've been doing compression for decades. (Score:4, Informative)

      by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @10:40PM (#3068528) Journal
      Telcos have been doing various kinds of voice compression for decades, especially on international circuits; an important feature has been detecting modem and fax tones and turning off compression. We used to use analog techniques, then digital, then fancier digital. There's not much compression used within the United States, but lots of international calling on traditional telcos runs at 32kbps. Many of the new low-price international carriers use Voice-Over-IP technology - you may be getting 8kbps. And in addition to the telephones-on-both-ends carriers, there are the international Internet-to-telephone gateway companies like Net2Phone which go for the consumer market.

      But the place you really see voice compression on T1s is between corporate PBXs - if you've got enough traffic between your offices to keep 12 or 24 channels full, it might make sense to run a private line, and until the mid-80s lots of companies did this, but by the time everybody's PBX was smart enough to be good at it, the price of Voice-by-the-minute from long distance telcos was cheap enough that almost everybody ripped that stuff out except for multiple offices in the same city. But compression equipment has become cheap enough and good enough that lots of people are rebuilding those networks that we ripped out in the 80s, especially since IP data networks mean that even if VOIP isn't cost-effective by itself, you can piggyback some voice on a data network for not much extra operating cost, and the equipment cost may pay off pretty quickly.

      Companies are more likely to use voice compression on international circuits, because the price of pipes across the ocean is usually atrociously high, but the price per minute for phone calls to much of Asia is also atrociously high, so a dedicated line using compressed voice is still often a good deal. It doesn't usually sound as good as a Real Telephone Call, but lots of Asian telcos don't have the best sound quality either. The other big trend that's appearing in international calls is VOIP over internet connections - the quality is more variable, but the price of a T1 or E1 internet connection in Asia is often similar to the price of a 64kbps or 128kbps frame relay PVC.

  • The Next Big Thing (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Sludge ( 1234 ) <slashdot@NosPaM.tossed.org> on Monday February 25, 2002 @07:23PM (#3067785) Homepage
    Embedded devices aside, The Next Big Thing has to be lossless codecs. Consider the scenario that made MP3 flourish (at least for me): 33.6 dialup, P133 with 40 megs of ram and a 2 gig hard drive.

    Yes, all my stuff is now at a higher bitrate, but my machine is twenty times as efficient in every category mentioned above. Forget more efficient lossy algorithms. I'm going to be interested in lossless compression Real Soon Now.

    • It might be possible to send audio recordings around losslessly these days. But why send the masses of random noise around that mp3 encoders strip out? I'd rather save my bandwidth for downloading compressed video.
    • There are lossless audio formats out there. The best ones generally compress at around 2:1. I believe the most popular one is called Shorten, commonly abbreviated to .SHN. It's quite popular with show tapers, from what I understand.

      The thing is though, when encoded right, Mp3's are practically indistinguishable from the source, even by "golden ears", or by looking at the waveforms.

      When I say "high quality mp3", I'm talking about high bitrate VBR mp3's encoded with newer versions of LAME. See www.r3mix.net [r3mix.net] for more info. Even with 8:1 compression you get 4 times as much music as lossless formats, at practically indistinguishable quality.

      Unfortunately, 99% of the mp3's you see out there on the web are recorded at low bitrates with crappy encoders. :-)

      Now, I'm not saying that lossless compression doesn't have its place... once audio is lossy-compressed once, even if it's compressed well, it's essentially useless for further editing if you care about sound quaslity. But for just LISTENING to music, trading uncompressed audio seems like overkill no matter how much bandwidth and storage space you have....
      • The lossless encoders I have used get a maximum of 60% and an average of 75% compression. They are FLAC, shorten, and monkey's audio. However, they are a hell of a lot faster than lame and oggenc. (20 seconds per song with Monkey's audio.)

        If you encode with oggenc at 100% quality, it makes files about 1/3 of the original size and you probably can't tell the difference. But you might possibly have some artifacts that are a caused by a flaw in the algorithm which you won't have in a lossless encoder that works correctly.
        • That's cool, I didn't think the losses encoders could get such good compression.

          Now you've got me curious. Two questions... did you mean to say "average of 60% and a maximum of 75%", or are the words "average" and "maximum" in the right place, and you typo'd the numbers? Second, what sort of source material do you get those numbers with (music genre if applicable).

          I guess lossless compression is a bit more of a contender if it can put up numbers like that. Thanks for the informative post. :)
          • I apologize for being unclear. What I meant was, usually the files would become 75% of their original size after compression, and at best get around 60% of their original size. Nothing really gets around 50%.
            • What I meant was, usually the files would become 75% of their original size after compression, and at best get around 60% of their original size. Nothing really gets around 50%.

              Actually, some types of music will get better compression than that, like some classical and jazz. I have some Ella Fitzgerald that gets 5:1. But usually classical gets around 50%, pop/rock gets 60%, and death metal 70%. I have a comparison of different genres and different codecs on the FLAC site:

              http://flac.sf.net/comparison.html [sf.net]

              Since the KT guys haven't even released an encoder yet there's no way to see how they measure up.

    • Why not just store the original PCM wave? If you don't care about the size, what good does the 50% you gain from a lossless compression scheme do you anyway?
    • You're going to be hard pressed to find a lossless codec too much more efficient than those currently available. Even if you were to design a compression algorithm tailored specifically to music or spoken word, you're still going to be dealing with enough variation between samples that you'll eventually need to rely on some mix of tried and true lossless compression schemes (barring radical advancements in compression theory, that is.)

      That said, there exist lossless audio compression schemes that will give you fairly reliable results in the 25%-75% compression range. These are great for high-quality reproduction and high speed (high speed as in fast disk access, not as in cable modem/DSL) access, but you're still looking at a 160 MB download (near-best case scenario) for a single CD of music.

  • File size (Score:3, Interesting)

    by acoustix ( 123925 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @07:28PM (#3067810)
    Has anybody else noticed that all of the .kts files are larger than the mp3 files?

    8kbps = .6KB larger
    32kbps = 3.3KB larger
    64kbps = 4KB larger

    I know that its not a big deal with those small amounts. But, also, those demo files are pretty small. What will be difference when using larger files or streaming?

    • It depends on how their algorithm works. If the file contains information (this could be a mother wavelet and a set of reconstruction filter constants) tuned for a particular song, then there will be a little up-front-cost, but an overall smaller file size..

  • Not enough info to determine usability (Score:4, Informative)

    by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Monday February 25, 2002 @11:02PM (#3068597) Journal
    The web page doesn't have enough information to tell if the technology is usable. It's got some examples of compressed files, and a demo program, which does say that it's not vaporware and that at least for some kinds of sound samples it provides good compression and probably-pretty-good sound quality for the bitrates it uses. But that doesn't tell me enough to know if it's usable for any real applications. It needs several things:
    • Documentation on what kinds of sound compression it can support at what bit rates, and what frequencies it supports. Is this the same algorithm for music as for 3kHz voice? Can you do really good voice with 11kHz stereo inputs, or do its voice compression modes only do a better or worse job of reproducing the same raw 64kbps / 3kHz voice stream?
    • CPU horsepower requirements for compression. Is this a job for a DSP, or a fast PC, or a slow PC, or a Palm Pilot, or a wristwatch?
    • CPU horsepower requirements for decompression. It's often lower than compression, but not always.
    • Latency requirements for Compression and Decompression - is this usable for real-time conversations, or only for canned speech? This is separate from the horsepower requirements, which can be fixed by faster processors - many of the common algorithms require N voice samples to run the compression algorithm over, which is ok if you need 10ms of sound, marginally usable if you need 100ms, and unusable for conversations if you need 1 second of sound samples to get the compression rates (even though it's fine for music playback and other one-way sound applications.)
    • If possible, standard voice compression quality scores compared to the popular compression algorithms.
    • Information on what kind of licensing is negotiable and what isn't - can I give away free players and only pay/charge for compression tools, or do I have to charge every listener money for the decompression client? This makes a huge difference for web applications - it's much easier to get a web page publisher to pay for a tool with better compression than to get their readers to pay - that's Kiss Of Death mode.
  • Before anyone starts comparing Ogg Vorbis at 32kbps against KT Tech's 32kbps implementation, let me remind everyont that Ogg Vorbis is not ready at 32kbps yet. This is planned for the RC4 release (Ogg Vorbis is currently in the RC3 release) where all the low to very low bitrates will be tuned. It is not possible to compare Ogg Vorbis at 32kbps against KT-Tech now simply because RC3 doesn't support the encoding at that bitrate. The currently lowest quality (encoding at -q 0) will give approximately 64kbps.

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